Dispatch from the wilds of North Middlesex: #8

 A Parkhill ode to autumn 

Autumn is a season of “mists and mellow fruitfulness” in other times and places, but here, not so much.  It’s mid-October, and I still have dozens of spring bulbs to plant.  However, today is wuthering (cold, rainy and windy, in other more prosaic words), so I am safely indoors watching leaves and small branches fly off the poplars in the back yard and hoping the 60-year-old trees themselves don’t topple.

Speaking of which, the biggest story here — aside perhaps from the provincial election, in which the incumbent was likewise tossed away on the winds of change — is arboreal.  The tree trunk carving in Coronation Park is now complete. The work was commissioned by the Parkhill and Area Horticultural Society — known here as simply the Hort.  An earlier dispatch reported that the carver said the old trunk “spoke to him.” Now we know what it said:  a fairy tale come true in oak.  For older folk, the side towards the street commemorates the recent Royal Wedding with the initials C and W rapturously entwined on a shield and surrounded by a fantasy of oak leaves and roses.

The other side depicts  Rapunzel  letting down a long braid of hair just tantalizingly out of reach of a spry youth climbing up to meet her.  This latter image is intended for the entertainment of children, with the underlying hope that none of them will later vandalize what captivated them as youngsters.  Around the top are several jaunty plump acorns carved from the truncated remains of four or five large branches. The intentional fallacy prevents me from contemplating what the artist had in mind when he included them, but to me they appear more mammiferous than memorial.

Before my imagination takes us irretrievably gutter-ward, I should report on another new feature here in town:  the crosswalk on Main St.  Coincidentally, the same pedestrian safety device had been instituted in Souris, PEI when we visited this summer.

Each appears to be confusing to both motorists and pedestrians — but for different reasons. In Souris, as in much of the Island, cars still stop for pedestrians without having to be told. In Parkhill, they don’t. It can be embarrassing either way – well, actually, here it might also be fatal.

In any event, last year in Souris I walked up and down by the post office trying to find the mailbox. Veering a bit close to the curb, I slowly realized that traffic both ways had come to a halt. Not wanting to seem ungrateful, I crossed the street. Traffic flow resumed.  Gazing back across at a wider angle than before, I spied the mailbox, stopped traffic, re-crossed the road and mailed my postcards.

This summer, crossing Main St. in Souris had become complicated. Does crosswalk protocol mean that cars need stop only there, or can they still be expected to stop anywhere along the road?  Small children on bicycles seemed to think so, as they darted across anywhere as before.

Here in Parkhill, it’s not that simple (and, incidentally, the only people crossing Main St. without looking first are ATV operators driving illegally on the hiking trail, oblivious to the fact they have suddenly intersected with the road).  Anyhow, the Highway Traffic Act makes clear no one is to move into the path of a vehicle that is “so close it is impracticable for the driver to yield the right of way.” This would describe most vehicles barrelling along Main St. In fact, local opinion holds that the OPP would be better advised to lurk beside the crosswalk and catch real speeders than by entrapping senior citizens nudging the speed limit just outside town.

In any event, cars don’t get it, nor apparently do pedestrians. The other day, I saw one poor soul standing meekly behind a parked car while a couple of pick-up trucks whizzed by. Having experience with crosswalks in bigger urban centres, I advanced with a toe into the gutter, raised my cane, waved it, fixed the motorist with my gimlet eye and began to cross the first lane.  This procedure has worked for me, at least so far, most notably with drivers I can make eye contact with. In fact, just this afternoon, I crossed twice — and both times I didn’t have to wait long before cars came along.

However, as the local paper points out, understanding how to manage a crosswalk has something of a learning curve. The editor implored readers to be careful, as she doesn’t want to see anyone get hurt using this new safety feature. 

Speaking of getting hurt, the 153^rd Parkhill Fall Fair got underway several Fridays ago. The highlight of the three-day exhibition is always the demolition derby held on the Sunday afternoon.   Leading up to this competition crescendo were baby contests (including baldest, most dimples and rolls, and craziest hair), mutton busting (a sort of demolition derby involving sheep), crowning the fair royalty (not just a princess, but also a bespectacled prince and several ambassadors) and of course, judging the hundreds of fair exhibits.  The judges, perhaps wisely, come from outside the community — in fact from as far away as London for the exhibits sponsored by the Hort.

I did not attend the fair’s finale, but one of our neighbours entered a vehicle, which I saw being carted off on a flat-bed truck a couple of days later. It didn’t look like a winner. Anyhow, to start the event, the fair’s karaoke champion, sang  O Canada, and you’d think she was standing in our back yard the sound system worked so well.  Engines roared all afternoon, and traffic was lined up at least 10-deep at the stop sign at the south end of town, as the crowd dispersed — not perhaps as “gathering swallows “ twittering in the skies, but there aren’t a lot of thatch-eaves around here either.   John Keats lived in quieter times, or at least they were differently noisy.