Home  >> Stories  >> The Tale Spinner #2016-37

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IN THIS ISSUE

• Dorothy Cady remembers a rescue in HeroicStories
• I conclude my account of my years as a printer
• Gerrit deLeeuw sends these groaners
• Catherine Nesbitt forwards a story of a good deed
• Here is a joke about a son not wanting to go to school
• Sites are suggested by Carol Hansen and Tom Telfer

Dorothy Cady of Oklahoma writes in this issue of HeroicStories about

THE COURAGE TO STOP

The cold had settled in quickly. It had been balmy the day before, but it was below freezing now, in December 2003. The Oklahoma roads were icy that night, and few people were out on them. Our son had just left our house to take his friend home before the weather worsened. When the phone rang, I knew something wasn´t right.

"Mom. We found a body in the road. No, at the curve. Yes, we´re fine."

Because we lived up a dirt road with few other houses around, there was no telling where the body had come from, or whether or not it was a trick, or truly someone who needed help. My husband, our son-in-law, Jon, and I rushed the two miles to the site.

Our son, Ray, and his friend, Merrick McGuire, stood coatless and shirtless next to Ray´s car, which he had turned to let its headlights brighten the area. The body was on the side of the road. It lay covered with every piece of clothing the two could afford to remove and still remain modest. The boys shivered. My husband checked for a pulse. The body was breathing. My son and his friend had done their best to keep him warm.

"I drove right past him," Ray told me. "I thought someone had tossed out some clothing or lost it off their truck. I looked in the rear view mirror and the heap didn´t look right. So I went back. That´s when we discovered there was a person there."

We called the police and told the two young men to get into our car to remove the chill. But they wouldn´t go. They crouched by the man and waited, talking to him, hoping to keep him conscious until the police arrived, both wanting to know if he´d survive.

"He´d have frozen to death if your son hadn´t found him," the officer told us. "His truck is down the road a bit, in the ditch. Looks like he thought he could walk and get help. You may go now. We´ll take it from here."

Once the ambulance arrived, I asked the officers if it was OK to collect the coats and shirts the two had donated to keep the man warm. The stranger was blanketed and the clothing returned. My son and his friend dressed again and went on. We went home.

Though the two young men were worried about their own safety when they realized what they had found, they kept their heads and helped a man who wasn´t able to help himself. We still don´t know who he was and probably never will, but that doesn´t matter. The man is alive because my son and his friend noticed something didn´t look right - and had the courage to check it out instead of just driving on.

ED. NOTE: To comment on this story, or to get your own free subscription to this letter, click on

Wherein I conclude the story of my experiences as a printer,

A WOMAN IN A MAN´S TRADE

In the summer of 1946 I received my journeyman papers, certifying that I had completed the required number of years and all the lessons in printing sent out by the ITU. There I was with credentials but no job.

Early in that year I had become engaged to an electrical engineer who, upon graduating in May from the University of British Columbia, was offered a job by Canadian Industries Limited in their Quebec plant. John´s getting a job and my losing one suggested that it was a good time to start a new life together, so in September of that year, we were married in Shawinigan Falls, up the river from Trois Rivieres in Quebec.

John was paid $300 a month as an engineer, which did not cover the expenses we had, including the money he had borrowed to go to UBC, so I went to work part time in a French print shop.

I had taken three years of French in high school, but that did not prepare me for setting French-language material. However, I soon adjusted to the new arrangement of the 90 keys on the Linotype keyboard to accommodate the accented letters. The keyboard was confusing at first, but not nearly as confusing as the French I was setting. Most of it was of a religious nature and had many unfamiliar words in the text; it became necessary to set the words by letting them pass from my eyes to my fingers without trying to understand them.

My shift was in the evening, after the regular workers had left. I worked alone in the shop, which was a little intimidating, but the bus rides home were far more frightening. At that time, Saint Christopher was still looking after travelers, and the drivers had every faith in him. Because there were other workers who got off at midnight as I did, there were several buses scooping us up at the same time.

The drivers would race the buses, and every time people had to get on or off, the passengers would urge them to hurry with "Vite! Vite!" While one bus would stop, the other would pass it, encouraged by the delighted cries of his load. Of course, when the passing bus had to stop to let passengers off, the other bus would perform the same manouevre, so that in effect they were hop-scotching from stop to stop. Not having the same faith in St. Christopher as the other riders, I kept my fingers crossed until it was time for me to hurriedly exit the bus, to the cries of "Vite! Vite!"

The bus rides were the most exciting thing about my working in Quebec; far more exciting than anything that happened in Hamilton, where John was transferred in three years. Again I worked nights, this time in a job shop, with rats for company. One night at the end of my shift, I headed to the washroom to clean up. There was a rat in the doorway. I decided I didn´t really need to wash my hands before catching my bus.

I didn´t work all the time we were in either Shawinigan Falls or Hamilton, because each time I stopped when I became pregnant. My first child, Judith, was born in Shawinigan; she still feels a strong attachment to Quebec. She is a fluent French speaker and now works in Ottawa, which is truly a bilingual city

My son, Jay, was born in the hospital on top of Hamilton "mountain," which in reality is part of the Niagara Escarpment. To westerners like John and me, who grew up among real mountains, it was a hill, but it was certainly the highest land around there. Ontario´s mountains have long since been ground down by time and weather, while British Columbia´s mountains are relatively new.

At the end of the next three years, John was transferred to the new plant in Edmonton, where he became the maintenance engineer. Not having any more children, I worked all the time we were there (three years, of course) at the Edmonton Bulletin, setting government publications and phone books.

Again, I worked the night shift, alone in a great barn of a place that was in darkness except for the little space in which I sat. There was an upstairs which housed other offices, and occasionally I could hear foot-steps up there. The old building was situated in what had become a rather tough neighbourhood, and I always left it to the last minute to dash across the street for the last bus. In Alberta at that time, it was the law that women could not work after midnight, but in any case, there were no buses after that time.

In our next posting, back to Brampton, Ontario, I was a lady of leisure. At least, I didn´t work as a printer. However, when we were finally sent back to Vancouver, we found it necessary for me to work again after John decided to go into business for himself, always an iffy proposition. I started as a Linotype operator at Pacific Press, and before I finally left the trade, we went from Linos to teletypes (where we had to read ticker tape), to primitive computers, and finally to more sophisticated machines that used typewriter keyboards.

We had been in Vancouver only a few years when John died of diabetes, which he had contracted when he was 18. I was 40 at the time, and my family consisted of my children and my mother, who had come to live with us; and two dogs and a bird. At this point, I was faced with another 25 years of setting mostly classified ads, seven hours a night, on a machine which was no longer a challenge. Again, words were passing from my eyes to my fingers with no thought in between, and I was completely bored. I looked around for an alternative.

Thinking of what I would really like to do, I decided to combine my love of books with a new career, and after having taken a correspondence course in English 101 to make sure I could still study, I started at the age of 43 on my university career. At first I took only a couple of courses while continuing to work. After I had completed my first year, I signed up for full time, going to university for seven months and working five months at Pacific Press for the next two years. At the age of 49, I got my teaching certificate and became a school librarian.

Thus ended 31 years of printing. The trade was good to me, supplementing our income during our marriage and supporting my family when I became the sole breadwinner. During all those years, I met only one other woman who had gone through an apprenticeship, although there were other women Lino operators who had learned in small non-union shops. Nowadays, printing has become a white-collar job, operated by typists, and while it is far easier and cleaner and faster, I still remember nostalgically when printing was a craft, not just a job.

I have been asked what it was like to be a woman in a man´s trade, in view of the present struggle of women to be paid the same as men doing the same work. At the time I became an apprentice, there was no thought of women ever being in the printing trade, which was dirty and hard work, so there were no clause in the agreements that there should be a pay differential. In all the shops in which I worked, from Quebec to BC, I was never discriminated against or harrassed in any way, but once at Pacific Press, I was asked if I was trying to set the whole paper by myself. In all the small shops where I had previously worked, everyone was expected to work hard; in PP, union members took a more relaxed view of their duties.

On a lighter note, Gerrit deLeeuw send these groaners:

CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT

I changed my iPod name to Titanic. It´s syncing now.

I tried to catch some fog. I mist.

When chemists die, they barium.

Jokes about German sausage are the wurst.

A soldier who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned veteran.

I know a guy who´s addicted to brake fluid. He says he can stop any time.

I stayed up all night to see where the sun went. Then it dawned on me.

This girl said she recognized me from the vegetarian club, but I´d never met herbivore.

I´m reading a book about anti-gravity. I can´t put it down.

I did a theatrical performance about puns. It was a play on words.

They told me I had type A blood, but it was a type-O.

A dyslexic man walks into a bra.

PMS jokes aren´t funny, period.

Why were the Indians here first? They had reservations.

Class trip to the Coca-Cola factory. I hope there´s no pop quiz.

Energizer bunny arrested. Charged with battery.

I didn´t like my beard at first. Then it grew on me.

How do you make holy water? Boil the hell out of it!

Did you hear about the cross-eyed teacher who lost her job because she couldn´t control her pupils?

When you get a bladder infection, urine trouble.

What does a clock do when it´s hungry? It goes back four seconds.

I wondered why the baseball was getting bigger. Then it hit me!

Broken pencils are pointless.

What do you call a dinosaur with a extensive vocabulary? A thesaurus.

England has no kidney bank, but it does have a Liverpool.

I used to be a banker, but then I lost interest.

I dropped out of communism class because of lousy Marx.

All the toilets in New York´s police stations have been stolen. Police have nothing to go on.

I got a job at a bakery because I kneaded dough.

Haunted French pancakes give me the crepes.

Velcro - what a rip off!

Cartoonist found dead in home. Details are sketchy.

Venison for dinner? Oh deer!

Earthquake in Washington obviously government´s fault.

I used to think I was indecisive, but now I´m not so sure.

Be kind to your dentist. He has fillings, too.

Catherine Nesbitt forwarded this story from The Mercury News:

PAYING IT FORWARD - IN MOROCCO

Karen Anderson writes: In September, 1980, we were in the middle of the Moroccan desert halfway between Casablanca and Marrakech, a four-hour drive. My husband had a bad case of tourista, so I was driving our rental car to Marrakech. I discovered that men of Morocco did not like women to pass them, so I was doing all sorts of tricky things as I sped down a two-lane road.

It was 100 degrees out and we have no air conditioning. I was driving a small European car, and as I ascended a hill, my car started to slow. I tried downshifting, but the car still slowed, so I pulled over. The car died. There were no villages, no people. Only a goat herd, very far away.

My husband dragged himself out of the car and poked around. Nothing. One of the men I had passed gallantly pulled over. He spoke Arabic and French. I took French in school 20 years before. He also poked around the car, lifted the hood, but the car did not start.

He could not take us anywhere as his small car was full. With a wave, he called, "Bonne chance, Madame!" and drove off! Trucks ignored my wave, cars were few, and it was 4:00 p.m. We were extremely concerned. We were very far past the last the gas station and had no idea what was on the other side of the hill.

Finally, another man pulled over. He spoke English! He used to work for our Air Force. We were saved.

He towed our car to a gas station just over the hill, as it turned out. He told us he was a coffee dealer and shows us $100,000 in U.S cash under his mat. He took us to our hotel and we babbled about taking him and his wife to dinner to show how grateful we were.

But he explained that he was Muslim, and in his faith, you may not take compensation for a good deed, but the person helped is required to aid someone in need in the future.

In August, 1981, on Interstate 5 somewhere south of Fat City in California, we were 30 miles from the last gas station. It was again 100 degrees. We saw a woman pushing a stroller with a baby in it, going in the opposite direction from us and away from an obviously stalled car. I shouted to my husband, "She´s the one!"

He made an illegal u-turn and pulled over. She had run out of gas. She climbed into our car and we drove her to the closest station. The men there were so astonished to see a woman with a baby that they volunteered to deliver her gas themselves.

So much goodness that started from the kindness of a stranger in Morocco!

WAKE UP, SON!

Early one morning, a mother went in to wake up her son.

"Wake up, son."

"But why, Mom? I don´t want to go."

"Give me two reasons why you don´t want to go."

"Well, the kids hate me for one, and the teachers hate me also!"

"Oh, that´s no reason not to go to school. Come on now and get ready."

"Give me two reasons why I should go to school."

"Well, for one, you´re 52 years old. And for another, you´re the principal!"

SUGGESTED SITES

Carol Hansen sends this link to a video of Turkish artist, Garip Ay, recreating Van Gogh´s Starry Night using Ebru art, painting on water:

Tom Telfer forwards the URL for an America´s Got Talent show, in which the Clairvoyants gather the judges around a table to display amazing mind-reading feats:

Tom also sends this link to the female quartet "Salut Salon" playing in the key of comedy:

Gracing the stage from Italy and the Netherlands, the visual dance act "Another Kind Of Blue" bring something new and exciting to Britain´s Got Talent:

These signs will help you determine if someone is having a stroke:

This father could donate only one life-saving liver to one twin, so a 19-year-old stranger steps in:

This National Geographic series takes a look at some animals making seemingly bizarre friends:

These towns aren´t waiting for world leaders to take charge on climate change:

This site suggests eight chemical-free natural pain killers that you can make at home:

Tell Health Minister Jane Philpott that you want to put plain packaging on cigarette packs and save lives. It´s legislation that bans any branding or advertising on a cigarette package other than the company name in plain font - and it´s been proven to work all over the world, including Australia, Ireland, and Great Britain:

Improve your computer´s speed with some of these tips:

To check out the features of the "freedictionary," which changes daily, go to