I Wonder If Dick Can Hear The Geese This Year

The flakes are falling outside as I sit here and it is just around -3⁰C with a windchill about 10⁰C colder than that. I have decided that today is a good day to sit and look out of my window. Yes, I should have taken the dog for a walk but he didn’t seem any more enthusiastic about being outside than I was. I guess it is true that the longer you have a pet the more you become that pet.

 

I can’t help but think of all those summer days that I frittered away putting off projects because I had months of warm weather ahead of me. I spent too much time doing indoor projects that are meant for the colder days of winter. Mind you, I did enjoy my summer a lot so I guess all things considered it was time well spent.

 

I heard my first flock of geese today which is really late for it. Now, I’m not sure if it just happened that I was inside when the flocks flew over or perhaps the lead goose saw me and told the other geese to run silent. I don’t see why he or she would do that because I don’t pose a threat of any kind to geese. I have never had goose for dinner although I wouldn’t say no if I were offered. Well, I might say no, why break a long standing tradition.

 

I have been wondering if the geese and ducks were planning their flight south this year. I wouldn’t go south or should I say I wouldn’t willingly fly over the USA for the foreseeable future. I have a feeling that there will be too many reckless, disappointed people who have a right to bear arms and bullets could be flying everywhere. Nope, the geese, ducks and human snowbirds should take the year off and let the good citizens or America have their civil war while we prepare for an influx of political refugees.

 

It wouldn’t be the first time I harboured people that fled the US in my house. During the Vietnam war my brother was dating a girl from Rochester that he met in Florida. Well, she had a brother named Dick who was unable to avoid the draft and had to go to Fort Dix for basic training. Well, Dick didn’t like army life too much and decided to leave. One dark, moonless night Dick jumped from a second story window in the barracks, used some of that basic training to get out of Fort Dix and entered Canada on vacation, never planning to return to the US of A.

 

Dick showed up at our door and asked mom and dad if he could stay at our house until he got a job and a place of his own. Dad wasn’t sure, the war he fought in most people signed up to fight willingly, but Dick explained his reasoning and dad relented. I think dad saw too many things he couldn’t unsee while he served his country and in the German prison camp.

 

Dick stayed for a while and mom got him a job where she worked and eventually he got his own place, a nice basement apartment not too far from our place. From time to time friends of Dicks would show up at our door in much the same predicament as Dick had been in and we would feed them and put them up for a few days until they decided what they would do and where they would go.

 

These people were true hippies and I learned a lot from them about life and choices. Also about drugs and music. In fact, the first time I heard Abbey Road by the Beatles was in Dick’s basement apartment and I can still remember the smells and sounds of that day.

Dick left the area and I mostly lost track of him. From time to time others that had stayed with us would drop by and catch us up on all the latest gossip. Tony got into heroin and he drifted away from everyone, and John began traveling the world and probably still is to this day. Dick was stoned on acid at a party and put his arm through a plate glass window. He was cut up pretty badly but the good news is that he met and talked to God who told him his life’s purpose. The last I heard about him was that he was living in northern Alberta had cleaned up and was running a Christian retreat making oodles of money for whatever sect he was following.

 

I wonder if Dick can hear the geese this year.