Posts with the Dick Dee tag

Barris Beat

My summer standard

Written by Ted Barris on . Leave a comment
My overnight standard transmission instructor, said, “It’s easy. You’ll get the hang of it.”

Eleven days after July 1, 1968, Canada Day, I turned 19. I had legally been driving a car in the province for three years. And either by sheer worry or good luck, I had a perfect driving record. My true baptism of fire came that July, however, when I got a summer job as a copy boy at the then Toronto Telegram daily newspaper. A few weeks into my day shifts, the head copy boy told me they were moving me to the night shift, which involved driving the Tely station wagon.

“You know how to drive a standard, right?” the guy asked rhetorically.

“Ah, sure,” I said, lying through my teeth.

I spent the next couple of days searching for a friend who could teach me how to drive anything with a three-speed standard transmission. (more…)

Barris Beat

Jobs and dodos

Written by Ted Barris on . Leave a comment
Jobs that go the way of the dodo bird are often the ones we rely on most.

The other day a canoeing partner of mine mentioned he’d faced a bit of dilemma. His cedar-strip canoe, which he and I had used one spring to paddle down the Black River in Muskoka, was in need of repair. Stored out in the open, the canoe had generally resisted the elements fairly well, except where the water had collected in the canoe gunwales and caused some of the wood to rot.

“I needed somebody to repair the damage,” he said. “Surprisingly, I found a guy near Huntsville. That’s what he did – repaired canoe gunwales.”

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