So, last weekend was the last one for my seasonal flying up north. Gone, until Labour Day, are the six-hour car rides right after work, and the exhaustion that comes with getting home from that after midnight, and getting up to go to the factory.
And I realize: I have my weekends free.
I never have my weekends free. But now, there’s no homework, no exams, no flying, and on the weekends, no working at the candy plant.
What on earth am I going to DO with myself? Here, living in this strange town for the summer, with negligible disposable income and very little mobility… boy, I’m not used to having all this free time.
Smiths Falls, for those who don’t know, is a town of a little under 10,000, in southeastern Ontario. (That’s in Canada.) It’s propped up by the railyard, the chocolate factory, and a whole lot of tourists who come to buy candy and admire the historic Rideau Canal. I’m here as a student engineer at the factory. It’s been an experience, to say the least.
This morning, I got up early, made eggs (mmm…), hopped on my bike, and rode off to go yard-sale-ing.
My quest is singular: I want LEGO bricks. I find some, but a lady who got there just before me snatched 'em up. A bucket of them for a dollar.
Oh well, I think, and keep pedaling. All morning, all over town. I stop at a fundraiser for the lawn-bowling club… they turn out to be charming, if highly enthusiastic, elderly people. Who continually ask me if I’ll start coming out Monday nights to join in. True, it might be nice to meet some people in this town, but I didn’t make any commitments.
Anyway, I keep pedaling, and by two in the afternoon I’m pretty tired… and still have no LEGO. I’ve seen a lot of the town, and the weather is nice, but no LEGO.
I decide to stop in at the Salvation Army Thrift Store. They usually have clothes and such, in my price range. This place doesn’t, but they do have some books, and I look though them. I find a couple that I like, and ask how much they are.
Books, it turns out, are 25 cents each. Or, I can have whatever I can cram in a grocery bag for 50 cents.
This has solved my problem of what to do with myself in this picturesque, but very foreign town. I’m going to keep looking for LEGO. And I’m going to sit at the train station and read. Here’s what fifty cents gets you at the Sally-Ann:
Aristotle for Everybody, Mortimer J. Adler
L’Etranger, Albert Camus
Anthem, Ayn Rand
Ship of Fools, Katherine Anne Porter
Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck
100 ways to save energy and money in the home, Energy, Mines and Resources Canada
Up The Down Staircase, Bel Kaufman
Call of the Wild, Jack London
Tales of Ten Worlds, Arthur C Clarke
The Machineries of Joy, Ray Bradbury
Possible Tomorrows, edited by Groff Conklin
The Invisible Man, H G Wells
Analysing Philosophical Arguments, Ian Philip McGreal
The Metamorphosis, Frank Kafka
Holy Bible, King James Version
New Testament, New International Version
Not bad… a Quran and some Fluid dynamics books would have really hit the spot. And, there were a few LEGO bricks in a bag of “bag-for-a-dollar” toys, with a lot of other junk.
So, that’s my mundane pointlessness for today:
- The best place in the world to buy books is the Salvation Army in Smiths Falls.
- LEGO, like gold, true love, and responsible government, is hard to come by.
- Smiths Falls’ business district is all pawn shops, thrift shops, and dollar stores.
- Anybody who wants to trade a big bunch of LEGO for a bagful of furbies, beanie babies, plastic animals and a flywheel-powered truck, should e-mail me.