Dear Panpanpan,
Our house is in an area of half acre lots, where every home disposed its sewage
into its own septic tank, and it drained into the earth through their septic bed
.
Now our Regional District decided it was better for the environment to have homes presently on septic tanks connected to storm drains and sewers. Therefore thesewer lines are being installed throughout the area on a section by section
basis.
Last autumn the sewer and storm drain lines were installed in our area and we
were all expected to pay our share of this preliminary work. For us it amounted
to $2,700.00 for the common lines installed. Ben and I decided this autumn to
connect our home to the system and bypass our septic tank and the deep wells that we used for filtration. This now achieved, the entire cost has amounted to $10,000. It coud have been put on our house tax bill and paid some each year for
the next ten or fifteen years, but interest would have made the entire cost so much higher so we decided "to bite the bullet" and instal now. That'll "hold us down to a dull roar" for a little while! ;->
We chose the company that had installed a hook-up from their home to the common
system for a couple of our good friends. Their jobs were well done at a reasonable price and the gardens left in good condition. The young men who came with equipment to do the job were courteous, helpful and friendly. They never used bad language where they thought I might overhear them. But, it just so happened that I was working outside in an area of the garden where they didn't think I could hear, and you should have heard f--k words sprinkled heavily through everything they said to each other. They got along well together, so it
wasn't that they were doing it because of anger of annoyance. It's simply the style among some people right now.
These young men were clean-cut looking, skilled at their work, and drove good vehicles. The one with the snappy little white jeep put on some music as he drove
away and it was horrendously loud rap. Maybe gangsta-rap. I heard women called many things you don't want to know. What you heard in the movie wasup-to-date for those types. What more can I say? I guess I can tell you this:
During the late '60's and early '70's we opened our home to 'street kids.' Itwas very interesting. We played a lot of loud rock music, and the "Woodstock" album, of course, was one of the most popular. Lots of times new people would want to hear a song that starts:
Gimme an F!
Gimme a U!
Gimme a - !
Gimme a - !
What's that spell??? (3X)
F U - - ! 3X the whole audience screams what it spells. I'm pretty immune to
the f-word, but I don't use it. Unfortunately I picked up a other expressions that break out now and then if I get angry about a topic in some conversation. It's out of style now for "nice ladies" like me to swear and I try really hard not to do it, but now and then.... alas, alas.... ;->
When the song played eyes would be glued on me to see how I'd react when I heard
it, or what I'd do. It was a sort of a test of me. I never turned a hair, of
course. You would be astonished if you had seen me then, wearing my long torquoise-coloured "Othello Robe" and with all the candles burning, maybe some incense, and the lights turned low. Ben used to have a big bright flashlight and if anybody started to make out too heavily, he would shine the light on them from the steps. But we never said anything. It worked just fine.
We had tons of street people coming on a Friday night. The times were different
then. I wouldn't open our home in the same way now. The street is different,
too. At that time the very loud rock allowed people who couldn't communicate to
"groove" with the music until they felt at ease. It was quite an interesting adventure. I also helped some people. I remember one young guy wearing an Iroquois cut -- hair all shaved except for a stiffly standing section from the front
on the top of his head. He also wore a nose-ring. I advised him to remove the
nose ring in case somebody ripped it out of his nose. He switched to an earring. A few weeks later he
was in the park down by the Falls when some punks came up and demanded his boom
-box. He was forced to give it to them. He was a very good guy and I think he
could have had his nostrils ripped then. He came from our present province of British Columbia, known as BC. He came from a northern area called The Peace River Country. Isn't that a beautiful name. He and one of his friends lived with
us for awhile. His friend once tried to smoke my oregano spice. Our kids told
me about it. Otherwisea they were good guests. I found out through a later incident what a noble fellow the guy with the Iroquois cut was, but this is not the
place for that story.
Some people asked me how we could have such people in our house when we had young children. Our son was 10, the two elder daughters were about 9 and 8 and the
youngest was 2. It was a good education for the kids --and for me. They learned about the damage of drugs, and I learned so much that, throughout their teens
a couple of our who wanted to get a little wild and show offto me by "shocking me" with stories of what went on couldn't get anywhere, because I always knew more than they did and could top them, and that gave me a lot of influence that a less knowledgeable and more "goody-two-shoes" mother wouldn't have had. They all
grew up not to drink, smoke, do drugs or sleep around.
A lot of the street kids then had run away from home to try life out for themselves. They were sampling drugs and the wild life, but at bottom they were pretty
good kids. That's not to say that many weren't in trouble with the law. Lots
of them had probabtion or had to meet their counsellors and keep certain hours.
In fact, workers from the Toronto drop-in youth centre wouldn't work in Niagara
Falls because it was considered too wild and dangerous. Right on the US border
with their big cities just across the line. But we never had any trouble, although we held open house for anybody who wanted to come, so long as they didn't bring their drugs into our home. I only had one small brass incense burner stolen
in the whole time, and we held that open house for two years solid.
There are quite a number of young people from that open house who are very excellent Baha'is today. They knew we were Baha'is, but we didn't try to tell them about the Faith. If they wanted to know more there was another couple who used to have "Baha'i Firesides" until as late as 4 AM, and that's where they could learn more about what made us tick. It was there that people might decide they wanted to join us. Our local Spiritual Assembly was very wise with our often wild
youth, and it was fun, and funny, to go to a regional conference a hundred miles
or so away and have Baha'is from other communities come up to us to ask where we found such excellent youth.
As I said earlier, some adults asked how I dared to have our children present at
the Open Houses. I can only say that they learned NOT to use drugs at a very young age, in a very easy way. For instance, there was a "George" a nice enough
looking young fellow who came one night and had the signs of having totally ruined his mind with drugs. Other kids told us about it. His eyes would roll and his hands would flutter up and down in front of his face. There were the two beautiful and well dressed young girls who were on "Speed." They were standing for
a week and then they would "crash" somewhere. Not at our house. When my father talked about "druggies" I told him he would have been glad to hire either of those pretty, well and conservatively dressed, well-mannered and intelligent girls, and he wouldn't have guessed that they were "speed-freaks." Of course, they
could very well have burned themselves out and died within about two years at the rate they were going. I never did find out what happened to them in the long
run. One of our drug-taking girls quit, and eventually became a psychiatrist.
Once the biggest, baddest, leader of the worst gang in Niagara Falls came. He was high on something when he arrived. I talked with him. He was a pretty decent fellow. At about two in the morning he came down, and could talk sensibly. He was very intelligent and had ideals.In fact, he decided that night after talking with me when he was sober that he wanted to be a Baha'i, and he did
become one. There was a guy we knew as "Big John" -- he doesn't want anybody to remember those days of his, or to ever mention them. Ben still has the wide,
tooled leather bracelet Big John gave him, and Big John married the daughter of
a Baha'i family who have been our dear friends for 50 years. He became a high school teacher, and he and his wife went to live in South Africa where they had children, where their parents visited them, and where his wife eventually died, poor girl, of cancer.
Well, those are some of the stories. People aren't always on the outside what they are on the inside. It's an interesting world, and we are all one human
organism. The human organism known as "humanity" exists through both worlds, this one and the next. That's my belief. You don't need to believe it, though.
That's strictly your own choice.
So, that's my story of the f-word.
Affectionately, Mary
