Chicken Pie

I was at the supermarket yesterday with my son. His mother was pushing the cart far from us down an unknown aisle and he and I were doing what we do best, joke around. He has my sense of humour or perhaps you could say that we share a common one.

The store had advertised a sale on beef so he and I headed to meat department. We saw something that appealled to our chuckle headed nature. Around the beef display area there was a crowd of shoppers all digging through the cello wrapped meat, searching for the best looking chunk to take home. I grabbed my son by the arm and told him that they look just like lions on the African plain, feeding on a fresh kill and he and I were just a couple of hyenas too timid to take a bite.

We bypassed the hungry pride and found a nice small chicken, it wasn't on sale but it looked good and our family can get three meals out of a small chicken.
Bird in hand my son and I went off to find his mother and the cart. We were laughing, laughing like hyenas.

The Grand River

The Grand River of my early youth was nothing like it is now. For the greater part I would say that its health and beauty have greatly improved. There was a time when the river was a polluted vein of ugly water that ran through our town carrying sewage and agricultural runoff from lands and settlements along the way.

To eat fish from the Grand was unthinkable, there were so many phosphates in the water that huge amounts of grey brown foam would form on the surface of the churning waters below the Park Hill dam. On very windy days this awful stuff could be seen blowing around on the streets nearby.

The story of my river is to me a reminder that not all things get worse. If you care about and care for something it can be made better, decay is not always inevitable.

When I was a boy you never saw the graceful heron stalking small fish in the shallows at the rivers edge. Today their numbers high, to see them is common, though they are less rare, to see them is still a delight.