Editorially speaking...
Another challenge to answering the numerous requests for information made of me is that my filing system over the years has occasionally proved to be something less than perfect. I never subscribed to the Dewey Decimal System and, overall, my ad hoc approach to filing has worked. There have been exceptions, of course, and they can be maddening.
Speaking of files, I still use them: computer and external hard drives, flash drives and disks, yes, but I also want them as hard copies. Besides, many of them are originals—scans just don’t cut it. My archives isn’t all that much smaller than the one in town, with 17 cabinets in four rooms, two libraries and perhaps 10,000 books in eight locations throughout the house. (They make great insulation, I’m told.)
I found the following while preparing for this week’s post on readers’ requests. It has been folded in six, it’s creased from usage and it’s on cheap paper that’s turning colour and appears to have been mimeographed. This is another one of those odd items that are hard to file and I didn’t mark as to its origin, but I feel safe in trusting to memory and crediting it to the late Andy Bigg, onetime publisher of the Duncan Pictorial and, later, the Cowichan Leader.
After he sold both papers he opened a highly successful office furniture store in Whippletree Junction before—this time for real—retiring in Duncan. By mutual agreement, for $200, I cleared out what was left of his newspaper files and collection of memorabilia that he’d stored in a mini-warehouse. I had to buy most of it sight unseen, not getting to go through it until I got it home.
What a treasure trove of journalistic history! One day I’ll have to tell you Andy’s rags-to-riches story, of how he and his family came to Canada after the war to start life anew on the B.C. frontier. It wasn’t easy for them. In fact, the first years were almost pure hardship. But, never daunted, Andy proved to be a real-life Walter Mitty after moving to Vancouver Island and the Cowichan Valley.
But back to the folded, fading piece of paper. It has to have come with Andy’s stuff, it so expresses his work ethic and his skeptical outlook on life based upon his experiences as a small, struggling businessman. He didn’t write it but he must have, at one time, carried it in his pocket. I, too, share its sentiments. Entitled, HOW WE CLING TO LIFE! it’s priceless:
“I beg leave to inform you that the present shattered condition of my bank account makes it impossible for me to send you a check [sic] in response to your request for funds for the Aged Decrepit Angle Worm.
The state of my present financial condition is due the effects of federal laws, brother-in-laws, sister-in-laws, mother-in-laws, and out-laws that have been foisted upon the unsuspecting public.
Through their various laws, I have been held down, held up, walked on, sat on, sandbagged, flattened and squeezed until I do not know where I am, what I am, who I am or why I am.
Those laws compel me to pay a merchant tax, capital tax, excess profit tax, income tax, real estate tax, property tax, state auto tax, city auto tax, gas tax, light tax, amusement tax, sur tax, syntax and carpet tax.
In addition to paying these taxes, I am requested and required to contribute to every society organization that the inventive mind of man can organize. To the Society of St. John the Baptist, the Women’s Relief, the Navy League, the Children’s Home Fund, the Policemen’s Benefit, the Dorcas Society, the Y.M.CA., the Boy Scouts, the Diggers’ Home, the Jewish Relief, the Near East Relief, and the Old Gold Diggers’ Home. Also every hospital and every charitable institution in town, the Red Cross, the Black Cross, the White Cross, the Purple Cross and the Double Cross.
The government has so governed my business that I do not know who owns it. I am suspected, expected, inspected, disrespected, examined, re-examined, informed, required, commanded and compelled until all I know is, that I am supposed to provide an inexhaustible supply of money for every known need, desire or hope of the human race, and I refuse to donate all I have and go out and beg, borrow and steal money to give away. I am cussed, discussed, boycotted, talked to, lied to, lied about, held up, held down, and robbed, until I am nearly ruined, so that the only reason I am clinging to life is to see what in the HELL is coming next.”—Anon
Thank you, Andy, for that posthumous chuckle. See you next ALL week.
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