Transition From City Madness to Rural Bliss: Living in the Woods of Nova Scotia. by Derek Dubolski

Author:Derek Dubolski
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Sustainable Living, Biographies & Memoirs, Regional Canada, Hobbies & Home, Crafts
Published: 2012-10-19T06:00:00+00:00

Vehicles.

Within our first week at Embden Lodge Omar and I were prospecting for our first vehicle. We had to return the massive black Ford truck that had carried us in comfort on our first reconnaissance of our new territory. It had at least repaid a little of its considerable rented cost in transporting household appliances, but we could not retain it a moment longer than absolutely necessary. Aside from any other considerations there was always the possibility its lovely shining paintwork might be damaged by travelling our dirt roads. Heaven forbid we should hit a deer or run off the road. It also had a tremendous thirst for gas that was currently hitting unprecedented prices in Nova Scotia. We needed a very different vehicle, something reliable, practical and cheap, a trusty old pickup that would not show the dents and scratches of its daily life in our back woods, mainly because it was already too scarred after years of excellent service. Every drive out had a secondary goal, scrutinizing any neighbourhood trucks with “for sale” signs. There did not seem to be as many as we had hoped and some on offer had been standing so long their axels were almost buried in earth or their bonnets festooned in weeds. Then one morning as we drove into Digby, on errands nothing to do with trucks, we spotted one cleanly parked in a front yard barely two miles from home. We almost zoomed past it unnoticed and had to do a U-turn further down the road. I pulled the big black Ford alongside the much more mature Dodge and immediately began to wish I had father beside me to offer advice.

I was never mechanically inclined, which was perhaps a bit of a disappointment to my father who was. From a tender age I recall him working on his car in the garage, with various parts of its metal intestines carefully placed around him on the cement floor, looking like oily bits of a jigsaw puzzle. I always marvelled that he got them back in the right place but had absolutely no interest in assisting him or learning the magic of it. I think it was the mess that put me off more than anything. I certainly have never been averse to getting my hands soiled in good wholesome earth or compost, or even manure, but Dad’s grimy oil-covered hands and black fingernails were no incentive to me and the usual cursing that accompanied his mechanic endeavours, while invariably successful, suggested the whole business was unpleasant.

When I was a young college student father and my uncle, another car enthusiast, virtually re-built a Ford Cortina as my first car to take to college. By this time I had learnt to show a modicum of mild interest whenever passing dad labouring away in his garage or half submerged in the bowels of the engine under a car bonnet, but his attempts to educate me in the ways of these machines met with little success.

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