Bacon Scrapins – “Do You Believe in Magic?”

by Barry S. Wolfe

Bacon Scrapins are the little bits of meat left in the greasy fry pan. They’re tasty, but the ‘nutrition’ needs searching for. This tale is a bacon scrapin.

Since we recently moved into our newest home, what with Covid restrictions and all, it had been a long time since we’d visited the resort town along the lake. Being a mature, responsible, caring, and modest husband, who does not like to raise the anxiety levels of left-versus-right with my wife, I decided to use the car’s GPS and let ‘the voice’ do the guiding.

It’s a no-brainer. I entered our postal code and our destination postal code and pushed “Set as Destination”. Seat belts were fastened, dessert was safely on the floor in the back, and we were off.

Petersburg, Wellesley, Crosshill, Millbank, Listowell. Listowell? ‘The voice’ said to go right through Listowell and keep on truckin’ west. My inner voice said, “No! We turn at #9 and head to Teviotdale.” I didn’t want to upset my wife, who is always dozing 10 minutes after leaving anywhere, by arguing with ‘the voice’ because it doesn’t listen anyway.

OK, we’re through Listowell, past Molesworth and ‘the voice’, who can draw maps on the screen for me, showed that I was looking for the #34 turn and heading toward Gorrie. I thought to myself, “I can’t remember the last time I was through Gorrie. It’s a pleasant day, let’s try her adventure.”  I made the turn.  Proceeded north. And went around the curve.

That’s when ‘the voice’ said, “Keep slightly left.” I did. And was on gravel. “Woah! Hold your horses! This cowboy ain’t drivin’ long distances on gravel!” Oops. I had said it out loud, as I toed the brakes to bring us to the side of a country road. Beautiful surroundings, but we’re on gravel. Gravel! My wife is now alert and has an opinion about a couple of things regarding our situation, all of which relate to my skills, but it’s best to let that ride.

What does a man do when he seems to be in the wrong place, and thus “Lost!” – in one person’s opinion?  I don’t know about all other men, but this one has been married for 45 years and wants to stay that way.  I did the obvious. I said, “Would you take out that folding map of yours from the door panel and let’s take a look at our options.” In reality, I didn’t even have to ask, because she was pulling it out as I was talking.

I’m proud to say, I pushed ‘Cancel Route’, tuned to the Elvis channel for her, and we were able to see beautiful downtown Gorrie, Wroxeter and Belmore among others. I don’t remember the last time I’d been through any of them. All on paved roads. We eventually arrived at our lakeside destination, and were only 5 minutes behind what ‘the voice’ had predicted. Amazing what ‘accepting a little guidance’ can do!

Now, I enjoy a comfortable ride in the country, on dry paved roads, the same as the next person, but this GPS ‘voice’ needed some fine-tuning. It seems that I had not “programmed” it completely. I had given it permission to find the shortest, fastest route. In this case, that included a gravel road. The GPS would have placed us at our destination, eventually, probably, maybe with some unfortunate events along the way that I didn’t want to experience, so carefully programming the GPS, with restrictions, before heading out on a journey, is very important I concluded.

Being a somewhat random thinker sometimes, it occurred to me that programming a GPS is less important than being able to program the political people we elect. It’s similar. We have a destination we want our province to go. We elect someone (like our GPS) to guide us there, but along the way we might find they, whoever they are, are going off in unpromised directions. We decide that we don’t want to go their fastest, shortest, cheapest route.

I think we should be able to ‘stop-the-car’, reprogram the politicians, and get back on the right road.

Wouldn’t that be magic?

NOTE: Characters and names in this Bacon Scrapins tale are fictional.

You may email appropriate comments for the writer to thisiswilmot@gmail.com