Archie’s Pipe Dream

The newspaper article related how a desperate woman had used a large knife in retaliation against her husband. It was gruesome and I shuddered, with uneasy emotions. The woman said that the root cause of all her woes, was her husband’s sexual appetite and that he would never accept the word no. She was always black and blue from his cruel abuse and yet no one listened; no one cared; certainly not him. When she finally realized that all she had to look forward to was more of the same, she decided to act.

One day while he lounged peacefully in the bathtub, she took matters into her own hands, so to speak, and she cut off his sex organ with a butcher knife.

Then to further emphasize her message to him, she took, what had been his upstanding pride and joy, and she threw the now wilted and wrinkled appendage away into a field. To her, it was a simple and effective solution to her difficulties. To paraphrase Gilbert and Sullivan; she let the punishment fit the crime.

In spite of the ghoulish nature of the story, I read on, fascinated but also amused, in a schoolboy-snickering kind of way. Then, I actually chuckled when I got to the part about the police going into the field to search for and actually finding, the husband’s missing link. My fertile imagination started to exaggerate parts of the story and provided me with more chuckles.

I disrespectfully labelled the search party, The Penis Posse. I pictured big, burly, uniformed cops routing through the area and picking at things daintily, with thumb and forefinger; all the while wearing rubber gloves, no doubt.

I could imagine that the Irish cop who had found the missing appendage, would refuse any commendation, rather than have the deed perpetuated on his service record. He’d always hope that his peers would not refer to him as the Mick who found the Dick. (I get a laugh out of strange things).

Then when I read that a hospital team had been successful in sewing the spigot back on, I cheered. But I said to myself, for his sake, I hope the doctors got the seams straight and that they didn’t drop any stitches.

I nodded my head, agreeing with the adage that truth is stranger than fiction. Then, because I felt a little guilty at finding anything to laugh about in such a grisly event I was glad to move on to other news.

As I scanned the rest of the front page, I was startled to see the picture of a man that I knew from somewhere. It had been many years since I had seen him, but after only a moment, I realized, it was Archie. A wide, tangled mustache, which I had never seen before, matched the familiar crop of unruly hair, now thinning and gray. There were new lines in his face and the scowl was now more arrogant than grimacing, but I knew it was Archie. The sight of him triggered memories.

When I read that Mr. Archibald Archer had addressed the local Canadian Club, I was surprised, on two accounts. The first surprise was that Archie actually had a last name. I had always known him as just plain, Archie, and I realized now that I had never once been the least curious about his family name. The second surprise was that Archie would ever condescend to actually become involved and champion a cause. In high school, where I had first met him, he had fallen through the cracks between jocks and what we now call nerds; he was a non-person whom we had voted most easy to forget. Although he wasn’t a blind follower, by any means, neither had he exhibited any leadership qualities.

Throughout our college years, I didn’t note any change in his personality and that was why, it had been hard to understand the romance that developed between him and Laurie. She was a pretty girl from upstate New York, active and popular, even though some of her dates had complained about her violent temper. Archie was, by comparison, an aloof, mild mannered, non-participant. They truly formed a strange twosome; the Queen Bee and the Drone.

Every one knew about the romance, even for the short time that it lasted. When it was over, we were astounded to learn that it was Archie that had ended the relationship, not Laurie. He obviously knew something about her that we didn’t. I must grudgingly admit that, for a moment, I had felt a twinge of respect for him.

According to the present news article, Archie was indeed championing a cause and the proposals he had made were creating quite a stir in government circles on both sides of the border. The gist of the story was that “Archie was promoting his vision of how to solve the dilemma of countless Canadian seniors wanting to winter in the sunny south. One of their main problems, in addition to the depressed value of the Canadian dollar, was that Provinces had recently amended regulations dealing with health insurance. Out-of-province medical expenses were now payable only for emergencies and at such a reduced rate that the purchase of expensive supplementary private insurance was necessary.”

The newspaper reported that Archie had said, “While advocacy groups continue unsuccessfully to press governments for change, I take a different approach. There ‘s no use crying about it; no one listens; no one cares. Solutions to problems are simple if you narrow the problem down to the main issue. Get to the root cause; be incisive; sever and separate.

“Since we’ve got to accept the insurance situation as a given, for the present at least, and since we recognize that we can’t improve the dollar situation, for now, all that remains in the equation, is that, Canadian seniors want to winter in the south.”

He continued, “It came to me in a dream one night that if Florida’s weather, could be enjoyed in Canada, there would be no problem. But since there was no way to change the climate in mainline Canada, I reasoned that the solution was simply to have Florida become part of Canada. We’d buy Florida but no money would change hands. Instead we could cut off a section of Canada, so to speak, as an exchange. There is a part of Canada that has an area measuring more than 595,000 square miles; more than 10 times the size of Florida; even bigger than Texas. It’s called the Province of Quebec. Because we want Florida so badly, and because Quebec is threatening to secede anyway, we could offer to make an even swap.”

Yeah, I thought to myself, with tongue in cheek, and maybe as an added inducement, we should make sure the Americans know that Quebec provides easy access to Baffin Island and all of the ‘wonders’ there.

Archie had paused before concluding with, “Florida would become a Canadian Province and snow birds would have the normal provincial health insurance. Quebec would easily became part of the American family, bordering as it does on four U.S. states namely, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine.”

I put the paper down, fascinated and excited by both the plan and it’s creator. I immediately telephoned the hotel and was put through to Mr. Archibald.

Archie, himself, answered the phone and I said, “Hi Archie, this is Gilbert calling.”

He said, “Gilbert? Is that a first or last name?”

Touché, I thought and I blushed a little as he continued.

“I don’t remember you. What is it that you want?”

He was rather solicitous but not unpleasant and after I finally reminded him who I was, he talked freely. I learned that he was a relatively wealthy man having made several killings on Wall Street, entirely due, he said, to having the courage to act on his instincts.

I also learned details about his Florida proposal and the more we talked the more I realized that this was not the same Archie that I had known. My admiration grew. He had come a long way. Finally, I reminded him of his romance with Laurie and that I had wondered all these years, why had they ever parted company.

He said, “It’s strange but I had a premonition that the girl was not for me. I was never quite sure what it was about Laurie that scared me off.”

He paused, then said, “Back then I only thought I had made the right decision but now, since I’ve read about her daughter, I know for certain that I was right.”

I expressed surprise, saying “What about her daughter?”

He said, “You must have heard about her . . . She’s the . . . . Oh, I see, you didn’t make the connection because you wouldn’t have known the daughter’s married name. She is Mrs. Loreena Bobbitt.”

I answered brilliantly, “Wow, you were lucky to get away from that.”

He said, “There’s no luck involved. I have premonitions or hunches or visions, (call them what you will) and I’ve learned to act on them to my benefit.

Make a note that I had a premonition about Florida joining Canada and wait to see what happens. EH?”

After we rang off, I sat back and thought about his proposal. It would be a tremendous exchange of real estate. Bigger than the original purchase of Florida from Spain, or the purchase of Alaska from Russia. Was it ridiculous?

Sure, the idea is far fetched, but I won’t reject it yet because I know that if anyone can swing this deal, it’s Archie, even though, one might say, that he was never cut out for the job.