The "Helgi Files"

After my posting a memory of one of my dad’s performances, a friend of mine suggested writing about some of them on the blog.  Thank you for the suggestion Melanie.  I figure every so often I will add an entry from what I call, “The Helgi Files” ( that was his name).  My dad was a big old cowboy with a wicked sense of humour, who rarely passed up an opportunity to tease somebody, even if he had to walk on the edge of absurdity to do it.  He had a long memory and God help you, if you had behaved like an idiot and he found out, because his sense of humour would come looking for you without mercy. If you had behaved like an idiot towards him, you didn’t stand a chance.

"I'll Show you Noise" 
About 3 AM one morning, my dad got out of bed, dressed and walked to the back fence where a large group of kids were having a camping party.  He politely asked them if they could turn the music down a little bit.  They did, only to crank it back up full volume as he walked back to the house.  He didn’t respond, just kept walking.

About 6AM, when all was quiet behind the fence, Helgi rolled the metal wheel barrow right up to the boards, lifted the lawn mower into it and fired it up.  After much, screaming, hollering and questioning of sanity from the other side of the fence, my dad calmly said he didn’t think the noise would bother anybody. 

And sometimes, it seemed like it was just something for him to do....

"In the Old West, Yellow, meant Coward"
Listening to the news on the radio one day, my dad heard that a “Yellow Cab’ driver had been robbed the day before and they were still looking for the culprit. Of course the company was called “Yellow Cabs” but my dad, not only a big western buff but also never one to let an opportunity pass, called in to the radio station.  With as much fury as he could pretend, he told them they weren’t there at the time, so they had no right to call that cab driver ‘yellow’, just because he had been robbed didn’t mean he was a coward. 

The person fielding the call was stumbling all over himself trying to explain they hadn’t been calling the cab driver ‘yellow’ as in cowardly, that he worked for the yellow cab company.  Dad pretended not to understand and played it for all it was worth, wiping tears from his eyes, trying not to laugh out loud before he got off the phone.