I’ve heard it said that a picture is worth 1000 words.

The boy in the center holding ‘Chico’ is Laddie.

Laddie was the name my mother gave me I think because I was named after my father and she didn’t want to think about him or utter his name.

This photo would have been taken months after I had fallen 51 feet from a railroad bridge. No bones were broken, but I had a concussion. The kind of head injury that if my feet hit the ground to hard when I walked it felt like something was smashing into my brain.

I have no memory of this time other than the headaches and walking quietly and gingerly as if walking on eggshells. I lived in a very small farming community and whenever people saw me coming they would give me a wide berth. No one wanted to bump into the boy who fell over the railroad bridge for fear he would break.

I carried ‘Chico’ with me everywhere then as kind of a comfort I guess and yet this is the only photo I have to prove he ever existed.

Even the other kids didn’t tease me to my face about carrying a doll because they had been warned not to bother me. They thought I was all busted up inside. They used to tease me about being called Laddie but not during this time. In fact no one spoke to me at all. They just stared. Laddie had to fall off the bridge to get some peace and quiet.

The infant on my right and toddler on my left are my cousins Steven and Kimball. They were visiting my mother and I from Cape Breton.

I visited them both this summer and they are both fathers now and they both still call me Laddie.

I could get to 1000 words but… I’ll get there eventually.

Dennis Laddie Mantin

She was blonde and she was beautiful.

I knew I’d lose my mind.

I was looking for distraction.

Her smile not hard to find.

It ended on the freeway.

Behind a flatbed truck.

She was screaming some obscenities.

And I was out of luck.

I sensed in you an anger, not at anyone; but in and at everything that you had become… a failure, a disappointment. You had even lost the will to speak. Your cold stares into nothingness are if nothing else, unsettling. Your plans and words for dreams of future endeavors have passed like a fart in a windstorm and now you feel what? Anger? Fuck that!

Sometimes you just have to drop back 30 yards and punt that into the past and keep it there. It’s ok to dream a little and it’s ok to fall short.

Just keep moving. Push forward. Enjoy the ride…

I have to remind myself of these things every now and then.

Dennis Mantin

I’ve been weighing out my options. I’ve been weighing by the gram.

I’ve been offered a sole partnership, that don’t like me as I am.

I’ve decided to go solo because well its always been my way.

It’s not I don’t like people It’s just the things they say.

Sometimes I think I’m damaged. Battered, black and bruised.

Then I’ve never partnered up before, that I haven’t felt abused.

It was painful in the beginning. Lines creased on furrowed brow.

It may have looked like something else. But really no one knew just how.

The teachers they all stayed silent. They were staring at the ground.

Or they looked for things just at their feet. But nothing much was found.

The youth had all gone sullen. They were prone to criticize.

Their status was more confusion. You could see it in their eyes.

It took just a generation. Some said it would take 2.

With the boys and girls not talking. The children they were few.

And no one could remember, in the end they just grew old.

There was no win with a hand like that. In the end they had to fold.

Some were looking for salvation. They were looking far and wide.

Finally someone spoke some truth and suggested look inside.

It’s cold in the shadows now that summer is over. I have had enough of heat and sweating for another season.

It is going to be a chilly one this year; I can feel it already. Formation of birds mainly geese are already in giant V’s moving fast against blue grey skies flying south.

Not me. I will stick it out here until at least Christmas and then we’ll see if I’m so fond of cold.

Not as common as given credit.

Most reactions are quite uncouth.

As far as we humans go.

There’s a low tolerance for truth.

We say that we can take it.

We pretend that we don’t care.

But those of us who can take the truth.

Like me they’re low and rare.

She said, “Time flies.”

I said, “I understand. “

She said, “She wishes sometimes that she was rich because she wouldn’t have to go to work.”

She is tired.

I have no such wishes.

I wonder what’s wrong with me sometimes. I’ve seen what money does.

She wants to buy a house soon, so she will keep working. I like many things about her.

Last week of September.

Rains came pouring down.

The winds whipped up the Gulf Stream.

A kind of hell has come to town.

Trees are falling in Cape Breton.

Land flooding in P.E.I.

The Hurricane Fiona.

Is here and passing by.

The expression-‘Shit or get off the pot.’ … I first heard from someone born in 1908. He was fond of saying  19 ought 8.

He was of a different time: in the land before indoor plumbing and poverty hardships.

Today I was with my daughter who was born in 2011 and I was being impatient with something she couldn’t decide and the phrase shit or get off the pot bounced around my brain… but I didn’t say it at first

I said, ” Have you ever heard the expression shit or get off the pot?

She answered, “No.”

I explained that before there was indoor plumbing people used chamber pots and if the pot was being used and someone needed to go then this is probably where that came from. She laughed.

A modern turn on the old expression is “Lead follow or get out of the way.”