The Lost Spike

Bit late with this one, but even people in The Trade need some down time, time I enjoyed in cottage country. I am, however, now back at The Manor, and begin with the following dialogue:

"Don't look over there! No one went there."

"Bit improbable, but you never know."

"Well go ahead, but it's a waste of time."

First, to get at what all this is about, some positioning is in order. I had been invited by my good friend of many years, The Emp, to rest and relax at his fine island cottage on beautiful Lake Piranha in the Haliburton Highlands. Bodhan, my Ukrainian sugar beet manager, was also present, as was Sir Peter Crapp, a colleague in The Trade. The Emp had made a request, but Sir Peter, having previously worked hard in shifting firewood from the mainland to the island, was more keen on taking a quiet row around the island than participating.

Now a word about my friend The Emp. The term comes from a genealogical exploration he once did, where he traced his family tree back through United Empire Loyalists to England, and then to Germany, where he was delighted to learn that one of his ancestors hailed from some minor German principality, but had succeeded in becoming, briefly, an Emperor in the Holy Roman Empire. Briefly, because he died shortly thereafter from a surfeit of capers. Exploring further, he ran across another ancestor named Miles The Slasher, and at that point his interest in genealogy withered.

The Emp, I might add, is a kind of emperor on the island, ruling benignly over a number of suitably cowed cottagers. All is usually well, but every now and then The Emp commits the error best illustrated by The Charge of the Light Brigade and thunders the wrong order. This causes confusion on the island. It also caused confusion in what is now known as The Lost Spike Incident.

The root cause lies in the shifting of firewood from the mainland to the island.

A truck drops the wood on the shore, in an flat area that doubles as a badminton court.The court, now covered lightly in leaves, is demarked by strips held down by four spikes. The Emp had taken pains to lift this mobile boundary, keeping the spikes in a little pile for later insertion after the wood had been shifted.

He had not taken pains enough. One of the spikes was missing. A first attempt by himself to find it came up lacking.

On the following day, our mission was to locate the thing.

The Emp's theory, not an unsound one, was that he or the trucker had inadvertently stepped on the spike, driving it under the sandy ground. Thus The Emp busily began raking up the likely spots where this might have occurred. All this fell into the area of the probable.

Bohdan and I, however,felt the need to explore the improbable. The Emp gave grudging agreement, propounding a theory that somehow the spike had become embedded in one of the truck's tires. Hence I was sent to retrace the area where the truck had been, while Bohdan raked leaves away in places where a spike was unlikely to have fallen.

I proceeded on my task, finding, in no particular order, a brass button, a busted badminton racket, a ticket stub for a Foo Fighters concert,and faded piece of paper that might have been the inside flap of a book on erotica. All of which indicated that the nearby cottage was the residence of interesting people.

The bickering between The Emp and Bohdan was growing louder (see opening dialogue) with The Emp making the point that in no way shape or form could the spike possible be where Bohdan was looking.

Following the trail of the truck, suddenly I heard a roar from Bohdan.

"I found it! Here!" Satisfaction glowed on his face.

I hurried back, curious to know by what means the spike had extended so far out of the probable search area. The Emp was also doing some hard thinking, and then admitted that on the previous day had raked rather hard, and could have turfed the spike to where Bohdan had found it. [Note: This admission, made earlier, might have saved a great deal of effort. On the other hand, perhaps the Emp had told us, and we had not heard.] In any event, we returned all smiles -- that which was lost was found, and all was well with the world. And if there is a moral, it would be that when the probable has been exhausted, the improbable takes centre stage.

Thus the tale of The Lost Spike, not to be confused with the tale of The Last Spike. For that we would need Sir William Cornelius Van Horne and his triumphant completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway.

Enough. Or too much.