ingwe;
Top of the morning to you sir, hopefully you folks are as prepared for Christmas as you'd hoped to be and all else is acceptably well at your house.
Once upon a time we used to get a custom combine crew from South Dakota come up and harvest for us - this would be '82 or '83 I'd think - before both of our governments decided that sort of entrepreneurship was bad.....
Anyway these boys would start every fall at Ogallala, NB with a half dozen Massey 760's and work their way north until they hit us which was about the end of season for them as I recall.
Back then the big grain elevator companies along with the fuel suppliers used to give out promo toques by the handful, so we'd always have a good stock of green Cargill or black and red Esso ones stashed in the office. They all came with at least a tennis ball sized tassel on the top too back then.
One particularly frigid night we were finishing up and the South Dakota folks were not enjoying our temperatures much at all, so I suggested that I could go back to the office and supply each of them with a toque - which brought 6 of the blankest stares I'd seen in some time.
I asked the boss Mark just what they called a knitted woolen head covering and he replied - "watch cap or wool cap" Then he added, "As hungry as I am right now Dwayne, if you brought us a half dozen toques I'd likely try to eat them!"
Being the curious sort I asked Mark what they'd call the headgear I always wore then and he replied "ball cap or trucker cap"
They all got a good chuckle when I asked, "So then John Wayne wears a cowboy cap then?"
Anyway ingwe you might be sad to know that the tassel top is getting more rare up here these days and the regular plain top watch cap style is the most commonly seen in our part of BC anyway.
You folks do have some interesting things that aren't common up here however and they do catch the traveling Canuck by surprise.
There was the time I was having breakfast in one of the Dakotas and was asked if I wanted chips with the bacon and eggs. Being a Canuck and mistakenly equating "chips = fries" I said yes please.
Of course I got potato chips with my bacon and eggs - which while confusing my stomach somewhat wasn't half bad....
Then there's the whole sausage gravy on biscuits some of you folks do at every meal.
Merry Christmas to you and yours ingwe.
Dwayne
