The Editor,
Re: "Deadly numbers game," Editorial, June 8.
I'm going to have to stop reading The News! I was taking a quick break between agenda items, I sat down for a coffee and started reading on June 8. I got past the cover story on proactive democracy, the item on counselling, the piece about the outrageously inadequate, cost-of-business fine handed out to Kin Seafood Importing Corporation for trading in a $100,000 of nearly extinct species and the letter on seniors issues. All issues close to my heart.
Well, the editorial did me in. I couldn't help thinking of the friends who have seen "the light" the hard way, in particular my old buddy and mechanic, Fernando.
Fernando was a large, physically impressive dude, not the kind you would want to cross on a dark, deserted street.
On the way back from Victoria, Fernando stepped out onto the wind-and-rain-swept ferry deck for a smoke. I followed.
"Fernando," I said. "Don't light that coffin nail. Throw the pack overboard. Quit now and I'll tear up your IOU." (I had helped him out with a four-figure cash flow problem. There was no IOU. You could take Fernando's word to the bank.)
"Are you crazy?" he asked, rhetorically.
"Nope," I said. "Look at it this way: If you die, who is gonna keep my old Chevy wagons running? It'll cost me more than you owe me just to shop around. And that's only if I don't lose my temper."
Fernando looked at me in silence for a long time but, even for a guy made of tempered steel, the addictive cocktail in "tobacco" was too strong. So much for the American war on drugs! American corporations, like ours, don't like competition.
Neither one of us knew he was already dying of cancer that day. It had spread too much to be treatable.
Over the coming year, I watched with profound sadness as he deteriorated and finally died in pain, misery and regret.
Fernando left a grieving wife without a husband, a son without a father, parents without financial support in their elder years and a cathedral full of sad people, like me, to whom he had been such a good friend.
If the tobacco industry missed Fernando, they never mentioned it. Corporations don't have feelings; but the CEOs of those corporations should thank the prophets of profit or whatever gods they pray to that it is a pen that gnarly old dudes like me reach for.
Happy Father's Day to Fernando and to all the fathers out there in Newsland who might find the strength to quit in their love for their kids, as I did.
Set an example for your kids. Do it. Give those tobacco industry corporate fat cats what they deserve. Hit them where it hurts: Profits!
Quit killing yourself to make them rich. Your kids need you, and so do we.
Ramblin' Ryan Lake Gnarly Old Dudes and Dames of Steveston (GODDS)
