Rodgers Backyard Jam

The date is September 19,2009. The place is King Kirkland, Ontario, the event is the Rodgers Backyard Jam. This is a yearly event that is sponsored by Dave and Joanne Rodgers of King Kirkland, a small community just a mile or two east of Kirkland Lake in Northeastern Ontario.

The Rodgers family is a very talented musical family with two daughters and one son as well as a number of grandchildren in the growing stage for awhile.
Their son, Daryl is a musician, not to be ignored, as he and four other musicians make up a bluegrass band called Canucky Bluegrass Boys,

out of Sudbury, Ontario. These boys have just recorded their first CD called "Standin' Up". I bought a copy of their cd and must say that I enjoy it very much, of course one of my favourite
styles of music is bluegrass or gospel bluegrass.

The Rodgers Homestead is located at the end of a back street in King Kirkland and is somewhat isolated from the main flow of traffic and the highway going through the village. Dave has a saw mill on his property beside the house and some acres of bush just past the saw mill. All of this area has been developed so that people can bring in their campers to stay overnight while they
enjoy the entertainment of the backyard jam

The Rodgers have a nice entrance that reminds me of a schene from an English carnival with the little footbridge and striped tents for the people to sit under for shelter from the sun and rain.












This is a neat little alley taking us from the entrance footbridge to the arena( the area where the music comes from) in front of the music stage.











The whole area is a little rustic in theme
with the priveys off to the side of the back yard
as well as a fire ring for a large warm bonfire to keep the people warm on the cool nights that are common at this time of year. The fire ring also supplies a place for the guys from the "Hot Stove League" to gather and share their tall tales.







Here is the start of the Rodgers' camping area with lots of privacy for each camper but the campers can still stay around their unit and enjoy the music coming from the house so if they are body tired, they can relax and still hear the music at the same time.









One very important item is the sign posting the name of the program as you can see, this is in case one is so tired or out of shape that they can't figure out that they are at the Rodgers Backyard Jam. This structure is part of the main stage, just off to the right in this picture.








Here is a very important part of any event, it is the food stand, with hamburgers,octoberfest sausages, coffee, pop, hot dogs and water. Their prices are quite reasonable as well, plus the food is good.











This is a stand that was set up to display items for sale from the musicians who are playing here today.










The following pictures are of the entertainers, I will try to identify those that I can but there were some, whom I do not know so I apologize for this.


The Canucky Bluegrass Boys

















Reverend David Naylor,Dave Rodgers, and their musicians getting ready to play.

The Midway is in Town

Surprise, surprise, the midway is in town this week. I was going to do a service call in the Federal district and had to go past the Legion on Duncan Ave There were a whole fleet of transport trucks and trailers parked around the property at the Legion. The midway is made up of a company called Canuck Amusements from Selkirk, Manitoba.





There are extra trailers besides the ones that carry
the amusement rides. These are used for living
quarters for the workers and are the same as lots of people use for RV'ing. So you see one could say that these people are sort of on a holiday every day they are away from home working, but I am sure that they don't consider this work a play time.









A normal site at a midway is the concession stands with such items for sale, as pizza, cotton candy, hot dogs, pop, etc. This midway is no exception to that rule. The smells are so good that my wife had to order a slice of pizza and a drink to help fill the empty void in her stomach.







Talking about food, here is a ride made up of
strawberries. These strawberries are hollow with
seats inside for passengers to ride and they go
around and around.










This one is an arrangement with two cars which look like long subway cars for people to ride in and I don't doubt that they will hold around ten people each. The two cars oscillate back and forth in opposite directions to each other while they go
around in almost a complete circle starting at the
bottom, going forward and upward then when they reach the top, they change direction and go the opposite way until they reach the top going backwards. This carries on for awhile until the ride is over.




Here is another ride with some small groups of
cars with seating for about four people each. Each group of people go around in a circle, then the whole ride goes around in a circle, I am afraid that if I were to ride on this one, my lunch would be history!







Anyone like a sleigh ride? Here is one with sleigh
frames for people to lay on and go spinning around in circles. I saw many folks, young and old spinning around enjoying themselves until the cycle was over.





















Here are two rides for the little kiddies, this helicopter appears to be interesting and I can
imagine the thoughts going through the minds of
the little ones. If you like boats, then the second ride should be okay for you as well, after all they are powered by twin outboard motors!!!!!





















We are getting close to the end of the carnival
atmosphere as we approach the games trailers. You can try your hand at bowling as you toss balls
up the ramps and try to land on the centre circle
so you can win a prize of some sort.
There are also many other games of chance to try to win prizes at other skill testing games.












The last attraction is this long slide out in the back fourty, where the participants climb the ramp on the right side of the ride and sit on carpets while they ride the bumpy ride down the ramp to the bottom. If you ever wanted to settle down a meal then this would be the guaranteed way to do it.




Well, it is the end of another day of midway rides at Kirkland Lake. We will look forward to another day of thrills and spills at the midway for another year. The companies are coming up with very interesting ways to create a thrill for the people and more ways to extract dollars from the public as well but I guess that is what business is all about.
I hope you have enjoyed the rides and the tour today, look forward to seeing you come for a visit again soon.
Wilf Blakey

Dominion Day Holiday

I have had the pictures of this event on my computer since the first of July but with the activities of the summer I did not get around to making a blog entry on this.
The town of Kirkland Lake has a grand celebration for this day of the year to help celebrate the birthday of our great country.
The weather has not been that great so far and the rain is plentiful and cool a lot of days. There are many events planned, especially at the Federal Park on Tweedsmuir Rd with live music, concession stands and rides for the kids. The planners should have supplied canoes for the people as there were almost lakes of water on the grounds so it was not really an enjoyable year for outdoor activities.
At night there are fireworks, and what is a celebration without fireworks? There were many varieties of fireworks with rockets shooting high into the sky, sparklers going up a short distance and breaking apart so they can create a small waterfall effect. I like the ones that go what seems like a mile high and then a big boom with sparks spreading out in all directions.
We like going to these events sponsered by the town, it gives you a chance to meet and socialize with lots of folks we haven't seen for many years
Events like this help to build up the spirits of the town's people as well as raising funds for various
needs. I find that I will go out on the town on events like these where I wouldn't even think of venturing away from our home normally.
Parades are another happening that create interest and public closeness, you can tell this especially when the Christmas parade is on and you see the line up of folks standing on the side of the street waiting for the floats and , particularly, Santa Clause to come by throwing out candies to all of the kids, big and small.
I apologize for the delay on writing this story but as I mentioned in another post called " Summer time activities" our time just flies by when the warm weather shows up and presents us with so many possibilities of things to do around here.
I hope you have enjoyed the pictures and story as well as the events if you were in the area at the time.
I will join you again a little later with another story from the story teller.
Wilf Blakey

This Summer

I discovered a comment on one of my posts on the blog today and it amused me very much. Mr Bossence (from the Bayfield Bunch) asked me how come I have not had any updates on here since June (actually he didn't put in the month June but I did ). For some time now, I have been reading and following along with some blogs written by some people who live in their RVs or at least travel in them, especially in the winter and travel down through the southern USA. Mr. Al. Bossence and his wife live and work in the community of Bayfield,Ontario near Goderich. I commented to Al that I felt he did very well keeping up on his blog all through the summer even though they are sitting still and not moving around with their RV

I keep thinking about what a person does to fill in space on the blog when there really isn't too much to chatter about, in this case I mean the summertime. I guess if you really want, you could invent things to talk about but in my case, I didn't care to make a whole bunch of idle chatter and I had been busy with a great lot of jobs and activities around the house and country to keep me busy.

My wife and I bought our home in August of 2006 and we, of course, bought it with the realization that it had imperfections and repairs were needed in the future to keep it in liveable condition. Well this year is the year that our shop needed a new roof, or else. We had a certain amount of cash to deal with and everyone knows that money does not grow on trees so a person has to make the money stretch as far as possible and that is what we do all of the time. I had a contractor approach me with an offer to do the rooof for a sum of money and I simply told him that I didn't have that amount of money. I had replaced rooves on previous buildings that we had lived at or owned and I knew that I could possibly do it again here but after my accident 14 years ago, my back does not want to co-operate with me to do this type of labour, including loading and unloading shingles to and from a trailer.

I had talked to different people about roofing and heard the comment that steel was the way to go. I checked out prices on steel roof material and found that a lumber yard near Earlton had excellent prices so this is what I did. I figured that there would be work involved as in strapping the old roof over top of the old shingles and laying the steel on top of that without the back breaking work of handling the old shingles. I also expected that I could get some ocassional help from friends to get the hard parts done and I was correct. Over the period of about three weeks of part time work , the job is done and I expect to have a dry shop and garage area for many years to come.

I also have been busy selling and installing Free to Air Satellite systems this year and it has kept me occupied doing that. I am not an expert in this field but in the past, 1983-1988, I used to sell and install the big 10ft dish systems when we lived in Southern Ontario operating our own tv sales and service business. It has been a real learning experience figuring out how to set up a motorized system but I must say that overall I don't mind doing it.I have installed most of them in the Kirkland Lake area but I did do one below Englehart recently. When I first started doing them this year, I would install them on a tripod mounted on our deck on the south side of the house. I had already had our own there for two winters with no apparent trouble but when I got to the point that I had two systems on the same deck, the frost decided to play havoc with the level of the deck and threw the aim of both of them off so I lost most of my stations. I had to come up with a better solution and I decided to use my cargo trailer to set up the dishes and level them on it, then things started to work out and no doubt people would wonder if I was growing satellite systems instead of a garden.

We also have been working on our basement insulating the walls to keep out the cold and keep in the heat. We had to tear apart the walls of the fruit cellar to be able to apply a proper layer of sheet insulation and also applying a layer of hydraulic cement to the floor to wall join to help keep the moisture out. There is also a small area on the entrance of the house where there are stairs to take you to the second floor and the basement and the basement area had to be insulated as well so this is where we spent many hours.

So as you can see, this is where all of the "spare" hours went this summer instead of writing blog articles. I have included pictures of the new roof, the dish farm on the trailer (most of the dishes are gone now) and the outside of our home. I hope that this has explained our coming and going for the summer.

Wilf Blakey

The Glad Game

I came across a lesson in life recently, as the title says "Rejoice in all things!". It takes time to examine a title or statement and make total sense of it and I am sure I am not the only one who has this trouble. This summer I have had the desire to read some classic novels that normally people read when they are young but in my case it didn't happen. When I was reading "Our Daily Bread", it made mention about the book Robinson Crusoe and I thought " I have never read that book" so I searched the Internet and found a copy there, then I saved it to my hardrive and read it later. As time went on I found copies of more novels and read them. One of the latest ones is "Polyanna", a story about an orphan girl taken in by her spinster aunt, who by the way is a grouch. Polyanna is the daughter of a missionary minister. Her father taught her the art of appreciation and thankfulness by way of what he called the glad game. They used to receive barrels full of things needed and one time Polyanna wanted a doll but got a pair of crutches. Her father told her to be glad that she did not need the crutches and life goes on from there.

When she came to her aunt's home, she got to know many people in the surrounding village and taught them the "glad" game with the purpose of teaching them to be thankfull for things that most people take for granted. She got to know an older gentleman who had hardly talked to anyone for years and always walked on the streets looking down at the ground with no interest in the world around him. On the second or third meeting with the man (Mr Pendleton), Polyanna was able to break the ice with him but not fully. Some time later as she was walking up the road to his house, she came across him laying on the ground with a broken leg, not able to get up so he asked her go to his house and phone the doctor to come and rescue him. This she did and further broke the ice with Mr. Pendleton, especially when she had the opportunity to visit with him in his sick bed at his home. Mr. Pendleton came to realize that Polyanna's cheerfull attitude was infectious as she showed interest in the colourful designs reflected on the walls from some prisms he had that were sitting in the sunlight. Things exploded from there and a close friendship developed between them to the point that this recluse changed so much he asked Polyanna if she would move into his house to be the "child presence" he needed to make his house a home. He had in the past had a relationship with a woman but it did not work out and the lady went elsewhere to join another man as husband and wife so that is why Mr Pendleton became the town hermit.

Polyanna had similar friendships with most of the people in the village and the atmosphere changed dramatically around town. Towards the end of the story, Polyanna had an accident when a car hit her causing her to lose the use of her legs. It was quite awhile after the accident that Polyanna learned the hard fact that she was supposed to be crippled for life. As you can guess, the cheerful attitude of the young lady began to change for the worse as she couldn't find anything to be glad about but there is a silver lining in every cloud as the townspeople whom Polyanna had cheered up came back to try to cheer her up with the reports of the good things that she had done for them after she taught them the glad game and Polyanna's attitude started lifting up again.

The end of the story is good as she was taken to a specialist in a far off town for treatment from which Polyanna was able to gain the use of her legs again and she now had something extremely good to be happy or glad about. As you can see there really is no need to go around in life with a great long lower lip almost dragging the ground just because things are not quite what you want them to be.

Now that the story is over, I can get to where the story fits in with my life. I have read in the Bible many times where it says to rejoice but it is not always easy to rejoice if things seem to be going against you. Since I got injured in a bad fall 14 years ago, I have had things go wrong and I didn't always have a good attitude about them. These things are financial, health, possibly relationship problems, problems with work related tasks not co-operating with me and many other things. This week I have had a bad last few days because something is not right in my physical body and my wife and I spent most of the afternoon at the emergency department of the local hospital with the doctor checking me over, doing tests and asking many question. After all of this time and frustration, we headed home around 5 PM, feeling somewhat better because the doctor has given us a better grasp of what is going on and how to deal with it. We also realize that there may not be an immediate cure to the problem but if we approach the task and have faith that God will help me to overcome the difficulty then life will be much more enjoyable but it can be enjoyable even in the meantime if I keep rejoicing in God's hand in our lives.

I hope I have not been too boring with this story but I felt that it was time to put down some words about my Revelation.God bless everyone here and everywhere who trusts in our Precious Father.

Wilf Blakey