C L U T C H  C H A T T E R
REPORT

RIDEAU     VALLEY       REGION

Happy New Year 2010 to All!!

Last Meeting  
The last meeting of the Rideau Valley Region was held on November 15th, 2009, at the home of Helena & Neil Tompkins to elect the slate of officers for 2010.  Fourteen members were present.  It was decided that each member be credited $20.00 from the treasury towards the cost of their Christmas dinner.  Membership cards were distributed to those present with the remainder to be mailed out with the reminder that dues should be paid in by December 31st.  At this time there are 30 members in the Region.  The suggestion that $25.00 be donated to “Specialty Vehicles of Ontario” (SVO) will be discussed at the December 12th Christmas Party, which will be held at Kemptville College, the same venue as two years ago, starting at 4PM.  As usual the gift maximum will be $10.00 with gifts marked on the wrapped package for either a gentleman or lady.  Items for the auction are also welcome.  A collection will be taken up at the dinner, for gifts for Phyllis Theriault and Isabella Fiander.  Pauline Richer will phone members for a head count.
--------- from notes by Ernie MacKenzie.

Christmas Party
Thirty-three members and guests gathered for the Christmas dinner at the Kemptville College Agri Forrestry Education Center situated at the southern part of the campus on Bedell Road.  We all mingled and then later sat down to a sumptuous meal of turkey, dressing and all the trimmings including pasty desserts, shortbread cookies as well as coffee and tea.  Once the meal was over, Bruce Robinson led us in singing Christmas carols and we picked favorites, which he sang while we all joined in.

While we socialized, Blair Prior collected club dues and gave out membership cards.  Our auctioneer was Dave Black, assisted by his wife, Barb who passed him the items to be auctioned off.  The total amount raised for the club was $341.50.  Good going to the Blacks!
While things were being arranged for the gift exchange, we had a surprise visit from Mrs. Claus (Helena Tompkins) and were even invited to sit on her lap.  She even offered her assistance to keep the whole process running smoothly.  Four new club members were present at the dinner so it was requested that each of us stand up and state our name and what sort of antique vehicle we had.  The January 24th planning meeting was announced and members were urged to put forth their ideas for the 2010 agenda.  At the end of the evening, door prizes were handed out before we headed off home, thus ending a successful 2009 Rideau Valley year.  Much thanks and appreciation to go out to Neil and Helena Tompkins for their time and effort in arranging for this splendid Christmas dinner! 

Trivia Quiz
1. Who was the first President to ride in an automobile?  
2. This car has the distinction of highest sales ever in its first year. 
3.   The advertising slogan “Ask the man who owns one” was for which car?  

Your Executive For 2010
The following is the slate of officers for the Rideau Valley region for the year 2010:

 President ......................... Bill Henderson
Vice President ................. Blair Prior
Secretary ......................... Ernie Mackenzie
Treasurer ........................ Anne Hall (Mary Mackenzie to assist)
Membership ................... Jim Hall (Ann Hall to assist)
Regional Rep .................. Marilyn Henderson
Vehicle Inspections ........ Neil Tompkins (Rene, John and Art to assist)
Activities ......................... Hilary Faris
Clutch Chatter ............... Bruce Pettinger (Ted to assist)
Web Reporter ................ Ted Fiander
Custodian ....................... Jim Hall
Photographer ................. Dale Faris
Phone Canvassers .......... Pauline Richer / Bonnie Hall

Activities – Rideau Valley:
January 24th, 2010: Planning Meeting and potluck supper at the home of Dale and Hilary Faris.  See Next Meeting below for details.

Activities – National:
January 9th: National Executive Meeting followed by the Annual General Meeting, at Schomberg, hosted by York Region.

Retarded Grandparents

And That’s When the Fight Started
I rear-ended a car this morning.  So, there we were alongside the road and slowly the other driver got out of his car.  You know how sometimes you just get soooo stressed and little things just seem funny?  Yeah, well I couldn’t believe it – he was a DWARF!!!  He stormed over to my car, looked up at me, and shouted, “I AM NOT HAPPY!”  So, I looked down at him and said, “Well, then which one are you?”

And that’s when the fight started.

After 20 Years, Portland Family Brings “Daddy’s Car” Home
---------------- (by Tom Hallman Jr.)  
When Ernie Rigotti died, in 1978, he left behind the loves of his life: a wife, four daughters and a green 1951 DeSoto.  Bought new off the lot, the car reminded him that he’d made something of himself.  Other men, he could say with pride, called him a good provider.  He was a self-made man.  In 1947, he managed to scrape together enough money to buy a garbage truck to service routes in what was then called Portland’s “Italian Section”. 

Rigotti worked alone, rising at 3 A.M.  Day after day for nearly 30 years, he hoisted heavy metal cans onto to his back, pulled himself up the truck’s small ladder and dumped the load.  His body took a beating, but Rigotti never complained.  The truck put his girls through Catholic schools and gave the family a house, clothes and food.  But the truck was a tool, no different than a carpenter’s hammer or a plumber’s wrench. 

His DeSoto was something special.  In the Rigotti home, it was called “Daddy’s Car”.  He babied the car, driving it gently and washing it once a week, sometimes twice if the family had a special outing.  Over the decades, the car and the man became one.  You couldn’t say the name Rigotti without someone mentioning the DeSoto, with its distinctive hood ornament and blaring horn.

In 1973, Rigotti’s back gave out.  The doctor told him to quit the garbage business or risk being disabled, so he sold the truck.  Five years later, he and his wife traveled to Italy for his first trip to the old country.  He had been there less than 48 hours when he settled into a chair to enjoy a meal and glass of red wine.  He looked at his wife and said two words “Tutto passé” – everything passes.  Then he was gone, dead from a heart attack at age 65.  It was August 31, 1978, the exact day the DeSoto’s Oregon vehicle inspection registration expired.
 
His wife renewed the tags and the family continued using “Daddy’s Car”.  It kept Rigotti’s memory alive.  By 1989, though, his wife, Flora Rigotti, was considering selling the car.  The kids were gone and she had bought a newer car.  When grandson Christopher Cettina, then 13, heard that she might sell the DeSoto, he told his parents they should buy it.  Cettina had only vague memories of his grandfather, who died when he was not yet 3.  Yet when the boy rode in the DeSoto surrounded by his aunts and grandmother, the talk inevitably turned to the family patriarch.  Through the stories, Cettina felt his grandfather’s presence.

But his parents didn’t what to buy the car.  Besides, they told him, his grandmother was only thinking about selling it.  Then, unbeknownst to anyone, Rigotti’s widow placed a classified ad in the newspaper asking $2,000 for the DeSoto.  The next day, a man came by and offered $1,800. She accepted and handed over her husband’s keys and black leather fob.  The DeSoto rolled out of the garage and down the driveway.  Flora Rigotti shed a tear for the man she’d loved and the car he’d treasured.  She went inside and called her daughters to tell them the car was gone and in that moment, they felt as if their childhood was gone too.

Everyone has something from the past they wish they could retrieve. In a turbulent world, objects from the past can serve as personal anchors, reminders of a simpler time.  That’s how it was for the Rigotti clan, which grew to 24 people as the daughters married and had kids and grandkids.  What they thought about – what they missed – was the DeSoto.  When they got together and talked about the past, they talked about the car: how the four sisters, driving and singing got a ticket for driving without headlights.  The time they got a flat tire and stayed quietly while Daddy jacked up the car; the trips to the beach with the dog sleeping on the floor and the youngest daughter up front between her parents.  And they talked about Ernie Rigotti. How he insisted on taking water on long trips in case the car overheated, though it never did. How he covered the car, though it was in the garage, with a blanket in winter because he wanted it to stay warm.  How he insisted there was a certain way to wash and dry the car.

A year ago last May, Christopher Cettina, then 32, was going through a divorce.  One Monday night, feeling low, he thought about his grandfather.  He typed into Google: “1951 DeSoto”.
A list of links popped up, the first from eBay.  The seller had photos of the car, inside and out. The car looked like his grandfather’s – same color, same interior.  He clicked on a photo taken from the passenger seat toward the steering wheel.  He enlarged it and spotted the key in the ignition.  It was on a black leather fob.  In a heartbeat, Cettina was a little kid.  He scanned the rest of the ad and found that the seller had posted a phone number.  He called.  A Salem man told him he bought and sold cars and had owned the DeSoto for about six months.  He knew the car’s history.  He told Cettina that previous owners – there had been several – had each agreed to keep the car out of the rain and in a garage.  The original owner, the seller said was “a little old lady” in Southeast Portland.
 
Cettina waited while the man went to check a tag in the car’s door jamb; it was a service sticker from a Shell gas station off Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard, the shop which Cettina’s grandmother used.  Guess what, Cettina told him: I’m the grandson of the car’s original owner.
The seller had posted the car the day before and believed that fate had intervened.  Cettina had to have this car.  The man knocked $1,000 off the $8,500 price.  “I’ll call you right back,” Cettina said.  He called his parents to tell them he’d found the DeSoto.  They didn’t believe him.  Neither did his grandmother or his aunts.

Cettina wired the man the money to hold the car and drove to Salem with his parents later in the week.  The car was in the back of a long garage.  His mother examined the car and found where her father had tried to touch up a scratch with paint and the spot where battery acid had caused the paint to bubble.  Cettina bought the car.  He brought it home and washed and waxed it until it gleamed the way his grandfather would have liked it. 

Cettina asked relatives to meet at his grandmother’s house that Sunday after church.  That day, the house was packed.  Miles away, Cettina slid behind the DeSoto’s wheel.  He wore Ernie Rigotti’s old fedora, the hat his grandmother had given him after his grandfather died.  A few blocks from his grandmother’s home, Cettina began honking the horn.  The aunts and grandmother remembered the sound. Could it be?  From a window they spotted a flash of green.  They piled outside, just in time to watch the DeSoto lumber up the driveway.  They erupted into tears and laughter.  How?  Where? When?  Cettina explained as best he could, but everyone was talking and reminiscing and hugging.  In the middle of all this, Flora Rigotti made her way to the car.  At 95, she walked with a cane.  The family parted so she could stand in front of the car.  She looked at it for a moment, then leaned down and kissed the hood.  In that moment, everyone agrees, it was if Ernie Rigotti himself had come home.
--------------------------Bruce P.

 School Daze
Early one morning, a mother went in to wake up her son.  “Wake up, son.  It’s time to go to school!”

“But why, Mom?  I don’t want to go.”

“Give me two reasons why you don’t want to go.”

“Well, the kids hate me for one, and the teachers hate me, too!”

“Oh, that’s no reason not to go to school.  Come on now and get ready.”

“Give me two reasons why I should go to school.”

“Well, for one, you’re 52 years old.  And for another, you’re the Principal!”

Next Meeting
The next meeting of the Rideau Valley Region will be our annual Activities Planning Meeting, on Sunday, January 24th, at the home of Dale and Hilary Faris, 26 Tennyson Street, Nepean, Ontario, starting at 14:00 hrs.  This will be the meeting at which we lay out our activities for the year 2010.  Come, bring your ideas and volunteer to host an event.  As is the custom, the meeting will be followed by a potluck supper.  We’re looking forward to your participation!  For further information call 613-224-0020.

The Last Word -- Never Judge Someone
“Some people!” snorted a man standing behind me in the long line at the grocery store.  “You would think the manager would pay attention and open another line,” said a woman.  I looked to the front of the line to see what the hold up was and saw a well-dressed, young woman, trying to get the machine to accept her credit card.  No matter how many times she swiped it, the machine kept rejecting it.   “It’s one of them welfare card things.  Damn people need to get a job like everyone else,” said the man standing behind me.  The young woman turned around to see who had made the comment.  “It was me,” he said, pointing to himself.  The young lady’s face began to change expression.  Almost in tears, she dropped the welfare card onto the counter and quickly walked out of the store. Everyone in the checkout line watched as she began running to her car.  Never looking back, she got in and drove way. 

After developing cancer in 1977 and having had to use food stamps, I had learned never to judge anyone, without knowing the circumstances of their life.  This turned out to be the case today.  Several minutes later a young man walked into the store.  He went up to the cashier and asked if she had seen the woman.  After describing her, the cashier told him that she had run out of the store, got into her car, and drove away.  “Why would she do that?” asked the man.  Everyone in the line looked around at the fellow who had made the statement.  “I made a stupid comment about the welfare card she was using.  Something I shouldn't have said.  I’m sorry,” said the man.

“Well, that’s bad, real bad, in fact.  Her brother was killed in Afghanistan two years ago. He had three young children and she has taken on that responsibility.  She’s twenty years old, single, and now has three children to support,” he said in a very firm voice.  “I’m really truly sorry.  I didn't know,” he replied, shaking both his hands about.

The young man asked, “Are these paid for?” pointing to the shopping cart full of groceries.  “'It wouldn't take her card” the clerk told him.  “Do you know where she lives?” asked the man who had made the comment.  “Yes, she goes to our church.”

“Excuse me,” he said as he made his way to the front of the line.  He pulled out his wallet, took out his credit card and told the cashier, “Please use my card.  PLEASE!”  The clerk took his credit card and began to ring up the young woman’s groceries.  “Hold on,” said the gentleman.  He walked back to his shopping cart and began loading his own groceries onto the belt to be included.  “Come on people.  We got three kids to help raise” he told everyone in line.  Everyone began to place their groceries onto the fast moving belt.  A few customers began bagging the food and placing it into separate carts.  “Go back and get two big turkeys,” yelled a heavyset woman, as she looked at the man.  “NO,” yelled the man.    Everyone stopped dead in their tracks.  The entire store became quiet for several seconds. “Four turkeys,” yelled the man.  Everyone began laughing and went back to work.

When all was said and done, the man paid a total of $1,646.57 for the groceries.  He then walked over to the side, pulled out his check book, and began writing a check using the bags of dog food piled near the front of the store for a writing surface.  He turned around and handed the check to the young man.  “She will need a freezer and a few other things as well,” he told the man.  The young man looked at the check and said, “This is really very generous of you.”

“No,”' said the man.  “Her brother was the generous one.”

Everyone in the store had been observing the odd commotion and began to clap.  And I drove home that day feeling very American.  We live in the Land of the free, because of the Brave!!  Remember our Troops of Yesterday and Today!!!  A great example of why we should be kind and patient.  Kindness is the language the blind can see and the deaf can hear.

Answers to Trivia Quiz
Answer #1– President McKinley in 1900.
Answer #2 –The 1965 Ford Mustang.  This model was also the first of the ‘pony cars’ that were popular in the late ‘60s.
Answer#3 – The Packard.

 
Bruce Pettinger, Editor, 8 Woodlawn Ave, OTTAWA, ON  K1S 2S9
Phone: (613) 234-4266:  E-mail: PettingerB@DFO-MPO.GC.CA

R. E. (Ted) Fiander, Regional Reporter, 3 Leeward Street, NEPEAN, ON  K2E 5W4
Phone:  (613) 226-5308 :  E-mail:  tedabel@magma.ca