The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

iq vmmumi jaar m st stouffville mmmmmmm hkama flooring a welcome addition t he chamber of commerce i will be rolling out the red carpet in the event the whitchurchstouffville recre ation centre gets new portable flooring the plan has initial approval and chamber president larry rogalski is pleased the flooring which will be used for such events as the annual home show should be in place soon the flooring will cost 28700 to purchase but the benefits are obvious for the town more shows such as the one the chamber sponsors could take place bringing needed rev enue into town it gives our rec centre a yearround multipur pose capacity it never had before some may say that in these times any capital expenditure such as a portable floor is a lux ury but with the projected usage it will receive the floor will earn its keep in no time the chamber is right in hail ing it as a worthwhile asset to the towns recreation facilities i life skills could help students enter real world you cant always get what you want but if you try sometimes you get what you need that line from a popular tune of a number of years ago relates well in these tough times it relates particularly well to my car situation i had been driving a leased vehicle for the past three years and to my horror discovered some six months ago that the lease was deemed upside down this means that the value of the car no longer met with the lease by- back value in other words with a byback of some 5000 and the value pegged at 2500 due to excessive mileage i was going to be in the red at the end of the lease for a whole whack of cash however if i attempted to termi nate the lease early there was a penalty of 220 for every month remaining in the lease so the dilemma i was facing began to look more and more desparate with each turn of the odometer the more i drove the less the car was worth to their credit the car dealership admitted i had been slightly mislead by the salesman who got me to tag my john hancock on the initial lease out of desparation i went in last week and explained that i would drop off the car with a set of options at my disposal i would drop off the minute with mair car they could fit me with a new one and the car company would have me for another four years or i would drop the car off buy a cheap replacement from a used car dealer and if they after me for the balance i would list the car compa ny on a list of creditors and go bankrupt this seemed to have the desired effect and to cut a long sor did story short i am the proud new owner no longer a lessee of a 1992 vehicle the point of all this is not to take a shot at the shadiness of car dealers but to alert others to make sure they read the fine print i leased my car out of desparation three years ago and was stuck with a document not tailored to me driv ing needs better still some knowl edgeable teacher might want to set aside a few weeks and teach stu dents about life not math or trigonometry but the facts of life concerning leases insurance mort gages prenuptial agreements obtaining and maintaining credit wills traffic tickets appliance repair and the like as far as i know there is little in the high school curriculum that deals with these issues outside of home economics and there certain ly was no such training in my day if there is such a course id like to hear about it students might well push for such knowledge rather than flying out into the world by the seat of their pants on a wing and a checkbook i wish i had that sort of life skills training i may have been able to get what i wanted not just what i need ed stouffville tribune publisher editorinchief editor advertising director business manager promotionsdistribution mgr operations manager patricia pappas jo ann stevenson andrew mair debra weller vivian oneil jennifer hutt pam nichols canada post has left me cold publication mail registration pending staff reporters tracy kibble julie casperson roger belgrave photographers sioerd witteveen steve somerville real estate joan marshman classified doreen deacon debbie amundson uxbridge retail sales joan marshman doreen deacon heather hill gibson uxbridge distribu tion arlenemaddock published every wednesday by metroland printing publishing and distributing at 9 heritage rd markham ontario l3p 1m3 tel 2942200 second class registration number 1247 the stoufmoe tribune published every wednesday at 6244 main st stouffville is one ol the metroland printing pubsshlng and distributing group of suburban newspapers which includes the acton free press alexpickering news advertiser aurora banner brampton guardian burlington post etobicoke advertiserguardian georgetown independent kingston this week lindsay this week markham economist and sun milton champion msslssauga news newmarket era oakvioe beaver oshawa- whitby this week peterborough this week richmond hirvthornhwvaughan liberal scarborough mir ror wcnewsrrazinowiltowdalemrrorarxjuibridae tribune metroland priming publishing and distributing is a division of harieguln enterprises ltd sales representative metroland corporate sales 4931300 distributing u national 6402100 6405477 fax m tt he romans with fast horses and good roads were able to assure nextday delivery up to 280 km by post the canadian ency clopedia on the subject of postal history ah progress nowadays canada post can in most cases deliver local mail to your community mail box within two days they even send out helpful little flyers which give you a special number to call if you experience problems what they forget to mention is its not a good idea to call during a period of stormy icy weather even though this is the only time youre likely to need help this is because lots of locks get frozen everyone phones at once and the lines get all jammed up if you do persevere and get through theyre very sympathetic as i discovered during the week of the big storm theyd send someone out they assured me and i should kates corne e able to get my mail by the fol lowing evening any problems just call back with this reference number call back i pointed out that id just spent half an hour getting through this time surely they didnt expect me to repeat the performance no they said they hoped i wouldnt have to but you never knew after two days of futile efforts to open the box i called again it took numerous attempts to get through and when i did a recorded message in both official languages stated that the lines were busy right now but an operator would be with me short- your call is very important to us the computer assured me sooth ingly when i reached a real person at last he told me that someone had probably been out to fix the lock but in this weather they just froze over again almost immediately this weather i observed tartly was not entirely unknown in south ern ontario didnt it occur to the mailbox designers that metal locks exposed to wind ice and snow were liable to freeze and that a can of deicer was about as effective at imgumming the works as chiga- cos stu grimson would be at a peace conference eventually i was able to claim my mail accompanied by an overpow ering whiff of deicer with which it had been liberally doused leafing through it i have to admit it proba bly wasnt worth all the trouble but it did contain a cheque my down payment on a fax machine