John Shows Elly the Future and the Future is Trains

Today’s strip in For Better or For Worse and the whole idea of John wanting to buy a retirement home specifically for the purpose of being able to set up 3 whole lots of yard with train sets is so self-indulgent, I am quite surprised it has gone on for as long as it has. Elly has tolerated the train hobby within limits, but to have a place that is entirely devoted to the subject would not set well with any woman I know. Nevertheless, the way it has been played in the monthly letters and the strip is as if it is a done deal. So, it seems odd that Elly is just now being brought into the idea, when April was introduced to the house back in February. It is also odd, that John waits until the moment April has left town to talk to Elly about this. It makes me wonder what has happened behind the scenes between John and April. There is a temptation to think it is just coincidence, but I do not consider it to be any more of a coincidence than Liz deciding to leave Mtigwaki just after she finds out Anthony is getting a divorce. April knows John’s intent from February, but perhaps she does not know John intends to buy that house this year, and the drastic effect it will have on her.

We know the whole scheme is to get Mike and Liz back into Milborough with Mike in the old house and Liz into Anthony’s house, but I would have thought that very last piece of that scheme was John and Elly moving. So, I am confused that this story is taking place now, before Liz and Anthony have started up again and before Mike has gotten his best-seller that will allow him to purchase the old house from John and Elly. Nevertheless, George Stibbs is presented as ready to sell, so that means this plot must move forward. John is so anxious for the house to be his; I cannot expect that he would let the house go on the market without tendering an offer immediately.

My big snark for the day was Howard hearing a salon story about the demise of George’s wife, whose name I picked to be Georgette. If George shows up and declares his wife to be of a different name, then her middle name is now Georgette. The monthly letters talking about this story went back and forth as to whether or not there was a couple or an old man, and I guess they decided it was the old man. So, I took great delight in presenting the tale as a couple harassed by John Patterson consistently since last September until the lady dies. In truth, if the monthly letters were canon, that is exactly what has happened.

As a word of explanation for the Mike Patterson and his cousin Laura comments, a long time ago, I had Howard present a story in which the youthful summer Mike Patterson was there at the Cruikshank Farm, was his Summer of Love with cousin Laura, who is reasonably close to his age. Coming from the States, cousin marriage is against the law in most of the states and is generally viewed as something only ignorant poor people or British royalty do. However, my understanding is that it is not illegal in Canada, so I can pursue the idea without feeling I have crossed a Canadian moral boundary. Of course, I don’t know how Canadians actually feel about it, even though it is legal.