ABOUT THE AUTHOR
   

Stocks, writing, guitar and harmonica, my love Dorothy, Rob, Cheryl, Shane, Mike, Dave, Paul, Kelly and all my friends and family and fun and adventures sum up Ralph's list of things to do.  and thanks to the new recruits, laurie, mike, jennifer, you all know who you are, courtney,  joey, and more, Add pro tools and avid studio in and you have a mixed bag of fun things to do.  As he retires out back in the country he told Dorothy,  "You know that little white sheet you write your daily list on? You know, the one with all the chores on it.  Well I will be happy spending the rest of my life helping you do your little list of things on your to do list."
Isn't that Romantic? -I did say helping, eg. pass the hammer, the spuds, whatever, and I did mention I needed a little selfish time to do my own pursuits. 

Let me see, I sang, played harmonica and guitar three times in the Omemee Legend and had people singing and dancing to crowds of over sixty, in age that is, and in number, scared to death.  I played harmonica once in a Newmarket Bar and that was thrilling as well, except when a drunken big lug tried to pick up Dorothy as I was about to go on and had to be brash with him.  I could not hear myself on stage and had all these difficult chords to play along too, (guitar teacher's gig) and had to play a lot of songs in first position as all day I kept saying I gotta replace my D harp!  Still I got the loudest applause.  I know I did not play that well but know no one else took notice or seemed to care and just cheered me on.  I traded in the pit in the old and new Toronto Stock Exchange floors. Dome Petroleum pit on the arbitrage, futures pit, options, stocks and was a broker too.   I was the first order trader for TD Bank, TD Waterhouse division.  I traded all their orders.  I got lucky and had my picture taken in 1987 and it was used in the November 1987 issue, page 43, in Reader's Digest in reference to the great black Monday Oct 17th, 1987 stock market crash  The same picture was also put into Maclean's magazine a bit later.  They doctored up the pic (with a brush and artist, no photoshop in them days and put a tear running down my cheek, sneeky devils, they owe me one), My Toronto Star newspaper picture with the Shriners on the old TSE floor was witness to some personal acclaim as well, and I seemed to get my pic taken unknowingly for a lot of TSE yearbooks,(5).  Probably because I was on the Arbitrage a lot and i was one of the guys you saw screaming, shouting and waving my hands on the floor.  I remember one time elbowing Paul Napol. twenty times in the stomach as he held me by the throat in the air as we both fought for ownership of Dom Petroleum shares.  Getting carried off the floor was the ultimate embarrasement.  I remember in the same pit of Dome Petroleum, shares trading five bucks different than in front of me. That was a good day.  I admit I did not trade pro too long but I did have a go at it and did well for a short while.  Serving the Toronto community doing emergency plumbing repairs for many years was also rewarding.  I honestly felt like a fire-fighter (yes with way less responsibility) and on occasion rescued many people in distress and saved valuable property and more than once carried people out from flooded basements.  I can still remember that three forty-five a.m. call where I carried out a beautiful damsel in distress, scantily clad in a see-through white silk nightgown, only to be chagrined when I was ordered inside to find her big, huge boyfriend standing on the side of the tub with over two feet of water around him looking more scared than her. I could not charge enough extra when there was more to do because of my kind and generous heart and felt a need to change when I met Dorothy. One of my favorite diversions is writing.  I have written and published a local newspaper for the local baseball team. The MVP section was a hit and I had a bit of a reader following for a summer.  I even played three games too.  Go Omemee Cornhuskers!  We lost in the final game. I made a game saving catch on the last play of the previous game with the tieing run coming over the plate and i snagged him hard and got the out to keep us going into the final.  i was subbing for mckeckern who was injured for three games, i played catcher but did not get to play in the finals. The A.C. Marina in Lafontaine still has on their walls a picture/text memorabilia where I wrote one of the best fishing stories of all -where it took seven of us to land the big one.  That is all besides having at one time an 82 golf average, 30 games in a row of 82, best was 78) and now can't get time to commit and do not score well at all now.  I love reading and encourage you to read so that you do not miss out on such a nice activity. and read my book.