Say what you want about Stan Arnold, but that man was usually right when it came to predicting the weather.
With the news that the feisty octogenarian died last week, the first thing that came to mind was no more calls from Stan about potential for heavy snow based on the way the birds were roosting in the trees, or the signs of a dry summer based on the cattle’s willingness to curl up on the ground, or the coolness of spring based on the emergence of the pussy willows. The last time I wrote about Stan was when he predicted the winter of 2010/2011 would be a long, tough, snowy one. He was spot on.
My second thought was no more calls from Stan when he would yell in my ear, so that I could literally hold the phone at arm’s length and still hear every angry tirade as clear as day.
Stan and I had what you might call a short-distance, love-hate relationship that revolved around phone calls.
Sometimes he would call with weather predictions or even news tips. You could always tell he deeply enjoyed giving the paper the scoop, delighting in the fact that he knew something first. Stan’s information wasn’t always entirely reliable, but every so often he came through with a hot tip that would pan out into an interesting story, so you never wanted to entirely disregard him.
He would call back gloating and chortling when he saw a story that came from one of his tips.
“I may not be no highfalutin’ reporter, but I know my stuff,” he would tell me. “Stan Arnold’s a straight-shooter. I just tells it like it is,” he would say.
But Stan had another side. The last call I ever took from Stan just a few weeks ago, I ended by hanging up on him.
He would often call to yell at me about past wrongs done to him… by former mayors, particularly Dick Smith and Colin Mayes, by his neighbours, by the RCMP, by various government bureaucrats and, indeed, by the Observer, including our late editor Gordon Priestman and, of course, myself. He would bellow about people diverting water on his property, or about dirty politicians or how the RCMP injured him on a ride to the police station after he supposedly made threats to blow up city hall. (Criminal charges against him were eventually dropped.)
I quickly developed a Stan policy. I’d give him one swear word as a freebie, warn him I would hang up if he continued to be abusive, and then I’d simply tell Stan good bye and put down the phone.
In a perverse sort of way, I’m sad I will no longer have to take a deep breath before picking up the phone, knowing Stan is on the other end. Stan was a lot of things. He was a curmudgeon, a cantankerous old coot. I personally think he would be proud of those labels. He was a character.
“Every town’s got one,” people would say, shaking their heads when Stan began heckling politicians at all-candidates meetings. Stan may have been eccentric, vocal and most definitely not politically correct, but no one can deny he was one of a kind. The fabric that makes up the community of Salmon Arm will be a little less colourful for the loss of Stan Arnold.
Tracy Hughes is the editor of the Salmon Arm Observer
