Thursday, August 31, 2006
Summary Part 4: Hobo Roadtrip '06
Noisettes
While driving through these small towns in Quebec, we came to one particular town; on the outskirts there was this kid standing on the side of the highway with a cardboard sign saying "Noisettes, 2$".
Now, my translation of noisettes was "nuts". So I'm thinking this kid is selling mixed nuts for 2$. Weird. But maybe this is like a school fundraiser or something. Either way, we drove on.
It wasn't 30 seconds until we passed what honestly looked like an abandoned shack with a little sign out front - "Noisettes, 2$".
100 metres down the street there was a parked car with a lunch pail (presumably containing nuts) sitting on the hood, and a little "Noisettes 2$" bristol board sign.
A minute later we went past a house with a card table set up on the lawn and what looked like glass mugs full of nuts. You guessed it, Noisettes. $2.
In a town of no more than 100 homes, literally 19-20(Laura and I had different "official counts") of them were selling Noisettes in one fashion or another. It was truly the oddest thing I've seen - we really should have taken some video of it to capture it. Particularly humourous were the really ghetto attempts to sell nuts - like they needed a class in "Nut Marketing 101".
Now - what I *have* learned subsequently is that Noisette actually translates to "hazelnut". Furthermore, apparently hazelnuts DO grow in Canada, including Quebec. So it IS possible that this town just happened to have an abundance of hazelnut trees. Regardless, out there somewhere in the middle of Quebec is a town with nuts for sale. $2.
While driving through these small towns in Quebec, we came to one particular town; on the outskirts there was this kid standing on the side of the highway with a cardboard sign saying "Noisettes, 2$".
Now, my translation of noisettes was "nuts". So I'm thinking this kid is selling mixed nuts for 2$. Weird. But maybe this is like a school fundraiser or something. Either way, we drove on.
It wasn't 30 seconds until we passed what honestly looked like an abandoned shack with a little sign out front - "Noisettes, 2$".
100 metres down the street there was a parked car with a lunch pail (presumably containing nuts) sitting on the hood, and a little "Noisettes 2$" bristol board sign.
A minute later we went past a house with a card table set up on the lawn and what looked like glass mugs full of nuts. You guessed it, Noisettes. $2.
In a town of no more than 100 homes, literally 19-20(Laura and I had different "official counts") of them were selling Noisettes in one fashion or another. It was truly the oddest thing I've seen - we really should have taken some video of it to capture it. Particularly humourous were the really ghetto attempts to sell nuts - like they needed a class in "Nut Marketing 101".
Now - what I *have* learned subsequently is that Noisette actually translates to "hazelnut". Furthermore, apparently hazelnuts DO grow in Canada, including Quebec. So it IS possible that this town just happened to have an abundance of hazelnut trees. Regardless, out there somewhere in the middle of Quebec is a town with nuts for sale. $2.
# posted by Greg @ 4:52 AM 
