A Difficult Passage
from prairie poverty
to heights beyond
Ray Wiseman
Smashwords Edition
A Difficult Passage - Copyright 2001 by Ray Wiseman
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Bible Publishers.
WordWise Associates - Fergus, Ontario
Dedicated to Anna who proofreads every line I write. Although she did not experience the life portrayed herein, she shares every moment in imagination.
Acknowledgements
Each time I sit down to write, I have the sensation of a crowd of people looking over my shoulder. Although that might sound a little scary, it really is a good thing. I refer to the people who read and comment on my material before it gets anywhere near a printing press. I owe special thanks to the following folks who read and reacted to every page of this book.
- Anna Wiseman, who read every page even more often than I did, applying her special proofreading skills. If you find a typo, I likely caused it by editing something following her last reading!
- Ellen Wheller, who has influenced and contributed to my life since the day I stepped off the train.
- Shirley Wood, who read with the care and concern one would expect from a sister.
- Richard and Merle Vincett. Rich, who appears in the story under an alias, has remained a lifelong friend.
- Nancy Lindquist, who took time to read and comment while in the midst of writing and promoting her own books.
- Donna Mann, who read with her heart, not just her eyes.
- Tina Baker, who tested some of the text by reading it to her husband, Jim.
- Mark Clayton who applied his artistic touch and graphics skills to the cover.
- Pauline Whyte who used similar talents and skills to complete the page layout for the printed version.
And that list doesn’t include all my readers and friends who encouraged me to complete this project!
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Introduction
This story has its genesis in the great migration of people who poured into Canada’s western provinces in the early years of the 20th century. They came from England, Scotland, Germany, Scandinavia, Ukraine, and a dozen other places including many States of the Union.
Although the primary account begins with the crystal-clear memories of a two-year-old arriving at the village of Gawain in April of 1936, flashbacks will transport you to earlier times. War in South Africa and Europe, followed by resettlement in a land of promise, shaped the parents who in turn influenced the life of the child - a child who would face a harsh prairie life with its own special terrors and temptations.
We have changed the name of the town and most of the people to protect the innocent - and those who merely think themselves innocent. The Stanley Stone you meet in Chapter 1, is, of course, Ray Wiseman. Now you know that, you can try to identify the others.
Foreword
They say everyone has a story to tell. Maybe so, but few can tell their story as well as Ray Wiseman. A Difficult Passage takes a fascinating look at life through the eyes of a child. The book quickly drew me in, with three things in particular catching my interest. The first is Ray's phenomenal memory of his childhood, which allows him to give us a vivid glimpse of life on the prairies during the depression. The second is the great difference between the boy who was and man who is--the one so vulnerable and sensitive, the other so confident and at peace. The third is the knowledge that the one became the other not so much in spite of the difficulties of his youth, but because of them. A Difficult Passage tells an engaging story of real life, with all its stings and scars, but with humour and liveliness as well, offering hope to all who face struggles.
N. J. Lindquist, author
Prologue
Fred Stone peered from the window of the gently rocking railway coach as it made its way from Edmonton, through Camrose and on toward Gawain. His athletic, wiry body sat stiffly upright in the seat like an eagle searching for prey from atop a cliff. Few men 40 years younger or a foot taller could match the strength or agility of his five-foot, two-inch frame. People who knew him well, called him Pop.
Pop contemplated the Alberta countryside, not seeing many visible changes since leaving it five years previously to retire in England. Yet he knew depression and terrible dust storms had greatly increased the hardships of prairie farmers. Indeed the long tentacles of depression had reached him in England. When income from the farm at Gawain ceased, he could see no other route but return to the prairie soil and start all over again. He must begin again at age 60 with a young wife, Harriet, and two preschool children, Fred Junior and Stan. Fortunately, he still had the farm - and six dollars in his pocket.
Start over again. He'd been doing that all his life! He leaned back on the seat and closed his eyes, hardly aware of Stan’s sleeping body sprawled across his knees. His mind moved back through dim hallways of time to the first occasion when he had started over.
Returning from the Anglo Boer War, he found his wife had abandoned him and their four children. Back in civilian life in England and facing economic hard times, he found it difficult but pulled his life back together. He remarried, returned to life as a shopkeeper, and rejoined his buddies at the cycling club. But two years in South Africa had stirred his imagination. He had visited enough of the world to want to see more. So he made major plans to start over again.
In 1907 they emigrated to Canada to homestead in the newly-formed province of Alberta. After two years apprenticeship with another farmer, he claimed his free land and moved into a tiny sod house with his wife and four kids. In another two years he built a house and outbuildings on the banks of a little valley that intersected his land - westerners call those steep-sided valleys coulees.
How often those early days had been a living hell! One day saw him looking over 100 acres of golden wheat - a crop that should produce 50 bushels to the acre. The next day he stood in the same place gazing at the same crop destroyed by hail. For weeks he had spent 12 hours a day preparing the land and putting in that crop. He had fended off black clouds of mosquitos that attacked any exposed flesh and drove the horses to distraction. And now, all for nothing!
Well he would get another chance the next year. But in years that hail didn’t get the crops, frost or lack of rain often did.
One winter the snow completely covered the tiny sod house. It took four hours to dig free. In summer they had carried water from a shallow well by a slough (rhymes with shoe) - a shallow natural pond that held water throughout the year. But when the slough froze solid in winter, they had to melt snow to get water for themselves and the animals.
In later years they had other problems. Dust storms blackened the heavens for hours and appeared intent on moving Alberta’s topsoil all the way to Ontario. But he defeated all the setbacks and challenges - he succeeded when many failed.
In the late 1920s Pop tired of farming, passed on to his family or otherwise disposed of all of his land except the original 160-acre homestead and an adjoining 160 acres. Then he prepared to enjoy the fruits of his labours.
He embarked on a year-long world tour, but on return, found nothing to do, so began farming again. By this time people had begun calling him Pop - although he really didn’t feel his age. Then his wife died suddenly. With his children grown and gone, he felt lost in an empty house. True to style, he started all over again.
In February 1931, he married Harriet after a whirlwind courtship by mail. Fred Junior arrived in November of that year. The next year Pop and Harriet put the farm into the hands of a daughter and son-in-law and retired to England. Their second son arrived in England.
But now a financial setback and gathering war clouds in Europe had forced him back to Gawain to start over once again. Surely this would be the last time!
The blast of a whistle, the squeak of steel brakes on steel wheels, and the attendant jolt brought Pop out of his reverie and awoke Stan. From their window on the right side of the train they could see Gawain spreading southwest from the tracks. Pop’s deep-set, dark eyes sparkled. He loved Gawain. It had little more than a post office when he first came here.
Now about 200 people lived in the village served by an assortment of establishments that included two general stores, a post office, a lumber yard, a John Deere dealership cum hardware, a service station with one pump, a Chinese restaurant, and a hotel with six rooms and a bar. Pop wondered how many businesses had changed hands in five years.
The grain elevators stood to the left of the tracks and not visible from the window. Pop had heard a new company had added a sixth during his time away.
He could easily see two two-story brick buildings standing out against the sketchy skyline - buildings that gave the village its importance in the greater farming community: the Gawain hospital, run by the Sisters of St. Joseph, and the Gawain Consolidated School. He had strongly supported building the bigger central school, even though it meant the removal of the one-room school that had stood on his property.
As the train slowed to walking speed, Pop got a good view of the tiny Mennonite church - his brother-in-law had served as its second pastor. At first it had seemed odd having a Mennonite church when he would have more readily supported the Methodists, but it and a Catholic church had quickly become important parts of the community.
Pop grinned when he noticed someone else taking a keen interest in Gawain. Stan had pressed his nose tightly to the window. As he watched Stan, he reflected, “It’s been an exciting life, but a hard life. Dear God, one day let it get easier - it must get easier. If not for me, for my children, for my grandchildren.”
Section One: Gawain
When I was a child,
I talked like a child,
I thought like a child,
I reasoned like a child. . . .
Chapter 1
A new life
A window on Gawain
I’m Stanley Stone - call me Stan. This is mostly my story, but I’ve invited you to join me just two months before my third birthday. You just met my dad - I, like everybody else, always called him Pop. Back then, Pop and I got along really well. Mother said that’s because I’m “the youngest son of his old age.” She also said that Fred Junior, my older brother, “has got his nose out of joint because of it.” I didn’t have a clue what that meant. Anyway, let’s get on with the story.
My first glimpse of Gawain came through the windows of an ancient wooden coach at the end of a mixed train towed by a puffing, belching black monster. Smoke clouded my view and ashes rattled against the soot-streaked pane as if trying to assault my nose as I pressed it against the inside of the glass. Memories from early childhood aren't the most reliable or complete, but some seem destined to cling with the permanence of a birthmark.
The Sandsend
Actually, my recall goes back even further to a rose garden behind a tiny cottage in Norfolk. While Junior and I played in the yard, our parents carefully packed boxes and suitcases in preparation for the move to Canada. Confused by the upheaval, I peeked in the back door and saw my blanket and rag doll disappear into a trunk. I began whimpering and tears ran down my cheeks and dropped off my chin.
Understanding my concern, Mother retrieved Rags from the trunk, squatted down before me, wiped away my tears, and put Rags in my arms. "Don't worry Stan," she said. "We'll have a bigger house in Canada with all our things in it. First we’ll get on a big boat and travel for two weeks across the ocean. You'll have a nice bed in a cabin and eat in a dining room with the captain. And you can keep Rags with you all the time."
Although my mind couldn’t comprehend or merge the disparate pictures of a boat, a cabin, and a dining room, I returned to the yard to play. But a knot slowly formed in my stomach - two weeks in a strange place without my blanket and toys sounded like eternity.
The next clear image out of my past reveals two little boys, their parents, and Aunt Dolly climbing into a rowboat to start the journey across the Atlantic. I’ll tell you more about Aunt Dolly later. Two men in blue uniforms began pulling at heavy oars. Water sloshed back and forth about our feet with each roll of the boat.
Terror bubbled to the surface as I imagined two weeks in this tiny boat. I began to blubber, "Where’s my kip, and the potty, and the diming room?"
The adults hushed me, not able to interpret my strange outpouring. But Junior, age four and smart in the ways of the world, knew how little kids thought - why just last year he’d been one himself. "Don't cry," he pleaded, "This baby boat is taking us to the big one out there. We're going to Canada on that great big boat."
The sailors pulled on the oars, moving us steadily forward. Pop said, “Stan, these men are sailors from the ship.”
I stared at them in admiration, my fears forgotten. Waving Rags at one of them, I announced, “I gots a sailor suit too!”
“You’ll have to wear it sometime,” he answered.
Although he spoke to me, he gazed at Aunt Dolly, giving her a long up and down look - much like I’d seen Pop give to a new model racing bike. Then I noticed Pop’s forehead wrinkle and his bushy eyebrows squeeze down close to his dark eyes as he glanced toward the sailor.
They rowed the boat right up to a steel wall rising straight out of the water. Mother, Junior, and Aunt Dolly scrambled up a rope ladder. I’m not sure how Pop did it, but suddenly I found myself flying up the ladder with Pop right behind me. As Aunt Dolly disappeared over the side, a seaman’s strong arms reached down to pull me over. “Look out Aunt Dolly! Here I come,” I yelled.
Then Pop vaulted over the rail, landing on the deck with a little bounce. We stood close together as a ship's officer approached and welcomed us.
Pop spoke, "I'm Fred Stone. This is my wife Harriet, my niece Dolly, and my sons Fred Junior and Stanley.”
The officer grinned broadly as he shook Pop’s hand. “Welcome aboard. But you’re confusing me. You say these kids are your sons, and this lovely young lady is your niece, but I distinctly heard the little one call her Aunt Dolly.”
Pop smiled back. “They are my sons and Dolly is my brother’s daughter coming to Canada for a year-long visit. But due to the age difference and because they are proper British boys, Junior and Stan call her Aunt.”
The officer shook Mother’s hand and then turned to Aunt Dolly. He seemed to hold her hand for a long time before he turned to Junior and me, bowed slightly, and said, “We always enjoy having proper British gentlemen on board.”
Pop’s brow had furrowed up again. He said, “Thanks for letting us come aboard a day early. Had we waited until you docked tomorrow, it would have cost us extra for hotel rooms."
As we walked across the deck of the ship, I heard Mother say to Pop, “Quit worrying about Dolly. Sure, she’s only five feet tall with a gorgeous peaches-and-cream complexion, but at 32 years old she’s quite capable of taking care of herself.”
I didn’t understand that, so I wrinkled up my forehead just like Pop.
That evening, Mom suggested that Pop take me on a tour of the ship. I clung to Rags with one arm and put a viselike grip on Pop's index finger with my free hand. He pointed out the bridge where the ship’s officers drove the ship, explained how the captain could talk to the engine room through voice tubes, showed me the dining room, even got permission to visit the engine room. "It's called a tramp freighter," he explained, "but it carries a few passengers. It costs a lot less than travelling on an ocean liner."
I didn't always understand everything Pop said, but I loved my Pop - I just knew he must be the smartest man in the world.
The next morning after our first breakfast with the ship's officers, we returned to the cabin. "Mommy, Mommy," I begged, "Hurry up or the boat will go without us."
"We're on the ship," she answered.
"He thinks being on deck is the boat, but not in here," Junior explained.
"In that case," Pop said, taking me by the hand. "Let's get on board the ship."
And so began a two-week, father-son adventure. The minute each meal ended, Pop took my hand and headed for the deck to take his constitutional with a tiny shadow at his side gripping a rag doll. We walked the decks in sun and rain, in smooth and rough weather. We watched for whales, talked to crewmen and explored every hidden recess of the vessel. Sometimes Junior came with us, but most of his time, he spent with Mother and Aunt Dolly.
One day while Pop held Rags for me and Mom and Aunt Dolly watched, two sailors swung Junior and me over the rail above a green sea. It scared me silly. I hung onto Pop’s finger even more tightly after that.
We left the Sandsend the way we boarded her. A yellow motorboat carried us towards a dock tucked against the skyline of Montreal.
The journey west by train remains a blur until the conductor's cry of “Gawain” and the squeaking brakes prompted me to press my nose to the window.
I step into a new life
Junior and I stepped onto the station platform first. I cowered behind Junior’s much bigger frame. Who were these strangers staring at us? I squeezed Rags tightly and felt tears building up, but before they started, Mom and Pop followed carrying the suitcases.
“Velcome back to Gawain,” a grandfatherly man on the platform spoke said to Pop. “I brought the team and vagon so ve can take you and your goods to the farm. It’s great to have you back.”
“Boys and Dolly,” Pop said, “this is my good friend Johnny Johanson.”
Grandpa shook our hands and welcomed us with his thick Norwegian accent, “Boys, your Pop calls me Yanny Yohanson, but you must call me Grandpa.”
He turned back to Pop to ask, “Vill you start farming again?”
Pop stared across the village and prairie towards the distant, unseen homestead, then spoke, “Yes, I'll start again. It won't be easy; I'm over 60. But I’ve a young wife and family, a farm, and $6.00 in my pocket. We lost almost everything else we owned in England. Maybe I should never have left Canada four years ago to retire in England, but who could have predicted this awful depression?”
As we climbed into the wagon box with Grandpa Johanson, I heard a girl's voice say, “Those are the cutest little boys I have ever seen. I just love their English accents; And just look at the little doll in the sailor suit.”
Grandpa turned to Junior and me and said, “Boys, this is my daughter Susan.”
Susan, a dark-haired teenager, sat on a sack of grain and chatted with us as we rode through the countryside. At two and a half I couldn't fully appreciate her poise and beauty, but I decided I could like anyone who called me cute - even if she had called me a doll! Maybe life in Canada would be good after all. Especially when we could open the trunks and get out my blanket and toys so they could join Rags and me.
The Farm
After a few miles and two or three turns on straight, dirt roads, we descended into a coulee, entered a farm gate, then climbed through a gully, arriving back on the coulee bank at a farmstead overlooking three large ponds that reflected the azure sky. Grandpa Johanson stopped the wagon beside a two-story, frame house. A barn, chicken house, and long shed with sliding doors bordered the rest of the farmyard. When I looked for neighbouring houses but could see none, fear gripped me. I took a tight hold on mother's skirt and burst into tears.
Mother broke my grip, took my hand and said, “Come and see the house. Your father built it a long time ago.”
We not only explored the house, but carried our belongings to the top floor where we would live until Sister June, her husband and two kids moved out. Even though she was the same age as Mother, June really was my sister - a half-sister - a child of Pop’s first marriage. But I didn’t understand all that.
I also met my half brother Willie and his wife Jessie when they came over to welcome us. They lived on a farm adjoining ours. Willie had red hair. He looked a lot like Pop and moved very quickly, like a little bird. Jessie, who had blond hair, seemed taller and heavier than Willie. Even then, I thought, “She’s the boss!”
They had their three kids with them, Reggie - about Junior’s age - and Sadie and Orton - a lot older. Orton put on a silly grin, stared down at me, and said, “Hello Uncle Stan.”
Uncle? I screwed up my face and backed away. I heard them talking about another half brother and a half sister who lived somewhere far away - talk about a confusing family!
The house fascinated me more than all these new family members. I remember best the windows. Each room on the ground floor had at least one set of huge double windows. Rooms on the second floor had one or two large single windows. In comparison, our house back in Norfolk had peep holes.
I hear the voices of little men
We hadn’t been more than two or three days in the two-story house on the coulee bank when I made a discovery that would later change my life. Even at this point it gripped my imagination. In a smaller downstairs room, Sister June and Uncle Nate, Sister June’s husband, kept a wooden box on a small table.
By the way, back then kids spoke formally to most adults calling them Mr., Miss, or Mrs. Those we knew well we called Aunt or Uncle if no other title seemed appropriate, except for Brother Willie and Aunt Jessie. For reasons I never figured out, we always called them just plain Willie and Jessie.
Anyway, Sister June and Uncle Nate’s box had a row of knobs across the front and a variety of wires running from it. One day I crept into the room dragging my blanket with one hand while the other grasped Rags. Pop and Uncle Nate had pulled chairs up to the box. Both wore odd little black cups over their ears with wires connecting the cups to the wooden box. When Uncle Nate saw me, he removed the cups from his ears and placed them on mine. I heard tiny voices and immediately guessed they came from wee men hiding in the box. But when I asked Pop to lift the lid so I could see them, he and Uncle exploded in laughter. Well one day I would look in that box and figure out how it worked.
The two men listened for a few moments longer, then Pop spoke to Uncle Nate: “Do you think Bible Bill Aberhart will ever pay his $25 basic dividend to each Alberta resident? We could sure use that money.”
Uncle Nate shook his head sharply, clapped his hands over the black things on his ears, and leaned closer to the box.
A moment later he sat up straight and turned to Pop who said. “So you think not?”
“I was shaking my head to hush you up Pop (like I said, everybody called my father Pop). I just wanted to hear the rest of the news. I don’t know if he can do it, but I’ll tell you one thing, Premier Aberhart and the Social Credit Party have got Ottawa and those eastern bankers scared. Things have changed in Alberta during your time away.”
I slipped quietly from the room, dangling Rags by one leg and dragging my blanket through the dust and dead flies that often littered the floors of prairie farmhouses as the spring sun warmed the building.
Just weeks short of my third birthday, in awe and embarrassment, I had discovered the world of telecommunications - a world that would shape the 20th century and consequently become a central theme in my life. But more important, radio brought a new dimension to living in isolated communities. The listeners could now attend concerts, political functions, and get up-to-date news from the next town or from faraway lands. Radio had begun to break the terrible isolation of the prairies. Less than a quarter century earlier Pop had travelled 40 miles to the nearest town to get groceries and buy a newspaper. Now the little men in the box brought the world to the living rooms of remote farmsteads.
The house that Pop built
Pop had arrived in Alberta from England in 1907 to claim 160 acres located 40 miles or two days by horses and wagon from the nearest railway. He knew they planned to build a railway nearby and hoped the few shacks clustered around the Gawain post office would become a real town. Pop knew little about farming, but two years in the Anglo-Boer War had infused him with a spirit of adventure. While working for an established farmer in order to learn the ropes, he began to gather horses, plows, and the other tools of farming. Within two years he built a sod house beside a large slough on his own land and moved in with his wife and four kids.
The sod house, or soddy, squatted close to the ground. Its thick turf walls kept out the worst of the cruel Alberta winters. Pop lined the floor, walls, and ceiling with lumber he purchased and hauled from a town on the distant railway line. He fitted a window and door and installed a huge cast-iron cooking range. The range cooked the food, heated the water and warmed the single large room. They stored their belongings in trunks and crates. A table and chairs and home-made bunks completed the furnishings. They settled in for two uncomfortable, crowded, stuffy, years.
Two years later Pop built the house with the help of a Swedish carpenter named Swenson. Pop sketched out a plan on a clean new board. Swenson looked it over, nodded his head and said, “Ya, by yimminy, ve can do it.”
“Big windows. We want big windows,” Pop instructed Swenson. The two worked at fever pace, for Pop didn't plan to spend another winter in a tiny, dismal sod shack. With the help of a team of horses pulling an earth scoop and friendly neighbours with picks and spades, they dug a cellar for the coal furnace. Swenson and Pop hand-mixed field stone and cement for a foundation and laid the beams to support the house. They soon completed the outer walls and raised and shingled the roof. Neither Pop nor Swenson knew anything about modern insulation.
Early one morning Pop arrived to find Swenson circling around the unfinished house shaking his head and muttering in Swedish. Each time he passed a pile of planks he struck it with his hammer and muttered “God bless us!” The pious Seventh day Adventist would say nothing stronger.
Pop watched the strange behaviour for a few moments, then spoke, “What's wrong?”
Swenson struck the lumber pile once again before saying, “By yimminy, ve forgot to put in the stairs!”
Pop roared with laughter. Neither of them had even thought of stairs! Together they decided to put them in the kitchen against the outside wall. The stairs turned sharply right at the top to enter a big room on the second floor previously planned as a master bedroom. That room became a common room with doors opening to three bedrooms. He called the common room “the landing.”
It took hours to remove the double windows from each floor now traversed by the new flight of steps. The kitchen, located below the landing, had become long and narrow with only half the windows originally planned.
Down those stairs
Oh how I remember one of my earliest experiences with those stairs! Soon after we moved in, before Sister June and her family had moved from the lower floor, I decided to visit them. The top three steps made a right-angle turn, meaning the side of each step against the wall became very wide, while the side of the step against the banister narrowed to a point. Gripping Rags in my right hand, I tried to wrap my pudgy fingers around the bannister support pole. I say tried, because they spanned less than half the pole’s circumference. I looked down, way down to the piles of dirty laundry on the lower steps and the open door at the bottom. Mother had begun preparing to do the weekly wash.
I bravely stepped from the landing to the top step, but my foot skidded off the narrowed step and my fingers released their tenuous grip. I wrapped both arms around Rags and rolled downward - my height just nicely matching the width of the stairs. Each time my body rotated I saw Mother on the top step, arms and legs akimbo, and mouth wide open. She held that stance as long as I could see her - until the laundry wrapped itself about my body. As I hit the bottom step, Sister June scooped me up and began unwinding the underwear, shirts, socks and pillowcases.
My spectacular descent didn’t cause a single pain or bruise. Out of character, I didn’t cry, not even a whimper. Indeed, I began to laugh! Could it be that I had begun to grow up?
Windows on a new life
Awakened by thunder, I crawled from bed and padded to the window where I stood transfixed at a world exploding with fire. Great sheets of yellow and blue light danced back and forth across the horizon while clouds hurtled bolts of fire at each other and at the helpless earth below. Great jagged branches of lightning, beginning high in the heavens hidden beyond the top of the window, bent and twisted their way earthward until they exploded into the prairie. The panes of glass shook with the noise of all-out battle. I stood in awe for a minute, then blurted, “God is fighting the debbil!”
"No, it's just an old thunder and lightning storm," said Junior who had quietly moved up beside me. “Pop told me Alberta has real bad lightning storms.”
Junior had become a know-it-all the moment he learned to talk.
I hadn't completely recovered from that night of heavenly fire when the big windows brought me a day of darkness and fear.
Noel, a recent British immigrant who worked as a farmhand for a neighbour, had come to “see”Aunt Dolly. They sat chatting in the dining room. Not that Noel did much talking; he seemed to enjoy just sitting and listening. I liked Noel even though he got the same look on his face when he talked to Aunt Dolly as the sailors on the ship.
Aunt Dolly chased me from the dining room, so I drove my green toy car across the kitchen, following the roads drawn out by the pattern in the linoleum. Just as I turned at the cook stove and gave a realistic "vroom, vroom," someone yelled, “There's one coming! Close things up.”
Pop and Noel hurried outside to close the shed and barn doors while Mom and Dolly raced about the house closing windows and lighting oil lamps. Within minutes the storm smothered the sun in swirling blackness and began clawing at the house. The adults gathered in the dining room, waiting like soldiers prepared for action but not knowing what duty might demand or where the enemy might strike. I sat motionless on the kitchen floor gripping my precious toy.
“That window is going to go!” Pop yelled. Pop and Noel stared helplessly at the glass panes gyrating within their frames. Mother raced from the room, returning quickly with an armful of pillows.
“Hold these against the glass,” Mom ordered. The men shook off their inaction and pushed the pillows to the trembling glass. Noel, being much taller than Pop, held two against the upper panes of the window. Lamp in hand, Aunt Dolly began an inspection of the rest of the house to make sure the storm hadn’t forced its way through another window.
Dirt began seeping under the back door, creeping toward me. When Mother saw it, she grabbed a kitchen towel, dunked it in the crock that held drinking water and laid it across the bottom of the door. I remained on the floor, shaking all over.
Eventually the storm subsided. Pop and Noel went out to assess the damage while the women began to clean up dirt that had crept through a thousand tiny fissures around windows. I hadn’t even cried! I returned my car to the lino highway, made a neat turn around the stove leg and began to “vroom, vroom” my way back across the kitchen.
The coulee
Stairs and windows aside, no part of early life on the farm fills as many spaces in my album of memories as our coulee.
Coulees, or small valleys, usually with fairly steep sides, wend across prairie lands. Some contain rivers or streams, but many see water only during spring runoff. Our coulee measured over 600 yards from the crest of one bank to the other. It arced through the northeast corner of the quarter section of land that Pop had claimed as a homestead and continued for miles in each direction, winding across other farms. But nowhere did it have the width and beauty of our coulee.
The ponds made it special - large ponds that remained full in all seasons. The largest almost touched the banks on either side. Two smaller ponds and acres of bulrushes filled the rest. Between the ponds gooey sinkholes, surrounded with rushes and sometimes covered with water, waited to pull the rubber boots off a straying child, or suck a careless cow or horse to its belly or beyond in black, smelly mire.
Despite the minor dangers of the sink holes, I’m sure Pop selected the site because he saw the potential of year-round water and a place that would support a small herd of cattle.
Although I didn’t realize it during that first summer, the coulee and ponds would become my playground. Narrow cattle paths snaked through the waist-high, reddish-brown buck brush and silver sage that thickly covered the banks. They arrived eventually at the muddy edge of the biggest pond. We would race barefooted along the trails unconcerned about occasional encounters with skunks and porcupines.
In the spring we’d search out bird’s nests - redwing blackbirds in the acres of bulrushes, crows and magpies in the willows and poplars, and water birds near the water. Catching tadpoles in tin cans and studying them and noting their various stages of development complemented our education. We always threw them back; we loved the sound of thousands of frog voices blending with the calls of birds and the rush of wind through bulrushes and willows.
Summertime brought out the dragonflies; these helicopters of the insect world fascinated us. We’d walk knee deep in water and mire amid the reeds to reach their habitat. Seated on the edge of the wooden culvert that allowed water from the smallest pond to escape down coulee, we’d watch muskrats at work and play near their beaver-like lodges. We imagined swimming with them, entering the underwater tunnel into their homes, and enjoying a friendly visit.
In the fall we’d study birds returning south. We looked especially for cranes, hoping to see the survivors of the ill-fated and dwindling flock of whooping cranes. Thousands of ducks of a dozen varieties converged on the ponds. We’d slip up to the water’s edge and toss a stone to experience the thundering takeoff of countless birds. They’d speed along just above the water, webbed feet running on the surface to give added thrust until they gained flying speed.
Winter found Fred Junior trapping weasels and rabbits in the animal runs that crisscrossed the coulee bottom and banks. Together, we’d follow the footprints of rabbits and coyotes across snow-covered, frozen ponds, up the banks, and across the fields. We soon learned to identify the tracks of other creatures who dared intrude into our world.
Most certainly, it became our world. We rarely shared it with others, except when friends and neighbours joined us to toboggan down the slopes and skate on the ponds.
Starting over
During the first year back on the farm, Mom and Pop did everything possible to get income rolling in. Pop bought a team of horses and put a few pigs and two cows in the barn. We always had plenty of milk to drink. Mom separated the cream and made butter, feeding the leftover skimmed milk to the hogs. Pop butchered them and Mom cured the bacon and ham in large earthenware crocks filled with brine. Mom also planted a big garden and filled the cellar with a year’s supply of carrots, beets, potatoes, and squash. We did not lack food.
To earn cash before he could bring the farm into full production, Pop drove a horse-drawn school van. I often rode along with him, strengthening the special bond that had begun on the ship. I rode proudly between Pop and noisy boisterous school kids and got a view of the school life that lay ahead. One day a powerful wind blew the wooden van from its rubber-tired running gear and sent it rolling across a field. Pop got some cuts and bruises but no serious injuries. Fortunately, I hadn’t gone with him that day.
Pop had some other near disasters. One of our cows, old Bessie, absently chewing her cud, decided to take a shortcut back to the barn by travelling through the coulee bottom and angling across the corner of the middle pond. Two cow-lengths into the water, the gooey, black, prairie muck ceased to support her weight. Her four pointy feet sank in beyond her knees - she fought back, driving herself deeper. When she finally gave up the battle only her head, neck and the top of her shoulders protruded above water. She decided to wait for rescue but, being a cow, she could at least redeem the time by chewing her cud.
Eventually, Pop found her and summoned neighbours to assist. We had only two cows; losing Bessie would create hardship. Grandpa Johanson and his hired man arrived wearing rubber boots, driving a team of draught horses, and carrying yards of heavy rope. An hour later, after many outbursts in English and Norwegian, much pulling by the horses, pushing by the men, and mooing by Bessie, the stranded cow burst free with a loud sucking sound. Lucky cow: she suffered little more than a sore neck and rope burns.
Just about that time we visited a neighbour whose farm dog had a litter of puppies.
“You can have one Stan. Just pick one out.”
I stared at Mom in disbelief.
“Go ahead,” she said.
I picked the little one - “the runt” someone called it. That’s how Tippy joined our family. When he grew, he developed the tail and coat of a collie and the floppy ears of a spaniel. His legs didn’t develop much at all - they remained short and crooked. He looked . . . silly, but we loved each other.
Pop makes a bed
Fred Junior, born before our parents four-year sojourn in England, often speculated on my origin, suggesting my real parents still lived in England, or that Mom and Pop had found me under a gooseberry bush. Maybe it had something to with what Mom had said - about Fred having his nose out of joint. Anyway, it worried me until Pop did something that convinced me I really belonged. He made my bed!
No, Pop didn't just straighten the pillow and tuck in the sheets. He made the whole thing from scratch. With money desperately scarce, Mom couldn’t order everything we needed from the Eaton’s catalogue. I needed a bed, so Pop built it. Rummaging around through junk and leftovers on the farm, Pop found the head and foot boards of an old wooden crib. Two used two-by-twos became bed rails when screwed between the end pieces. He didn't paint them; I doubt he had either sandpaper or stain. A search of the drive shed provided material for the "springs" - enough chicken wire to stretch twice between the rails.
Grandma Johanson provided the next key element - an empty tick for a mattress. Pop carefully stuffed it with fresh straw and, behold, a bunk suitable for a prince. Pop's creation lasted only a few years - until my increasing weight began breaking through the chicken wire. By then my parents had a few more dollars and bought a real bed. But, I didn't forget what Pop had done for me. He loved me!
Precious water
As a lad under three, moving from civilized and cultured England to a prairie farm in the midst of the great depression, I received many shocks and had much to learn. True, the new house had lots of windows, an upstairs, eight rooms, and a radio. But in that era our house, like many others, had no running water, no plumbing, no electricity, and no adequate insulation or heating system.
Lack of running water meant that Pop daily carried two large pails from the well at the bottom of the gully. He’d pour those into a huge earthenware crock in the kitchen. An enamelled metal dipper floated on the water in the crock, its handle protruding over the rim. Anytime we felt thirsty, we’d simply drink directly from the dipper.
On wash or bath days, Pop carried extra water to fill the stove’s reservoir and two or three large metal pots that Mom used to heat water on the stove top. Mom did the laundry right in the kitchen. With sleeves rolled up, she’d bend over a scrubbing board propped into one end of a square washtub filled with soapy water. Sometimes Pop would help her wring the clothes by hand and dump them into another washtub for a rinse and another hand wringing. Mother usually accompanied her washday by singing. Her mezzo-soprano voice filled the house with song - either a hymn or an old army ditty, depending on her mood.
Lack of plumbing meant that Mom scrubbed us in a washtub on Saturday night. No, she did not use the scrub board! As she did for washday, Mom set up near the kitchen stove so she could easily ladle hot water from the stove’s reservoir into the tub. While she got things ready, Fred and I would strip off our clothes and streak back and forth through the yellow light from the oil lamps. We’d run the length of the big room, enjoying the rush of air over our naked bodies.
Having no electricity meant we used kerosene to fuel glass-chimney lamps for the house and hurricane lanterns for the barn. On special occasions we would light up an Aladdin mantle lamp. As winter drew on, I learned about unheated bedrooms. But while I could handle most inconveniences, the lack of plumbing, of a proper toilet, got to me.
The outhouse
I can’t recall my first trip to the privy or outhouse, although it surely happened before my third birthday. I certainly remember later visits: the two gaping maws ready to conduct the careless into the bowels of the earth, my nose twitching and rebelling until I gagged from the stench, and the sound of rusty hinges and the brush of cobwebs on my forehead. By age four, I had graduated from the chamber pot and began making daily pilgrimages down the path to the little outhouse at the edge of the grove.
The tiny wooden building, small enough that a half-grown child could almost touch all four sides without moving, contained a wall-to-wall wooden bench or seat. The seat had two side-by-side holes cut into it, a bigger one for adults and a smaller one for kids. A pile of newspapers and an old Eaton’s catalogue occupied a corner, not for reading, but for what we called “ammunition.”
Some outhouses had wooden lids covering the holes, but not ours. And here the terror began. As I sat on the small hole, straining hard to quickly finish my business and escape the stench, my imagination would run wild. What if I fell through the hole and sank helplessly into the slime and ooze beneath? I’d heard of kids stumbling out to the privy at night, sitting on the big hole by mistake, slipping in, and disappearing forever.
During evenings, I’d carry a lantern to keep coyotes at bay as I raced for the outhouse. Once inside in the oily yellow light of the lantern, I would imagine something worse than a coyote, a prehistoric slime monster down below, reaching up to grab me. Even worse, in the midst of winter I expected hoar frost or icicles to form on my unprotected bottom.
During one winter, I had a stroke of genius. I would quit going to the outhouse, at least for number two. Days, maybe weeks, slipped by before I confided in my big brother. Being a year and a half older, Fred Junior had a better knowledge of physical processes, so he blabbed to mother.
Mother had studied practical nursing and knew what to do. She had all the needed equipment on hand and quickly got to the bottom of the problem. It took a full week and numerous enemas and soapy suppositories to flush clean all the blocked passages. (It took decades to outgrow the damage I’d done.) I’d learned two lessons: don’t try to ignore nature, and don’t trust Fred Junior with a confidence.
A big mouth at the wedding feast
Noel showed up often during our first year on the farm. He seemed to appear in time to help Pop finish the chores. Then he’d come in for a cup of tea and a scone that Mother had pulled out of the oven earlier in the day. Even I had figured it out. Noel didn’t come for the fellowship or the food - he came to see Aunt Dolly.
They held the wedding in our house. I can’t remember a thing about the ceremony, but I sure do remember the wedding dinner - they likely called it a wedding supper back then. The adults added leaves to our dining-room table, then stuck the kitchen table at the end to seat about 16 people in all. Mother covered the whole thing with white cloths and set out her best dishes - augmented by extra settings borrowed from a neighbour.
The table and setting have nothing to do with the incident forever lodged in my memory. I remember it because it turned everyone’s ears and eyes in my direction. I sat near the corner on the long side of the table right next to the Reverend Mr. Wiebe. The bride and groom sat on the far side near the middle with two other people flanking them. Seated on a regular chair, my mouth barely made it to the edge of the table, so I could just see the bride and groom over my plate. Two or three other people, including the teen-age Susan Johanson, bustled about with serving trays and platters of meat, potatoes, and squash. Susan had remained special to me, beginning the moment I met her on the railway platform as we stepped off the train.
“Shall we ask the blessing?” said the pastor. Peering across my still-empty plate, I watched the heads bow and eyes close, all except those belonging to Noel.
“Our heavenly Father . . .,” began the prayer. In fascination I watched Noel eyeing his bride. Would he ever tire of looking at her?
“Bless this food to our bodies . . .,” the prayer continued. Noel now shifted his eyes to the pastor, then let them slowly circle the table, studying each guest in turn.
The prayer finished, “In the name of our Lord, Amen.” All heads lifted and eyes opened, but a silence rested on the room for one or two seconds before a tiny voice intruded.
“Noel had his eyes open,” I called out from my lowly position.
Aunt Dolly immediately accused, "How could you tell unless you had yours open too."
The truth of her statement dawned on me and I dropped down behind the edge of the table as if to duck the laughter that bounced off the four walls and ceiling.
Lost on the prairie
Not long after Aunt Dolly married Noel, Susan Johanson married Eric Pederson. The newlyweds moved onto a farm on the next road over so that it abutted at the rear of Grandma and Grandpa Johanson’s place. Being technically clever, Eric built a telephone system between the farms. He powered discarded radio horns with telephone batteries and stretched wire along a mile and a half of fence line.
On visits to the Johanson’s, Grandma would let us rap inside the horn with a spoon. That would bring Susan to the horn at her end so we could carry on a conversation.
We didn't get out much, so when Grandma and Grandpa Johanson asked us to join them for supper and a visit to Susan and Eric’s place, we happily went along.
After eating, we all piled into Grandpa’s tiny van to drive in the winter darkness the mile-and-a-half across the fields to the young couple’s farm. The little van would run along easily on sleighs behind the team - even on the deep snow that had fallen in the last few days. Grandma Johanson in her thick accent asked Grandpa, “Think you can find de vay, Yonny, in the dark and snow?”
He just laughed, “Vat are you saying voman? Get lost in my own fields?”
Then he hooked two big alligator clips onto a car battery by his feet. An old car headlight fixed on the roof of the van shone a beam across the yard, “Get lost vit dat? No vay.”
We drove past the barn and out the back gate with sleigh bells jingling and snow crunching under the runners. After a few minutes Grandma said, “Shouldn't ve have reached de east fence by now, Yonny?”
“No,” Grandpa answered. But then he pulled up the team and stared out the tiny window in the front. The rest of us couldn't see much of anything. “Funny, someone's been trew here by sleigh recently. Who'd be driving around in our field? Must've been the Ellis boys getting a load of straw - I said they could take vat dey vanted.”
Grandpa chucked-up the horses and we went on for a few more minutes before he stopped again and said, “Look at dat. More tracks going de other direction. These tracks look even fresher. The boy's must be lost out here. Maybe dey'll see our light and follow us.”
In another five minutes Grandpa stopped again and said, “Ve just crossed more new tracks and now ve've come to a fence - but there shouldn't be a fence here!”
“Just sit tight Yonny,” Grandma said and climbed out the door at the back.
She put her head back in after a moment and said, “Yonny, ve're up against de nort fence. You've been driving in circles and crossing your own tracks. Follow me.”
We peeked out the tiny window to see that old, wiry, tough, little Scandinavian grandmother walking in the beam of the headlight. She took us through deep snow banks, across the field, and straight to the exit gate and the lane on the far side. When she got back in she never reproved her husband, she just said, “Ve're okay now Yonny.”
There’s no party like a political party
At one time in at least one part of Canada, people turned politics into fun and games. The Social Credit meeting once highlighted the winters in rural Alberta for kids and adults. I really shouldn't speak for adults, but as a preschooler back then, nothing apart from Christmas excited me more.
The fun started when Mom and Pop hurried through evening chores, then prepared for the outing. Like most of our neighbours, we travelled during winter in a horse-drawn open box mounted on runners. While Pop threw some straw on the bottom, mother gathered quilts and blankets. Straw and bedding created a cosy nest for Junior and me. Mother put a kitchen chair near the front, positioning it where she could keep an eye on us and still watch Pop's driving. Seated on the chair and wrapped in a travel rug she could just peek over the front for a view of the road, hindered somewhat by the horses’ rumps. Pop took the position favoured by most prairie men - standing upright. That way he got a good view but exposed the upper half of his body to the weather.
In the pitch black of a mid-winter evening, we snuggled into our nest, Mother checked the blankets, and Pop hollered gitty-up. Cold, black nights amplify sound, especially to the ears of a child viewing the world as a four-by-ten foot section of starry sky. The rhythmic sound of sleigh bells combined with the slapping and jingling of harness leather and metal fixtures. The crunch of horses’ hoofs on crisp snow vied with the hiss of runners breaking a new track.
When a mysterious blue-white light caught our attention, Fred and I abandoned our covers and stood up to watch the northern lights dancing across the heavens. From this vantage point we also began a search for our other night-time favourites, the Big Dipper and Orion. Mother, herself enchanted by the stunning winter display, allowed us a few minutes before ordering us back under the covers with a warning; "You'll freeze your noses. It's twenty below out here."
At the Johanson farm, mother bundled us quickly into the house while Pop took the horses to the shelter of a barn or driving shed. The meeting wouldn't start until more people arrived, but those already there had begun socializing. Knowing I had little time, I too began the rounds.
In one corner I found a group of men throwing rubber sealer rings at a thing that looked like a dart board, but with cup hooks positioned to catch the rings. Soon bored with this, I moved on. In the living room a group of older children, girls, gathered around a piano while one showed off her skill by plinking out Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. I finally found the boys in the mud room trying their skills on a couple of mouth organs. They soon chased me away but let my brother stay. I carefully avoided the women gathered in the kitchen - no need to remind Mother my bedtime passed two hours ago.
Back in the living room, I met Eric. The young farmer had many talents. Tonight he balanced a concertina on his knee and with some effort began coaxing music from the ancient instrument. I watched with fascination as his hands moved back and forth working the bellows while at the same time his fingers pushed an array of buttons.
When he finished his practice session and put the instrument aside for the sing-song to come later, I turned my attention to a group of men already deep in serious political discussion. One said, “Those Easterners have done it again. If they don't like the laws we pass, they simply declare them ultra vires.”