From Crows to Meadowlarks

     With a final grunting thrust, the pole pushed up through the bottom. The debris rained down as we jumped back, not wanting our hair and shirts to be filled with twigs, leaves, dust, and debris, but mostly, not with the ugly little bodies of the newly hatched crows. This was not easy work, but was great entertainment for a Saturday afternoon. The low bush of the Saskatchewan prairie made sure the nests of the hated birds were not so high that we could not reach them with a downed sapling. There was a bounty on crows and that was all the justification we needed.

     We sifted through the underbrush and the remains of the nest to find the young while the frantic parents were screeching at us from the tree tops. Not hatched more than a day or two before, they were ugly pink/blue creatures, with bulging eyes, not yet open, and only hair where there should have been a covering of black feathers. Grabbed by their tiny feet, we collected them and wondered how we would kill them. Killing nature was natural in those days. Killing for killing’s sake. The bounty on a set of crow’s feet was secondary. It hardened us, made us man/boys, tough, and a force to be reckoned with. They call it macho.
    
     We were near an abandoned farm house, a skeleton from days of old, the chimney having fallen in a heap near the back door. The bricks would do just fine, as we placed each hatchling on a brick and smashed another brick onto it. “Crow Sandwich” we chortled.
    
     Hayward’s pasture was perfect. The cattle had cropped the grass short enough and there was a ready source of water in the middle of it. But the best thing was the proliferation of gophers. There were holes everywhere and movement around them was abundant. Armed with pails, clubs, and .22’s, we marched onto the killing field. Where a hapless creature would dart down his hole, a full pail of water followed and the back entrance, a few feet away, would soon produce a slick, wet gopher, looking for dry safety. We would be ready, and soon, another tail was in the collection sack. I remember being relieved that although they were cute dry, they were ugly wet, like small rats, and that was justification enough. The bounty was secondary.

     There was a slough behind my friend Vern’s house. With spring run-off waters to sustain them, it was home to toads, frogs, lizards, salamanders, newts, and other horrible amphibians that were loathed by all and most likely transmitted warts. It seemed incumbent upon us, as young boys, to rid the slough of these creatures. Vern was particularly adept when it came to capturing these crawling creatures.
    
     It was a hot early summer evening when I was wandering down the alley behind Vern’s house when the flames caught my attention. The fire was built in the middle of the lane between two rows of poplars, where his dirty deeds would be hidden from the eyes of civilized folks. It was a small fire, maybe a foot across at the base. “Watch this” he called out when he saw me coming. Vern had an evil streak in him, regardless of, or maybe because of, his strict upbringing. He had cooked up a successful scheme to steal chocolate chips from my dad’s grocery store, and did it right under my eyes. I had witnessed him doing several unmentionable things in the few years I had known him, and so the “Watch this” should have been a clear warning for me to walk away. I didn’t. As I approached his back, which was turned to me and hunched over, I thought he was having a wiener roast in the lane, but it did not look like a wiener, that thing on the stick. As I got nearer, I saw with great clarity that the ‘thing’ was a live salamander writhing and twisting in agony as it was being roasted alive. The silent scream of that creature has haunted me since. I pushed Vern away from the fire and yelled at him that what he was doing was cruel and God was going “get him”.
     Moments from having uttered those words, one of those freak prairie storms roiled in from the west. The lightening flashed and thunder rolled across the slough. Without warning, the flames, sparks, and burning brands of the sacrificial fire were swirling in the air and down the lane as wind that came out of nowhere, gusted and eddied. It was too late for the dead salamander, but as for me, I ran home as fast as my legs would carry me. Looking back over my shoulder, I saw the silhouette of Vern against the dying light of the day, shoulders shaking, whether from crying or laughing I do not know.

     Lying prone in the bush, only a few feet away from an established rabbit trail, sprinkled with fresh droppings, I wait. Had I not read books about snipers and deer hunters, I would not have realised that patience was the key to success. My Cooey .22 was loaded with a single shot ‘long’, the bolt pulled back, and my finger was tickling the trigger. There it was, that slight movement in the grass, and then the rabbit was in plain view. Had I been farther away I would just shot for a ‘hit’, but I was close enough to target the heart. I did, and I was surprised at the way the animal leapt straight up in the air and fell back down, lifeless. I was at once exhilarated and sorrowful. I cut the feet off and left the carcass. It would have been nice to have my buddies there to cheer me on with a slap on the back or a called out “Good shot”. Clutching the rifle and my rabbit’s feet on the way home, I felt a change coming over me.

     It was one of those warm bright summer days, where the blue in the sky would almost hurt your eyes, had it not been for the isolated cumulous clouds, brilliant white in their upward billowing. The word was out that there was a Wood Duck’s nest near the little grove of Willow trees on the corner where the road to Gunther’s farm turns off the highway. The Mallards of the lakes and sloughs were familiar to us but a Wood Duck? Now that is worth an adventure. To what end, I did not know. We slowly approached the Willows, watching carefully to see where the duck would be flushed. It would be the key to finding the nest.

     On a weathered and split fencepost nearby, there sat a Meadowlark. His melody had always been my favourite, and I could not help but stop and listen. A low wind was pushing the grass to the earth in waves, making a hissing sound. The notes of the bird came in waves as the heat and the wind distorted a clear hearing of it. My friends were ahead of me, and I was glad for it, as a sudden flutter in the grass drew my attention and there was the mate of the singing bird, floundering in the high grass, making distressing calls, and convincing me that her wing was broken. Naturally, I began to follow, hoping I could capture one of these beautiful birds. She led me away. Away from where? It suddenly dawned on me that I was being suckered and at that point I tried to recollect where I had first seen her fluttering deceit. It was near the cluster of Brown eyed Susans, I was sure of it. I walked, carefully, in that direction, and by the hysterics of both Meadow Larks now, I knew I was on the right path. And then I found it. The ingenious structure of the nest, the way the grass was pulled over in a teepee like manner, the camouflage of it, the deception of the mother, the clutch of tiny speckled eggs, the blue sky, the soft wind, the cotton clouds, everything, hit me hard.

     Having failed in the search for the Wood Ducks, my friends wandered to my place of reverence and soon discovered what I was marvelling at. I defended that nest despite protestations. I loved Meadowlarks from that moment on and if I defended the nest, there would be more Meadow Larks, and that would be an excellent thing, an enduring goodness.

     I have since thought often of how that incident changed the mindset of a prairie boy raised in a culture of exploitation and destruction of so many beautiful things. It changed my perspective, in a lasting way. The appreciation of beauty in nature requires only a moment of sincere and maybe intense observation, and a thinking and enquiring mind.

Manitou Beach

No photo today, but another story in my collection of boyhood memories.

My world, as a child, was actually very small, but one of my very favourite places in that world was Manitou Beach. The sights, the smells, the memories, and the experiences of this unique place are as fresh in my mind as this mornings home made blueberry muffins. I loved everything about that salty place, my mom hated everything about what she called ‘that wretched hole’.
It all started during my dad’s childhood. His father would take his family there in summer and rent a cottage for a month, sometimes two, where the children would play in the parks and swim in the lake and in the pool. For him, the childhood memory was as good, if not better than mine, so, naturally, he wanted his own children, and his wife, to experience the joy of Manitou as he had. It was only a one hour drive from Lanigan. But to see and experience Manitou in the 50’s and 60’s was an exercise in disbelief and incredulity. Thinking back, I cannot blame my mother one bit for hating the place. Let me explain.

We were not sure of the history of the location, but after reading a weatherworn sign on the beach, we had a small understanding that this place had a history with Native Indians before the white man settled the prairies. They had apparently come to camp there and to take in the healing waters. Manitou Lake is a small body of water just north of Watrous Sask. It has a uniquely high mineral content and as a result, the buoyancy is similar to the Dead Sea and the mineral makeup of the water actually promoted healing of cuts, sores and a variety of skin conditions. As kids, all we knew was that it was very, very salty. After enjoying the waters, if one did not shower off thoroughly, the salt would dry on the skin and in the hair and leave a white crystalline residue. It was a particular problem in the hair as the hard water of the prairies was not the best with which to clean hair in the first place. Shampoo would only coagulate and make matters worse.
The town of Watrous was normal enough and is not much changed today. The little resort area of Manitou, beside the lake, had a touristy feel, and does today, but back then the tourists were mostly elderly and the resort atmosphere was mostly a left over from the turn of the century. I doubt there was a single structure in Manitou that had seen even $5 worth of upgrades in the last 50 years. As we drove in from the east, the first sign of anything unusual were the white salty marsh and mud flats. As we approached the residential area, there were old, dilapidated cottages on the beach, and more substantial homes across the road, but still in a state of disrepair. A little further on were the tacky little so called restaurants, fish and chip joints and whatever was on the menu for that day. You knew you had arrived when the largest structure of the village appeared on a rise across the road from the main beach. It was the public swimming pool. Next to it, separated by a side street, was a private spa. Both of these buildings were quite large and ornate, but had weathered badly and were in need of paint and repair, both inside and out. Perhaps they had at one time been white.
We would park the car on the street, on the beach side and immediately the smell of French Fries and vinegar would fill our nostrils, and activate our saliva glands, and of course, the whining and pleading for ‘chips’ would begin. No trip to Manitou was complete without a cardboard container of the greasy delicacies along with a good dousing of vinegar. It was the one thing my mother reluctantly admitted to enjoying. There was a ‘chip stand’ on the beach and also one in the pool, which opened to both the outside and the inside of the building. The pool ‘chip stand’ had the best chips, but only because they used the less aged frying fat.
I can only remember swimming in the lake one time. We did not like it because the water was cold and the stones on the beach hurt our shoe pampered feet. My only recollection was that it seemed cleaner and fresher than the pool and there was more room to splash and play. So, we would go through the ritual of trooping to the pool, getting our admission tickets, and trying one last time to talk mom into coming into the pool with us. We knew it was futile. She had made up her mind the very first time she laid eyes on the bacteria ridden place.
We would enter from the brightly sunlit outdoors, and squint our way to the dressing rooms. The only light in the chalet-like structure seemed to come from skylights planted high in the ceilings. The dressing rooms were abysmal in every sense of the word, and it was this more than anything that turned my mom’s stomach. After her first time, and I don’t even remember if she completed her first time, there was no doubt in her mind that we would die of horrible diseases if we touched anything in those cubicles. Even as a kid, I remember being disgusted, but it was something easily overlooked when the reward of a good swim was just around the corner. There was a labyrinth of hallways and corridors and much confusion regarding male and female quarters. On more than one occasion I caught an unsightly glimpse of white female flesh as I rushed down the wrong hallway. The floors were covered in hair, salt slime, and crushed, partly decomposed ‘chips’. When you found one of those cubby-holes in which to change, there was a wooden grate on the floor, soaked and never dried out, with many years accumulation of briny drippings from countless bodies. I was loathe to take my shoes and socks off and put my feet to the floor, but it had to be done. It was cold, clammy, and slimy. It took me only minutes and after stuffing my meagre belongings into an open unsecured locker, I raced back through the rabbit warren of hallways and found, at last, what I had come for.
The pool itself was divided into a cold and a warm section. The first few times we were there, I was relegated to the warm pool because I did not know how to swim. It was shallow and full of elderly people. It was a rectangular section of the main pool, cordoned off with concrete retaining walls, and on one of these walls was a bank of tall curved metal pipes, each with a spray nozzle at the high end, spewing out steamy hot water. The really old people sat under this perpetual hot shower and did not move, many of them indeed dead, or at least, so the rumour went. When the magical waters of the Manitou were heated, they not only took on additional healing powers, they stank to high heaven! The hot pool was definitely for sissies and I had to get out. It was too hot, boring and smelly, and watching the fun over the wall gave me motivation to want to learn to swim. A revelation came to me as I sat there, in the water, having suddenly to pee. The prospect of walking back through the labyrinth to a cold filthy washroom and standing in front of a stained urinal with a mat of curly hair on the floor, gave me the idea to just do it where I stood. Who would know. So, with a warm flood of guilty relief, I fouled a pool for the first time in my life. The amazing thing was that not one single person looked at me funny as if to say, “What on earth do you think you are doing!”
And that is when the revelation hit me. If I was able to pull that off, what about all these other people. The old folks rarely stepped out of the pool and yet I was sure that nature called them too. I connected that idea to the fact that the pool stank, and that it was actually very yellow! That was when I stepped out and never went back, to the warm pool. The thought came and left very quickly that my mom might actually be right.
So, I and my sister Gaye graduated to the big cold pool and with our dad supervising, we began our ‘swimming lesson’. The buoyancy was actually so strong that you could float with your shoulders and head completely out of the water. One had to be stricken with a rare affliction of paralysis in order to be incapable of swimming in those conditions. But, leave it to us. Because of the buoyancy, Gaye’s centre of gravity forced her upper body over, and her floating lower body came up. It was a sort of inverted float, head down and feet up. My dad let go of my hand and tried to rescue her, and as he did so, the same strange laws of physics took over my body and I did the same thing. Now he had two floundering rats, pulled up above the water, a grip on one arm of each kid. Did I mention the effects of salt water on the eyes and nose? It is severe to say the least. One of the two deadly sins at Manitou was in regards to the burning and stinging of the water in the eyes, nose and throat. What ever it took, do not get it in your eyes, nose, or throat. Ears were OK. Needless to say, we both had volumes of the salty brine in all our orifices and we were gasping for breath and were sure we were going to die. If my Mother’s prediction were ever to come true, it would be now, considering the gallons of the foul liquid we swallowed. I suppose we made quite a scene because dad got very disgusted and mom came running from the spectator’s gallery, ‘chips’ flying, to help revive her dearly beloved children. It was probably a first for Manitou, two near drownings in the span of a minute. Unheard of for a facility that had prided itself in never needing a lifeguard.
Our swimming for the day was over. We showered and joined mom and the babies in the sunshine outside and dad finished what he had come to achieve, a fun time in the cold pool.
Not much was said on the way home, except rumbling from my mother about never going back to ‘that place’. I remember having a bout of nausea from an overdose of grease and salt, aggravated by vinegar. I must give my dad credit for persistence because were back at Manitou a few weeks later.
With my bad experience behind me, I jumped in with both feet and with a little coaching from my friend, who’s family came with us this time, I caught on quite quickly and was very soon in the deep end, feeling quite confidant and comfortable. The trick was to stay upright. Sinking was not an issue. I tried not to glance over to where my mom was sitting in the spectator’s area, but did catch some severe motions out of the corner of my eye. Something about pointing to the shallow end. My dad gave me great encouragement and seemed to be proud of me, which was quite a change from the shame and embarrassment of last time. I watched him work the rings, a series of ropes hanging from the rafters with handholds on the ends, dangling 6 ft. above the water. The trick was to swing out and over the water, catching one ring after another until you reached the far side of the pool. He was always the best at it. I was most proud of him when he jumped off the high dive. He could not dive, but had no fear of jumping off the 10 ft. board and then the 20 ft. There was another board tucked high in the rafters, up where the skylights were, with a little home made sign that said 25 ft. I saw him climb up there one time and jump off. I was not that proud of him but only scared. I had only ever seen someone jump off that perch one time and it was a young kid. I think it really frightened him because he never even talked about it after.
Because the pool was so old, it needed some sort of maintenance in the winter months. The concrete pool was cracked and falling apart, and the method of repair was great gobs of tar which would seal the cracks and prevent the water from seeping into oblivion. When the tar warmed in the summer months, occasional pieces would float to the surface and the swimmers would collect them, lump them together, and throw them like balls. The staff and management did not like this at all. My friends and I did it all the time. I remember one time I found one and was just about to grab it when my buddy stopped me and told me what it really was. On closer inspection, I saw that he was right. I could not believe it until I remembered the time a few years back when I had relieved myself in the warm pool. Why not take it to its logical conclusion? Some people had no scruples. So we skirted around that area and continued to have fun. On the way home that night, I thought I would gross out my mom and sisters. I told them of the actual turd I had seen in the pool that day. My dad quickly interjected and explained about the tar business. He knew the goods but did not want to add fuel to my mom’s fire about diseases. And that is how the second deadly sin came to be. Never, under any circumstances, play with tar in the pool at Manitou.
Manitou Beach was not just about the water, but a swim was included with every trip. It was usually a Sunday afternoon social event and we would go with or meet friends for a picnic in the park after the swim. While the moms were setting up the picnic buffet, we kids would climb the steepest ravines we could find, getting dusty and dirty in the process. The lake was a runoff for the surrounding low hills and the little gullies made good picnic areas because of the shade the trees provided. There were wooden tables, BBQ pits, and horseshoe pits. It was at one of these events where I learned to throw horseshoes at a special area for kids where the pits were a little closer together. The shoes were very heavy and we could only throw them so far before they went totally out of control. I remember one of the kids needing a few stitches to his head when he caught a shoe just above his ear, running around not paying attention to all the flying horseshoes.
When all the food was laid out, we would stampede to the tables and with our ravenous appetites eat everything in site. There was almost always potato salad, jello salad, buns and cold cuts, or if it was not too dry, some adult would light a fire and we would have hot dogs. For dessert, there was home made cookies, chocolate cake, or watermelon. It was always a treat when several families would pool their resources and we could pick from a greater variety of foods. I still seemed to always gravitate to my mom’s cooking as she was the best there was. We would pile into the car after an exciting and very tiring day, and fall asleep before we were half way home.
My Dad discovered golf at Manitou. Where the land rose above the lake bed, on the road to Watrous, there was a 9 hole golf course set among a straggly stand of poplar and willow trees. The grass fairways were always parched and brown as there was no adequate supply of fresh water for irrigation. The ground was rock hard and when the ball was struck well, it rolled forever. The greens were actually browns. Again, because of a lack of water, grass greens were an impossibility, so the putting surface was a bed of oiled sand. A hemp 'welcome mat', with a rope tied to it, was dragged from the ball to the hole to make an even surface. Because the sand was oiled, it did not blow away in the constant wind and it made a much more cohesive and firm surface on which to putt.
My first golf experience was here, in the heat and dust of the Watrous Golf Course. A men’s set of golf clubs consisted of a driver, a 3 wood, a putter, and a 3, 5, 7, and 9 iron. My dad and his friends would play ahead of us and the sons would each get a 5 iron with which to drive, chip and putt. I played golf like that for a few years until I received my first full set as a reward for all the work I did in the store after school and Saturdays. I thought I had really ‘arrived’ when I swung that red plaid golf bag over my shoulder and strutted around the golf courses.
The Watrous course had a unique feature. The land had been chosen because it was too rocky for agriculture. In fact, the rocks were huge flat boulders that were just visible above the surface of the fairway. When a golf ball hit one of these, it would careen in any direction and take on an added dimension of acceleration. We never minded hitting our ball into the bushes or tall grass because this was an opportunity to find more to fill our bags. We always came out of the bushes with more than what we were looking for. My most memorable shot was a line drive toward a tall dead tree that was a natural hazard left deliberately in the fairway. I hit the tree square and hard. There was no bounce, and my ball seemed to just disappear. Upon close inspection, we noticed a small woodpecker hole near the top of the tree, and we could only assume that my ball had hit the hole square on and was lodged in the tree. I wondered how many more balls were up there. Golf at Watrous was the beginning of my life long love affair with the sport.
In 2001, I went back to Manitou with my wife, anxious to show her the fabled location of my boyhood adventures. We found it with no difficulty, but what was difficult for me was all the changes. I suppose very little stays the same as time progresses, but after just wanting to reinforce my memories, I discovered that Manitou had become quite a nice little place. The old Chalet Pool was no more, probably condemned and torn down years ago, and in its place, and further down the road was a new and very modern Spa and pool, part of a hotel/restaurant complex. It was pricey and looked like a destination resort. Of course we had to at least have a swim.
I was let down as we entered the change rooms. They were clean and fresh smelling, very well lit, and there was no access to the ladies change rooms from where I was. The floors were spotless and dry, the lockers modern and very secure. There was no lingering odour of French fries and vinegar and every surface was freshly painted or scrubbed. As I walked out to the pool area, I detected a faint aroma that brought back a flood of memories. It was that heated briny water, but minus the urine overtones. I was somewhat heartened to notice that there was still a hot and cold section, and the warmer water was indeed a little on the yellow side. My wife and I entered the water at the same time and I was excited to show her the buoyancy of the salt water. She had thought I had been exaggerating all these years, but now she saw for herself that you could indeed float with your head and shoulders clear out of the water.
The rings were gone, there was no diving board, there was no perch 25 ft. up in the rafters from which to make a death defying leap, and there was no spectator’s area from which my mom would be looking out for us. And fortunately, we didn't catch any diseases this time either because there were no chunks of tar floating just under the surface.

Spring Rafting

It has been a while since I have posted a story. Here is another adventure I had as little boy growing up in the Prairies.

One of the best spots was directly on our shortcut to school, due west from our house. We almost always took this route to school as it was direct and quick, across the street, through Barrand’s yard, across the back alley, through Greeve’s property and over their driveway and only one block further, across the empty field. Another great spot was about a block west of my Dad’s grocery store, although it was too visible, and a chance encounter with my Mom was highly probable as she traversed this route routinely on her way to Main Street. And then there was the location next to Butch Dueck’s yard, which was by far the most dangerous and therefore the most exciting and most appealing.
Spring rafting was one of those activities that would never be allowed in today’s world. Certainly parents would ban it, but I am sure there would be municipal, provincial, and federal regulations making it a forbidden sport.
There was a small window of opportunity for rafting every spring, just after the last bank of snow melted and the spring rains were willingly finding the lowest land in town. Being a flat prairie town, the low spots were few and far between, but gravity and the undulations of the prairie did provide for sloughs in the wet years. During my time in Lanigan, there were several very good years for rafting and certainly the memories those times provided were some of the best and scariest.
All three locations were vacant city blocks. The land being too wet for housing, would grow bulrushes and willow trees and was generally good for little else. In the tall grass and reeds beside the roads that surrounded these properties, were well hidden structures made of logs, planks, 2x4’s, and other assorted floating materials. As the years went by and generations of kids recycled these mini arks, they fell further and further into disrepair. Most of the heavy tree branches were recruited for shoring up the platforms and it was often difficult to find a branch long and strong enough to serve as a push pole. It was Saskatchewan, and trees were a rare commodity, especially the ones that had long durable branches.
Spring runoff was a very exciting time of year as it heralded the end of the long bleak winter. There was a smell in the air of new growth and promises of warm weather and summer holidays around the corner. We would test the water content under the shrinking snow drifts that always grew particularly large in the depressions of the land. Each day held a little more promise, and as soon we dared we let our foot go through to the bottom and our boot would fill with water for a certainty. And that was cold water, with semi melted chunks of snow still floating on its surface.
The day would soon come when some brave soul would test the depth and announce that it was indeed deep enough, and then rush off home, with squishing watery sounds coming out of his boots, before hypothermia could set in. The exact location of the raft had to be determined before the water got too deep or it may be stranded where nobody could reach it. If the previous year had been particularly wet and the water deep and widespread, the raft would have beached on the outer reaches of the property and would have to be physically manhandled toward the water. This was almost impossible for us small children because of the shear weight of a bunch of water logged timbers strapped together. Usually the water level would eventually reach the raft and with only a few heaves and grunts the contraption would be pushed to where it would float.
The bigger kids always got the first rides. It was the pecking order. Besides, if the raft held them, it would hold the smaller ones too. Except that there was usually more than one kid on at a time, and that contributed greatly to the instability and the danger. That in turn increased the chance of a dunking, which if in deep water, could result in a drowning or at best a bad cold verging on pneumonia.
And so it was that eventually we were rafting part ways to school. There were usually several rafts on each slough and that meant there was almost always one for coming and one for going. If not, we did the usual walk around the block. There were challenges, however. We were in our ‘school clothes’ and we sometimes had books to carry. The boots were not a problem because we wore boots all spring, regardless. There were no sidewalks or paved roads so there was mud everywhere and boots were the standard for adults and children alike. Getting on and off the raft usually required a leap because the raft was grounded, but on a gentle slope so there was water between the dry land and the wooden platform. The leap was onto a very small, very wet, very slippery landing pad and one had to be careful not to slip off the far end into deep water. The books made it even more difficult. If there was a chance we would be late for school, there would be multiple passengers, making the voyage quite precarious. There was always a lot of pushing and shoving to get to the raft and later on the raft. These water craft were very unstable and an unbalanced load would make them slowly sink down on one end, making it imperative that somebody be shoved very quickly to the end rising above the water. It always made for an exciting trip to and from school and usually a story to tell our farmer friends who only had a bus ride into town that morning.
As exciting as that was for us boys, the best was always saved for Saturdays. I had many chores and responsibilities on Saturdays, but there was usually opportunity sometime during the day to have an adrenaline induced rush at the deepest slough in town. Not only was it the deepest, but there was some bush undercover, and an adjoining pit that was full of water all year long.
This was the scary end of town for me. The people who lived here were on the wild side, except for Butch and his family. There was Jimmy Schmidt, the alcoholic teenager, and the Vernard family, who nobody knew or hardly ever saw, and Jim Hill whose dad was my hockey coach but there never seemed to be a mom around anywhere. But the scariest family was the Hunt clan who lived within sight of the deep water that drew us kids like a magnet. Dennis was a year or two older than me but had already lived a lifetime. He rarely showed up for school, always had money, and his aunt lived with him and his dad. At least I think it was his aunt. She was an epileptic and I remember seeing her have a seizure in my Dad’s store one day. It was one of the most frightening things I had seen until that time and I remember thinking she would die right there in front of me. It took an hour to clean up the chocolate bars scattered all over the floor as a result of her thrashing. After a while, she recovered and headed out of the store, back to her home, forgetting her groceries in a brown paper bag beside the door. She had some really bad burns on her hands and face, the result of a seizure at home, happening a little too close to the wood stove.
Jimmy and Dennis were friends in a loose sort of way. They enjoyed guns and knives a little too much and it was scary being anywhere near them when they were in the mood for fun. One afternoon, Butch and I were pulling his little red wagon to the well to get drinking water for his mom when we heard hysterical laughter coming from Jimmy’s yard. As we passed the front of the house, we saw what the cause of all the gaiety was. Jimmy and Dennis were standing 50 ft. apart, taking turns shooting each other with a BB gun. The biggest round of laughter came when Jimmy’s front tooth came flying out of his mouth. Moments later, Dennis lifted his shirt and had to dig a BB out of his skin from just beside his belly button, with the hunting knife he always had tucked in his belt. We just could not bring ourselves to stay for any more of the fun and games and headed for the well at a brisk trot. I knew they were crazy and it was confirmed when Butch told me about the night his Dad was out to walk the dog and Jimmy shot at him and his dog with a .303 from out his upstairs bedroom window. We pushed the little red wagon the long way home that day.
The big deep water by the Hunt house was always off limits when Dennis was anywhere nearby, but there were a few occasions when the coast was clear and we got to experience the most dangerous place in town. I had a very healthy respect for water, indeed, a fear of it. The best rafts in town were in the deepest waters and if you knew where to look, you could actually find a push pole long enough to reach the bottom, that is, the bottom in most parts of the swamp. I had a fear of getting in so deep that my pole would not reach the bottom and I would have no way of getting back to shore. There was a back up plan and that was to tear off a plank from the raft and use it as a paddle. The trouble with that plan was that the planks were usually nailed on with spikes and were impossible to budge.
I had a bad feeling from the start, partly because I knew that if my Mom had any idea where I was and what I was doing, she would ground me for most of the rest of my childhood. If we stayed in the deepest part of the slough where the trees were, Butch’s Mom would not see us out of her kitchen window and we would be just fine. We did not have much time so we decided that we would get on the raft together instead of taking turns. I got on first, without incident, and then Butch jumped on. But the combined weight settled the raft down on the reedy bank and we were stuck. He jumped back off and after pushing me out a little way, he made a leap for the raft. He miscalculated and hit the edge, not only shoving the raft farther out, but he never gained a footing and went straight into the water. He floundered and I panicked. I pushed my pole down to get back to shore to help him, but the pole just went down, down and did not touch. With cries of “help” at my back, I got on my knees and reached down as far as I could to get a purchase on the bottom so I could shove the raft back. With my hand down in the water, I managed to touch bottom and with all my strength, pushed. Imperceptibly at first, the raft leisurely made its way back in the direction it had come. If not from the cold, then from sheer terror, Butch lunged for the raft and hung on as if his life depended on it. And it did. I would have preferred that he lunged toward shore, but this was not the time for that particular discussion. His body was between the raft and dear sweet land, and that was a dilemma. Now that we were both thoroughly panicked, I simply followed my instincts and jumped in, grabbed Butch, and together we waded to shore. The cold was numbing and almost instantly I lost feeling in my feet and legs. I was only wet to my waist but Butch was soaked from his brush cut to his gum boots.
We struggled to a dry spot and sat in the grass and emptied our boots. It was a sunny day, but early in spring, when there was still a chill in the air, and I knew we had to get to shelter soon. I eyed the Hunt house, only a hundred yards away, probably with the cook stove stoked and burning, but, on the other hand, Aunt Esther might be on the stove burning too. That, plus the prospect of Dennis taking aim at us with his BB gun, drove me in the other direction, straight to Butch’s house and sure trouble, but of a lesser variety. We made it and had a laugh after, but only because his Mom was not home and we had a chance to dry off almost completely.
Conversation at the supper table that evening was routine. Naturally, I did not let on about my adventure. I wanted to tell someone, but I would have to be satisfied that only Butch and I knew. I was thinking about the danger I had put myself in and how lucky I had been that it turned out OK. Then my Dad mentioned that he had heard that Dennis Hunt was in the hospital in Regina. He had got himself into a knife fight and was hurt quite badly. It made my little bit of danger seem like child’s play. We never did see Dennis after that, but regardless, I stayed away from the deep water at the Hunt house.

Piano Lessons

Our recent trip to Vancouver Island to visit my sister resulted in some reminiscing. The subject came around to the music lessons we both experienced as children. Her recollections were somewhat different than mine, probably because I would much rather have played hockey. Here is some light summer reading for those of you who have endured piano lessons and for those of you who were fortunate to evade them.



There were only two things in my childhood that brought extreme stress into my life. One I could have done something about, and the other was out of my control. I speak of trips to the dentist and piano lessons.
Had I brushed my teeth faithfully, and stayed away from those bedtime snacks, the times at the dentist could have been less severe. Many nights I would go to sleep with sugary cornflakes tucked firmly in and between my teeth, much to the delight of the bacteria that left little brown craters in their destructive wake. I doubt any kid ever had as many cavities as I did, without losing their teeth completely. You would think that the pain of the drill, often with no freezing, would have been a great incentive to be more diligent in that regard. It could have been sheer laziness, a poor memory, or just a young boy seeing what he could get away with. The fact I have ever only lost one tooth, a wisdom tooth with no fillings, gives testament to the fact that I did change my ways as I matured. However, in the interim, my mouth has been completely redone several times and now has more crowns than the queen.
The piano lessons were a different matter. I remember grudgingly relenting as my mother tried to sweet talk me into expanding my horizons in the musical department. My older sister, Gaye, was taking lessons and "it was so much fun and she was progressing so wonderfully and her teacher was taking on more students, and it would be so nice to hear me play and I would really enjoy it", finally got to me and I thought I would get everyone off my case and take the darn lessons. It couldn't be that bad, could it?
I started in late summer and being very young and not thinking long term thoughts, I did not realize that the only day Miss Schoppe taught lessons was Saturday, which was fine in late summer. The foresight that was missing was that come winter, the Peewee hockey practices were also on Saturday. Had I thought this through to its logical conclusion, I would have dug my heels in and not consented at all. As I endured the years of practice, I always took comfort in the idea that I did actually have a choice at the beginning. Who was I kidding?
The first music lesson Saturday arrived much too quickly and I remember the new clothes I wore, my one set of clothes for the new school year, and the dire warning to keep them clean ‘or else’. I had been ear pulled into Miss Schoppe’s presence a few days earlier and was introduced and handed my ‘Grade One for Piano’ lesson book fresh from the Royal Conservatory of Toronto. I had not even glanced through it prior to my first lesson, proof that my mind was elsewhere.
I dawdled as I wended my way from our back door to the driveway of the hospital directly behind our house. There was a shortcut from there to the Schoppe residence, a very familiar route for two reasons. There was a town well in the alley behind the Schoppe’s and I made hundreds of trips there to get metal cans and pails of fresh drinking water, both summer and winter. Now in summer it was easy and fun if I went with a friend. I would carry two pails on my little red wagon and with one pushing and the other pulling, the trip home usually resulted in one pail of water, net, due to spillage.
And there, just a few yards away from the well, was the magical hideout belonging to Delano Davis. It was actually a rabbit hutch with a very small loft where the rabbit feed was stored and where there was a huge stash of comics, something that was strictly forbidden in our home. I was tempted to climb up there and hide for the next little while, until all this music lesson stuff blew over, but I had made a solemn promise to Delano that I would never go up there without him. He was two years older than me and he had an older brother who had been shot up in the war, so out of respect for the both of them, I dismissed the thought from my mind and continued down the path from the well to the torture chamber. Enough dawdling. Just one more thing. The path had a low lying section, and in the spring when there was water standing in the low spots of town, I would probably have to detour around this section somehow. I pondered on this for a while. When I looked up, only a few feet from the house of horrors, there she was, waiting at her back screen door. And she was just as I had remembered her.
She was a heavy woman, middle aged, living with her aging mother in the little ivy entwined bungalow. She ushered me through the kitchen and into the front room which was her studio. It was a tiny room with hardly enough space for the monstrous shiny black grand piano which every kid in town had sat down to at one time or another. There was the standard piano bench, also shiny black, and beside it, a kitchen chair, just within reach of the keyboard. She motioned me to the bench and as I squeezed past her, the smell of talcum powder mixed with perspiration gave the back of my throat an unpleasant tingle. Her hair was perfect, too perfect, but what did I know about wigs. I really did not know that I had ever seen one. She wore a tight blue (or was it black) dress that squeaked when she moved her arms. It was probably the snugly confined spare tires trying to get back on the road again. Her face was caked with powder, not quite the same colour as her neck, where it had balled up a little in one of the sweaty creases below her chin. Her eyes were as dark as her hair and just below the tiny pushed in nose was a pair of brilliant red lips. She had a no nonsense look to her, but at least on this occasion, she was friendly enough. I was, after all, a source of income for her and she was not about to jeopardize her good fortune.
That first lesson was an introduction to four years of hell. Not the actual lessons, not her, nor was it the music. It was the lying and cheating that I began to indulge in to preserve my good standing with her and my parents. There was a lined notebook where she would write comments during the lesson and give the assignment for the following week. In the back of the notebook, she showed me how to draw a chart where I would keep track of the pieces I had practiced, the scales I had worked on, and the amount of time per day I practiced. The goal, she said, as she stared intently into my eyes, was ½ hour per day, but not on Sundays, unless for some reason another day of the week was missed.
Being a God fearing boy and raised to always tell the truth, I did well for the first few months. I was progressing, learning the key of C and distinguishing between the bass and treble clef. The simple tunes I learned were easy and with ½ hour of practice a day, I was becoming a master. An A student all the way. Then the weather turned cold and there was ice in the town arena. Hockey season had started. There were road hockey games to play, table hockey games to play, arena hockey games to play, and NHL games to listen to on the radio. There simply was no time for piano practicing. But the lessons continued.
And so I devised a method whereby I could indulge in my favourite pastime, and also keep the adults in my life happy. When my mother was home, I would practice a little and tell her I would finish later. When she was out, I would miraculously be at the piano practicing just as she walked in the door and exclaim that I was so relieved that my ½ hour was up. I would pore over the time chart at the back of my piano book on Saturday morning, filling in the blanks, always managing to come up with an average of ½ hour per day. On a good week, it would actually only be ¼ of that. Apart from the guilty conscience, all was going well. I learned quickly and was able to talk my way out of any suspicions on the part of Mrs. Schoppe. Either she was on to me and did not like confrontation, or she thought I was a slow study. If the performance was totally inept at the Saturday morning lesson, I would give an excuse such as practicing the wrong piece that week. That worked a few times until she told me to play the piece I had actually been working on. That was extremely uncomfortable. My parents were thrilled. I was learning to play piano.
I endured the charade for four full years, with only summers off. I vowed I would change my ways, but would lose my resolve as soon as the ice returned in winter. I was incurable. As the lying increased, so did my ineptitude. It all came to a head at the end of my fourth year. I had made a compromising deal with my dad that if I stuck it out for four years, I could quit if I passed the final test. I was on the Royal Conservatory program and what I did not know was that the teacher/examiner would not be the pushover Miss Schoppe, but an examiner who would come out from Toronto and test students in Saskatoon. I panicked. Gaye had taken the test and she told me how difficult it was and how stern the examiner was, and how they made you play a piece you had never seen before. I went into the bathroom and threw up.
What happened next was a temporary abandonment of hockey and a tortuous month of playing the piano, nonstop day and night. I did not bother noting the practice times as Miss Schoppe would never have believed me anyway. She did, however, notice a remarkable improvement in my technique and knowledge. My Mother was beaming. Her son would become a piano player after all. She thought I was doing this because I had a new found love of music. But it was desperation, survival, redemption.
The fateful day in June arrived and we took a trip into the big city. This was rare and very special, and added to the seriousness of the mission we were on. I was as scared and as nervous as I had ever been in my entire life. The large Victorian house is forever etched into my memory. It was a warm sunny day and as the sun streamed through the windows, I thought it was a lovely day, for my last day, for I was dying of sheer terror. I panicked as I heard the tinkling of the piano keys in the adjoining room fall silent for an instant, and then a booming voice reprimanding some poor terrorized hockey player who just wanted to go home and count his hockey cards. The kid finally came out of the room and I saw tears in his eyes. I am so dead. I wonder if my friends will miss me?
The exam was pure torture, the most painful kind. I was asked to play the required scales, and went to automatic pilot as I always did when playing scales. It was the only way I could get them right as I thought they were a nuisance and total waste of time. Much to my surprise, I pulled it off. No major mistakes. Smooth and a nice light touch, were his comments, as he made a note in his book.
Then, he told me to play my memorized piece from the grade four book. It went well, considering the little time I had practiced in the last four years. He scowled at me as he noted that he thought it was the easiest piece in the book. When one crams four years of study into one month of practice, this makes sense. And then the most feared moment of my life to that time. He opened a book and placed it front of me and told me to play it. It was a piece that I was not supposed to have seen or practiced so my sight reading skills could be assessed. My life passed before my eyes. But just a minute. What is this? I had heard my sister play this piece one time and in a moment of weakness, thought I would do some extra curricular piano playing and spent a bit of time trying to play it, and all just a few days ago! This was my ace in the hole if I pulled it off. After managing to conceal my exuberance, I began to play the piece. I did not know it, I was bad, I had to start over several times, but it was not a total failure and I was certain that I would not have the lowest mark in all of Canada.
I came out of the room a basket case and the relief mingled with latent fear gave me a giddy feeling. My mom put her arm around me and we went home.
After waiting for several weeks for the results, the big brown envelope finally arrived in the mail. At this point I did not care. My music lesson days were over. I had given over four of my precious boyhood years to this exercise and I was done. The family was gathered at the table that evening as the envelope was opened. Out came a stiff piece of cardboard to keep the certificate from wrinkling. The certificate! Did they give those out to the failures too. My mom proudly held up the blue and white document and announced that I had passed my Grade Four Royal Conservatory examination. I was very surprised, to say the least, and suddenly became rather proud. Miss Schoppe would be proud of me too. She had told my parents on more that one occasion that their son had a natural ability. Actually, every kid did. It was the ability to keep her in groceries and rent money. What else would she say.
I lay in bed that night reviewing the route I had taken to get the certificate, and all the money my dad had spent on the lessons. But, a deal was a deal. It was a monumental relief to abandon the lying and cheating of the last few years. I never told anyone. Nor did I ever play the piano again.

Square Dancing and Sardine Sandwiches

When I wrote this story, I tried to keep the perpsective of a ten year old growing up in the 50's. It is another of my boyhood memories, growing up in the Canadian Prairies.


Sports and square dancing were the two truly redeeming factors of school. But, you say, boys are usually only interested in sports and girls. Or later, sports, girls and cars. Okay. Let me get to the square dancing first.
It was mortifying to think that we had no choice. There was just no way we were ever going to get out of it. It was written in stone. Physical education could only be accomplished so many ways in a gym, with a blizzard blowing the minus 30 degree air around the playground of the school. To break the monotony, the teachers decided the children needed to learn square dancing.
The girls giggled and whispered amongst themselves while the boys fidgeted with their hands in their pockets and glanced at one another with a combination of horror and loathing on their faces. There was a lot at stake here. You see, there were certain girls that were OK, but they were in the minority. Even so, you just didn't touch them. End of subject. Then there were the 'others'. These were the ugly ones, the ones that stank, and the ones with reputations, although none of us could actually define what a reputation was. These creatures were avoided like the plague, and indeed were a plague, if even touched or brushed past. Call them fleas, germs, or whatever, but these untouchables had them in spades and they were easily transmitted. The contagion was so reprehensible that indeed, if one brushed past one of these persons, say with an elbow, the infected part of the body could be cleansed only by running to another boy, rubbing the elbow hard on his body, somewhere, and calling out the name of the girl and the word fleas. The disease could be continually spread throughout the classroom until it was watered down to the point where interest was simply lost, or there could not possibly be any fleas left after having been rubbed on so many guys.
So you can imagine the reluctance to learn square dancing, because, although we did not know much about it at all, we had all seen or heard of Don Messer's Jubilee, a hot bed of square dancing kind of TV show. And having seen the goings on with those dancers, we knew there would be touching and there would be lots of it.
There was some basic instruction, an introduction to the music, (curses on those portable record players) and the inevitable pairing off into groups of eight dancers per square. There was a momentary glimmer of hope when one of the boys lamely suggested that boys dance with boys. This was a brave gesture as we all knew that there was death in touching girls, but there was also death in being called a homo.
Having grown up with sisters, I deep down knew that touching a girl would not kill me, but there is this thing called mob mentality. I was one of the guys and we were all doomed. Four girls were selected, and immediately, I, together with three other guys, was told to "go stand over there with them". There, in the group of four, that would soon be transmitting their fleas to us innocent young men, were two girls of the first category, the OK category. I was relieved, but at the same time, there were two 'others' in the group also. ‘They’ who brought sardine sandwiches to the last Friday of the month Red Cross Meetings and subsequent 'last lesson of the week' parties. Nobody ate them for two reasons. They were sardine sandwiches, and they had the worst kind of fleas possible, having been handled multiple times by their creators. Nobody knew what really happened if one actually ingested these fleas of the first order. Not one of the guys was willing to find out.
I will never forget it. There was 'OK' Marion Rode, there were the incurable flea ridden Gloria and Jeannie Romashenko, and then there was Jackie Rosea. Of all the OK girls, Jackie was at the top of the heap. She was a dark haired, brown eyed, swarthy skinned girl. The exact opposite of my blonde, blue eyed, fair skinned sisters. That intrigued me. The moment of truth snuck up on us rather quickly. The girls were to choose their partners and no fighting over the best dancers. That was a lame attempt at humour. Jackie made a purposeful few strides in my direction as soon as the instruction was given, and to this day I do not know if it was because she found me appealing, or if it was because the other three guy in our group smelled of farm animals and she preferred the smell of groceries. I sent up a quick prayer of gratitude.
The first hurdle was overcome, but there was still a mountain to climb. The first lesson was basic movement around the square and familiarizing ourselves with the different calls and the terminology. No touching. Another prayer of thanksgiving. Maybe by tomorrow, President Kennedy will have bombed Cuba, Kruschev will have retaliated, Saskatoon will have been wiped off the face of the earth, and there will be too much plutonium in the air to conduct classes. That would be a truly good news, bad news type of thing. No more square dancing, but no more Saskatoon Pioneer days either.
When my mother would make a dentist's appointment for me, out of necessity, it would be months ahead. I thought of it everyday and dreaded it, playing it out in my mind until it became a monster, a thing of fear and dread. So too was the dawning of a new day, a day that would find me dancing with a girl, touching hands and horror of horrors, touching other parts of our bodies. (Please, not cheek to cheek!) But, like the dentist appointment, the time does eventually arrive and you just have no choice but to go through with it. The lesson I had never learned was that it usually was not as bad as I had imagined.
The moment came. Her hand was soft and warm. We gently clasped fingers, palm to palm, and the other hand suddenly became my universe. It was supposed to hold the waist of my partner. My hand went just close enough to brush the fabric of her sweater. Technically, this could easily be close enough. However, this finely measured distance could not be sustained as we began twirling around the dance floor and it became a necessity to firmly grasp her waist in order to maintain direction and balance.
Jackie Rosae! My first love.
As I felt her hand clasp mine a little more firmly, and I felt the slight curve of her waist move beneath my other hand as we dosey doed around the square, I became intoxicated. I had no clue what this was all about, but I did know that I suddenly liked square dancing. And I liked it a lot.
The other part of that story is that square dancing, unlike conventional types of dancing, requires that the dancers change partners frequently, alamanding left and right, and swinging other partners to and fro. This inevitably resulted in multiple contaminations of girl fleas. Because all the guys were in the same boat it did not make any sense to try any kind of decontamination ritual. This, then, became the beginning of the end, for all us boys, of the fear of fleas. Sardine sandwiches, however, were still taboo.

Slippery Slopes of Childhood

The distant memories of childhood eventually fade. I found this out as I reviewed my stories, looking for one to post today. As I read it, I was amazed that I had written it only a few years ago, but had already forgotten some 0f the details. I hope you enjoy reading it.

Life was not an endless summer full of adventure and discovery. Real life was interrupted every fall by the drudgery of school. On my first day of grade one, little did I realize that I and the kids in my class would spend the next nine years together. There were two classes of us, but there was little exchange in the make up of our group over that span of time. For the first two years we had silver haired Miss Bell Thompson as a baby-sitter / teacher. Right from the opening clang of the hand bell on the first day of school, with mothers in tow, we just knew she meant business. It was the pursed lips and squinty eyes that revealed her philosophy of teaching. Her blue and white outfits that gave off strong odors of deodorant and perfume looked too much like a uniform that indicated she would be more of a drill sergeant than a surrogate mother. She did, however, have a talent for conveying the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic that laid a good foundation for us all.

That is, all but the Funk twins. I suppose they were the only ones who were not intimidated. Their special genetic gift in life was a high pain tolerance. We just knew something was coming down when Miss Thompson let her agitation show by digging in her ear with a bobby pin. Douglas and Donald were identical twins and took great pleasure in confusing her. Being a self assured woman who had by that time amassed about a hundred years of teaching experience, she knew how to kill two birds with one stone. Rectifying the defiance and wreaking revenge for interrupting the class. The twins were masters of switch and blame, which only works if you are identical twins. They had probably mastered this technique at home. It was great entertainment for the rest of the class. We sat there, truly in awe, as both boys were punished, and punished severely for something probably only one of them did. The pain was meted out right there in front of all the students and it usually consisted of several very hard raps on the back of the hands with a wooden ruler, on edge. It was the 'on edge' part that kept me on the straight and narrow for most of my first two years under Miss Thompson. It happened on an almost weekly basis and the frustration on the part of the whip master was getting more evident as time went by. You see, the problem was that Donald and Douglas would not flinch a muscle during the ordeal, but more than that, they would look back over the classroom and actually smile as wood crushed bone and flesh, at least by the sound of things.

We knew for a certainty that no pain was ever experienced by these classmates, when we saw them get into their first fight. With each other. They seemed the best of friends, the way I and my brother would treat each other if, indeed, I had a brother. But I did not have a brother so I was so confused when I saw them turn on each other with hatred, usually only lasting until they had exhausted their energy tearing each other apart. And tear each other apart they did. Literally. Ears half torn off, bits of scalp pealed back, red and swollen eyes from the gouging, blood running down the chin from the cut lips and their good school clothes tattered and shredded and covered in grass and mud and blood stains. It was brutal. I suppose that a rap on the knuckles from a wooden stick doesn't hurt much when your ear is dangling on your shoulder.

The opposite extreme was Marion Rode. She was a pleasant enough girl, but my goodness, she knew everything. I had thought the purpose of school was to learn stuff. What was she doing there? She was at the top of the class for the rest of her life and we knew if we had a score on a test that was anywhere near her score, we had accomplished a near miracle. She came from a large family who had a very, very large mother. Rumor had it that she went into the hospital one day due to sever pains in her 'stomach'. She came out with a new baby in her arms, a complete surprise to her. She should have known though. It was nine months and ten minutes since her last one. At least it was a really good gene pool because every one of those kids was the pride and joy of Miss Thompson, whose favorites were always the ones who could ace the math quizzes.

I found it quite a coincidence that there were three Terrys in our class, but a really amazing coincidence that all three of us were left handed. It was a policy in those days to have one left-handed desk in each classroom. The educators of the day were finally giving in to the fact that some people are born right brained and there is not a whole lot they can do about it. It took several days, but we finally had three left handed desks, one for each Terry. Dragging a blotter behind the fountain pen was bad enough, but having your left arm hang down while you were trying to write was bad cause to give a failing grade in penmanship.

I got along with the two Terrys, but never became fast friends. There was a famous Toronto Maple Leaf hockey player named Bobby Bonn, whose claim to fame was playing in a Stanley Cup final with a broken leg. This was the stuff of true heroes and Terry Nackenascheny live in the actual house that Bobby Bonn grew up in on the east side of town. The old paint worn three story house became a sort of shrine for us young wannabe hockey players. This made that Terry somewhat of a hero too. By default. The other Terry had glasses at age six already, but we thought it was because his dad was a teacher at the local High School. If your kid had glasses, he looked more scholarly, and this was appropriate for a teacher's kid. The other theory was that he was a coward and wearing glasses virtually guaranteed him a spectators role only, when the after school fights broke out. His dad was an alcoholic and when the word got out, Terry was always making excuses for him. It was natural and I felt a little sorry for him, except when he beat me in chess.

Most of the students in the Lanigan Public School were farm kids. There eventually developed an 'us versus them' attitude between town and country kids. We were just jealous. The farm boys never came to school in the first week in September like the rest of us. They had to help bring the harvest in on the farm. Indeed some of them never ever came back to school at all. Like Gordon Turner who sat behind me and talked to himself when he was supposed to be doing his work. The front end of a combine fell on his head and killed him outright. Keith Vernard was hauling cattle with his brother when the truck left the road and flipped over, expelling both brothers and all the cattle. The ensuing stampede crushed Keith and he never survived. Kenny Shenko never came back one fall day either. He hung himself in his Dad's barn. He had just been on my team in a spirited game of Prisoner's Base in the school gym the day before. Kids' had tended to avoid him because his clothes were permeated with barnyard smells.

The farm kids were generally poorer than those of us from town but made up for it in smarts and in physical strength. They excelled in track and field competitions, but did not do well in team sports. But they got a ride in the bus every day. I thought it would be a pure pleasure to have a ride in a school bus everyday, twice a day. Some of these kids were a half hour drive out of town so I don't know why spending an hour a day on a bumpy country road in an old bus with no springs appealed to me. These kids, for the most part, had parents who shopped at my dad's store so I instinctively knew that I should be nice to them. Over the years I made connections between my dad's farm customers and which kids belonged to them and eventually knew everyone in town and most people within a radius of five miles. We, as a family, sat down one evening to do a town census. We named every man, woman and child in town, added them up, and came up with 575. We did not go beyond the town limits and knew many hundreds more in the farm lands.

Farming was what sustained this town and not until 1965 was there any other economic base. That is when the potash mine was developed.
The main school was a granite monstrosity with oversized halls and very high ceilings. Having been built in the early part of the century, it was somewhat ornate, much in the style of a government building. It was on a rise and was looking down protectively on several smaller one room school houses and a portable or two. There was no sanitation system as we know it today. The row of toilet cubicles were built over a cavernous septic tank and anyone who had the great misfortune of dropping something into the toilet was assured of saying good-bye to it forever. It could be a painful good-bye because you could see it and almost reach it, but the thought of doing so was too repulsive.

The gray water from the wash basins was collected from under the counter as needed, by the janitor, and dumped in front of the school so it could run down the slope and feed the fringes of grass along the third base line of the ball diamond. In winter, it became the frozen version of a water slide. You were not cool unless you could sail down the entire length of the ice sheet while standing. Being uneven and rough, it was quite an accomplishment and only the most coordinated boys could pull it off. On one such attempt, I fell half way down and instead of finishing the slide on my butt, I attempted to walk back up. My feet disappeared from under me and I landed on my face. Why my face? I was unconscious for while and I remember wanting to stay that way in order to avoid the excruciating pain around my eye.

What resulted was the most incredible black eye in the history of Lanigan Public school which was the topic of conversation for months. I hated it because those who saw it and were not aware of how it came to be, asked questions. "I'd hate to see the other guy" became so predictable. And, no, I was not looking through a keyhole. While the tough guy persona was enjoyable, it soon faded as the embarrassment of “I slipped on a slop pile" took over. While the colours eventually faded from black to purple to yellow, the hard swelling around my left eye took many years to gradually subside. It was a constant reminder to stay away from slippery slopes.

Weather or not

The peace and tranquility of the aftermath of a Valley snowfall are not at all like the recollections I have posted below. This weeks 'memory post' is not so much a story as a description of prairie weather in the 50's - 60's as seen through the eyes of a small boy.

The climate of Saskatchewan is one of extremes. Because the economy is inextricably tied to the business of agriculture and the success or failure of agriculture is tied to the weather to a great degree, people of the prairies are inveterate weather watchers. Even as a child, I too, was keenly aware of the weather, and became very observant of the skies and the signs of nature that were constant evidence to the state of things happening or the state of things to come. My recollections of growing up are of both the indoor and the outdoor variety. As kids growing up without televisions, videos, or electronic games, the outdoors was our arena of entertainment and activity. Only when the weather was severe, were we forced indoors to find ways to entertain ourselves. When I conjure up childhood memories, the predominant recollections are the ones which find me under the prairie sky. Who knows how many hours we spent lying on the sparse dry grass in the midst of a Saskatchewan summer, staring into the azure blue sky, waiting for the lazy white cumulous clouds to wander by so we could find the hidden shapes in their billowing outlines? The animals, the faces, the outline of countries recently learned about in Social Studies classes at school were easily distinguished and pointed out in the constantly changing shapes, 10,000 feet above our heads.
The weather always came from the west and that was the direction our living room window faced. Our house, being on the hill, gave us the distinct advantage of being one of the first in town to see the storms coming. Keen observation eventually gave one the skills to sense the approaching storm before it was even on the horizon. I can recall the sudden silence before the storm. The birds, knowing of impending danger, stopped their singing and hunkered down for a good blow. Even the town dogs would cease their straying and head home where they knew they could find comfortable shelter from the storm. The wind would do an about face, subtly at first, just enough to turn the Poplar tree leaves in a direction they were unaccustomed to. The groves of trees took on a lighter shade of green as the underside of the leaves were exposed and jiggled nervously in the rising wind, contrasting with the darkening sky.
The summer storms were the ones that made me most nervous as they carried with them the potential for great calamity. They were almost always preceded by a sudden drop in temperature and an increase in wind velocity. The wind was always blowing where we lived, a steady and constant backdrop to all other sounds. The change in direction and speed was matched only by the ominous darkness which would descend as the white edged black storm clouds suddenly obscured the sun. By the time the sun was obliterated, there were bits of paper garbage, grass and Russian thistle tumbling down the street. We were tucked safely away in our houses by the time the storm hit full force, which usually did not take long at all. The lights were turned on and we hoped and prayed that the power would not fail. All the appliances were unplugged and storm doors and windows closed tightly.
The cloud formations were watched carefully for any indication of blue-white edges, a harbinger of hail. We had hail many times, usually on the hottest days which always struck me as a contradiction, until it was explained to me how hail was formed. After a hail storm, which was always very short lived, we would run out and collect hailstones, putting the largest ones in plastic bags to store in the freezer so when the relatives came from distant lands, we could prove how big the hailstones were. The dimensions were usually exaggerated much like the size of the fish we caught at Long Lake. The largest ones I can recall were about the size of golf balls, but I could be exaggerating.
If the storm was nothing but dry wind and electrical activity, the dust would begin to fly, adding to the darkness of the sky. I witnessed some very frightening dust storms and liken them to standing in front of a sand blaster. We always hoped for rain to accompany the storm so not only could the dust be kept down, but the dry thirsty soil could be given a much needed drink. By far the most awesome aspect of any prairie summer storm is the lightening and thunder.
This is why the appliances in the house were unplugged from their sockets. Each building in town had a lightening rod, securely fastened to a heavy wire cable that ran down the side of the structure and was fastened to a steel rod that was driven deepl into the ground, at least 3 or 4 feet. The idea was to direct the electrical charge of a strike down into the ground, harmlessly sending the bolt away from the building where it would otherwise do great damage, mainly fire related. In later years, when everyone had a television, the required roof top antenna would double as a lightening rod, and they made good ones, as the masts had to be at least 15 feet tall in order to get adequate reception from the only television transmitter which was in Saskatoon, 75 miles away.
There was never a thunder storm that approached us that we did not meticulously track by measuring the distance of each lightening strike. We were taught that sound travels 1 mile per second, and light, for all intents and purposes, instantly. So, when we saw the flash of lightening on the horizon, we would count off the seconds. One milk bottle, two milk bottles, three milk bottles, until we heard either a clap of thunder or the beginnings of the rumble and roll of the more distant strikes. In this way we could judge the approaching speed of the storm and, indeed, if it began to recede, or veer off in another direction. I suppose we had a small feeling of control and it diminished the fear of something so uncontrollable.
The lightening was always spectacular, and was mostly of the forked variety. There was so much sky to observe, with few trees and no mountains to obscure our view and it was indeed a memorable and frightening show every time. Often, when the storm was still a long way off, there would simply be a lighting of the sky, like a flash bulb on a old Brownie camera, and very little, barely discernible thunder. However, when the storm came with full force and enveloped our little town, my heart was gripped with fear and awe. The flashes and thunder claps were simultaneous and we knew there was destruction right in our neighbourhood. Indeed, our own house was struck on at least two occasions and an ancient 100 ft. cottonwood tree was felled within a half block of our house. I can remember a time or two when we would take a leisurely drive through the countryside after one of those storms to see where the lighting strikes had taken place. They were easy to spot if they were anywhere near the road.
The most memorable storm for me was a summer storm that had no lightening and no rain. My Mom and I, along with two sisters, had spent the morning at the dentist in a larger town, Humboldt, 35 miles away. As we left for home, we saw the foreboding sky in the north, and were relieved we were heading south. When you are in sunshine, and there is a severe storm in the distance, it takes on a most sinister appearance. The blackness and towering clouds across the horizon stretch upwards to heavenly heights and look as though they could destroy the world.
As we drove down the country road, which was a short cut home, my Mom kept looking nervously in her rear view mirror. It soon became quite evident that we were not going to be able to out run the storm. She put her foot down and soon we were driving faster than her cautious nature would normally allow. Us kids were kneeling on the back seat, staring in fascination out the back window of the car, as the wall of swirling dust gained on us. And it was a wall. We could see no clouds; only gray swirling billows of soil being easily lifted from the road, ditches, and fields, into the air and swirled upwards into what had moments before been blue sunny sky. It was truly frightening. The closer it came, the more detail we could see and then we began to hear it. It was a roar, heard even above the roar of the engine as we sped down the gravel road, not trying to out run it now, but seeking shelter, lest it blow us off the road.
The car braked heavily and we swerved into a narrow driveway leading to a farm yard. My Mom had the presence of mind to race toward a large sturdy barn and parked rather recklessly on the south side of the huge building. Only seconds later, it hit with full force. Even though the windows and doors of the car were tightly closed, sand and dirt began drifting in through the smallest of crevices. The car was sandblasted and pummelled by the wind. We could not see but a few feet outside the car and even the large barn was obscured by the blackout. Just when we thought all was lost, the storm suddenly subsided, just as quickly as it had descended. The dust settled and the sun came out. The only evidence of the storm was the blackness that was now roaring down the road in a southerly direction.
The farmer suddenly appeared and chatted with my Mom for a few minutes as they both agreed that it was the strangest and scariest thing they had ever seen. We were on our way, and apart from the dusty interior of the car, there was no evidence that we had what we thought was a near death experience.
The winter storms were a different thing altogether. I suppose I had no fear of them because they were usually a harbinger of good things. Like no school, or my Father's store staying closed for the day. The roads closed by blizzards and drifting snow concerned me not in the least. After we moved out of the rental, we were fortunate to have a secure and warm house, so, even though I marvelled at the power of the wind and whiteout conditions, I do not recall being frightened. The only apprehension I remember was the incessant howling wind in the night.
Morning would come and with it an amazing array of lacy frost and ice on the inside of the windows, getting thicker toward the bottom where the condensation and melted frost would accumulate and re-freeze. There were winters when there was a perpetual layer of ice on all the windows, indicating a prolonged stretch of very cold deep freeze weather. If we could some how peer through the iced up widows, the visions that met our eyes were otherworldly. The landscape could be completely altered by one night of blizzard conditions, providing it was accompanied by enough snow. The drifts were everywhere and on the lea side of every building, fence, and tree, the snow had curled back on itself to form overhanging waves of crystalline snow. If the sun shone after the storm the scene was even more spectacular, dazzling so brightly, one could barely look at it without sunglasses.
One year the drifting was particularly heavy and we had a difficult time extricating ourselves from our house the morning after. The front door was completely blocked and frozen shut. The back kitchen door opened but the outer storm door was blocked two thirds of the way up by a firm drift. When snow blows and drifts, it is no longer fluffy and movable. The ice crystals lock in a formation that can make it as hard as bricks. My Father, having grown up on the prairies, had the foresight to bring a shovel into the house the night before in case of just such an occurrence, and after a great struggle, managed to edge his way out of the house and clear enough of the drifts to swing the door fully open. There was no school for several days after that storm and I recall spending endless hours carving igloo blocks and tunnelling under the drifts. We could walk on the drifts and leave no footprints, the snow was so hard packed.
When we eventually returned to school, I had a real thrill when the school bus driver asked me and a buddy if we wanted to come with him to get the last few farm kids into town from the more remote stretches of the school district where the snow clearing equipment had not yet arrived. It was no ordinary school bus. It was a Bombardier with skis for front end steering and cat tracks on the rear to ride above the snow. What a thrill to speed over the snow banks, through the fields and ditches, totally disregarding any roads. Of course, I thought that one day I would have one of those.
Years later, I realized how big a part weather plays in the life of a prairie person. Watching for it, hoping for it, planning with weather in mind, guarding against it, preparing for it, and dressing for it. To a degree, people everywhere do this, but, because of the extremes, not to the extent that prairie people do.

Collecting Bottles ... 1950's Style

The sweetness of my life is getting her groove back so it is off to do some Christmas shopping today. My post for today is another boyhood story. I hope you will enjoy this one because I had fun writing it.

Frankie and Brett were two of the best and the worst friends an innocent and naïve little boy could have. I grew up in a home whose mission statement was more implied than stated, and what was implied was that you had better obey Mom and Dad 'or else'. The 'or else' part was not well defined but I instinctively knew that it was best not to find out. On the other hand, Frankie and Brett came from homes where there were no real rules to speak of. That came about partly because there was seldom a parent in sight, something which intrigued and fascinated me. The freedom that came out of that was dizzying. It offered endless possibilities.
So, it came about that I learned my morals from the safe and secure place called my mother's knee. The immorality I learned, came from hanging out with Frankie and Brett. Frankie lived the farthest away of the two and it was perhaps a good thing because of the two of them, he was immoral to a greater degree. I puzzled at the observation that these two guys had older sisters that taught them all kinds of intriguing things and I too had an older sister but she had not told me any of this stuff. I concluded later in life that either my sister was hopelessly naïve herself, or she had such a disinterest in me that she would not even give me the time of day, or she was a loving and caring sister who was protecting me from the evil world, albeit by keeping me ignorant.
Roberta had a limp. To this day, I have no idea why, but it somehow elevated her in my mind to legend status. After all, she was somehow a survivor. Her husky voice added to the mystique. She took it upon herself to make sure her little brother Brett had access to her romance magazines. This was primarily done through her negligence in that she would forget to lock her bedroom door and neglect to put her magazines on the highest shelf in the room. We simply took that as an invitation, or permission, you might say, to look through them, taking great care to replace them in such a way as to leave absolutely no evidence that they had been rifled through. When we had scanned the whole stack, we would steal into Brett's parent's bedroom and under the bed we would find a neat stack of 'True Detective' magazines. These magazines were curious for the reason that I assumed there were actually detective stories therein, but each and every story was prefaced by a picture of a scantily clad woman, in some state of undress, apparently uttering a scream. I never read one of those magazines, nor any story in them, as there was not the time or the desire when paging furtively through them only looking for the next screaming victim. Thinking back on it now, I can see how a steady diet of that kind of thing would easily make a permanent connection in a young mind between women and violence.
These shenanigans would never have been able to take place, had there been a parent at home during the day, to monitor the young boy's behaviour. Brett's Dad was a school superintendent, traveling around the school district, and his mom was a nurse, working shifts at the local hospital. Two young boys in a big house full of adult things, all alone, with time on their hands, was simply trouble waiting to happen. I sensed that it was not a good thing, I mean the being alone, and was always a little relieved to make it home without having been caught red handed doing some forbidden thing.
Frankie had an older sister too, but she was so mysterious that none of us ever actually saw her.
She could have simply been a rumour. It was no rumour though that she had to leave high school before graduation because she was pregnant. I must admit that I pondered over that for years wondering how that was possible. I finally put it to rest when I convinced myself that she had a secret husband in the little town down the road to the east of us and would go see him on weekends.
I never did anything forbidden with Frankie, like I did with Brett, but my, did I learn a lot of new words. His dad owned and operated the local hotel and of course there was what was called a beer parlour on the premises and people who frequent that kind of establishment usually have very colourful language and I was told that when one drank too much beer, the choice words tended to flow more freely. And that would explain why Frankie's dad talked that way, and why, as a result of hearing it day after day, Frankie too, talked that way. And that would explain why Frankie and Brett and soon Terry all talked that way. If my mother would have heard us talk that way, not only would I have been forbidden to play with the only two boys my age on our side of town, but I would have been subjected to a severe leather belt strapping, and a grounding to my room of the rest of the summer, which would have meant the only humans to play with would have been my sisters.
That explains why my mother never ever heard me talk that way.
Frankie's mysterious sister took a few of her best friends, including my older sister, for a treat one day. Four of them planted themselves in her Dad's hotel cafeteria and ordered ice-cream sundaes, with nuts and whipped cream. Nobody could afford that kind of luxury. When they had wiped the last vestiges of chocolate sauce off their cherub faces, the waitress demanded payment. Frankie's sister instructed the bossy waitress to 'put it on my Dad's bill'. That could explain why we never saw her.
These were my friends, for better or for worse, and we had many great times together. They had grown up in that small prairie town and were more than willing to show me around and teach me what it was to be a boy on the loose with no fences or boundaries, once I left my yard, that is. When we were in grade one and two, our world was our end of town. We knew every street, back alley, every climbable tree, and every outhouse that was obscured from it's owners kitchen window, just in case we had to 'go' and were too busy to run all the way home. We knew every stray dog, every kid and his parents, and every place to seek quick shelter in case one of those sudden summer downpours caught us in the middle of an adventure. Later when we got bikes, our world expanded, not only to the other end of town, but the 'outskirts' where the poor people like the Romashenkos lived. From there we explored the highways, the country roads, and every ravine and strip of bush for miles around. There was never a dull moment and my great delight was exploring and learning the lay of the land. Trekking for miles up and down the Yellowhead Highway, pulling a little red wagon to hold all the pop and beer bottles strewn about by thirsty travelers, was very hot and tiring, but so rewarding when we trudged home and cashed in our treasure for real money.
The only bad thing that ever happened on one of those trips was when we found a part case of unopened beer. Being good cub scouts, we always carried our scout knives with us, so a bottle opener was not at all a deterrent to preventing good beer from going to waste. It was a scorching hot day and we were thirsty. There was some debate as to whether we should open them now and quench our thirst, or bring them home, cool them off at the town well, and enjoy them at a more leisurely pace under Brett's caragana hedge behind his Dad's garage. We had all tasted beer, yes, even me, but under parental supervision. You know, just a sip to see how it tastes. The second option seemed too risky. There were bigger boys, bullies, in town who might see us with our prize and would think nothing of taking it away from us, outright. Out here in the tall grass of the ditch, we would not be seen and there would be no chance of having it stolen out from under our noses.
There was enough for one full bottle each. And one full bottle we each drank. Somehow, it did not taste the same hot, as ice cold, like the last time I had tried it. It was wretched and the thought occurred to me that it might be hundreds of years old and have gone bad. It did not even remotely taste like the beer I had remembered. But, we could not back down and lose face. It was unspoken, but there was a contest going on. Who could finish theirs and who could drink the whole bottle without complaining. I am sure our faces were not green, but mine certainly felt that way. It was very quiet heading back to town. We seemed to overlook some prize bottles but we were thinking only of getting home and lying down in some shady spot somewhere, hoping the dreaded puking would not begin. It would have been good for us, but that would have meant loosing the contest.
The recovery was slow but we eventually came back to life. It was mid afternoon by now and if we wanted to cash in our find, we had to get busy and scour the mud and refuse off the bottles, both inside and out. We were experienced at this task and we soon had a red wagon full of cleaned and sorted bottles, ready to head for one of two places in town that paid cash for bottles, Lee's Cafe. The other place was Frankie's Dad's hotel, cleverly named 'The Lanigan Hotel'. But with what Frankie had planned, it would not have worked to go there.
There were only two restaurants in town, Lee's, and that other big faded yellow place by the railroad tracks with the huge 7UP sign on the side of the building. Years later we discovered that it had a name. Kraft's Kafe. We should have known. Mary Kraft was the owner, the cook, the waitress and the bouncer. It was cleaner, but Lee's was the town hangout. Lee and his wife came to Canada decades ago, with his brother Happy. Then came Lee's son, June, a young handsome business-like protégé of his father. When he came, he came alone, from Hong Kong, and it was a bit of a mystery when a few years later June's young son Hip showed up. There was the occasional glimpse of an old Chinese woman in the kitchen, but it was uncertain as to whether she was the wife of Lee or Happy. Only Lee and June had any inkling of the English language. Hip was a fast learner though. Too bad his teacher was Frankie.
There seems to be a human mental assumption that works something like this. If someone cannot speak English very well, they must be stupid or at best gullible. Brett and Frankie were victims of this mistake and after we sold our wagon load of bottles to Lee, their criminal minds went to work. We knew from roaming the back alleys of town, that Lee stored the bottles behind his business establishment until he had a high enough stack to warrant calling a delivery truck out to take them all away at once. The plan was simple. We would creep around the back of the cafe and reload our wagon, pull it around the block and hit up Lee for another few quarters when we sold him the second load of bottles. It seems I was assigned the task of point man. I was reluctant to be involved at all, but I reasoned that if caught, I would not be seriously implicated because I would not actually be doing the selling.
I crept around the stack of bottles and other junk lying near the rear kitchen entrance of the cafe and peered into the gloomy interior. I thought I caught a glimpse of the elusive elderly Mrs. Lee, but as my eyes grew accustomed to the dim light, I realized it was Happy, toiling over a counter near the large oven. The rumour was that his home baked raisin pies had a nice golden sheen on the top crust because he would growl up a big nugee from his throat and spread it over the crust with a baking brush and then bake it in the big oven. I quickly glanced away lest I witness a confirmation of the rumour. I liked his raisin pie and as long I didn't see anything, it didn't happen.
Over his shoulder, through the round glass window on the swinging kitchen door, I saw June clearing tables, and beyond him, sitting at the front counter, a wimpy home rolled cigarette dangling from his lower lip and peering at a Chinese newspaper, sat Lee.
I glanced over my shoulder and announced 'all clear', and at that signal, Brett and Frankie loaded up the red wagon lickety split. With one pulling and two pushing, we were down the block and around the corner before anyone even suspected there were robbers in the back yard. We were clever enough to wait a while, after all, a wagon load of bottles takes some time to find, let alone wash.
We practically had the money already spent as we wheeled up to the front door of Lee's. Hip was playing on the front steps and I greeted him with a cheery 'Hi, how are you?' With an innocent grin and an eagerness to please and be accepted, he blurted out, "D**n good. Go to h**l". I had heard this response before and because the men who frequented Lee's thought this to be hilarious, nobody bothered to correct him. Frankie crouched down to Hip's level and was about to teach him a new phrase when I grabbed him by the collar and pulled him to his feet as I saw Lee approaching.
We announced that we had another load and should we take them to the back or did he want to count them? Lee sent a lot of money to Hong Kong family members and hoped one day he could afford to bring more relatives to Canada. He was not about to let three snot nosed little thieves deprive him of his hard earned money. He caught on immediately, ranting something about the bottles looking familiar. His English not being that good, I could not determine if he was telling us to go to the hotel with our bottles or if he somehow knew of the hell that I was sure to go to if my parents ever found out about this. We dumped the bottles right there by the front door and ran for our lives, little red wagon bouncing at our heels, all the way home. Frankie and Brett were laughing but I was too scared to find any humour in the situation. My Dad spent a lot of time at Lee's and Lee bought bananas from our store when someone ordered a banana split. Surely this would not remain a secret in a town where everyone knows everything about everybody. There was a distinct possibility that I would never again be able to step foot in the shabby little Chinese restaurant. It would be a pity because I sure did like Happy's raisin pie.