'My Commonplace Book'
By Beryl A. (Bock) McPhee

Page 2

In the summer I was five my sister Myrl was born in a nursing home across the street from where Mom and Dad lived in Shaunavon, my first sight of her was very disappointing, Mom had a very hard delivery and Myrl's face was somewhat squashed as baby's are sometimes - she wasn't the doll I wanted to play with!

Mom would occasionally ask me to run errands for her to Stevenson's General Store, she would give me 25 cents in my hand to buy a bag of broken cream-filled biscuits that would cost about $3 today. I would start out with the money clutched tight in my hand and away I went about one and a half blocks down the board walk to the store, on the way were many distractions for a small girl and nearly always I would lose the money down the board walk and then go home again for a scold and another 25 cents! This procedure was repeated many times and Mom says when the board-walk was taken up there someone would have found their fortune!

My sister who was nicknamed "Bubbles" was young enough to never really be a buddy to me and she was never very well. There wasn't a fence around the house so when she was about 2 years old Mom had to tie her to the clothesline to play outdoors, the reason was that when she heard Dad's truck coming she would race out into the middle of the traffic, she screamed and threw tantrums when tied to the line but at least it kept her alive! Dad had acquired a fox terrier for us to play with, the only thing he was really good for was jumping so guess what his name was? Jumper of course! He did try to protect me from neighborhood bullies though.

Other things about Shaunavon I remember are:

- the little autumn colored celluloid biplane I was allowed to play with very carefully,

- the plate of four devilled eggs that Bubbles ate when we weren't looking, she loved them but they were supposed to be for our supper!

- the day Mom put on her lovely pale green georgette dress with a wide brimmed hat to match, dressed Bubbles in a white silk dress, (don't know what I wore) put her in the big wicker pram and we went shopping. Mom bought some purple grapes and while she was unlocking doors to get into the house we got into the grapes! Bubbles dress was ruined, I got a spanking and the lovely day was spoilt.

- the time Dad and a neighbor took our families out to the Cypress Hills for the afternoon, Dad and friend were a bit thoughtless, they went up on a hill leaving us in the car then started rolling rocks down. They heaved a huge rock and when it rolled down it missed the car by about a foot, we may have all been killed! I have never seen Dad as frightened as he was then!

- the time my friends came for a visit, the Mum's wanted to chat so we were given some money to spend, away we went and came back with licorice whips, whistles, and pipes which I had never been allowed to have before. They were delicious of course and I'd like to taste one again.

- the livery stable at the back of our house on the next block, I loved the horses there, I didn't go into it but it was so mysterious!

- going with Mom & Dad to visit Billy Bock Snr and Louise and family at Eastend, Sask. (he was a Member of Parliament, Author and a Potter). The two youngest children Digger and Punch (nicknames) who let me ride a horse while the adults had a real wild time making music! The whole family could play musical instruments and they put out the most beautiful jazz and honky-tonk music!

When the depression came in the "Thirties" Dad lost his job with Imperial Oil. The government of the day gave men the chance to go north to the bush and take up a 160 acre homestead, in two years they had to build a proper house and a barn and clear and plant a certain acreage. If they succeeded - "proved up on it", it was theirs to keep, at the same time Grandpa and Era & Wilber Eddy signed up for adjoining blocks, but guess who had to do all the work? Dad of course! Grandpa was too old and crippled to do real heavy work and Wilber was the "professor" type.

Anyway Dad, Mom and Bubbles moved up to the farm and lived in an old fashioned floorless white tent till Dad could get a building up. He had to cut down trees, took some to a saw mill with borrowed horses so he could have flooring and slabs for the roof of the barn. The rest of the logs went into a "shack" on the range line which comprised two small bedrooms and one large "cum everything" room, it had only one window with no glass, just oiled cotton.

Before I get ahead of myself, Granny and I went for a trip on the train to Big River, Sask. at the end of the railroad line where Dad picked us up in a wagon and took us out to the homestead at Ladder Valley which was 6 miles to the east for our visit. We stayed in a tent too, and for the one and only time of my life in the bush I was very frightened by the noises at night of all the small animals, and one particular bird. At the time I didn't know what it was but next day Dad told me about it, it is called a Mosquito Hawk, in the evenings and early night of summer it feeds on mosquitoes which it does by diving in the air with its mouth open for mossies, at the end of the dive it goes up again abruptly and the action of the wings makes the most frightening sound which scared me in the tent. The next night we went out and watched them and of course I wasn't worried any more!

In the hard times there seems to be lots of humor around every corner, in the big tent was a bed, cot, table & chairs, a cupboard and also a kitchen stove. The cupboard didn't have a back so it was set against the tent wall, I remember Mom doing some baking and needing an egg so she opened the bottom right hand door, reached in and got one warm fresh egg right out of the nest! I thought that was so funny as I saw the hen just going out under the side of the tent, there being no chicken coop an enterprising hen had to find herself a safe spot for her eggs! Later on Rosie the cow came to be milked and announced herself by sticking her ugly moose-like head (she had no horns) through the tent flap and mooing!

When the holiday was over Granny and I went back to Watrous but I didn't want to go as it was a paradise in the bush. Mom and Dad didn't get into the shack till winter came and the snow flew, to keep warm in the tent they only had the kitchen stove and they banked the snow halfway up around the tent to keep in the heat. That first year they lived on potatoes, eggs and milk, in the spring they tried to plant a garden but the weather was so wet it got washed out. The shack was built beside a meadow that flooded that year, and to get to town it had to be crossed so the horses had to swim and pull the wagon too.

Mom, Dad and Bubbles had traveled from Shaunavon by a little Ford coupe and had their belongings shipped up by train, when they got to the meadow the car couldn't cross it so it sat there for a year or two until Dad sold it. When we visited the next time we stayed in the shack, in the big room was a "Winnipeg" couch which was made into a bed for company, and that was my bed there. This next little story might make you squeamish but it's true so I'll will tell it, when Mom and Dad moved into the shack they also acquired a boarder a little half sized female cat, of course there were hundreds of mice about so the cat was allowed to stay in at night when it was "mouse time". In the mornings when I woke up I had to watch where I put my feet, the floor and rugs were covered with literally a dozen or two dead mice! The cat was a wonderful mouser but couldn't eat all it caught so it dined on the most delectable bit which was the head, and left the bodies for the rest of us!

The things I remember about the shack that I loved were the big black cook stove, the big flour barrel, the nice colorful rugs Mom made out of rags for the floor, and the rifle & shotgun Dad had on pegs just above the door handy in case of trouble with wild animals. At night there were millions of mosquitoes which we tried to control by making "smudges", little fires covered with leaves and grass to make them smoke which were lit beside a doorway or in a container which was carried through the house to discourage the mossies, all the beds had mosquito nets over them of course. Besides the mosquitoes we could watch the tiny shining lights of fireflies at dusk, they are a small beetle that flies and when it's wings are open it shows it's phosphorescent body which glows like a tiny lantern.

I used to play hide and seek with Bubbles, when I couldn't find a place to hide Mom helped me into the flour barrel on top of the flour sacks and put the lid on, it was a good hiding place so Mom had to help Bubbles find me. When it was her turn to hide she hid behind the coats hanging on the wall but she didn't realize we could see her legs, so we pretended we couldn't find her and it became her favorite hiding place. Dad made a swing which hung from a tree and on hot days we used it a lot, Bubbles and I had the most wonderful "playground", all around was the bush with all sorts of things to see and play with, new trees, flowers, insects and animals, like the garden of Eden!

No-one had ever lived on or used that piece of land so we were actually the pioneers, a most glorious thought! I loved nothing better than to be by myself in the bush to enjoy nature. The trees in the bush consisted of white and black poplars, spruce, silver birch and an assortment shrubs of all sizes, the shrub I liked best was the pussy willow and the high bush cranberries which produced clusters of little red berries, after a hard frost the berry was very sour but edible and we could squeeze them between our fingers and shoot the flat seeds at each other - lots of fun but the juice stained our clothes.

The flowers in the bush were not as numerous as on the prairies, the ones I liked were the tiger lilies that grew by the thousands and had up to seven or eight flowers on the one stem and the fireweed that sprang up after a bushfire, it grew tall with a pinkish blossom and the seeds were like cotton wool that flew everywhere in the breeze. A blue star flower with a grass-like stem was so dainty and where it was damp there were marsh marigolds, ladyslippers and birdbills, oh I must not forget bluebells and black-eyed susans and along the roads were wild roses and golden rod. We had some pussy willows that grew around the pond at the bottom of the garden and there were also ducks and flocks of blackbirds that lived there. In the summer and autumn we stocked up on wild fruit, there were strawberries no bigger than a fingernail but so much sweeter and better than cultivated ones, they were very hard to find though as they are a shy plant, we considered them treasures!

Then there were raspberries, high and low bush blueberries, sakatoons, pincherries, chokecherries, June berries, redcurrants and blackberries, all these wild fruits kept us going through the winter as we didn't have peaches or pears, etc. Apples and oranges we had to buy and bananas were sheer luxury! One time Dad, Mom, Bubbles and I loaded the big wagon with food for lunch and pails to go picking berries, we drove into the hills to collect bush blueberries that grow down very close to the sandy soil. We had a lovely time and decided to return the next day, we started out again next morning only to find when we got there that a big rotten log had been turned over on the spot where we had been picking, by other signs we knew that a bear had visited for his share of the berries and to eat the ants in the log, we didn't stay there long - just left him to it!

There were also birds galore, thrushes, robins, three types of blackbirds-plain, black with red on their wings or with red and yellow stripes on their wings, woodpeckers and flickers, owls, wrens, humming birds, kingfishers and King birds, several kinds of hawks, swallows, partridges, prairie chickens, ptarmigan, several kinds of ducks, Canada geese and in a spot a short distance from us were whooping cranes. Those are most of the kinds of birds but also many others like the beautiful little ball of grey fluff that had a black cap and tie, it swung back and forth upside down on branches and sang "chick-a-dee-dee-dee". These were birds found in the north, further south there were meadow larks with glorious songs and other prairie birds.

Where we lived in northern Saskatchewan was the spot that migrating Monarch butterflies came to, they would settle all around us and around puddles to get the moisture on hot days. Wild animals abounded, deer, moose, squirrels, skunks, badgers, coyotes, foxes, gophers and ground hogs, weasels, rabbits, snow shoe hares and a few miles away in some foot-hills there were brown bears, further north there were wolves, polar bears and wolverines. At dusk the bats would come out and fly just over your head and around your ears! I used to walk along the road on a warm fall evening and would watch hundreds of bats flying towards me straight at my head but not one ever actually touched me !

Beside the house was a wood pile where gorgeous little chipmunks played, they were about the size of a large mouse, tan colored with two dark stripes down the back, they move very quickly darting here and there and are very cheeky. I remember Bubbles and I standing perfectly still in the middle of Mom's flower garden only moving our eyes to watch the humming birds taking nectar from the flowers, they were too fast in flight for the eye to follow and they were like flying jewels so beautifully colored, and we'd get down on my hands and knees in the nasturtium patch biting off the end of each flower and sucking out the honey, yummy!

The weather was very hard in some seasons like winter but I loved it, the snow would start falling at the end of October and would stay with us until April or May. The temperature would be cold enough to keep the snow dry and crisp like sugar until the spring thaw and then that was the only time we could make real snowballs and snowmen, the snow balled on the horses hooves which means it caked up under their hooves as they trotted along harnessed to the sleigh or cutter and their foot action would throw the snowballs back at the driver, us kids thought that was great fun!

A big event was when Dad got the sleigh bells out and put them on the horses' harness, when Bess and Maude trotted through the snow the bells sounded so happy and Christmassy and we'd sing Jingle Bells at the top of our lungs!! I recall coming home after dark in the harvest season when a huge harvest moon would be shining, we'd be riding in the big wagon singing all the songs we knew, particularly "Harvest Moon"! I'm sure people thought I was a little mad because I liked walking out in a blizzard when the wind howled around me and took my breath away, it blew the snow into hard-packed drifts that made walking difficult.



Memoirs: Beryl A. (Bock) McPhee
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