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'My
Commonplace Book'
By Beryl A. (Bock) McPhee
Dad worked so hard clearing the land and planting wheat and oats of which
he had very good crops, the threshers would come travelling from one farm
to another with the farmers helping each other to do the harvesting, I
recall the fellow who owned the threshers was Joe Gilbert. Dad also had
pigs and one sow (a pet) called Susie had a litter about the time we did
the threshing one year, Dad decided it would be nice for the pigs if the
straw was blown over the pigpen fence so they could enjoy themselves in
it, that was alright until the little piglets discovered they could run
up and over fence and have a ball outside! Dad spent all summer chasing
piglets and building the pigpen fence higher!
I
really haven't said much about my sister so far, as children we lived
in different houses and there was the five years difference in our ages
so we didn't get very close, I knew and loved her as my sister but we
didn't play as much together as other children do, she was frightened
of so many things and had a hard time learning at school. She was sick
a lot and had to be taken great care of, if there was any childhood disease
going around she was sure to catch it, her tonsils had to come out when
she was quite young and Mom had to take her to Prince Albert for that,
they were away for over a week which to me then seemed a very long time.
The
post office and store near the school was run by an English family, Mr.
and Mrs. Wilf Young and their son Leonard had a dog named Laddie, the
strangest animal I've seen in dogdom. His head was large with floppy ears,
he had a long thin body that didn't seem to fit, his paws were huge, he
had a long very waggly tail and such a happy nature. Mr. Young made a
dog harness for him and attached it to Leonard's sled in winter and his
wagon in summer, when school was over we would all watch 
fascinated
as Laddie would race over to the harness and sled and stand there barking
till Leonard hitched him up, as soon as the boy was on the sled away they
would go for a ride at top speed!
That
same dog hated fighting and he just ignored other dogs, farmers who came
to collect their mail brought their dogs and there were some very serious
dog fights, sometimes they would fight to kill. One time I will never
forget a couple of big dogs began to fight and three or four others joined
in, the noise was terrible. Laddie had been curled up in a ball sleeping,
he opened annoyed sleepy eyes and decided that was just too much, he took
a good run and jumped in the air, spread those huge paws to the four winds
and came down right in the middle of the fight, dogs flew everywhere and
the fight was over , Laddie then went back to his snooze. Those dogs always
respected him after that.
Other
small things I remember from those lovely farm days that were so soon
to come to an end are as follows;
- the boards
Grandpa nailed to the roof to hold the radio aerial, the woodpeckers
found them and every morning when the sun rose the woodpeckers came
and would start pecking on the boards, rat-tat-tat and literally lift
you out of bed, Grandpa did everything he could to discourage them but
they didn't quit until summer was over,
- the time
Mom and Dad were going somewhere in the big wagon, Mom had turned to
wave goodbye to us just as one wheel went over a big root, the bounce
slid her off the seat right into a big mud puddle! How we laughed and
she was so angry!
- the time
Dad was making hay in the meadow and a deer was standing watching him,
and when
I was jumping up and down on a board pile to flush out a weasel, instead
it came out up between my feet and frightened me spitless because they
are so viscous,
- Mom making
noodles and while they were drying she, Bubbles and I went out to pick
wild strawberries which we later had in a shortcake for supper with
lots of thick cream - yum!
- Mom making
lovely home-made bread and butter,
the taste
of cool buttermilk straight from the churn,
taking
a bottle of fresh milk to school in my hip pocket and having lumps of
butter in it by the time I got there, the other children thought it
was fun to stop periodically to see if the "churning" was done yet!
- using
flat irons because there was no electricity on the farm of course, we
never had electricity in any of our houses until the war started and
we lived in the city, I always loved the soft glow of a coal oil lamp
though,
- Dad with
his feet up on his desk at night listening to the battery powered radio,
he loved the programs of Edgar Bergen and Charlie Macarthy the puppet,
George Burns and Gracie Allen, Fibber Magee and Mollie, Amos & Andy,
The Gangbusters and the Ice Hockey, I remember his socks which were
so well-darned and patched with whatever Mom could find to do the job,
- Grandpa
playing "Turkey in the Straw", "Orange Blossom Special" and "Devils
Dream" on his violin,
Dad used
to played guitar for the school house dances, one night an aged, enebriated
dancer insisted that the same tune be played over to extend the dance
time, he enforced this with $5 bills pushed into Dad's guitar, that
was quite a financial haul in those times!
- the flocks
of all sorts of blackbirds gathering in the fall in the slough at the
bottom of the garden - their singing was glorious!
- the big
garden Grandpa planted and which got bigger every year, he had the best
garden in the district and nobody came to visit without taking home
some samples. Because he had very badly injured legs and was somewhat
crippled he couldn't work in the fields so the garden was his department,
one year
Grandpa planted peas, there were three plantings of two long rows each
at two weekly intervals, when each patch was ready I had to pick them!
I spent all summer picking peas! When each patch was finished I would
go to the next and so on then back again to the first one! We had peas
fresh, cooked, canned and dried hard as bullets, they were also lovely
in soup in winter,
- the log
church that my father had helped to build, we only had services when
a minister could come that far, and every fall we had a thanksgiving
service when everyone brought their best fruit, vegetables and grain
to decorate the altar and arch and it really looked magnificent! There
is nothing to be seen like it these days, the fruit and vegetables would
always be given to the minister after the service,
- the nights
in winter when Grandpa would have to sit up all night to make sure the
house didn't burn down because he had put on one too many pieces of
wood in the barrel heater which made it red hot,
- the men cutting cordwood
into three foot lengths in the winter to sell or use at home, I used
to help Grandpa with the mobile power saw (see photo right),
- when
Dad took me to see my first movie at the school house, it was a western
and as we walked home through Ernie Straub's place in the moonlight
as bright as day he taught me the song "Tiptoe through the Tulips",
Dad and I had such a lovely time!,
The
neighbors were all friendly and very assorted, one family would invite
us for a meal and never fail to have sand still in the carrots, another
lady Granny and I visited was anything but clean, she was old and had
palsy and we felt very sorry for her but she always had bread rising by
the stove covered with a very dirty quilt! Needless to say we didn't ever
eat there! Then there was the man with three boys and a girl who lost
his wife, all he would do was sit under a tree all day, his children had
to live with neighbors to be fed, clothed and sent to school. One day
when his cow jumped into a neighbors grain crop and he was given the news
all he said was "she's liable to do that once in a while"!
Around
the north of our district were the Russians, Polish and Ukrainian settlers,
Dad was secretary for the school district for some years and these people
came to him to read and write letters for them, they were very nice and
hardworking people. Down the meadow lived a Scots couple who we only saw
about once a year but I'll never forget the delicious shortbread she used
to make.
We
had bushfires around our place almost every summer, one time Uncle Wilber
and his hired man had to run for their lives when two fires met. The sun
behind the black smoke made me feel like that was what hell must look
like, so very eerie, one year we had smoke in the air all summer because
somewhere miles north of us a plane had crashed and the resulting fire
continued to burn until the fall rains came, in the spring we had the
smoke again because the fire had gone into the ground and continued burning
all winter, nobody could fight that fire because of it's remoteness, it
just had to burn itself out. We had a neighbor John Bognor who lost his
whole quarter section because he burned some brush and it turned into
a ground fire and burnt out all the growing soil, nothing could stop it.
Once Granny fought a fire by herself after it had crept up to the back
of the house and she was the only one there because we were all away fighting
it elsewhere, she was utterly exhausted when we came home. The fire may
not have touched the house as we had a bit of a clearing around it so
we asked her why she didn't get to safety and let it burn, she said she
was not going to let a fire burn the stacks of cordwood in it's path because
Grandpa had worked so hard to cut it!
When
we went to town at Big River there was a hill with a look-out, we could
see for many miles and every time we passed we'd stop to look. One year
there was a plague of green caterpillars, they came from the far distance
slowly but steadily eating all the trees bare in their path while continuing
in a straight line, this went on for weeks until they came up the cliff
near the look-out, over the road and down the other side. From our view
only one side of the valley was eaten as if there was a line drawn across
it, we never knew anything about them and thought it was so strange how
they'd eat this swathe through the bush.
Another
time when Dad went to town by himself in the Model-T truck he told us
about how he wanted a smoke so he let go of the steering wheel to light
it while going down a hill, the truck gathered speed and he yelled "whoa"
"whoa" forgetting he wasn't driving horses!
While
we were in North Saskatchewan enjoying our fortunate life people on the
other side of the world were fighting each other, in due course Canada
entered World War 2. 
When
we heard the news we knew our lives were about to take a very different
direction, it was a very big decision to make but Dad said he was going
to enlist, he knew he would be called up into the Army anyway but he thought
he was too old to be marching so he enlisted into the Canadian Air Force.
It
seemed no time at all before he was called up, we got prepared to pack
up and follow him, we had to sell as much as possible
such as furniture, machinery, cattle and horses, etc. Now was the time
my parents really needed me so I moved from my grandparent's into Mom
and Dad's house, I was so very, very happy to be home, it was what I had
been waiting for for years! Saying goodbye to my grandparents who were
so good to me was not very hard really, it sounds cruel but I never should
have been with them all those years and I at last felt so free!
I
was 16 at the time and felt I was just leaving childhood, I had never
gone to dances, had boyfriends or done exciting things like that because
Granny didn't think it was right, I was too young she said and those were
wicked things!
In
a short while they went to live with Era and Wilber in Regina.
Well in
time everything was sold and Dad had gone to start training in Toronto,
Ont., Maude was left to be picked up by a man later but in the meantime
we had to look after her, she sensed that things were going wrong, the
other horses were gone, Dad was gone, she was getting old and so she decided
to turn mean. Mom and Bubbles wouldn't go near her so Maude and I had
some battles, I wouldn't give in so she would 
rear
and strike at me or kick but somehow we managed, when the man came for
her he had quite a time with her too! I'm sure in her own way she felt
very unsure and frightened about what was going on.
The
only other things of importance left were the 20 young pigs that Mom wouldn't
let Dad sell as they needed some weeks and a lot of good feed to bring
a good price, so we all carried big buckets of feed to them six times
a day for a month! The last feed of the day was always by beautiful moonlight
(a harvest moon in September), the weather was getting real cold at nights
so the three of us shared a bed with only a couple of old blankets (to
be left behind) to keep us warm. Due to us leaving Dad had not mudded
the walls of the 
house
so the wind whistled through the cracks one side of the house and out
the other!
It
was at this time some neighbors came visiting to say goodbye and wish
us well, and another time Violet and Viola Huxted
(who were Bubbles' friends) came with their parents too, of course country
hospitality dictated they were asked to stay for tea (or supper as we
called it there), the only food of any quantity we had to eat as we were
leaving in a few days was spaghetti and some tomato soup, the dishes were
packed up to send away and the three of us were just eating off can lids,
we had one knife, a couple of forks and a spoon or two. Now with company
we had an emergency but we ended up all sharing the spaghetti pot! The
little ones had a ball and we really enjoyed that visit!
Well
the day came when a neighbor Ernie Friedlie came to take the pigs to market
for us, when the cheque came back Mom was so excited and proud - each
pig had brought top price! We were free to leave the homestead now and
we did so with many, many, tears for the wonderful years the country provided
us with and the happy life we had lived there, as I look back now those
years in the bush were the happiest of my life.
Memoirs: Beryl A.
(Bock) McPhee
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