Memoirs of a Worldly Guy
It's possible there was a discussion about the family tree before the first time I was taken to meet Jim and Lulu. I may as well bore you now as later with these details. My mother's father (my grandfather) was the brother of Lulu's father. I think those boys were both born in Killarney, Ontario, Canada but 'Uncle Dan' as we called him, must have moved to New York at some time because I remember Lulu telling us about working at a candy store in New York when she was young, but that's where the family lineage becomes a bit cloudy. Lulu had a pretty daughter, Hope (called 'Hopie') who married a man called Peterson and lived in Vancouver for most of her adult life. 'Pete' Peterson was killed in a car accident when returning home from refereeing a football game, leaving Hopie and a young son, Jimmie, who was only four or five years old at the time.
There was never any mention of Lulus' first husband, the father of Hopie, and Lulu was living in the foothills near De Winton with Jim Wilson, who was referred to as her husband. Lulu must have been in her late thirties or early forties when I first saw her. She had black hair and a kindly face and was infinitely patient, especially with little boys, which I happened to be at the time. Jim was a big Scot, with a trace of an accent and a balding head above a ruddy face that was exposed to the weather for most daylight hours.
I've been trying to remember how old I was when I first went out to the De Winton farm. I haven't a recollection of any significance except for a photograph Dad had taken of his three boys standing before the car parked in front of the De Winton house (shack). There are also three or more gophers (Richardson's ground squirrels) in the photo, all alive and all gophers we had snared and brought back to the house. The photo shows the automobile to be an Essex and, lo and behold, the edge of the license plate is showing and reads 1931! It was taken during the summer so that means I was six years old at the time. There is a stamped-out brass replica of a buffalo attached to the radiator of the car which indicates that Dad had paid the yearly toll for entering Banff National Park. There is a photo next to the one I've referred to which has Jim Wilson sitting on the porch with Lloyd and Bob next to him and with me perched on Jim's shoulders. The chubbiness in my cheeks indicates that I might be as young as five. Lloyd and Bob are both bareheaded but Jim and I are both wearing tweed caps. Bob is more casually dressed but Lloyd and I are both wearing tight fitting coveralls.
The roads were neither paved nor gravelled and the trip to the 'farm' when it had been raining or when the snow was still melting was exciting and borderline perilous. At least there was very little or no traffic on the road. My first experiences with gates dated back to those trips. I was too small to manipulate them at first but later learned the routine. When we approached a gate the car would come to a temporary stop, motor idling, while someone, my mother at first, would open the car door, walk to the barbed wire gate and hug the end post of the gate and the adjoining post of the fence to bring them close enough to each other to slip off the wire loop holding them together. The gate was then dragged far enough open to allow the car to pass through, then the gate was closed. This procedure was sometimes repeated two or three times before the car was properly admitted.
I think wealthy people these days would pay big bucks to send their children to a farm similar to the one we visited regularly. I realize now that it had just about everything; since Lulu and Jim had no children of their own they concentrated on things that would amuse us. Jim, who loved us as though we were his own, had rigged up a horseshoe pitch in the yard in front of the house.
Risking the use of an oxymoron I confess to a feeling of fond nostalgia when I think of the trips in the old Democrat Jim used when he organized our trips to De Winton. You don't know what a Democrat is? Other than the well-known and probably well-disliked political type the Democrat was an open horse-drawn carriage for the middle class, four-wheeled and speedy. There was a building at the north end of the yard where Jim kept three horses, two heavyweights and a lighter, bay-coloured horse for riding and light work. On days he wanted to travel with the Democrat he hitched up the bay between the shafts. As we alternately had the horse walking and trotting into De Winton Jim amused and astounded us with his memory of rhymes he could quote endlessly.
'Ivan Skavinsky Skavarr' would keep us entertained most of the way into the De Winton store. Once there Lloyd and I would stand around making little sense out of the conversations Jim was having with the storekeeper and some of the other farmers present. He would climb down a ladder into the cellar every thirty minutes or so and remain there five or ten minutes before returning empty-handed. After a couple of hours we returned to the Democrat and headed back to the farm. Jim was in a good mood and was able to entertain us by reciting 'The Flea of the Polar Bear' most of the way.
When we were alone later Lloyd told me that Jim's visits to the cellar at the country store were for the purpose of testing the hard cider the storekeeper kept on hand for his customers. How Lloyd knew about this recondite practise I never knew but he had the results to back him up.
'Didn't you notice how jolly he was on our way home?' Lloyd asked. He had a point but since we hadn't been arrested for speeding or being impaired I had missed it. I've since thought that if Jim had known the lines to 'Eskimo Nell' he could have gone on the stage.
Jim had a bunch of pigs and I considered it to be adventurous to go with him while he prepared 'chop' to feed to them. He poured oats and some other ingredients into a chopping device of some kind, probably a hammer mill, hence the term 'chop'. We would return to the house looking like snowmen, covered with white dust. There was also a henhouse which Lulu visited on a regular basis. She had unusually sharp eyes and frequently had something of interest to show us. On one occasion she had found a wren's nest cosily settled into the binder twine holder on an old swather near the henhouse.
The spring up in the woods fed the stream which meandered down through the trees on the slope and on across the open area between the house and the bridge across it about two or three hundred yards to the west. It's just occurred to me that there was another spring and another stream at the north end of the property completely separate from the one that ran behind the house. In the winter we would take our skates to the farm with us and skate for several miles along the frozen stream. It was much more exciting than skating around and around a frozen patch of ice at the community club, especially when we would spot a weasel that had turned to a white ermine ghost and watched us curiously from behind a log or a bush as we skated by.
The woods ran back behind the spring for several hundred yards and Lloyd and I would explore in the dark, overgrown forest as though we were the first humans to have penetrated it so far. Its dank floor was ideal for the growth of 'shooting stars' and at first we gathered a handful for Mom and Lulu. They had languished and drooped pitiably by the time we returned to the house. From that time on the rule was 'Look, but don't pick'.
Jim was addicted to auctions and every time the CPR had an auction of unclaimed goods he would travel into Calgary for the event. Books were his prime interest and on one occasion he made a great purchase of an Oxford dictionary. Each time we visited the farm after that he would lead me to the dictionary and ask me to spell what he had up till then discovered as the longest word in the dictionary. I remember him testing me once on the word 'pneumonoultramicroscoposilicovolcanokoniosis'. It was really a compound word and easily spelled, but he was nevertheless proud of me when I was able to spell it. He was usually unconcerned with the actual meaning of the word and would spend the next week scanning the dictionary for a longer one. He was even more proud when I was chosen by the princpal of Sunalta School to represent the school at the 'spelling bee' held on the stage of the Annual Exhibition and Stampede. (I spelled out on 'statistician'! Nobody got more than four out of five all week).
As a child I idolized Lulu; Jim was also large in my estimation but Lulu was my favourite. She not only had conversation that always entranced us, she lived in an ambience that was partially alien from that to which we were accustomed. She had a large wood burning stove that we'd seen only in antique catalogues, which had to be fed regularly with the split poplar sections from the woodbox next to it. There was a large tank called a reservoir at one end of it which held heated water.
There were flies around the kitchen which she disposed of by catching them in full flight. The part I didn't particularly like was when she squeezed them till they popped, then walked to the stove, raised one of the stovelids with the lifter that had a coiled metal handle and dropped the dead insect into the fire. I still wonder at her snakelike thrust as she caught one of the flies in full flight. It must have been a God-given knack!
In all the years they lived there, and it must have been ten or fifteen, Jim walked up to the spring in the woods to fetch the drinking water. Whether he had been born lazy or was just beaten down by circumstances I'll never know. It seems that he was a sort of Huckleberry Finn in many ways; take what you've got, don't give yourself high blood pressure by striving after the impossible, just go with the flow. The irony of him walking a hundred and fifty yards into the woods for water once or twice a day was a good example; I guess he'd always done it that way! He would have a four or five gallon galvanized steel pail in each hand as he trudged each way. The irony was that the spring itself was about five or six feet higher than the kitchen. The possibility of having a constantly-flowing supply of fresh water begged for acknowledgement but it seemed never to have occurred to Jim. I don't remember Lulu ever nagging him about it though.
There were hard, shelf-like fungi growing on some of the older trees Jim passed on his trips through the woods for water. They could be pried off if it were done carefully and the soft underside could be inscribed if done before they dried out and hardened. There was one resting on the table one weekend when we arrived at the farm.
'It was within reaching distance of the path so I pried it free,' Jim said. 'you can imagine my surprise when I found your name on the underside. Probably the squirrels!' Since I was only six or seven years old, I believed him--I thought it was magic! I still do!
The kitchen and dining room were not separated, so I guess you could say they were ahead of the times in that respect. When we ate dinner there on Sundays there was usually a roast chicken or a roast of beef. I was particularly pleased when Lulu set out a platter with a large piece of her own corned beef with wedges of blanched fresh cabbage around it. There was a decanter filled with white vinegar and a jar of mustard but she obviously felt there was still something missing.
'Would anyone care for a bit of horseradish?' she would say. A couple of heads would nod so she would push back her chair, step over to the trap door, raise it and descend into the cellar. A moment after she lifted the lid of the storage crock I was aware of the sharp, aromatic smell of the pickled root. When she came back to the table, the dish was passed to me and my eyes began to water. Whenever we dine out and I taste the wimpish substitute they call horseradish I am transported back to the farm kitchen and yearn momentarily for the dynamite condiment of my youth. If my eyes don't start to water when the waiter approaches the table I dismiss it as ineffective.
We 'slept over' at the farm occasionally and the experience of climbing up to a top bunk and snuggling down in the eiderdown was pure bliss. There was a young fellow called 'Tyo' staying over one weekend; that was his surname. I asked him to spell it for me.
'That spells "Twoh!' I said. It was several years before I mastered the latter part of the English alphabet, so I assume I was only five or six years old when I was sleeping in the upper bunk.
Bob discovered a deposit of 'blue' clay in the stream at the north end of the property and Lulu was quite happy to dedicate her oven on occasion to bake the candy dishes and ash trays we moulded. Bob dropped out of the Sunday visits when he became a member of the champion Westmount hockey team from the north side of the Bow River. He was later a member of the 'Radios' and eventually went off to university on a hockey scholarship. Lloyd was very chummy with Bill (his buddy from Fourteenth Avenue) and started smoking under Bill's supervision. It was only a matter of time before he began to beg off the Sunday visits to Lulu and Jim so that he could 'do something' with Bill. I didn't mind, I had Jim and Lulu all to myself! I wouldn't say that Jim was heartbroken exactly, but I know that he felt somewhat miffed at the loss of one of his weekend buddies.
Bob was only seventeen years old when he went to Ann Arbour, Michigan on his first University hockey scholarship. When he phoned home to tell Dad that he'd had a tryout with the Detroit Red Wings he was so excited he could barely speak. John Ross Roche, the legendary Detroit goaltender accused 'Bucko' McDonald of deliberately shooting into Bob's pads to make him look good. It was all a great 'Hoo-haw' for Lloyd and me.
'Promise me you won't sign anything until you've seen me!' Dad said. He left on a train the next morning early, told Bob to pack his bags and brought him home, saying he could go back to school if he promised not to talk to any more hockey agents until he had his degree. Bob eventually moved to North Dakota and finally to Southern California where he was able to bask in the sun with his Canadian buddies They eventually exceeded their 'eligibility' and ended up playing for Bakersfield in a semi-pro league. They could have earned big bucks in today's market but in those days there just wasn't long term money so he ended up as a well-paid engineer. Dad was right all along! But I digress!
There was a liitle yellow duck on the De Winton premises one week when we arrived. Jim had acquired it somewhere and had named it 'Elmer'. The little duck had already made itself at home and strutted about as though the whole farm had been his original idea. If we went down to the pool that had formed where the creek had pooled then changed direction at the bottom of the hill, Elmer came along after us. If we had doffed our clothes and were engaged in corralling minnows, Elmer, who had nothing to doff, joined us. Our attempts to capture and examine one of the water bugs that skated across the surface of the water with the help of surface tension were unredemptive and Elmer was not helpful.
As the weeks and months went by we watched as Elmer grew larger with maturity and more comfortable with his role as quasi 'Lord and Master' of all he surveyed. We became so accustomed to his ever-present behaviour that we never bothered to look behind us to see that he was following in our footsteps, clucking quietly or quacking loudly, depending on the situation. One weekend I became aware of the silence and wondered where he was.
'Where's Elmer?' I asked Jim.
'Oh, he could be around here somewhere,' he replied vaguely. That made me suspicious; for a bird who usually stuck to us like shit to an old army blanket it was not like Elmer to 'be around somewhere'! When I questioned Lulu she was equally evasive.
'He's usually front and centre as soon as I arrive!' I complained.
'Well, he may show up!' Lulu said guardedly. When I had still seen no sign of Elmer by noon I began to get suspicious. My suspicions grew as I questioned them closely at lunch until they finally confessed that Elmer had gone to the big duck aviary in the sky. Had they eaten him? Surely not! Not good old Elmer! Further intense questioning continued to be answered with vague, shifty-eyed responses.
They had eaten him, I decided! Further questioning was futile; they were already suffering from a severe case of guilt so I was never able to ascertain the details of Elmer's grisly demise. Most of him would have ended up as duck grease in the bottom of the roasting pan anyway. Well, I guess they never claimed that they were vegetarians!
I don't remember Lulu's path back and forth to the hen house on a daily basis as particularly perilous or strewn with foreign objects. However, as I mentioned previously, she had, due to her sharp eyes and natural curiousity, a habit of deviating from the track to examine some new bird's nest or a digging she had not previously noticed. I was not present at the time but one day she presumably veered from her normal course and involved herself in a tragic circumstance. She not only broke her ankle, she fractured it seriously and either at the time or while making a desperate effort to return to the house she compounded the fracture.
By the time she had alerted Jim and been bundled into the Democrat and driven to the nearest doctor it was a serious injury; made worse by a clumsy attempt on the part of her doctor to reset it. She finished up with a large, unwieldy, ugly-looking ankle that not only caused her to limp but needed constant attention for the rest of her life. Her clubfoot-like ankle required her to visit a specially trained bootmaker a block north of the old Calgary General Hospital on an annual basis. The result was a close form-fitting boot of soft leather that compensated to a degree for the discomfort caused by her unattractive injury.
Jim and Lulu eventually retired and moved to Vancouver. When I was returning from Esquimalt in Victoria in 1945 I stopped off at Hopie's place to visit her and Lulu and assorted other relatives. Lulu took me out to Jim's grave in the cemetery, then eventually, in years to come, just faded away herself.
— The End —