Welcome to Page 2 of Mom's Book
Being the oldest girl in a very large family was not fun. I started changing diapers before I was in school. I don’t think I minded it too much though—at first. I liked the babies, and among the other disasters, I remember pushing Kay, who is three years younger than me, across the kitchen floor in the baby carriage and dumping her out. The carriage was one of those wicker affairs with high handlebar I could barely reach. I tripped on something, fell, and pulled the carriage down with me. Baby Kay flew out over my head, hot hurt, but she sure howled. So did I. I got whacked for that one too. But until I was a teenager, I really didn’t mind helping with the babies. I was nine when Robert was born, and I was heartbroken when he died after only 4 weeks. I had embroidered a little dress for him and he was buried in it. Among my boxes of "stuff" there is a little metal ornament, shaped like a hand holding a flower, which was taken from his casket and given to me. (1927)
Betty was a beautiful baby. I was 4 years and 8 months old when she was born, and I can remember all the details—the doctor with his little black bag that he brought all the babies in, and the Scotch nurse who looked after mom. She called us upstairs one at a time to see our new "wee sister" and when it was my turn, she told me to look at the "ceerrls" (curls). Her dark hair was plastered tight in perfect pin curls all over her head and I thought she was a baby fairy. She is the only baby I can remember with such clarity. The curls did it. Years later I asked Dr. Johnson if he really did bring the babies in his little black bag. He harumphed a bit and then told me I’d better ask my mother about that. I did, and she told me not to ask such foolish questions. I never did find out from her. Auntie Clara brought me up to date on the facts of life.
As usual, I started school at six. I liked it from the first day. My teacher’s name was Mrs. Sweet and she lived up to it. The first few years were good. We were not so poor then, and I did have a few nice dresses. It was after the stock market crash in 1927 that things went bad. Dad’s pay was cut and cut some more, and the babies kept coming. Dad’s temper got worse and worse and nobody was safe from it. 1927 was what might be called a pivotal year in our family history. On a day in early spring we came home from school and found mom sitting, crying, with a letter in her hand. She told us it was from her "folks" and it was the first time she had heard from them in 8 years. Until that day we were not aware that we had any grandparents or other relation. I still don’t know what had caused the breach. She never explained anything like that. But that day she told us we had not only grandparents, but great-grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. And we were invited to Asquith to spend our summer holidays.
Great plans were made, but within a week or so, somebody broke out in chicken pox. Well, we couldn’t all break out at once. We were quarantined the whole summer as one after the other came down. The result was we came to Asquith in early September, were enrolled in school and stayed until Christmas. Our time was divided between Grandpa’s shop in town and Gib and Clara’s farm (aunt and uncle).
Mom and seven kids traveled on a smoky, dirty train from 2 o’clock one morning to about the same time the next. Most of us had travel sickness, but in those days we could open the train windows and stick our heads out. Then we had to get the cinders out of our eyes. The train stopped at every little jerkwater station all the way. There was nobody to meet us when we got off the train, so after waiting in the dark, outside a locked station, mom decided we should start out walking to town. The CN station was about one and a half miles from town. So we picked up our luggage, except the trunk, and walked about halfway before Uncle Jim came chugging along in his topless Model T Ford. He had had a flat tire.
It took some time to sort out the relations. The only one now living is Uncle Lorne (1998). He was not quite 16 when we first met. He is now 86 (1998). I don’t know why we stayed so long. Four months is a long time to visit and I’m sure we wore out our welcome. I didn’t like Asquith school. I had been used to separate classrooms for each grade and it confused me to be in a room with two other grades. It was even worse when we got back to Edson and I had the rottenest, meanest teacher that I had in all my years in school. She was killed in a car accident a year or so later and everybody who had ever had her cheered. I never did get close to my grandparents. Grandpa seemed to be a grump and Grandma was not what I had envisioned in the months we had waited to see them. I did learn to love my great-grandparents, Granny Rose and Grandpa Rose. They were full of great stories and always seemed very happy to see me. Granny Rose lived until 1942. We have a 5 generation picture with David, me, my mother, grandma and great-grandma. Cousin Marion has an even better photo and I hope to get a copy of it this summer.
Incidentally, that fall of 1927 was when I first met the man who was destined to be my husband. He was 21 and I was 10. I never dreamed I would wind up marrying him. I didn’t like him one bit. The only thing I can remember about him then was he was a teaser, and tried to put a dead gopher down the back of my dress. Gophers to me were just huge mice and—dead ones!!! Yuck! I howled and he laughed and Auntie Clara rescued me. He said he was just pretending. That’s your dad, kids.
When we went back to Edson, George stayed with Auntie Clara and Uncle Gib. Kay, who was 7 at the time, was left with Grandma and Grandpa. I don’t know why. She says she felt deserted and never really fitted in with the family afterward. George didn’t get back to Edson for seven years. Dad didn’t see him once in that time.
We all came back to Asquith for summer holidays in 1928, and Kay returned to Edson with us. It must have been late in July when we left Edson because that was the year when Jack was born, and I nearly killed him on July 12, Orangeman’s Day. Dad was Grand Master of the Orange Lodge and they always had a parade and picnic on July 12. I was bathing Jack, who was 4 months old, and I tried to put his clean undershirt on without getting the knot out of the neck string. It stuck on his head and he went into convulsions. I didn’t know what to do, so I hollered for mom. She worked on him and he was okay after about 15 minutes, but I wasn’t. We did go to the picnic, but we missed the parade.
Edson district was beautiful in those early days. There were birds of every description in the park where we had the picnic, and wild flowers from dandelions for orchids (lady slippers) and everything in between. There was even a little landing strip for airplanes, those tiny one-engine things. They sometimes landed on the town main street. But that day the plane landed on the airstrip and took some of the more adventuresome ones for a "hop". Not any of us.
I don’t know how I came to spend the first half of Grade 7 at Asquith. I was staying with Gib and Clara and George and I were attending Douglas Plain School. I was 12 and George was 14. He was in Grade 8. His last year of school. We walked the 2 miles in good weather and had a horse and cutter when winter came. I was back in Edson School, for the second half and for Grade 8. Then, when I was 14, I came back to Asquith and worked for 2 years for 5 or 10 dollars a month. I saved enough money to buy my books and went back to Edson for a year of High School Commercial. I learned to type and do a bit of shorthand, and while I was still in Grade 9 (16 years old then), Dad lost possession of our house by not paying the taxes. He somehow bought the homestead bout 3 miles out on the Grande Prairie Trail, and once again I was walking to school, along with Kay, Edith, Betty, Jessie and Tom. Tom hated school and we had to drag him in sometimes. This was now May 1934, about the time the Dionne Quints were born. I finished that grade and that was the end of my formal schooling. We were outside the town limits and there was no school for anybody. The Edson School wanted $40.00 each for kids outside their district, and of course, that was out of the question. I was not far enough along in my commercial training to get a job, so it was back to "working out" at $5.00 or $10.00 per month and board. I tried a job or two at Edson, but I hated it there so in August 1935, I left Edson for good.
Back to Asquith, more farm jobs. I was good at milking cows, pretty hopeless at housework, fair with laundry, and good, even excellent at sewing. So I could always find a place that could use some of my talents and gradually learned how to wax floors and keep things fairly neat.
I worked for Gib and Clara, supposedly for wages, for over a year. But my pay was sporadic, to say the least, and at their place I couldn’t learn much about cooking and cleaning. Just hard work milking cows, cleaning barns, trying to tidy a hopeless house, chasing flies out before each meal, etc. It was in May 1936; that I heard Mrs. Mogenson was looking for help at $12.00 per month. I said I was going to Vanscoy to try for the job and I was told she was so fussy and a slave driver and I wouldn’t last there a month. Well, I got someone to drive me down, applied and was hired. I stayed for 2 years the first time, and learned more about cooking and housekeeping than in all my years before. Of course, I still milked cows. Lots of them. It was during my stay there that she convinced me to join her church. I can honestly say I have never regretted that move. My dearest friends are the church members.
I guess I just got tired of the daily grind—she WAS fussy! She made me iron everything that went into the wash—sheets from 6 or 7 beds, even the men’s underwear and socks. Everything. And if the old man didn’t like the way I ironed his shirts, he threw them on the floor or twisted them up and yelled at me to learn to do them RIGHT! So I left and went back to Asquith. I loafed at Clara’s place for awhile, stayed with Grandma for a bit, and then somehow after 6 months or so, Mrs. Mogenson asked me to go back. This time it was $15.00 per month. I couldn’t resist that. I was broke anyway, so back I went. That time I stayed 6 months. By then I was going around with Bill and he took me down to Mogenson’s and then came to visit me on my Sundays off. After the six months, even the big salary couldn’t keep me there so it was back to Asquith. I had a bicycle by then and sometimes I even rode the distance from Vanscoy to Clara’s place for my Sunday off. It was about 20 miles I think. And still I never got thin!
Anyway, back at Asquith. We got engaged in the summer of 1938, and by then I was working for Albert and Mary Grasby at Asquith. It was a change like night from day, or I should say day from night. They were pleasant to work for, treated me like family, and never, ever demanded anything more than I could comfortably do. She made me feel guilty sometimes by telling me to sit down and take it easy for awhile. I had been so used to toiling from early morning to late night that I thought that was how it always was.
This is the car Bill had when we were married. It’s a 1928 Chrysler and was a very nice car. Luxury interior, wood spoke wheels, etc. One problem--it would not start in cold weather. Anyway, cars were almost useless in the winter unless you lived very close to the highway. So we used horses and a cutter (a covered-in sleigh). We sold the car in 1943 for $25.00. It hadn’t been running for 2 years, needing repairs we could not afford.
Well, at the end of October I had saved enough money for a train ticket to Edson. We were planning to get married in the spring so I thought I had better go home for a month for a visit, knowing I wouldn’t be able to afford it after we were married. I made one miscalculation, though. I bought a one-way ticket. I had hopes that Dad could get me a pass to come back. But I was 21 and outside the age limit. So instead of being back in a month, I had to look for a job at Edson. Kay helped, in a way. She was working at Jens Olsen’s place and she left at the end of December to marry Viggo Rosen, Dec. 31, 1938. I got her job, again at $15.00 per month. Our wedding date was set for April 10, 1939, and I worked at Olsen’s until March 30, boarded the train the next day and had ten days to complete our few small arrangements.
Edna Whiteman had baked a wedding cake for us, and Grandma made a wedding supper. We came into the city on a blustery, but sunny Easter Monday, drove to Arthur Gendron’s little two-room house on Avenue D and after the briefest of ceremonies, we were married. Betty was my "bridesmaid" and Norman, Bill’s brother, was Bill’s "best man". Herb, another brother, had come along to do some business and the only other people there were Florence Gendron and their little six year old son, who died later that year with typhoid fever.
Back at Asquith, about 20 people were at Grandma’s for the wedding supper. Gib and Clara, Edna and Jim Whiteman, some kids, Lorne Whiteman, and I don’t know whom all else. I can’t even remember if Bill’s mother and Dad were there, but somehow I don’t think so. It had never even occurred to me to think about a church wedding with all the trimmings. There was just no money. That was our wedding day. The next morning, about 5:00 am, I was wakened and told it was time for breakfast. He was going to work in the field, getting ready for seeding, and I was now a farm wife.
The following Friday, the school north of Grandma’s place put on a wedding dance for us (Polar Crescent). The school didn’t, of course. I think Lorne arranged it. We got stuck in the mud while trying to get there, so it was after 10 PM when we finally showed up for our own wedding dance. There was a lot of good natured, but embarrassing teasing. I think there must have been a sale of Pyrex ware that week, because there was a lot of casseroles and pie plates among the gifts we received. Bill had to make the first speech of his life. He grunted out a few unintelligible words, but ended up with a perfectly good "thank you". (He never made another attempt until Margie Keene (July 5, 1995) got married and he had to give the toast to the bride. I wrote it for him, he spent weeks memorizing it and did a very good job of it.)
That first year was a tough one for me. Our home was a drafty, dirty old house with one big room downstairs, a lean-to kitchen which could only be used in summer, an upstairs bedroom, hot as Hades in the summer, and nothing to work with. My kitchen stove was an old wood-burner that sat on 4 jam cans for legs, and there was nothing else. The front room had a table and two chairs (should mention that our "sanitary facility" was a little outhouse about 50 yards away from the house….no running water!), a cupboard of sorts, a bench or two. No easy chairs or anything else. There was a broom to sweep with, no mop. So I began married life. Don’t ask me why we had nothing. There was just no money.
A couple of days after we got married, Bill’s dad brought us a milking cow for a wedding gift. We had four horses, a plow, a seeder, a mower, rake and binder, all in varying stages of decay, and that’s how we started out. The same day that we got the cow, Bill heard about some calves (1 day old) that were for sale for $1.00 each. So we went to the sale, bought a heifer calf, named her Lily, and I proceeded to make a pet out of her. It was my dollar, so she was my calf. She turned out to be the best investment we made during our farm years. When we left the farm I sold her for $135.00. All the other cattle brought about $50-60.00 each. She was a superb milker. A big bucketful morning and night.
A few weird, some comical things (at Asquith) happened that first year on the Flewelling Place, where we lived. First since I was known as a town girl in spite of my years of working on farms, I was determined to show the neighbors that I could raise as good a garden as any of them. So I planted a huge one—too early. My beans and peas came up and froze. Try again. Second time, they survived. I also planted every other vegetable you could think of, and a big patch of vine things. Bill’s mother had given me seeds for vegetable marrow, squash, pumpkins, citron, and two or three other things I can’t remember the names of. I planted them in nice square beds, all in one end of my big garden. In the fall, I harvested orange vegetable marrow and cucumbers, green pumpkins, squash of all colors and shapes, citron that tasted like cucumbers and most of it not edible. They had cross-pollinated. (*NOTE: I wrote that my vine, vegs and fruits had all cross-pollinated. Well, they didn’t. Not in my garden! Stan Woynarski told me—in 1996, when I told him that story, that the crossing happened in Grandma Hitchings’ garden the year before. It was the seeds that were at fault! Stan was a professional at this, so he knew what he was talking about.)
Then there were the gophers. They had a grand time decimating everything that came up, until one day I decided to poison them. Bill mixed up the poison and I spread it wherever I could find a gopher hole. I thought the things would die instantly when they ate the poison. Not so. I went out later in the day and found dozens of the poor little things writhing in agony all over the place. I started bawling. I didn’t want to torture them, only kill them. So what to do" I did the only humane thing I could think of. I picked up a big stick and went around bashing them to death. What a horrible day. I didn’t stop until I was sure I’d put them all out of their misery. And I never again spread gopher poison. That was the only year we spent on the Ffewelling Place, and we didn’t have gophers like that on the farm north of the city. There were some, but not so many.
One day in the hottest part of the summer, I baked bread. I usually did six or 8 loaves at a time, because we never bought bread. It was all homemade. I also baked a cake. And there was the top layer of our wedding cake. All put away in the cupboard. After chores that evening we walked over to Gib and Clara’s place for a visit, about a half mile. When we came home, we found we had had a visitor(s). All the bread, cake and the wedding cake were gone. Nothing else. We figured that some freight train passengers had got off the train while it was slowing down on the long bend and had come looking for a handout. Finding nobody home, and the house still smelling of fresh-baked bread, they went looking for it. Well, we were big hearted about it, but I just wished they had not taken the wedding cake. That made me mad.
Then there was the day that Rev. Baxter and his wife came to call. He was the Baptist Minister and Bill was in his congregation. They came about 4:30 and of course I had to make supper for them. The garden was flourishing and we had lots of eggs, so Bill went out and got lettuce, green onions, carrots, some little potatoes and brought some cream in from the well. Fortunately, I had lots of fresh bread and I don’t know how come, but there was a pie for desert.
So I baked eggs in cream, cooked carrots and potatoes together and made a salad with the lettuce and green onions and radishes. Everything was going nicely until I happened to glance at Rev. Baxter’s plate and saw a fat green worm crawling out of a curly piece of lettuce. Horrors! I still don’t know whether I did it right or not, but I just said, "excuse me, Mr. Baxter", picked up his plate, took it to the kitchen, shoved off the offending piece of lettuce with its occupant, rummaged quickly through the rest to be sure there wasn’t another, then took it back to him. I didn’t have enough food to dump the lot, so he had to have it. I suppose I should have explained but I was a fairly new bride, and at that moment I was too embarrassed to thing straight. I think he might have guessed, but he was a perfect gentleman and he cleaned his plate. Maybe he was hungry too. The pie was very good.
Bill went away with the threshing gang in the fall and I was left alone for several weeks. He came home on Saturday nights, or if it rained, and he cut our crop during slack times with the gang. I did the stooking, and all the other home chores. One day I got sick. I had eaten some eggs and they just didn’t agree. The next morning I thought I’d try again. I couldn’t stand the smell of them cooking. So I fed them to the dog. I ate porridge and it was okay. I didn’t know it then, but David was on the way. I suspected, of course, but I was never regular, so I didn’t know for sure. When I told Bill what I thought, he just said, "well, can you finish the stooking"—I did. A few weeks after the threshing was done I finally visited a doctor—I think I was about 3 months then. So then I started my campaign for a sewing machine. Our harvest was poor, so there still wasn’t any money. But a sewing machine salesman came along, and I wanted that machine! I asked how I could be expected to make baby clothes without one, and could we afford to buy them ready-made? Well, the salesman said he would leave the machine for a week, so I could try it. Well, I knew that come hell or high water, I was going to have that machine. It was a Singer treadle—we didn’t have electricity. Finally, amid much grumbling, Bill sold 15 bushels of wheat (he said it was his seed wheat) and I got the money for the down payment. That was 55 years ago (1994) and I still have that sewing machine.
We were only renting the Ffewelling Place. Bill had batched there for seven years, and now the owners had sold it so we had to move. We got the place north of the city and moved there one month before David was born. (April 1940, that was) I went back to Asquith for the birth, May 8th, to the doctor and midwife who had looked after me all winter. The move turned out to be a bad one. The land was gravelly, the water was poor, and in the five years we lived there we never had a good crop. The war years were on and Bill had a few days work here and there in the city, but he was "frozen" to the farm, under the War Measures Act, and he couldn’t even leave to join the army. Not that he wanted to, but he would not have been accepted if he did. Food production was important. Arthur and Evelyn followed David into the world during those years. We acquired a few more cattle, pigs, chickens and turkeys, so we always had plenty to eat, but money was still scarce, and I grew to hate the farm life.
