The high winds of the dirty thirty stopped but the drought continued. I remember now having a couple of fairly good gardens, then only growing enough for our self. We had corn on the cob to sell so in the evenings we took fresh picked ears to some of our milk customers we were paid 5 or 10 cents a dozen for our work, then we could buy a pencil, or a candy bar for 5 cents. We filled the milk bottles then separated the rest of milk and delivered a pint of cream to a Chinese cafe in town. If we had any over we drank the separated milk & could have cream on our oat meal.
Feed for our cows was scarce so some cattle had to be sold. There was a house & barn in town for rent so we moved as a family into the Ben house just across from the school. I believe dad kept 2 milk cows, a pig & a few laying hens. Paul Haase a bachelor lived on a farm that joined the town so Ralph would take the cows out to that pasture in the summer time & get them in for milking. We had one bed room down stairs for my parents & two partly finish ones in the unfinished attic where the boys had one room & the girls had the other. It was cold up there in the winter but the boys had a straw tic on theirs which was refilled from a friends straw stack spring and fall. In winter we put heated flat irons (used for ironing) & hot water bottles in the beds each night to keep us warm.
There was a drinking water well just out our back door. There wasn't enough water to supply the house and the barn so as it turned dry with no rain we couldn't grow our garden & water it. Winters were mild, no snow so didn't need overshoes or heavy coats to wear. That fall the grasshoppers ate up a lot of the vegetation, then one morning when I went to walk out the door the army worms had arrived, every step they would squash under my feet. They crawled in the houses, in fact they were everywhere. They came in the night ate everything the hoppers had left, leaving little or no vegetation, they even ate leaves off the few trees that were in town. Cliff's dry cough continued so he was put on the train to spend several months in the sanatorium. Dad worked on building a tent like place for Cliff to sleep out side in when he returned home. It had a wooden floor & part way up on the sides, mother had ordered a thick tent canvas material from Eaton's catalogue which she sewed & dad put it on as a peak roof for Cliff new bedroom which they put on the south side of the house. Each morning the bedding, mattress was brought in the house & stored in our warmth of the house, then to be taken out each night after dad had made a fire to warm this bedroom up before Cliff went to bed. Each of us helped with these extra duty's. Ralph started school when we moved to the Hazenmore area. Each one of us were in different rooms in this much larger brick school in the village, very different from the one room country school house we were used to, there were many more children & 4 teachers for the different classes. When we had just moved there some kids were walking by our house when we kids were on the porch & we could hear them say "their dad was in the crazy house" this was shocking news for Cliff & I & for a time it really bothered me. Now that hospital has been closed for many years. Doctors now have a different way to treat patients with nerve problems. We found out years later that 2 more of my dads brothers had this walking problem, with differing side effects. Dads younger brother Tom Lincoln was in the US army hospital & he was diagnosed as having multiple serous. Uncle Tom wrote Uncle Oscar that my dad must have had the same disease. To this day Doctors aren't sure of what causes it or just how to treat this illness.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Life for our famliy in the Dirty Thirtes
Life now had new & harder challenges. I was from a small country school in grade 6 as my parents had gone a second time for the winter to my grandpa's Phillips small farm in Ill. When they heard of this depression & the dust bowl where their daughter & family lived they again sent money for the Lincoln family to spent the winter with them. We now were a family of 6, as Ralph was a little over a year old. I am not sure of the month we arrived but we were there in time for Christmas. Again we had a Christmas tree with many well wrapped gifts hanging on it for all the children. In Sask we had few trees & only a few willows on our first quarter of land.
Mother sent to Eatons catalogue for bricked designed crapped paper which she used to make our old treadle sewing machine into a fire place, with a place to pin our stockings to and a place on top for home made decorations. In our stockings we got a tangerine orange some hard candy, also a small toy. There always were gifts from Grandpa, Grandma & Aunt Clara which arrived early in the mail, as they had sent shelled nuts from their trees & some home made baking. There were always one larger gift for each child of a special toy. That Christmas I got my first doll with eyes that open & shut, with home made clothes, I don't remember what the rest received but Christmas parcels arrived each year from our grandparents in the US.
We went that winter to meet our 4 cousins, mothers youngest sisters family Clayton & Mildred Mc Caws, John, Betty, Frank, & Herbert. They had been missionaries in Philippians. They were near each of our ages. John is a year younger than me. Uncle Clayton was now a minister in the Christian Church in Des Moines Iowa. Our family all slept in what they called a solarium - like our closed in veranda. I only remember walking & playing with our cousins, getting to put faces on them as previously we had only heard about them when we received the family round robin letters.
I was behind in my schooling. I didn't start school until the spring I turned 7 year in April & Cliff started at age 5 as he wasn't 6 until July 4. We both were very shy as in those early days you went by buggy & sleigh to church, 7 miles to town to shop for our needs. We attended a one room school house taught by one teacher, with grades from one to eight, also several older students took high school subjects by correspondence, the teacher gave help to some if she had time. I still remember how painful my very first day at school was. There were double desks so Cliff & I sat together, he didn't seem too interested so would half lay in his seat & swing his hair on the floor, I was feeling sorry for him but he was bored with school. The teacher took me up beside her on a bench, I believe she knew I was close to tears, put her arm around me, as she opened a box of very small letter cards of the alphabet. She named each letter as she handed me them one at a time. I knew some letters but she realized I needed to lose my fear of this large room of children of all ages. Now after missing a winter of schooling, in this school another teacher gave Cliff & I classes to help us catch up. I was loving learning & as mother had time she helped us at home. Cliff was smarted than I in some subjects, like spelling. This subject was hard because they had spelling bees, where everyone stood up at the front of the class, when I was given a word to spell my mind would go blank. Cliff was in his own world so he could spell it right quickly. I could write it correctly so the teacher noticed this so I think I wasn't chosen to spell in public. To this very day when I get tired I get a blank in spelling a word. We walked to school in the summer as we were only 1 & a half miles away to meeting with neighbour kids. In the winter each family drove their kids in a small sleigh, also called a cutter. As we got older Cliff drove us putting the horse in the school barn. His job was to feed & water the horse at noon. We had farther to go to school when we moved to the house on the quarter of land dad had bought. I remember one of the families who attended Dixie school, drove a pair of mules, they are temperamental animals. Some days we would find the 4 kids sitting in their buggy just waiting for the mules to move, yes I learned what it meant to be as stubborn as a mule. Christmas concerts at school was another time we learned to recite & act in front of a group of friends & neighbours. The school always gave a concert, as students spoke their parts & acted out plays, on the Christmas story. There was always a decorated real tree with real lit candles & gifts tied on it. Santa in full dress appeared with ringing sleigh bells & a big HO HO, which always frightened me. Each child received a bag of candy & an orange.
Now I will go back to our move from a country school to attending school in a small town, four roomed school & again Cliff drove us a mile or more to school going early to deliver milk to customers in town before school. Cliff put the horse in the town barn & cared for them. I carried the empty bottles into the school rooms storage closet to pick up after school & take home to be washed & sterilized refilled to deliver the next day. The dust storms got worse each day, as the wind piled the fence lines with tumbling thistle, which filled up with drifting soil. It got so high you could walk on top of the fence & touch the telephone line. The soil would come into the houses as this house was old so dust was in the air inside & outside, mother set the table & kept a cloth over everything until she put the food on for us to eat & even then you seemed to taste it. This old house just filled with the blowing soil. I got hay fever from the dust. We hear of a herb I could burn & inhale the fumes to stop my continual coughing, especially at night. We kids slept upstairs in this large house. The winds started on Easter Sunday and it was said that if the wind started on a Sunday it would blow for 7 Sundays & that is what it did that year. Cliff got a dry hacking cough so Dr would later send Cliff to the TB sanatorium in Fort Quepple.
We moved as a family to a neighbours second house in the town of Hazenmore It was only 2 rooms. I slept across the street on a closed in veranda with my girl friend from school, Joan Wright. They used to have a confectionery in this store but business was gone, they sold a bit of ice cream in the summer.
By fall dad had rented a farm yard and a set of buildings,one & half miles west of town just across the tracks. We could drive down No. 13 hwy to deliver milk in town. We must have had some moisture & the high winds stopped so we did have a good garden spot which Cliff & dad worked the land with horseand a hand held plow. Mum & dad did a lot of work to sterilize the milk bottles. They milked the 3 or so cows, filled the quarts bottles & hand pumped the large watering trough with fresh cool water from this deep well. They had to get up while it was dark to get the milk cooled before we kids went with horse & buggy to deliver milk & all four of us to attend school.
I was now in junior high, my room teacher took an interest in me she had me stay after school for extra lessons as I needed to be advanced in some subject to be able to take grade 7 & 8 together & with her help for the next two years I got grade 9 & 10 together, Miss Coats was such a good teacher & I liked her method of teaching. I became good in Algeria, & my life long friend in high school was Isabelle Keith who did that subject as a past time. When I got into grade 11 & 12 I had good study habits, as we girls did extra home work together. I had different teachers in the next grades & Algebra & Trig came easy for me & often the teacher got me to do a problem on the board explaining each move & why I did it that way. Isabelle & I were often top of our class in marks. We were pen pals even after we each were married with children, first we wrote each week then monthly & rest of our time yearly. The year I wrote my grade 12 final exams was for 50 points & our school didn't have all the library reading books . I had read only one so lost 25 points as the school only had 1 book. Then we only took french by reading the story & trying to remember words we were never taught to speak it. Most students failed but one student got 50 in 4 subjects so was the only one that past his Grade 12. Isabelle & I failed composition which we repeated on our own, I went some days & took Latin classes, & read the needed library books. I went to see friends in Swift Current, got a job on a ranch making meals & cleaning for this couple, but they had bed bugs, I was bitten every night so called home & mother told me to get some kind of powder to put on the bed frame which I did & it helped. I stayed until I had wrote my exam in the town of Cadillac. I had met some church friend who gave me a ride back to Hazenmore
Mother sent to Eatons catalogue for bricked designed crapped paper which she used to make our old treadle sewing machine into a fire place, with a place to pin our stockings to and a place on top for home made decorations. In our stockings we got a tangerine orange some hard candy, also a small toy. There always were gifts from Grandpa, Grandma & Aunt Clara which arrived early in the mail, as they had sent shelled nuts from their trees & some home made baking. There were always one larger gift for each child of a special toy. That Christmas I got my first doll with eyes that open & shut, with home made clothes, I don't remember what the rest received but Christmas parcels arrived each year from our grandparents in the US.
We went that winter to meet our 4 cousins, mothers youngest sisters family Clayton & Mildred Mc Caws, John, Betty, Frank, & Herbert. They had been missionaries in Philippians. They were near each of our ages. John is a year younger than me. Uncle Clayton was now a minister in the Christian Church in Des Moines Iowa. Our family all slept in what they called a solarium - like our closed in veranda. I only remember walking & playing with our cousins, getting to put faces on them as previously we had only heard about them when we received the family round robin letters.
I was behind in my schooling. I didn't start school until the spring I turned 7 year in April & Cliff started at age 5 as he wasn't 6 until July 4. We both were very shy as in those early days you went by buggy & sleigh to church, 7 miles to town to shop for our needs. We attended a one room school house taught by one teacher, with grades from one to eight, also several older students took high school subjects by correspondence, the teacher gave help to some if she had time. I still remember how painful my very first day at school was. There were double desks so Cliff & I sat together, he didn't seem too interested so would half lay in his seat & swing his hair on the floor, I was feeling sorry for him but he was bored with school. The teacher took me up beside her on a bench, I believe she knew I was close to tears, put her arm around me, as she opened a box of very small letter cards of the alphabet. She named each letter as she handed me them one at a time. I knew some letters but she realized I needed to lose my fear of this large room of children of all ages. Now after missing a winter of schooling, in this school another teacher gave Cliff & I classes to help us catch up. I was loving learning & as mother had time she helped us at home. Cliff was smarted than I in some subjects, like spelling. This subject was hard because they had spelling bees, where everyone stood up at the front of the class, when I was given a word to spell my mind would go blank. Cliff was in his own world so he could spell it right quickly. I could write it correctly so the teacher noticed this so I think I wasn't chosen to spell in public. To this very day when I get tired I get a blank in spelling a word. We walked to school in the summer as we were only 1 & a half miles away to meeting with neighbour kids. In the winter each family drove their kids in a small sleigh, also called a cutter. As we got older Cliff drove us putting the horse in the school barn. His job was to feed & water the horse at noon. We had farther to go to school when we moved to the house on the quarter of land dad had bought. I remember one of the families who attended Dixie school, drove a pair of mules, they are temperamental animals. Some days we would find the 4 kids sitting in their buggy just waiting for the mules to move, yes I learned what it meant to be as stubborn as a mule. Christmas concerts at school was another time we learned to recite & act in front of a group of friends & neighbours. The school always gave a concert, as students spoke their parts & acted out plays, on the Christmas story. There was always a decorated real tree with real lit candles & gifts tied on it. Santa in full dress appeared with ringing sleigh bells & a big HO HO, which always frightened me. Each child received a bag of candy & an orange.
Now I will go back to our move from a country school to attending school in a small town, four roomed school & again Cliff drove us a mile or more to school going early to deliver milk to customers in town before school. Cliff put the horse in the town barn & cared for them. I carried the empty bottles into the school rooms storage closet to pick up after school & take home to be washed & sterilized refilled to deliver the next day. The dust storms got worse each day, as the wind piled the fence lines with tumbling thistle, which filled up with drifting soil. It got so high you could walk on top of the fence & touch the telephone line. The soil would come into the houses as this house was old so dust was in the air inside & outside, mother set the table & kept a cloth over everything until she put the food on for us to eat & even then you seemed to taste it. This old house just filled with the blowing soil. I got hay fever from the dust. We hear of a herb I could burn & inhale the fumes to stop my continual coughing, especially at night. We kids slept upstairs in this large house. The winds started on Easter Sunday and it was said that if the wind started on a Sunday it would blow for 7 Sundays & that is what it did that year. Cliff got a dry hacking cough so Dr would later send Cliff to the TB sanatorium in Fort Quepple.
We moved as a family to a neighbours second house in the town of Hazenmore It was only 2 rooms. I slept across the street on a closed in veranda with my girl friend from school, Joan Wright. They used to have a confectionery in this store but business was gone, they sold a bit of ice cream in the summer.
By fall dad had rented a farm yard and a set of buildings,one & half miles west of town just across the tracks. We could drive down No. 13 hwy to deliver milk in town. We must have had some moisture & the high winds stopped so we did have a good garden spot which Cliff & dad worked the land with horseand a hand held plow. Mum & dad did a lot of work to sterilize the milk bottles. They milked the 3 or so cows, filled the quarts bottles & hand pumped the large watering trough with fresh cool water from this deep well. They had to get up while it was dark to get the milk cooled before we kids went with horse & buggy to deliver milk & all four of us to attend school.
I was now in junior high, my room teacher took an interest in me she had me stay after school for extra lessons as I needed to be advanced in some subject to be able to take grade 7 & 8 together & with her help for the next two years I got grade 9 & 10 together, Miss Coats was such a good teacher & I liked her method of teaching. I became good in Algeria, & my life long friend in high school was Isabelle Keith who did that subject as a past time. When I got into grade 11 & 12 I had good study habits, as we girls did extra home work together. I had different teachers in the next grades & Algebra & Trig came easy for me & often the teacher got me to do a problem on the board explaining each move & why I did it that way. Isabelle & I were often top of our class in marks. We were pen pals even after we each were married with children, first we wrote each week then monthly & rest of our time yearly. The year I wrote my grade 12 final exams was for 50 points & our school didn't have all the library reading books . I had read only one so lost 25 points as the school only had 1 book. Then we only took french by reading the story & trying to remember words we were never taught to speak it. Most students failed but one student got 50 in 4 subjects so was the only one that past his Grade 12. Isabelle & I failed composition which we repeated on our own, I went some days & took Latin classes, & read the needed library books. I went to see friends in Swift Current, got a job on a ranch making meals & cleaning for this couple, but they had bed bugs, I was bitten every night so called home & mother told me to get some kind of powder to put on the bed frame which I did & it helped. I stayed until I had wrote my exam in the town of Cadillac. I had met some church friend who gave me a ride back to Hazenmore
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Memories of My Father
Memories of My Father - James Otto Lincoln:
This is a good time to put my first recollections of times with my dad. As a early Homesteader from the US Dad knew what hard hand labor was. His older brothers Charles, Oscar & the 2 younger brothers, James(Jim), Thomas(Tom) came to take up homesteads in Sask in the early 19 hundreds, some of them made claims & came back in a few years with plans to apply for immigratation to Canada, and turn the unbroken sod into good farming soil. I believe they came with a group of men by train from Rock Island Ill. They travelled the Sioux line by way of Milestone to Regina, the capital of this new province in western Canada. They looked at land just south of the city but it was a very dry year, with little rain so did not put their land claim in there as it was so dry that there was wide open cracks in the soil. Some said if you ever dropped a quarter on the ground you would never find it. So they went south to around the Parry & Pangman area as other settlers had made claims there.
When I was several months old mothers parents came by train for their first & only trip to Canada. They spent a night in a hotel in Rock Island but had to go to bed before dark as they didn't know how to get the strange glass bulb that hung from a cord from the ceiling. I learned many years later that grandpa Phillips had started a hundred dollar bank account for me, as his first grandchild. After I had finished high school, I worked as a clerk in 2 different country stores, attended a year in Bible Collage, & pastored a small church in Oak Lake.
Dad & Mum were living in Milestone when he received a cheque from the government debt adjustment board ,from the dirty 30s land loss. He mailed me a hundred dollars to pay his debt to me as he had to use it during those hard years. This was a great surprise to me. I was needing warmer clothing. I was living in the church parsonage in Oak Lake Man with a coal & wood heater to keep me warm & no warm coat or overshoes. Some church friends had a fur store & offered me a bargain of a Hudson head seal coat, I got warm foot wear, this coat & gloves etc. My real need had been met at the right time. This generous act of my father who had lost so much, his land, & his health but thought of me & wanted to pay at least this debit he felt he owed me.
Now I will tell of some of my first things I remember about my dad. He was musical. He often whistled tunes of the south, he could play a mouth organ. I remember when Cliff & I were small he would hold us both, one on each knee, either whistle or sing songs of early days, Cliff & I were 15 months apart so when mum was busy dad was a great help. When Ralph was born dad ,with help from neighbors (everyone helped each other in those days.) built a large room on to the original 2 room homestead shack. This room also had a attic where mother kept a lot of her magazines, with cut out dolls in & other surprising things for small children. Cliff & Clara were both born in Kincaid in a nursing home for birth mothers, but Ralph & I were born in our home. Ralph was born in this new addition. Aunt Clara came up from Illinois to be with mother & help with the other 3 children. My dad had heat stroke before he was married, whether it was from working with his brothers when he was 14 in Oregon in the heat of summer or when he was a dray man (horse driven flat top wagon used to haul freight from the train) in early days in the Canadian prairies, but he lost his sense of smell & taste to some extent. His health problems started after one winter he was very ill with what was thought to be inflammatory rheumatism. Mother nursed him & did chores, Dad had just bought an joining quarter of land and with a family of 4 children he needed more land. After we moved into this much larger home with 3 bedrooms & a large living room & kitchen combined & an attic which could be use if needed. There was a good sized barn & several grainiers, with more pasture land. We had a few fruit trees & a good grove of trees for shelter belt. The winds started blowing soil which drifted. We had the start ofwhat was called the dirty thirty's, many people lost their farms, My dad became ill ,.he was depressed & he found it hard to walk as his balance was effected. He had weeping spells so Dr sent him for shock treatments to Weyburn Sask to what was called a mental hospital. Mother hired a man but he was more interested in looking after our large Clydesdale horses & feeding them. One horse cut his leg in the joint so most of his time he was trying treat it. Mother couldn't afford to pay him so we kids helped .After dad came home, that winter we rented a large hotel like house on a farm near the town of Hazenmore, Dad moved what cattle we needed as there was pasture there. We took our several milk cows to this pasture so dad put up weeds & green Russian thistle for cow feed. We kids drove to town to deliver milk with a horse & buggy,on our way to school. These were trying years for many farmers.
This is a good time to put my first recollections of times with my dad. As a early Homesteader from the US Dad knew what hard hand labor was. His older brothers Charles, Oscar & the 2 younger brothers, James(Jim), Thomas(Tom) came to take up homesteads in Sask in the early 19 hundreds, some of them made claims & came back in a few years with plans to apply for immigratation to Canada, and turn the unbroken sod into good farming soil. I believe they came with a group of men by train from Rock Island Ill. They travelled the Sioux line by way of Milestone to Regina, the capital of this new province in western Canada. They looked at land just south of the city but it was a very dry year, with little rain so did not put their land claim in there as it was so dry that there was wide open cracks in the soil. Some said if you ever dropped a quarter on the ground you would never find it. So they went south to around the Parry & Pangman area as other settlers had made claims there.
When I was several months old mothers parents came by train for their first & only trip to Canada. They spent a night in a hotel in Rock Island but had to go to bed before dark as they didn't know how to get the strange glass bulb that hung from a cord from the ceiling. I learned many years later that grandpa Phillips had started a hundred dollar bank account for me, as his first grandchild. After I had finished high school, I worked as a clerk in 2 different country stores, attended a year in Bible Collage, & pastored a small church in Oak Lake.
Dad & Mum were living in Milestone when he received a cheque from the government debt adjustment board ,from the dirty 30s land loss. He mailed me a hundred dollars to pay his debt to me as he had to use it during those hard years. This was a great surprise to me. I was needing warmer clothing. I was living in the church parsonage in Oak Lake Man with a coal & wood heater to keep me warm & no warm coat or overshoes. Some church friends had a fur store & offered me a bargain of a Hudson head seal coat, I got warm foot wear, this coat & gloves etc. My real need had been met at the right time. This generous act of my father who had lost so much, his land, & his health but thought of me & wanted to pay at least this debit he felt he owed me.
Now I will tell of some of my first things I remember about my dad. He was musical. He often whistled tunes of the south, he could play a mouth organ. I remember when Cliff & I were small he would hold us both, one on each knee, either whistle or sing songs of early days, Cliff & I were 15 months apart so when mum was busy dad was a great help. When Ralph was born dad ,with help from neighbors (everyone helped each other in those days.) built a large room on to the original 2 room homestead shack. This room also had a attic where mother kept a lot of her magazines, with cut out dolls in & other surprising things for small children. Cliff & Clara were both born in Kincaid in a nursing home for birth mothers, but Ralph & I were born in our home. Ralph was born in this new addition. Aunt Clara came up from Illinois to be with mother & help with the other 3 children. My dad had heat stroke before he was married, whether it was from working with his brothers when he was 14 in Oregon in the heat of summer or when he was a dray man (horse driven flat top wagon used to haul freight from the train) in early days in the Canadian prairies, but he lost his sense of smell & taste to some extent. His health problems started after one winter he was very ill with what was thought to be inflammatory rheumatism. Mother nursed him & did chores, Dad had just bought an joining quarter of land and with a family of 4 children he needed more land. After we moved into this much larger home with 3 bedrooms & a large living room & kitchen combined & an attic which could be use if needed. There was a good sized barn & several grainiers, with more pasture land. We had a few fruit trees & a good grove of trees for shelter belt. The winds started blowing soil which drifted. We had the start ofwhat was called the dirty thirty's, many people lost their farms, My dad became ill ,.he was depressed & he found it hard to walk as his balance was effected. He had weeping spells so Dr sent him for shock treatments to Weyburn Sask to what was called a mental hospital. Mother hired a man but he was more interested in looking after our large Clydesdale horses & feeding them. One horse cut his leg in the joint so most of his time he was trying treat it. Mother couldn't afford to pay him so we kids helped .After dad came home, that winter we rented a large hotel like house on a farm near the town of Hazenmore, Dad moved what cattle we needed as there was pasture there. We took our several milk cows to this pasture so dad put up weeds & green Russian thistle for cow feed. We kids drove to town to deliver milk with a horse & buggy,on our way to school. These were trying years for many farmers.
Friday, June 26, 2009
More early memories.
I will try to add a few more memories today.
We lived on a small half section farm in southern Sask 7 miles from Kincaid, with just a horse & buggy for transportation. My brother Cliff & I were 15 months apart so were very close & did many things together. We once got up early & went down to the well where our drinking water was drawn up with a rope & bucket. We had lifted the well lid & were looking in it when my mother found us, so were inform never to go there again as we could fall in. Another time my parents were clearing the stubble field with a horse pulling a harrow section with fire to burn the straw, but we kids sneaked out to watch,so had to be informed of the danger of fire. Cliff & I just did everything together but when our sister Clara was born things changed. I remember we had a very bad hail storm. My dad had Cliff & I holding pillows up against the windows panes to keep them from breaking. Mother was laying on the bed weeping she wasn't the crying kind but the next morning she was gone & a neighbor lady was there & took us to stay with Grandma Cross. We were told we had a sister, who arrived early at the nursing home( where mothers went to to birth their baby) in Kincaid. It was a hard year for my parents, with their crops gone. Mother parents Ben & Bessie Phillips sent money for us to go by train to spend the winter in Illinois USA. I remember a little of the time with relatives there, we visited some of both my parents families .We had Christmas with our first real tree, which aunt Clara decorated with lit candles & home made decorations .Aunt Clara never married but retired early from teaching school to care for her parents until they passed away. We have a snap shot of Cliff with grandpa Phillips with several cottontail rabbits they had shot for a meal. Grandma & aunt Clara had dress, cleaned & fried up with butter for supper.
I remember when Cliff & I got in trouble with Cliff getting into Dad shaving case. It was a called a straight razor, very sharp blade, & he was using it on a chair rung to chip wood off, maybe it was his first carving experience. We both got a talking to on the danger cutting ourselves & it was the lose of dad razor. My parents didn't correct us without explaining the danger this was to our safety.
I recall another time we both were instructed on why we should never try to scare our sister. Our parents came late from somewhere. It was getting dark & it was near Halloween. I believe it was Cliff's idea but I agreed that we would put sheets over our heads & come in from outside & scare Clara, but out parents arrived in time to stop us . My dad told us that his brothers scared him so badly he fainted one time & it took years for him to lose his fear of the dark. I don't remember of any spankings for our foolish deeds but I still remember that we were making bad decisions.
Cliff & I didn't always like to have our sister to tag along with us everywhere, This time we had a plan, we felt our sister was a mama's baby & she didn't like to be bossed by her older sibling's, so she would show her Independence by doing the opposite she thought we wanted her to do. We didn't want her to come in where we were playing so, I believe it was Cliff said to me tell her to come & play with us but she had her own idea so she said,mother said NO. Our mother caught on to our trick, We got a private talk with mother, letting us know that what we are doing was wrong. Mother said " I know Clara is a bit stubborn but you two are causing her to develop this nature." I have never forgotten that advice!
We lived on a small half section farm in southern Sask 7 miles from Kincaid, with just a horse & buggy for transportation. My brother Cliff & I were 15 months apart so were very close & did many things together. We once got up early & went down to the well where our drinking water was drawn up with a rope & bucket. We had lifted the well lid & were looking in it when my mother found us, so were inform never to go there again as we could fall in. Another time my parents were clearing the stubble field with a horse pulling a harrow section with fire to burn the straw, but we kids sneaked out to watch,so had to be informed of the danger of fire. Cliff & I just did everything together but when our sister Clara was born things changed. I remember we had a very bad hail storm. My dad had Cliff & I holding pillows up against the windows panes to keep them from breaking. Mother was laying on the bed weeping she wasn't the crying kind but the next morning she was gone & a neighbor lady was there & took us to stay with Grandma Cross. We were told we had a sister, who arrived early at the nursing home( where mothers went to to birth their baby) in Kincaid. It was a hard year for my parents, with their crops gone. Mother parents Ben & Bessie Phillips sent money for us to go by train to spend the winter in Illinois USA. I remember a little of the time with relatives there, we visited some of both my parents families .We had Christmas with our first real tree, which aunt Clara decorated with lit candles & home made decorations .Aunt Clara never married but retired early from teaching school to care for her parents until they passed away. We have a snap shot of Cliff with grandpa Phillips with several cottontail rabbits they had shot for a meal. Grandma & aunt Clara had dress, cleaned & fried up with butter for supper.
I remember when Cliff & I got in trouble with Cliff getting into Dad shaving case. It was a called a straight razor, very sharp blade, & he was using it on a chair rung to chip wood off, maybe it was his first carving experience. We both got a talking to on the danger cutting ourselves & it was the lose of dad razor. My parents didn't correct us without explaining the danger this was to our safety.
I recall another time we both were instructed on why we should never try to scare our sister. Our parents came late from somewhere. It was getting dark & it was near Halloween. I believe it was Cliff's idea but I agreed that we would put sheets over our heads & come in from outside & scare Clara, but out parents arrived in time to stop us . My dad told us that his brothers scared him so badly he fainted one time & it took years for him to lose his fear of the dark. I don't remember of any spankings for our foolish deeds but I still remember that we were making bad decisions.
Cliff & I didn't always like to have our sister to tag along with us everywhere, This time we had a plan, we felt our sister was a mama's baby & she didn't like to be bossed by her older sibling's, so she would show her Independence by doing the opposite she thought we wanted her to do. We didn't want her to come in where we were playing so, I believe it was Cliff said to me tell her to come & play with us but she had her own idea so she said,mother said NO. Our mother caught on to our trick, We got a private talk with mother, letting us know that what we are doing was wrong. Mother said " I know Clara is a bit stubborn but you two are causing her to develop this nature." I have never forgotten that advice!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
