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.