After the Honeymoon

Now, to get back to my own story.

The second summer we were married, Uncle Tom persuaded George to rent his farm. I was opposed to the deal, as I felt we were just getting started nicely on our own place, and it meant so much more hard work for me as Tom's place was larger than ours and meant more hired men, more cooking and washing and more work in every way. That must have been 1894.

Well, George rented it (Lizzie and Tom McNeice left the house full of bugs), and we moved over in the fall of this year and they moved to Regina. Tom had a job selling machinery for the Massey-Harris Company. They bought a house on Halifax Street and were quite swanky, while I undertook the task of making butter from five cows. I had made butter at home the summer Mother was in Detroit, but it was a small task in comparison to making it from five cows. That summer, or fall, I lost another premature baby at six months. I believe it was in August.

Just to let you, whoever reads this, know what I went through, I’ll relate this experience.

We had been in Regina over night and stayed at Uncle Tom's place. We left there about two o'clock in the afternoon and drove in the buggy home. Arrived home about five in the afternoon. I felt rotten all the way home. However, we got the milk skimmed, the calves fed and the cows milked, then I went to bed.

Now, the house was so full of bugs we couldn't sleep in it and were sleeping in one of the granaries. Well, about five in the morning, I awoke in child labor. George roused my brother, Reuben, who was working for us, and they got a bed ready for me in the house, made a stretcher for me out of, or with, a robe (horsehide), carried me in that to the house and to bed. Reuben ran, or drove, for old Mrs. Sneed, a midwife and then for Auntie Swartz. My baby was born and died a few minutes afterwards.

That year our crop was frozen. We didn't know as much about grain and frost as we afterwards learned and we were raising red fife wheat, a grand wheat, but ripening so late it caught the frost, or the frost caught it before it was ripe. We had almost the whole half section on Tom's place in wheat and oats and it was all frozen! We also had forty acres over on our own place in wheat. I think we sold the wheat for somewhere around twenty-five cents a bushel. The potatoes that year didn't mature either. We hardly had any potatoes for our use as the men decided to keep what we had for seed in the spring.

It was while we were living on Uncle Tom's place that the whole neighborhood was in quite a dither. A man who had gone crazy was roaming through the neighborhood frightening people. He roamed around stark naked.

In the first place, before going further, I'll relate how my father ran across him. Father was coming up from Craven to Tregarva Post Office with the mail. Father had the contract of carrying the mail between these two places. As he was passing Jack Kiln's place, he saw a man up on the roof of the house going through some strange antics. Father stopped to see what he was doing and found he had been pulling up grass and stuffing it into holes in the roof. This house was abandoned at the time. The man asked father if he had any old papers or magazines, which he might borrow to read. So Father, on his way back to

Craven came in to our place and asked me for some reading material for the man. We thought it rather strange for anyone to be at this old house -- it was a sod or log shack with a sod roof and the people who had lived there were either dead or long since had vacated the place. However, I gave Father some magazines and newspapers and he went on his way. George drove over too, as he thought there must be something wrong.

Well, when they got over to the place where Father had come across the man, there was no sign of him; he had vamoosed. Then, the first thing we heard, the Mounted Police from Regina were searching for a man who had been working for the McBrains over at Wascana in the harvest. It seems this man (MacIllvain by name) had at one time years before, gone off his "beam" and had been in Selkirk and the police had had a difficult time taking him in custody. He was a powerful man and had stood off four policemen with an axe; however, they finally subdued him and had him put in Selkirk where he was kept for a long time. However, he was finally pronounced cured and was let out. He apparently was all right for some time and he worked for several farmers around Wascana. He worked for the McBrains for quite a while (the McBrains were Mrs. Ed Daykins parents), and then one day, when the men were resting after their lunch and sitting around outside as they always did a few minutes before returning to the harvest field, this MacIllvain quietly got up and walked off down to the Valley (Wascana), only a short distance from the house. At the time, no one thought anything of it, but as the day wore on MacIllvain did not return, nor did he come back at all. They notified the police and a search was instituted for him, as it was decided the man had gone loco once more, which decision proved correct.

By this time, the man had quite a start on the police and, of course, they didn't know which way he had gone; but it wasn't long before they heard from settlers about a man who had come to their door, stark naked, asking for food, reading material, etc., frightening the wits out of the farmers and, especially, their women folk.

Of course, he finally wandered into the Tregarva settlement, and I lived in dread every minute of the day. Eddie was a little baby, born that summer, July 24th, 1895, and I had several men to cook for. The house was a small house with only one door by which I could get out, or anyone else, either in or out, and I used to wonder whatever would I do if he came to our door when I was alone with my little baby. The men were busy in the harvest fields. Well, one day, the men had all gone out to the harvest field and, as I was washing the dishes. My mind was dwelling on the thought, "How will I get out with my little baby if that awful crazy man comes to the door?" when I heard a step at the door! I gave a scream, fainted and dropped to the floor! The first thing I knew, George was trying to hold me up and saying, 'What happened? What happened?" Of course, when I heard the step at the door, being so unnerved, I supposed it was the crazy man and here it was George, my husband who had come back from the field for something he had forgotten to take out to the field. As far as I was concerned, at the moment it might have been the poor crazy man.

I suffered tortures that fall. I remember one day while I was sitting in the rocking chair with baby Eddie in my arms, the dog started barking furiously, and thinking it might be this crazy man, I took such a pain in my back for minutes I couldn't get up off my chair. When I did get up and go to the door, I heard Mr. Freethy talking to the dog, so knew, once again, everything was all right. I often think, what a strain for a woman to go through with a baby not two months old, and so much work to do, with no help of any kind.

This crazy man had been to almost every house in the neighborhood but Denzens and ours across the road from us. He had been at Bob Raeburns, stark naked of course as usual and Bob, feeling sorry for him, fitted him out with shirt, overhauls, shoes and so on, but the man hardly left the place before he had stripped everything off and was on his way, stark naked, once more. Then he went to Minni Gore's house. Somehow she got out and ran across the prairie to a neighbor's.

The poor fellow was harmless, I suppose, because he asked one man why all the women were afraid of him; he said he wouldn't hurt anyone. But that didn't lessen the fear and dread we all had of him.

The days and especially the nights and mornings were growing quite cold as it was on in September, and how he did not perish is a wonder. The police finally caught up with him once more, to the satisfaction of everyone, but he was on the loose for weeks before they caught him. Where and how I do not remember.

Another time, before he was captured, I had another horrid experience. Very often when we would run out of coal oil for our lamps, we would make what we called a "witch," made by soaking a woolen rag in grease, tying a big knot in the rag and placing it in a saucer with quite a bit of grease in the saucer and lighting the end of the rag. It made a ghostly light but better than none. Well, I had such a light going, throwing weird shadows all around the room, when there was the most terrible scratching, snarling, and growling at the door and in burst a man with his face covered, snarling like mad! Down I went in a faint to the floor.

Why George loved to frighten me, I never could understand. It always seemed to me to be a cruel thing to do, but he always did love to scare me out of my wits. He could see so many supernatural spectacles, or professed to, and would go to great lengths to describe them to me. For instance, one time he came home from Regina quite late at night, which he often did, and when he came in the house, he looked so funny and asked where Sam Swartz was. He could see he wasn't in the house, as there was only one room downstairs and a little summer kitchen where he (George) had to come through before coming into the main part of the house. Of course, there was an upstairs, but I'd hardly stow Sam up there! I said, "I don't know; he hasn't been here." "Well, he said, "that's funny, that is his white pony in the stable, eating out of the manager and has its harness on." He swore up and down that it was the truth. I didn't believe him, because, had it been Sam, he would have come in. George made no effort to go back to the stable to take another look; always thought it was one of his fish stories and paid no attention to it. He would tell the weirdest stories about Banshees, how his father and mother had heard them wailing many times just before they heard of the death of some relation or friend. His father was Irish, his mother English, and he had the characteristics of both. Eddie, as I mentioned a while back, was born on July 24, 1895. He was a dear little fellow and we were so proud of him. He was very tiny and I didn't know anything about feeding and taking care of a baby. I did my best. I often wondered why mother never came to see me. She never came into my house until Eddie was over two years old, and then wouldn't have come, I don't suppose, only George went over and asked her if she would come because I was confined to bed with measles and there was no one to care for me. He had to work on the land and Eddie was on his own. She came, but let me know she wasn't at all pleased about coming. This, however, was after we moved back to our own place.

The first year we were frozen out; the next year we had a pretty good crop and I had to have help with the cooking in the threshing time. Maud Robinson (whose sister was Maggie Robinson, who married H.D.B. Ketchen, a sergeant in the R.N.W.M.P. at the Regina barracks) came to help me. She was quite young, probably fourteen or fifteen years old. Her brother Bill came to help with the threshing, as did also my father. In those days, neighbors helped each other. They threshed by horsepower, using six or eight teams. The poor horses looked so tired, going round and round all day. A man stood on a little platform in the center of the power place with a whip in his hand flicking the horses a bit once in a while. There were arms that ran out from the revolving machinery and the teams were hitched between these arms and, from this contraption, ran a spindle which turned the separator. As the horses, going round and round came to the spindle, they would step over it and on they would go on their monotonous way. Two men stood up on a platform at the front of the separator, each with a knife, cutting bands on the sheaves of grain as they were pitched from a stack of grain, or from a load of sheaves which men hauled in from the field.

At night, the men who stayed slept on the floor in the house. We, who slept upstairs could hear, every once in a while, someone give the order, "Turn," and immediately everyone would roll over.

Sometimes, rather often, one of the men would have his violin along and in the evenings would liven the crowd with the Devil’s Dream, The Arkansas Traveler, Little Brown Jug and an occasional Irish jig, a waltz called Dear Evalina, My Sweet Evalina, and Where, Oh Where, Has My Little Dog Gone, and many other selections famous in those days.

We women would have a stack of cookies and pies and cakes on hand for the men who were threshing. If we didn’t our name would be blazoned across the neighborhood and men would dread going back to thresh there another year.

It was always a great day for the women and the children when the threshers and the machine arrived. The children especially enjoyed it. The women would take a walk out to see the machine operate; usually in the afternoon after the dinner dishes were done and before preparations for supper were started. At mealtime, the men came in with a rush, gathered around the table, where all the food was placed and, to use a vulgar expression, "dug in." Of course, the children spent nearly all their time watching the men and the threshing machine. They stayed at a safe distance from the machine.

We usually used half a beef and several wild fowl, which were very plentiful in those days. All this made lots of cooking, taking into consideration all the pies, cakes, potatoes and vegetables and all the bread they ate.

One year, bad weather with heavy snowstorms came on, and the grain, being in stokes in the fields, they couldn’t finish the threshing and we had to board the men, twenty-three of them, for three weeks before they could start threshing again. Had we not boarded them, the gang would have broken up and would not have come back when we needed them. For three weeks I did all this work alone, no help whatever. All the baking, cooking, making butter, bread, taking care of the children, keeping the fires going; in fact, everything that needed doing for the crowd, I had it to do. The children were too small to help. After it was all over, I couldn’t stand up, and no wonder, was it?

The year our Eddie was born (1895), Bill Robinson and his sister Maude were with us in threshing time. This, I have mentioned before. We didn’t have as long a siege of threshing that year as we did later years. Bill used to sneak into the house once in a while for a cookie, and to look at baby Eddie and while in, he would dance the cork leg and sing, "Old Paddy Coon, He Came Along Too Soon; The Dance Won’t be ready ‘Til Tomorrow Afternoon." The feature of the Cork Leg consisted of holding one leg perfectly stiff and stomping with the other foot, swinging your arms around and singing the above ditty.

Alma Sutton, Isaac’s sister, would come down and help too that year and many years later as well.

Years after all this, the steam threshers replaced the horsepower; that was quite a "come up" in the advancement of the science, or the art, of threshing. In the cold weather, the engineer would have to stay with his engine all night and keep the water from freezing. He must have had someone with him, I suppose, a fireman; they fired with straw, and it must have been a task indeed. It was very interesting, though, to us women. We became accustomed to the various whistles, which the engineer would blow. One to stop, two to start, three for straw, four for grain (sheaves), five for wagons to haul the threshed grain and six for water.

Several years later, we bought our bread in Lumsden. A baker started a shop there. This was a great help to the women, to be able to buy our bread. So much less to do.

While we were living on Uncle Tom’s place, our neighbors across the road, in the summer time kept a flock, or herd, of turkeys, which roamed at will a great part of the time. They became a nuisance to the neighbors in this way. They would get into our gardens, gobble up all the green leaves off the vegetables and ruin the gardens. People complained to Mr. Denzin, and then he commissioned Alice, one of his daughters, then a little girl, and Arthur, one of his little boys, to herd all the turkeys. But, during school days, Alice and Arthur had to attend school; then the turkeys had free run of the prairie and of everyone’s garden. They used to come over to our place and get in the horse stable, fly into the mangers and feed boxes. It made George so mad to find them there and find the mangers polluted with their droppings.

One day when the men had come in from the fields with their teams, they found the turkeys had taken possession of the mangers, eating grain and gobbling, gobbling away. George began throwing them out and, I suppose, using some tall language. Our dog - Colonel - was standing there and George yelled, "Sic him, Colonel." Colonel "sicked" him all right, made a snap at one of the turkeys and took his head right off! Why George didn’t bring it to the house and have me cook it, I’ll never know, unless he was afraid the Denzins would find out. He buried it in the manure pile! Denzins often wondered where that turkey went. George would say he saw a couple of coyotes around such and such a morning and I guess Denzins believed him as it was a very common thing to see coyotes around.

One winter, about this time, Mr. Denzin killed a big fat sow, weighed five hundred pounds, and took it to Regina to sell. The butchers wouldn’t buy it because it was so fat so he brought it home. It was frozen stiff, so he brought it into the house to thaw out, so he could cut it up and saw it there. It took up nearly half the kitchen and was a frightening sight, lying there on its back, its stomach, or belly, slit from throat to its feet, and legs spread wide, its mouth wide open and its ears sticking straight up.

Well, when it, as Mr. Denzin said, "t’awed out," he cut it up and stored it somewhere and at meal time, he would say to the children, "Get more of dat fat pork into you dere, and not so much bread," and immediately all the children would have another piece of "dat fat pork."

Amelia, the oldest girl, stayed home and used to do some fancywork, embroidery with silk floss. One day when I was over there, she said, as she worked on her embroidery, "It is so different out here; back home we used to work with pigs and things, and out here we work with silk and things."

One day I remember so well. I had just finished churning and had set a bucket of buttermilk outside the kitchen door, where the men could pick it up and take it to the pig pen and feed it to the pigs. Well, it happened George had let the pigs out that day, which I don’t know, but he occasionally would do that, to my dissatisfaction, and just after I had set the bucket full of buttermilk out there, along came the pigs and upset it and wallowed in it. I was so mad, I picked up a little piece of plaster that had fallen out of a chink in the log wall of the house, and threw it at the pigs. To my surprise and consternation, I hit one of the pigs right behind the ear, and he dropped to the ground and lay still for several minutes. Was I frantic! It was time for George and the men to come in to dinner and I knew George would be mad as hops if he found a dead pig lying at his door. I tried to think what I could do to hide the pig. Finally, I thought I would try and drag it down over the hill (the house was built on the side of a little hill) and at the foot of the hill was a little creek. So, I proceeded to grab the pig by the hind legs, preparatory to pulling him down the hill, which I never could have done, when he gave a wiggle and a grunt and jumped to his feet and ran away. Was I thankful.’ However, I told George all about it and told him if he didn’t keep the pigs shut up I’d shoot them, and I would have too. There is nothing more aggravating than to have pigs or fowl on the loose on a farm. George shut them up.

Many times I would have to get on my pony, which Father had given me when I was married, and which I named Silver, and ride down to Lumsden to get tobacco for George when he was busy. George used that black chewing plug tobacco, as well as plug smoking. It must have been as necessary to men in those days as cigarettes are in these days. When men would run out of this commodity, they became irritable so the best thing to do was hike to town and buy them some "tebaccer." So I would saddle my pony and ride to Lumsden.

Lumsden was merely a hamlet in those days. T.B. Hill from Regina had a little store there. When I went to high school in Regina, I boarded at the Hills, or at least lived there. I helped Mrs. Hill with her work and got breakfast for them before going to school. T.B. had a brother living with them and working in T.B.’s store in Regina.

That was the winter "La Grippe" was so very prevalent and so many in the east died from its ravages. I contracted the Grippe and was unable to be up. Mrs. Hill made me get up and go down to a store for some medicine. I thought I’d die before I got to the store. It was owned by a Mr. Mowat or Moffat, I can’t remember which. When I went in the store this man said, "Child, go home, and get into bed." I told him Mrs. Hill had made me get up, and was he mad. When I went back to the house, Mrs. Hill said, "If you are going to be sick, Minnie, you may as well go home. That was around Christmas time, so I went home. After the Christmas season, Annie and I both went to Regina to school. I boarded with a Mr. and Mrs. Elm who were keeping the Men’s Club there. Mrs. Elm was very nice, but he was a nincompoop. Old Dixie Watson, J.C. Pope, Amede Bourget from the Government House, and many others belonged to this Club. Old Dixie Watson had a wife who at one time had been an opera singer and who was addicted to drink. She used to stop children, as well as adults, on the street and try to persuade them to get liquor for her.

All this should have been related long before this, but now I have started I may as well finish.

It was there while I was at the Elm’s there was a Calico Ball being given in the old town hall. The Elms had a friend, a George Hambly, who wanted Mrs. Elm to let me go with him to the ball. Now, Mother never would countenance such a thing. Anyone who would go to a ball was on the straight road to the fellow with the cloven hoofs and the horns and the pitchfork.

Mrs. Elm was determined I should go and bought material for a dress for me and made the dress. It was white muslin over pink sateen, very pretty when finished with a full skirt right to the floor. I did such a terrible trick for a girl, bought a pair of slippers and, of all things, an ostrich fan—ivory ribs with ostrich down—cost $2.50. I should have been spanked. Annie heard I was going to the dance and she came over and gave me the dickens. Of course, I balled my eyes out. Dixie Watson had come into the Club—it was downstairs and we were living upstairs—and he came up to see what was wrong. He thought I was a bit of all right (old soak that he was). However, he persuaded Annie to let me go. Finally, Annie said, "All right, Minnie, we’ll get you ready and you can go, but be a good girl." I was only fifteen and should have been spanked. Of course, I had a wonderful time, and didn’t get home until three o’clock in the morning.

There were a lot of Mounted Police there and I met several who wanted me to come up a few nights later to their dance at the barracks. They would send sleighs down from the barracks to pick up those who were going. Of course, I couldn’t go alone so I went over to a friend’s house, knowing they were going, and went with them.

At the Calico Ball, I met a Sgt. Major DeBarr who afterwards plagued my life for a time. I didn’t like him. He had come to see me one day and begged me to go with him to a dance, but I refused. He was so mad at me for refusing he left in a huff and went out and gave his beautiful black horse a licking before he took to the saddle. He had told me his father was German and his mother French, or vice versa, and that if I’d be his girl he would teach me to speak both languages, but I said no, no. I may have missed a great opportunity (har’) but I think not.

At the dance at the Barracks, DeBarr wanted to dance with me, but I re-fused. He was on duty that night at the dance and it was near the end of the dance when he asked me and, when I wouldn’t dance with him, he came in a little while later and closed the dance, or ordered it over. That night saw the end of my frisk-a-vating. I went no more.

The next night after the Calico Ball, Dixie Watson and J.C. Pope came up-stairs (Mr. Pope had a room upstairs for the winter --(his wife had gone east) -- singing "For She Was the Belle of the Ball." Then another fellow came up and said it was between May McDougal and me. Guess it was Miss McDougal. She was sophisticated and I was green. However, that ended my frivolities; I didn’t want my soul jeopardized.

In the spring of that year, Mother was ill and there was nothing for me but to go home and take care of her and the three younger children and cook for Father and all the family. Annie was home that summer too. She had taken her certificate, allowing her to teach in the Northwest Territories. If I remember rightly, we still were Assinaboia, Northwest Territories; had not been made Saskatchewan. Do not know just when we were formed into provinces.

Well, to go back.

As I mentioned a long while back, Eddie was born July 24, 1895. He was born about five o’clock in the morning. Mrs. Denzin and Aunt Beckie Swartz officiated. How glad we were when we found he was going to live. He was very tiny; his fingers were like little straws but he was precious. Everyone in the neighborhood came to see him. The first Sunday after he was born, there was fourteen people in to see him. That night I really had wheels in my head. That was the time, Irma, I have told you of the lunch George prepared for me, who had to nurse; a lunch of two soda crackers and a glass of water.’

Mrs. Denzin went home that day, seeing it was Sunday and George was home to look after the baby and me. I was to have chicken that day and she said she would leave it cooking on the stove and George could serve it; that there would be some nice chicken soup for me. Well, I kept asking George when it would be ready. I was growing very hungry (my lunch of two soda crackers and a glass of water not being satisfactory). George would say, "Oh, it isn’t done yet." Finally, about three in the afternoon, to satisfy me, he brought pan, chicken and all in to show me. Mrs. Denzin had never cut the chicken up, but placed the fowl in the pan whole. I was so mad. and so disgusted when I saw the thing lying there with its neck protruding at one end of the pan and its legs sticking up. I didn’t ever want to see a chicken again. When, if ever, it was ready to eat, I do not remember.

Somehow I got well. This was the time Mrs. Denzin left and had to go home to "look after the pigs and childer," according to Mr. Denzin. Of course, after a while we forgave the Denzins and became quite good friends. Mr. Denzin used to come over quite often, sit and tell us all sorts of stories about his early life and how he was a small boy; how they came in a sail boat and were eight weeks on the ocean. They, his parents, must have settled in the east somewhere, because he and his family came from the east out to Tregarva to live. They came to Tregarva right after George and I were married and settled right across from Uncle Tom’s place. Whether it was a homestead and preemption, or whether he bought, I couldn’t say, but I rather think it was the former. He used to talk and talk and it all was in his broken English. He would try to quote saying he had heard and sometimes get things so mixed up. For instance, somewhere he had heard some old copy book proverbs; I say "heard" because I do not believe he could read or write. He had heard "Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today." He would get it twisted like this: "Never do tomorrow what you can’t do today." Of course, we would laugh too, thinking we were laughing at his bright wit.

Our collie dog didn’t like him and if he (the dog) saw Mr. Denzin coming near our house, it was a race between Mr. Denzin and our dog as to which one got there first. If the dog got to the door first, Mr. Denzin couldn’t get in until one of us went out and subdued the dog. It was fun to see them race for the door.

One winter while we were on Uncle Tom’s place there was a wedding in one of the neighbor’s house. Annie Crispin and Joe Freethy were going to be married. We were invited but George was working for the Massey Harris Company over at Moose Jaw. My brother Reuben was at our place (Uncle Tom’s) taking care of the stock. Well, of course, I wanted to go to the wedding. It was going to be the biggest event of a lifetime and everyone else was going. I had a nice new black dress made, all trimmed up with beautiful jet trimmings and all pepped to go. Mrs. Denzin said she would keep Eddie for me so I could have a nice time without having to look after the baby.

Well, George arrived home a day or so before the wedding, from Moose Jaw and had to go back to Moose Jaw the day after he came home. He didn’t want me to go to the wedding! Of all things! He brought me a cute little watch (the open faced one, which you, Irma, are taking care of for me. You and Hunt are to have one watch each when I pass on), but I could have the watch on one condition only; that was, if I would not go to the wedding. I said no thanks, I was going to the wedding!! Well, then, I could go to the wedding and have the watch if I would promise I wouldn’t dance with Bill Petrie. I didn’t promise, but I went to the wedding, kept the watch and danced with Bill Petrie.

Then Amelia Denzin got married to Will Seed, who was a widower, and whose wife had died a year or so before. It was quite a wedding too, but no dancing. We sang hymns out of little red backed hymnbooks. I do not remember whether Amelia’s two sisters, Beckie and Hannah, who were working in Regina, were home for this wedding or not. They were working as housemaids for some wealthy people in Regina—Beckie for Mrs. Marsh and Hannah for someone else. When their pay-day came, Mr. Denzin used to go to Regina without fail and collect their pay until one day Beckie’s mistress wouldn’t allow him to take Beckie’s money. She told him Beckie needed her money to buy clothes for herself. They both were nice girls and pretty too.

Mr. Denzin was the man who when Uncle Tom asked him why he built such a small house when he had such a large family, replied, "I can always ‘tach to." Beckie Denzin later on married Uncle Isaac Sutton. His first wife died in childbirth when their second child was born. They had a little girl a few years be-fore who died from summer cholera—a beautiful little girl named Myra, after Myra McNeice, a sister of George, and who had married some railroad man and lived in the Coronado Hotel in San Diego for years. They were rumored to be quite well off.

Then, after Aunt Amy’s death (Isaac’s wife), Alma Sutton came out from Ontario to keep house for Uncle Isaac. She was a lovely woman and we became fast friends. After Isaac married Beckie Denzin, Alma went back to Ontario to live. More about that later on.

When Eddie was little more than a week or two old, I was giving him his morning bath and noticed a stain on his band that looked like blood. I was alone with him, George being at Moose Jaw and Reuben over at our own place. Eddie cried so much after he was two weeks old that he must have ruptured or did something to his navel. I was so frightened, I wrapped him up in a shawl and carried him in my arms all the way - a mile to old Mrs. Seed. She told me to make a good pad out of cotton, which I must sear on the stove, and keep it tightly bandaged on his stomach, which I did. I was so afraid he might die, as my other two babies died, but he got better and was such a darling baby boy. So pretty, with his blue eyes and his golden curls. Then, when he was one year and two months old, he became ill with cholera infantum and nearly died.

One day he had been restless, and in the afternoon commenced vomiting. He couldn’t keep anything on his stomach and I didn’t know what to do. George was still at Moose Jaw and Reuben working over on our own place and wouldn’t be home until six o’clock, when he would come home to milk the cows. I was sitting on the rocking chair holding Eddie in my arms, when he took a convulsion and stiffened right out in my arms. I thought he was dead. After a while he came out of it and I laid him down on the bed and ran and called Mrs. Denzin who came over. Reuben came home at six o’clock and, finding Eddie so sick, just ate a bite of supper, got on a horse and rode all the way in to Regina, fifteen miles, to Dr. Willoughby for medicine for Eddie. It was after midnight when he, Reuben, got back home. The medicine checked the vomiting and he had no more convulsions, but the diarrhea continued for some time. Poor, deal little Eddie. He lay just like a dead baby, and I was so alone. We sent for George, but George never thought anything serious and didn’t then. However, he came home but went right back to Moose Jaw. When harvest started, he came home for that.

Eddie was so sick’ Isaac Sutton used to come down nearly every night to see how he was. He would sit beside Eddie’s cradle (by the way, Mrs. Freethy gave me the cradle; her children, all the way down from Lizzie had used it) and watch the little boy. One night, he said, "Eddie is getting better; see, Minnie, he is sleeping with his hands up by his face, and his hands are closed tight. When a baby is sick, his hands are never up like that." Isaac was a great comfort to me in those days.

Eddie had begun to walk when he took this sickness; he must have been ill a month or so, maybe not quite so long, but anyway, he used to creep over to the stairway and go up on his hands and knees. There was no way of keeping him down. If I’d put a chair across the stairs, he’d pull it away and up he would go. He was afraid of raw meat. He would call it "kitty" and wouldn’t go near it, so one day, George was cutting up some raw meat and he took a piece, about four inches long and an inch wide and laid it on one of the stair steps. Presently, Eddie came along and started up the stairs in great glee; he came to the step where the meat was lying and yelled "kitty" and backed down the stairs. I never had any more trouble with him climbing the stairs. But I hated to see George put that piece of meat there!

During his illness, when his supply of medicine was done, I wanted George (he was home then) to go to Regina for medicine for him; his diarrhea was still bad. But George wouldn’t; he said Eddie was all right. Mr. Freethy said he should have more medicine. Mr. Freethy was there helping with the threshing; also some other men. I was frantic because I knew Eddie was far from well. Finally, on a Sunday morning, Jack Williamson, one of the men working for us, decided he would go in to Regina for the day. Men didn’t work on Sunday in Canada, at that time, so I asked Jack if he would go to Dr. Willoughby and get me some medicine for Eddie. I gave him a note to the doctor, explaining Eddie’s condition. Jack did this for me, for which I was very grateful.

When Eddie got well, one day I was putting the lining in a quilt, which I was making. Eddie crept over to the stairway and tried to get up on the lower step to sit there and couldn’t manage to do it. He came back to me, gave a big sigh, and sat down beside me. I was sitting on the floor. He didn’t try to move. He was very weak. But, gradually he grew stronger and finally well and strong. He was such a dear little boy.

One time when George was home from Moose Jaw, he butchered five pigs. It was in the wintertime and Reuben was home too. How I hated butchering time. Well, he cut up the hogs and, I suppose, he packed them down for summer use. That, I do not remember, but what I do remember, he instructed Reuben and I were to make headcheese. He, George, went back to Moose Jaw and left us to cut up and clean out eyes, brains, noses, etc. A horrible task! Very objectionable! Then I had to cook the awful things, take the bones out and spice it and work it up with my hands until it was all smooth, then pack it in crocks or pans. When it cooled, it would be all jellied and, as far as taste goes, it was all right. But, after that siege, I couldn’t look a hog in the face. That winter, church used to be held in our house. There weren’t very many people came, but one family came regularly. There were at least four in that family who never failed to come to worship, principally to stay for supper and eat headcheese and other food. They were so hungry and so poor they would have eaten grasshoppers if they were cooked. They surely enjoyed a meal, which they never had at home.

Our men used to get our wood down in the Qu’Appelle Valley, or over in the bluffs, a long way from home. One time, they had left home fairly early after tending the stock and bringing in enough wood for the day. Father was with me part of this winter. Well, this day, a blizzard came up in the afternoon and I felt sure the men, George and Reuben, would not make it home, so I decided I had better water the stock before nightfall. Night comes early on the Canadian prairies.

We had five cows, three oxen, several head of horses and some young stock. All these had to be untied and turned out and I had to run down about an eighth of a mile and draw water up with a bucket on a hook on a long pole. Of course, I didn’t water the lot at one trip. I let the oxen out first, then ran down to the well to water them, and by the lime I got down to the well, the oxen were down on their knees and some of them sticking their necks, heads, into the well opening and bawling for water. Believe it or not, there was hardly a bit of covering on the well, just a few odd boards. Everything was piled up with ice; the water, though, was one ice mound and I couldn’t get very much water, but anyway, the oxen drank it up as fast as I could draw it. When they got too cold, they headed on the gallop for the stable. I followed up and tied them in their stalls. They knew enough to go to their respective stalls.

Then I took the cows down and went through the same performance, got them back in the barn, or stable, then the young stock. I think there were only three or four and they didn’t drink much; then the horses. There were only a couple of teams, the most of our horses were running out.

Finally I was through with everything but the pigs. I fed them their grain and carried some water from the house for them. Then I had to go up on top of the stable and shove oat straw down through a hole in the sod roof, then go down in the stable and fork it into the mangers for the animals to eat. It was blowing pretty hard, but no snow falling, though it was drifting badly. I really wasn’t so very cold. I had a pair of Dolger felt shoes on, a pair of buckskin mitts, with a pair of double knit woolen mitts underneath and a leather jacket.

George and Reuben did not come home that night; not until the next afternoon, about three o’clock. I did not try watering the stock again. The men had tried to make it home but they said they got so cold, though walking behind the load of wood, that they actually began to get stiff. They were coming up the old Hudson Bay trail and when they pulled into Jack Kilus’ place, a log house where Jack and his wife lived, they stayed all night. They got home the next afternoon about three. They said the stable at Jack’s was about as cold as outside, but the wind couldn’t bother the horses, poor beasts. Jack Kiln used to say his wife "wasn’t much for looks but she was good for ‘sthrong.’ " They were poverty poor. One day when Father was carrying the mail from Craven to Tregarva, he went in to Jack Kilus’ to get warm and Mrs. Kilus had a dress made of coarse flour sacks. Father said across the rump of her dress were four big xxxx’s with the name "Hungarian Patent" printed in big red letters. That was the brand of the flour. The cheapest flour made.

I know it sounds incredible that I should say I did all this in the freezing cold weather, but it is absolutely true. Many women had it to do when their men were storm-stayed somewhere. That is the only time I watered all the stock. Poor beasts, they would suffer so without water. If they were running out and could find a straw stack to shelter them, they were all right, they would get some snow in the straw which would quench their thirst to some extent, but standing in the stables eating dry feed, they got no moisture at all. All our horses used to run out in the winter, except the teams we used for driving and hauling wood or grain. They would come in, in the spring of the year, rolling fat and with a coat inches long. No matter how deep the snow, they would paw right down to the grass; there would be acres of snow pawed not all in one place but in patches. People who never lived on the prairie will not believe it when you tell them how horses run out and live and grow fat in the winter. Some nights when it was bright moonlight, the coyotes would be on the rampage and start their weird howling, it would frighten the horses so badly, and they would all come on the gallop to the barns and sheds.

One thing I will say, if there should be only a few coyotes in a pack, when they start howling, they sound like there were a million.

I have known people who said the coyotes would follow them miles behind their sleigh in the wintertime. In fact, my Father and brother were coming home with a load of wood one cold moonlight night and several coyotes followed them for miles. They never did molest anyone and must have followed along out of curiosity. They were called prairie wolves, or coyotes, the "a" pronounced as "i."

H D.B. Ketchen and his wife, who was the daughter of a cousin of my mother came out in the hunting season for a few days one year, when we were living at Uncle Tom’s place; then, too, after we moved back to our own farm. He was a grand fellow. He afterwards went to South Africa in charge of a bunch in the Strathcona Horse. My brother Harry was in the group. That was in the South African War, the winter of 1899, the winter you, Huntley were born. I believe it was in the fall or winter. Lord Strathcona outfitted this group. I believe old Colonel Steel of the North West Mounted Police was in command. George, your father, went in to Regina to see Uncle Harry off. I, of course, with my three little children, had to stay home. But this was after we moved back to our own place, so maybe I am ahead of my story.

We must have lived on Uncle Tom’s place until 1897. We moved back there in the spring of the year. When Eddie was born, on Uncle Tom’s farm, our dog, Collie, (a nickname for Colonel) was very jealous of him. For a long time, he used to often stay with me in the house when the men were away. After Eddie came, George brought him in and showed him the baby lying beside me in the bed. He took one long look at the baby, turned and went out and it was weeks before we could persuade him to come in the house.

When Eddie learned to creep, I had a hard time keeping him indoors. We had no screen door and at every opportunity he would get outside. Colonel had paid absolutely no attention to the baby, but I felt a little dubious about letting the baby go near him. Well, one day I had set a pan of milk out in the yard and gone about my work. All at once I missed my baby’ I ran outside. I had forgotten to close the door and Eddie had gotten out. To my surprise, here was the dog drinking milk out of the pan and Eddie was standing up by the dog, hanging on to the dog’s hair and jigging up and down, laughing like everything’ From that time on, Colonel, this dog, was Eddie’s constant companion.

It was during this time we were living on Uncle Tom’s farm that Thornton Freethy came over to help while Reuben was away somewhere. I think Reuben (my brother) had gone over to work for Charlie Martin in Wascana. Thornton had a lot of trouble with his eyes. He had had some illness when a tiny baby that left him very nearsighted and there was other trouble too. He was a nice kid and brought his violin along with him. He could play beautifully. He was a brother to Lizzie Freethy of whom I have previously written.

After that winter, Thornton always came to our place for a visit; he would stay a week or two and I always enjoyed him so much. He went home one day in the bright sunshine shining on the snow and went totally blind. He always said, though, he would rather be blind than deaf or dumb. He knew what everything looked like; the shape and color of every leaf and flower, of birds and beasts. In fact of everything known to the rest of us. He said he could hear music and the song of birds and he was content. He could knit socks as fast as any woman. He would, in threshing time, go around from one grain bin to another in the fields, pick up a handful of grain, talk about the sample and knew whether it was wheat, oats or barley. He would tell how the mosquitoes would follow them in a cloud as they were driving along the road to town. To hear him talk, one would never know he was totally blind.

I often wonder now, why, during his childhood years, his parents never took him to a good eye specialist and had his eyes tested. Probably there was nothing could be done for him, and then probably there were no good eye specialists to be found, and then, again, they probably did not have the money to pay a specialist.

In the days when Thornton and I were young, people in moderate circumstances never did pay much attention to the ailments of their children; or, in fact, to the ailments of themselves. Oh, they weren’t cruel or hardhearted. I think they were fatalistic to a certain extent; not that they would have considered themselves in that light. They were good to their children and, in the majority of cases, good honest people. Of course, there were exceptions.

There was a large family of the Freethys. They came from near Nottawasaga in Ontario, I believe. The Crispins came from that vicinity too.

Something has just returned to my memory, which I’ll write about now before it slips my memory altogether.

When we used to have our Literary Society and met each week in the early part of our life after we were married, and which I should have recorded while writing about our good times then, after our business part of the meeting was over, though we didn’t have much business, and our weekly paper, "The Gopher" was read, and our editor for the following week appointed, we sang songs, gave what we called recitations, had dialogues and speeches and then danced old fashioned dances.

I do not believe Aunt Lizzie or Uncle Tom ever attended these social events. Aunt Lizzie had too many little children to take along and out of loyalty to her, Uncle Tom stayed home. Now, this part of my story took place before they rented the farm to us and before they moved to Regina to live.

At these literary festivities, George was the favorite singer and the favorite song with the crowd was "My Bonnie Black Bess." It had about fifteen or twenty verses to it. Nearly all songs of that day were lengthy. It was about a highwayman, named Dick Turpin and his beautiful horse (mare) Black Bess. I can’t remember much of it, but part of it ran like this:

"No vile whip or spurs didst thy side ever gall
For none did you need (drawn out like n-e-e-e-d)
You would come at my call."

Then, there must have been a posse after him because it went on:

"They never shall get you, my Bonnie Black Bess"
And finally he, Dick Turpin, must have been about to be captured, for he exclaims in this song,

"Oh, God, I have shot you, my Bonnie Black Bess."
The crowd would sit spellbound through the long song and at its finish there would be a great round of applause.

He liked to meet at Mr. Seed’s house because there was an organ there and usually Joe Crispin, or Sadie Swartz, to accompany whoever was singing. Then, too, Isaac Sutton always had his guitar and Mr. Freethy his violin. Mr. Freethy was a wizard with his violin. When you’d hear him turning up his violin, it did something to your heart and feet. Of course, our dances were the old fashioned square dances mostly or the Virginia Reed and some schottisches. Favorite one was "The Spanish Cavalier." No one knew how to waltz correctly. We used to try it but, for the most part, it was a fizzle. I really don’t know when or how it suddenly came to me, but it did. Then I was in demand. Lord knows, I used to practice the step and the time in our little shack when I would be left alone, which was plenty, goodness knows.

There was an Irishman who used to come frequently to our literary society affairs by the name of Jack Chambly; a queer little fellow, and every one would coax him to sing. He sang in a monotone all the way through his song. I think he knew only one song at that, "Nell Flaggerty’s Beautiful Drake." I do not remember what all the "Beautiful Drake" was noted for, but someone evidently shot the poor thing. There were plenty of Irish cusses—not bad ones, but to the effect, "May this and that happen to the one who shot the poor thing," and it ended up, "For murthering Nell Flaggerty’s Beautiful Dthrake." Jack would sing with the greatest gusto! Evidently this was a wonderful "dthrake." It was a long song and each verse ended with "Nell Flaggerty’s Beautiful Dthrake."

Mr. Crispin, the father of the Crispin family, was a saintly old man. He always made me think of the description of Moses in the Bible. He had a long white wavy beard. It hung in waves way down on his chest. He was superintendent of our Sunday School; also taught the Bible class. One Sunday an argument arose over baptism. Mr. Crispin was a staunch Baptist. Mr. Freethy was at that time, and I guess always, a Methodist. The subject of baptism came up, and Mr. Crispin being the Baptist declared one couldn’t be fully baptized without being immersed. Mr. Freethy objected to that statement. Mr. Crispin stuck to his guns. Mr. Crispin stuck to his guns. Mr. Freethy said if he, Mr. Crispin, wanted to believe that, fine, but he had no right to try to teach that to others. Mr. Crispin said Christ gave the command, "Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel." Mr. Freethy stood by his guns, too, and wouldn’t have Mr. Crispin teach salvation only through immersion taught to his children or in the Sunday School. Mr. Crispin got up, took his hat and walked out. Left the Sunday School flat’ His daughters followed him. One day, we went to visit the Browns. Mrs. Brown just had a new baby. It was on toward the spring of the year, because the roads were beginning to break up. The Browns lived in a sod house built in the side of a small hill. The snow had drifted around the house, and they had a walk dug out, just room for a person to walk through and about three feet high; on each side of the walk the snow was banked up. It had been thawing that day and the water from the melting snow had been running back into the house. Not so very much but enough to make the floor damp. If they didn’t keep the snow shoveled off the roof, then when it melted, it would drip down through the roof. Mrs. Brown said in the summer time when it rained, the only dry spot she could put the children to sleep was under the table. Mr. Brown liked his pipe and tobacco, when he had no tobacco, if there was any tea in the house, he would smoke that. Very seldom there was any tea.They lost one of their boys by drowning in the creek that ran from the springs which rose below the Freethy’s place and ran down through the Seed’s farm and Uncle Tom’s place and on down to the Qu’Appelle River. I believe they, the Brown children, and maybe some others, I don’t know, were playing there. The creek or the water was not very high, but somehow one of the boys must have taken cramps; something happened, and he drowned. Some of the children got back to their home and notified the parents who came at once. No first aid was given, and Mrs. Brown held him in her arms all the way home, just like a baby. Mrs. Brown was a daughter of Mr. Crispin and a sister of Annie and Tory Crispin. Joe, Dick and Will Crispin were brothers of the girls. There was another sister married to Mr. Blackstock.

They saw very hard times there in Tregarva. Mrs. Blackstock said she never ate so much boiled wheat in her life as she did after coming to Tregarva. To get the full effect of this word, "boiled," put your tongue flat in your mouth, make your mouth like a big round onion. Tory, whose full name was Victoria, was a very pretty girl. She and Annie were both lovely girls. Joe was a good looker too. He later became a veterinary, and very good too. Dick was rather a flighty boy. He claimed to be a detective; but I never heard of him detecting anyone or anything:. Will was a big gangling fellow, but had a good kind heart. His wife's name was Clara. All the time she was carrying her first child, she used to sit in her rocking chair, holding a cat, face toward her, on her lap, looking into the cat's face. Her family said she marked her child and that when her baby was born, the baby looked like a cat!

Clara, the wife and mother used to tell some tall stories about her baby's accomplishments. One she used to tell, was how they wakened one morning. They had the baby sleeping in bed with them, and here the baby had her feet against "Williums" back and was "shoving him right out of bed." The baby was only about three weeks old at the time. One time she was telling me she didn't care for "mood hens" William shot for food. She said she had cooked the "mood hen" (meaning mud hen) but it wasn't very good. I should say not. No other people ever ate a "mood hen" as she called them.

Joe Crispin married Sophia Adams, a girl from Ontario. Finally, old Mr. Crispin died and the family broke up. Annie had married Joe Freethy, Tory married Ralph Hardy, one of the Hardys who lived down the Valley. They moved to, or near Saskatoon. The Blackstocks also moved away. What became of Will Crispin and his family, I do not remember.

Maggie Petrie married Bob Cooper, who lived only half a mile from our place. Maud, her sister, died. Teena, another sister, married and went to Banff to live. George and I called on her when we were at Banff, taking Vinnie (Aunt Lizzie's daughter) with us. When Aunt Lizzie found out where we went, she blew up. Teena was an aunt to Maggie Petrie's fatherless child. All this was later, after we moved back to our own place.

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