This & That

One cold stormy day in the winter, George and Uncle Joe lit out for Regina. They took the bobsleigh (one bob folded back on the other) and their team and set off, the two of them, and of course I was left home with the children. They got home somewhere around eight at night, reeking with brandy or whiskey. They weren’t drunk. I suppose they bought themselves a bottle to fortify themselves against the cold. Anyway, I was mad and gave them the dickens! They both swore they each had only one sip out of the bottle, but the bottle was nearly empty. Of course, I wouldn’t believe them, but they still declared themselves innocent of drinking the contents of the bottle.

They had bought a new cutter in town and had tied it on behind the folded bobsleigh and Joe had ridden in the cutter; why, I don’t know. Anyway, he had ridden home in the cutter, while George sat on the bobsleigh and drove the horses.

It seems they had each taken their "sip" from the bottle, then Joe had put the cork back in and laid it on the seat of the cutter. He hadn’t put the cork in tight and the whiskey had all run out, all but about two or three teaspoonfuls and had saturated the cutter seat cushion. This was their story, which I scouted. Joe got mad, and he said, "Well, by God, I’ll prove it to you," went out and brought the cushion of the cutter seat in and held it up to my nose and said, "Smell that." Too true, the cushion was saturated with booze!!

George said I should be ashamed to doubt their word, when Joe wouldn’t let him finish the little bit in the bottle because he - Joe - said, "No, I’m saving it for Minnie." That was me. Of course, I do not suppose either one of them had me in their mind when they bought the bottle.

One time when Irma was quite little; in fact, only about two or three months old, we had been having several days rain and the children had been con-fined to the house most of the time. So, when the weather cleared, the children begged to go out. I said they could if they did not get in the puddles of water lying around in the yard. They assured me they wouldn’t even go near the puddles, let alone go in them; so out they went, the three boys — Eddie, Tommy and Huntley.

I was busy washing and suppose paid no attention to what they were doing. Finally just as the men were coming in to noon dinner, I spied the children cavorting in the biggest puddle of all — mud and water from their feet to their necks. Did I bring them in! I did, and stripped all their clothes off them, put each one in the tub full of water, scrubbed the mud off them, put their night clothes on them and ordered them upstairs to bed. I had to put a11 their clothes right into the water in the washer and wash through many waters to get the mud and slime out.

They, the boys actually looked as slimy as pigs that had been wallowing in a mud puddle. I was so annoyed! Tommy and Huntley went up to bed quite resigned, but poor Eddie, his dignity was hurt and, though Eddie seldom shed a tear no matter how badly he was hurt, paused on the lower step of the stairs and two big tears rolled down his cheeks and he said, "Mamma, if you will let me stay up, I’ll swing the baby." (He hated taking care of the baby.) Irma was the baby and George had made a hammock out of a box and strung it with a rope - clothesline rope - to the ceiling. When Irma, was cross we would give the box a gentle push and it would swing for several minutes; the motion was soothing and quieting. If there was one thing Eddie hated, it was to be asked to swing the baby; he just abhorred that task. But the poor little fellow would swallow his pride and "swing the baby" rather than suffer the ignominy of being put to bed in the daytime with his nightclothes on. Of course I relented and let him "stay up and swing the baby."

They were pretty good little boys, after all. Eddie always remembered the circus he had seen when he was quite small and he used to "acrobat" as he called it every day. He would have Tommy help him carry the sawhorses and all the board and sticks and boxes he could find right up to the front of the house and perform their stunts there. Huntley was too small to do much of the carrying but he did his share of whooping and yelling. Their father would get so vexed about all the junk they would bring up to the yard. He would carry it all back where it belonged every night and threaten what he would do to them if they ever brought it back. They brought it back every day and nothing happened.

One Saturday morning I had been very busy baking and cleaning and

Tommy had been naughty. I had put my custard or pumpkin pies in on a rack on the dining room table to cool. We ate in the kitchen. I also put Tommy in the dining room all by himself for punishment. He was very quiet and good, as I thought; he had to stay in there while the rest of us ate dinner. When we finished dinner

I went in to see how he was getting along. Here the little demon had eaten the entire filling out of the pies and left the shells devoid of their fillings. He, Tommy, was sitting on the stair steps; pumpkin spread over his face and looking quite contented. He felt a little more uncomfortable when I finished with him, but he had the pumpkin.

We used to have good times, the children and I playing together. We would play bear and all sorts of games and I’d tell them stories. We would play ball, anti-over, run-sheep-run and all the games we knew. I never was too busy to gather them round me for a little while every evening and sing to them. I would have the baby on my knee and the rest gathered around me singing along with me.

Then get them ready for bed, go upstairs with them and hear them say their prayers. One time, Tommy made a mistake; he got down on his knees by the bed, closed his eyes, put his little hands up by his face and started in, "One, two, three, four five," then realized he was not playing hide and go seek and looked so ashamed. However, I assured him it was all right and that God wouldn’t care. What a wonderful being God is! If we only would keep our childhood faith in Him.

One morning in the fall of the year, Bert Gemmel came over to our place saying Mable was very sick. Our men were away threshing at one of the neighbors and I had the three boys and Irma to take care of. However, I gave Eddie instructions as to the fires, and got promises from Tommy and Huntley to be good boys and do what Eddie told them. I couldn’t very well refuse to go, for Mable had stayed with me sometime when I was ill, and she and Bert had come over every night while George and Joe had gone looking for land at Zelandia.

I stayed all day with Mable, but left in time to get home before dark.

I had one horse and the buggy; Irma bundled and sitting on the buggy seat beside me. When I got home, Eddie was sitting by the table reading one of the Horatio

Alger books, but Tommy and Huntley were nowhere in sight. Eddie said they had gone over to Johnston’s, about two miles away and across a big ravine. Eddie said he couldn’t make them stay home. I think I left Irma with Eddie and I started out to look for the boys. Just as I got to the hill on one side of the ravine, I saw, coming down the hill on the opposite side of the ravine, the most outlandish outfit one could imagine. By this time it was quite dusk and I couldn’t make out what in the world it was. Finally, I decided it was a pony hitched up to some sort of a contraption. Every once in a while, the pony would give a half hop with its hinder parts. As they came close, I thought there was a big dog or something hunched up on a box behind the pony; then there was a hand sleigh behind the box with something else hunched on that.

All at once, as they came to the bottom of the hill, I realized it was Tommy and Huntley. They had the pony rigged out in a harness with no britchen strap. Just tugs fastened to their makeshift sleigh, and on coming down the hill, the box or sleigh would run up on the pony’s heels, then she would give this funny jump. What I thought was a dog, was my brave Tommy hunched up on his hands and knees. Huntley was squatted on the hand sleigh that was tied on the back of the box.

Just as they came along to where I was waiting for them, a coyote or two started howling; sounded quite close, and were the two boys frightened. This was one time I did not try to allay their fears. Huntley was frightened when he heard them howl and I told him that he never again must go away like that because he might get lost and have to stay away all night and we couldn’t find him and he wouldn’t know hot to get home. I took Huntley in the buggy beside me, and Tommy drove the caravan home. Believe me, they were a pair of frightened boys by the time they got home. Irma couldn’t have been more than two years old at this time. When Eddie and Tommy started to go to school, they first walked all the way there and back. It must have been about three miles to the little schoolhouse. One morning they noticed something sticking up in a furrow which ran along our school land property. George had bought this piece of land, a half section, and the furrow was a mile long. The two little boys went over to investigate and here it was, the two ears on a prairie wolf that was lying sound asleep in the furrow. They must have crept up very quietly because the animal never wakened. I think they were brave little boys to go on to school and then to walk home past the place where the prairie wolf had been sleeping. Eddie said, "We walked very quietly and made no noise." Eddie wrote a letter to the children’s column in the Family Herald and

Weekly Star, a Montreal paper, and told about their experience on their way to school. His letter was published and believe me we all got a kick out of it. We took the Family Herald and Weekly Star for years. That was the paper Mrs. Moses

Seed she liked so well, "because there is so much kindlin’ in it.

In those days, we used to go picking Saskatoons. We usually went in the wagon and took our lunch. We made a day of it. Then next day we picked them over and canned them. They grew in profusion and were very luscious. Then we found out about the frost berries. These grew on thorny bushes and the only way one could get the berries was to cut the branches off and beat them and the berries would tumble off. We first would spread a blanket on the ground, beat the branches and let the berries fall on the blanket. We had seen the Indians doing this. The berries were a bright red but funny thing, when one boiled them, the water was milky white. They were supposed to make a bright red jelly. The first time I tried making jelly of them, I was disgusted and was going to throw this white milky water away; then out of curiosity decided to try a little of it with some sugar and, to my surprise, when I added the sugar, it all turned red! The result was I finished making the lot.

There was an abundance of wild fruit in Saskatchewan, such as Saskatoons or June berries, red and chokecherries, gooseberries, black currants, and some red currants. Mrs. Purdy always made catsup from the red seed apple of the wild roses. It was very, very good.

Go to Contents, Next or Index