Shank's Pony

Getting to and from school during my first six years of formal education was an adventure in itself as parents were expected to provide transportation, the method of which was not a concern to the Department of Education nor it seems to the Child Welfare Department.

Most of the time getting to and from our little red school house on the prairie involved the packing of lunches, jars of water,  and homework into a bike basket; and the student travelling 2 1/2 miles to and from school across country roads, braving whatever weather the had to offer--wind, rain, hail, or dust twister; through puddles or  up hills over gravel roads in a countryside with foxes, badgers, and  coyotes on a one gear bicycle that in my case had been my mother's when she was 19 (I was six) and my sister used our aunt's. The only size adjustment available was the raising or lowering of the seat.  Full pedals were not always part of the bicycle equipage , nor were chain guards or handlebar covers.


Riding a bicycle after a rain storm would often involve  of  a lot of pushing as the mud would jam in the fender , and if you didn't have a fender the back of the  your jacket and pants would be splashed with mud and water until you were surely soaked by the time you reached your destination.

One  school afternoon during a particularly heavy downpour, the teacher telephoned a neighbouring farmer to ask if he would bring his tractor to help transport some of the students to a road where the gravel was heavier and where their parents could meet them to pick them up.  Bicycles would have to remain at the school for the night.

Before the farmer and the tractor arrived, this same teacher took the time to check every one's rubber boots  and shoes to make sure they were dry. If they weren't as dry as he thought they should be, he stuffed newspaper wading inside to make sure our feet were warm before we started on the bumpy albeit novel trip across pasture lands and quagmire of dirt roads in the rain.

I believe there were at least 5 students who somehow managed to 'hang on' on that perilous and wet journey. 

 My  Dad met the tractor with the 1/2 ton truck and got us safely home.  Upon our arrival , my mom took one look at the newspaper in my boots and went straight to the telephone and called the teacher's residence.  I heard her thanking this 19 year old fledgling pedagogue for his thoughtfulness and commonsense. 

I got a new pair of boots that next Saturday. We got the bikes home the next day. I think ( for safety sake??) the next week was when I started riding the horse (bareback) to school as I followed my sister  down the road as she rode the bike.  The horse could walk down any road --muddy or not.

My friend's mother would often refer to using  Shank's Pony to get to school--SHE could do that as she only lived 1/4 mile from school.

Reading/Writing, 'Rithmetic

 

It has been 54 years since I first started school.  I was 6 years old and attended a one room school house on the Canadian Praries. 

On that first day my hand had to stretch to get a good grip on  my 4 small lined notebooks along with my wooden pencil box, which I had recently received as a 6th birthday gift, and new tin lunch kit  resting on my knees while riding in the car with Mother at the wheel traveling over 2 1/2 miles of mostly dirt and gravel roads to the most mysterious and exciting place I could imagine. 

 I did not know what reading was,except for the fact that my sister read Thorton Burgess stories to me occasionaly. I really didn't know what school was except for going to see a couple of Christmas concerts, along with  whist drives and box socials that  our  family had attended.

Inside there was the following:

Fourteen students. Grades 1 to 9.
Two students in Grade One. 
Twenty books in the library. 
Blackboards truly black.
Painted wooden floors. 
Cream Can with 'fresh' water.
One teacher.
Several bicycles along the side of the school.
A barn on the far side of the playground.

I can clearly remember the teacher, a 19 year old, asking everyone in the school to come up and introduce themselves to the class. My sister, who was in Grade 7, commented to Mom when we got home that she was so embarrassed because I had talked so loud and so long. 

Although it didn't happen on the very first day, I do remember going to the board and being taught how to write my own name, learning the number  1-- (THAT was a cinch), and being allowed to use the biggest thickest red lead pencil I had ever seen. 

Then I was handed this book...

                   

...and after about three weeks of school I was handed this book...

            I remember being just a little bit suspicious of that 'Dick type' guy with the water hose.

 

 

   LOOK!

 

        I had learned to read!

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

Teachers that taught me some things somewhere sometime along the way:


Mr.  C. Datchko-  Grades 1 and 2
Miss Doreen Haggard -Grade 3
Mrs.  C. Kenyon- Grade 4 (until Thanksgiving--she was also my Dad's teacher at one time).
Mr. Irvin Krug-  Grades 4, 5, and 6.
Mr. Bing Runquist -Grade 7
Mr. John Brown- Grade 8
Mrs. Darlene McCall- Grade 9
Mrs. Louise Heuchert- Grade 10
Mr. Baines- Grade 11
Mr. Brian Clarke- Grade 12
Mr. Clay, Mr. Dosange, Mrs. Engle , Mr. Lavigne, Mrs. Krause, Mr. Pugh.




 

Rural Visitations

We very seldom entertain.  It is a rare evening when any one person or couple  will call up to say they would like to come over for a visit or ask us over for coffee.

  In fact, I would say that neither of the two scenarios have occurred at all in the year 2012, apart from the fact that one couple did stop in while passing through and stayed overnight just last week; otherwise, the need to  attempt to make clever conversation  with non family type people, along with something just as clever and even more tasty for lunch, is a rare demand upon my social psychic and cuisine art or  Cuisinart as my mood may dictate.

 As our company skills are rarely exercised  along with a lagging and rapidly weakening social etiquette there is also a certain lag in housekeeping procedure.  I would say  the lag is  probably in the area of the three week mark. 

But I digress. The purpose of this writing is not to comment upon the distress  of my housekeeping skills. It is, instead, intended to be a commentary upon the absence of friends and acquaintances not only  in our lives, but  indeed, in our whole physical area of the world. 

 There are few , near or far,  who are able, and moreover actually willing, to spend their own hard earned free time in the required shunning of their own habitual premises, which quite likely are more organized, cleaner, and uncluttered than mine,  and enter into the vast unknown, untidy, and if done on a spur of the moment as a hastily unannounced urge to visit, a surely unclean adobe; thus taking  the chance of being either served a lunch somewhere in the range of  rare and unnameable to something rare and uneatable.

 When my four children were all living at home there would be a squeal and a sort of terrorized shout out that included the words, "There's SOMEBODY here." in response to a surprise knock on the door. They would all then line up behind me, peering around pieces of furniture and little peek-a - boo hideeholes, nervous giggling and geegawing abounding,  as I opened the door to the unsuspecting guest.  These are the same children that would ask whenever I said it was time to clean up the house, "Why? Who is coming over?"

Yes,  rare and unexpected visitors are part and parcel of living in  most rural areas. 

 It puts me in mind of the time when my Mom , who lived 5 miles from the nearest store and having no vehicle for transportation, making arrangements for a friend to stop in with her car to pick Mom and us three children up for a trip to town one summer afternoon.   We had all been washed and dressed in clean clothes, hair combed and ribboned,  Mom in her town dress and hat, sitting in eager anticipation at the kitchen table waiting and waiting  for the expected friend to drive into the yard.  Finally we heard the sound of a  car motor approaching and Mom announced that it was time to go out the door and that we should hurry so her friend wouldn't have to wait. 

 I am not quite sure  who was more surprised to see us all standing  on the step and  smiling-- Mom or the Watkin's Man, as he  drove into the yard.  I wonder if he had ever had such a welcoming group come rushing out to greet him for the rest of his salesman career.

 

Shimmering Trees

Harvest #1

What a joyous  end of August Monday.  Blue blue skies. Warm sun. The sound of the voices of numerous types of flocking birds coming through the open windows. Golden Rods blooming and crops in various stages of turning from green, to lime, to beige, to yellow and ultimately to gold. The hint of chill in the mild breeze in spite of  the warm temperature serves as a reminder to treasurer these beautiful moments in this season of transition.

This is truly my favourite time of year.  I am not sure quite why this is so. Perhaps it is because for so many years autumn meant the excitement of harvest .

Harvest. 

The time when Everyone counted on the farm. Everyone had a job.  Everyone was focused on the same goal.  Everyone was on the same team.  

 If you were part of the younger set ( 12 and under)  you were probably employed as  an official 'gopher'--go for the hammer, go for the water jug, go for the grease gun, go for the oil can,  and if your legs are long enough, go for the half ton.

Women  not only kept the house  organized, garden weeded , laundry done  and cared for children during this weather dictated season; but they also served as fuel organizers, auger haulers, parts repair retrievers;  and sometimes some became combine operators, grain haulers, and swather operators.   This was the only time in rural Canada when male and female roles seem to merge--although it was the rare male that harvested AND organized the Meal in the Field.

 The Meal in the Field was a culinary art form that goes back as far as the beginning of agriculture itself.  The Ploughman's Lunch could perhaps be considered  the first Meal in the Field.  Some  of the more energetic  Meal makers would pack hot saucepans full of new potatoes, with pork chops or hamburgers in foil, along with another pot full of fresh  vegetables gleaned from the garden.  Dishes and pots were packed in cardboard boxes and newspapers for insulation , along with condiments and fresh bread/buns.  I have even heard of ice cream in coolers to compliment the warm apple pie or rhubarb crisp.   All this would be loaded into the backseat  and trunk of the car, along with kids and dogs , and driven across and around fields (avoiding the swaths and potential oil pan damaging rocks) to the waiting stomachs of harvesters who perhaps hadn't seen the inside of a building for eight hours or more.

 There is nothing quite like the smell of barely dust and hot potatoes, along with combine grease, complimented by the sound of the burring of grasshoppers to complete the portrait of dusty truck drivers and even dustier (pre cabs and air conditioning) combine operators sitting in the  stubble with coffee thermos close at hand as they partake of perhaps their only  hot meal since dawn and perhaps their last, if the wind stays up and the straw stays dry, until dawn returns the next morning.

I am not sure if those days really still exist.  I somehow doubt it as machinery is bigger, people work off the farm so much more,  convenience foods abound; along with the likelihood that the actual owner of the field is doing the harvesting is lower now as people often opt for custom combiners to do the harvest work.

I loved those days and love the memory of them.  I guess running around barefoot in the stubble with a piece of chocolate cake in hand is not something one forgets easily.

Sent by an Angel

There has been quite a bit of stress in my life lately.  There seems that the only news is bad news, or at least news that just creates more questions and tension.  Compound this  with some health , work , family ,  and financial issues  that have all seem to have chosen for whatever the heck reason to pile up in one little six week time slot called the Summer of 2012. My life seems like one great big balloon that is on the verge of bursting, leaving fractured and ragged pieces flying across the universe, never to be repaired.

This stress has had a tendency to build until sometimes one feels that the only way out is through some sort of ESCAPE  either physically or mentally.  My legs won't run very far any more to make that a truly viable option, nor do I have a passport so flying to the other side of the world can't be considered (for the time being).

As the physical escape , therefore, seems to be out of the question , it just leaves the escape in terms of mental coping.  Not an easy task.  A learnable skill so I am told, but until this mastery of thought control occurs I have many , many , moments, minutes, hours, afternoons, evenings, nights, and days of total and ultimate hopeless and endless despair.

I was in the throes of this type of what can only be described as luscious wallowing of self torment and self pity while out at our pretty much semi isolated campsite yesterday.   Only one other person had come with a boat  during the morning and had long since left.  There hadn't even been very many cars driving along the dust gravel road about a 1/2 mile away.

 There was only myself and my husband sitting in the hot afternoon sun.  All was quiet except the tinkle of  fish hooks  and fishing gear as my husband was fixing something on his reel . This sound was  interspersed with my long sighs of worry and angst every few moments.

It wasn't a real happy time at all.

Pity parties rarely are.

After about an hour of this painful self inflected hell , I heard the sound of a vehicle drive along the road and, consequently, saw it drive into our little closed in area.

It was someone we knew!  We hadn't seen him for at least two years.  What were the chances that he would be driving around and choose to stop right at our campsite?

This lone visitor parked his vehicle and came sauntering, almost skipping over to the campsite.  Smiling,  sun hat gingerly upon his head, and a spark of mischief in his eyes, as he started to tease us about how lazy we were spending time fishing instead of working.  After being offered a beer and a chair in the shade, the conversation turned to days gone by, fishing stories, and how much things have changed.

Then this visitor proclaimed with a grin and a slap on his knee, " You know life is too short to be unhappy.  It's good that you guys are taking every weekend off to go fishing.  You just never know what is going to happen around the corner. That's what we should all do--just be happy and forget about the other stuff."

He left soon after while proclaiming the next time he dropped in he would want some fish on the fire and a cup of coffee.

I thought about him as I watched the dust from his vehicle fly up on the gravel road as he headed to his empty home about 20 miles away.  I thought about what he had said.  The stuff about being happy and that life is too short.  
I also thought about his wife who is now lying continually in a nursing home unable to move, walk, or talk clearly due to a debilitating illness which she has suffered with for the last 30 years.  Our visitor never once complained that his life has been a series of continual losses of opportunities and dreams as he cared for and watched over his wife as her disease slowly destroys her mind and body.  When he did mention her he merely said that she was still in good spirits.
Would one say he was an angel?  Perhaps no.  But I  suspect he was sent by One.

Our visitor's jaw would fall open in astonishment and surprise if ever I would tell him so.  He'd pro bably say something like, "An angel?  If I had been sent by an angel, it should have sent me a fishing rod too."

PJ's

What is so practical about Practical Jokes? From my experience some of the most efficient and effectively funny 'jokes' were most decidedly impractical, involved a lot of work, and sometimes balanced on the precarious edge of being illegal if the matter was more closely examined. 

What is it exactly that is in our psychic that allows us to think  that cheap, simple and easily done trickery imposed on other human beings is so dang enjoyable and repeat worthy? 

 For instance, why does hiding behind a door and jumping out shouting BOO create such a sense of  superior self satisfaction when one is rewarded with the  consequential look of paled  shock and dismay, especially combined with the  inevitable scream of terror emitting from the target? What is it about putting cotton balls in someone's bed  in a University Dormitory that would cause one to giggle hysterically until an almost too late mad dash to the bathroom is required--indeed demanded? 

 Sometimes a scream isn't necessarily the desired outcome. Sometimes it is simply the blank look of jaw dropping surprise that is the aimed for effect--that look a deer gets in the glare of the headlights-- stunned confusion between flight and fright.

Some Practical Jokes are benign. Harmless.  Some are more inconvenient for the perpetrator(s) than for the target.  I hesitate to use the term victim because of the lack of ulterior motive  involved and as the goal is  usually nothing other than some  infliction and observation of  another's character revealing confusion.

 True  Practical Joke's are the manifestation of a usually not necessarily well thought out  idea  concocted  to inject a little bit of surprise and novelty to an otherwise humdrum world of both the perpetrator and the target.  I would classify the putting  of a walnut or pebble in someone's shoe as  benign, as is Frenching some one's bed--startling perhaps ,  surely confusing, but little harm done.

Somewhere further up the Practical Joke ladder of  the 'not so harmless' plots are those that involve substituting flour for bath salts, flour for sugar and /or salt for sugar.   Pushing the legal boundaries might be described in the sneaking (some might say breaking and entering) into the apartment of 6 young bachelors by 2 young bachelorettes ( who lived above them like the angels they weren't) while said young bachelors were out working. These 2 young bachelorettes  having gained entrance, proceeded to  switch clothes from one bedroom to another, move dishes from one cupboard to another, and yes, even substituted flour for salt in the shaker. The sounds of wonder and dismay upon the targets'(victim's?)  arrival home  could be clearly heard  by the angel ears  which were pressed in anticipation on the cold tiled floor above.

The stuffing of pantyhose,  high heeled shoes, and not so fashionable dress with newspaper and the placing a balloon with a painted face and wig on a string, and attaching this all to a broom stick, and the consequential  dangling  of the puppet type character dubbed "Mona" out  of the third floor apartment window until the tips of her shoes  gently tap tap tapped at these above named same bachelors' bedroom window directly below , until    the   sudden flying open of the window and   grabbing of 'Mona" (wig and balloon face et al) by an  oh so masculine and muscular   hairy  arm which pulled her loveliness into the dark recesses of this second floor  unkempt lair of malodorous maleness, could have been considered hovering on the edge of harassment in some circles and courts of law.  Luckily, Mona was found a few days later outside our apartment door lying prone , absent of shoes or wig,  balloon face all askance-- totally ravished and literally in pieces.  She was never the same.

Then there are the Practical Jokes that are not so practical, not so funny, and not so smart. I am talking Practical Jokes that have almost the opposite desired effect predicted by the perpetrators because the targets in this case either by their own interpretation or action in response to the  Practical Joke, or because of the lack  of good planning or 'plottery', the targets truly do become victims.


Some examples being:

Warning:

Children and/or Would Be Adults

Do Not  Try These at Home

-- The placing of a firecracker inside of a cigarette so that when the cigarette was lit it explods in the smoker's face.

-- Placing a stuffed 'dummy' into your roommate's bed so when said roommate returns home from late night shift she  is given such a 'start' that she screams in terror and then cries and hyperventilates hysterically.

-- Sending a much cherished Silver Tea Pot  along with two Turkey feet stuffed inside through the mail --mail delivery is MUCH too slow for this to be considered sanitarily successful.

... Sending  a professional looking one page letter in the mail with the words "..if this is not corrected immediately legal advice will be sought"  which has had Page 2 written at the top.  (Potential to wreck a good roommate relationship).

-- Being guests at a 25th Anniversary  Party and taking the master bed apart, then dragging it down to the basement where it was reassembled to be discovered by the 'bride and groom' after all the guests had left.  While not really harmful to the targets , it was harmful to the perpetrators as their backs were victims of their own creative musings.

--Having two preschoolers lie down behind a parked car and then run to the house to tell the mother that you drove over them. Totally BAD!


Pshaw! Practical Jokes are pretty much practiced with pleasantries planet-wide . Plots are planned and performed to please the perpetrator. These people playfully put preposterous plans in place to perform their precious and precocious ploys  designed  to placate the prankster's profound preference and proclivity for buffoonery.

Paperwork

We of the North American civilization (using the term loosely and  not without certain a sense of irony) take pride in our achievements in science, medicine, economics, and education. It is a fact that we have indeed surpassed the previous generations of ages past in having a standard of living that is  and would be the envy of all the world  since time began.  That is why I am fascinated when I see people pay money to buy stuff that is designed to make our houses look as if they are just a literal  stone's throw  away from looking like a cave.  

It seems that we who live inside have some innate desire to pretend we are outside. We place windows in walls that we have first built to keep out the outside and then place the windows so we can observe with a certain trepidation that very same outside. These windows range from peep holes to huge wall-to-ceiling openings of every shape  imaginable.  Some windows open  wide, some never open, and  some are tinted, but the one thing that is almost a given, is that they can all be  covered. That covering is usually a cloth or some painted board type material made to look like either a furred skin  with flower and fauna patterns embossed or printed, or a wooden wall (perhaps in a forest of trees?). These coverings sometimes  even cloak over  a  another film like  or sheer material that seems to be  designed to make one think one is either peering   through  a fog or else one's cataract operation is soon due.

 These same  people, who have paid  high fees to have natural gas and the consequential ease and warmth of central heating in their homes, bring stones and wood into the house to build fireplaces because  they think it's classy and modern. I  suspect it is eerily truly only our natural urge speaking to us and has been for eons, except that eons ago one didn't have to worry about higher insurance rates as a consequence.

This fascination with controlling our 'in house' world also affected my mom.  She would bring home specially chosen wallpaper to 'do' either the living room, kitchen, or a bedroom on what seemed to be a regulated biannual schedule of painting one year, papering the next. 

The  fact that this otherwise seemingly intelligent woman would  arbitrarily decide that instead of the nice shade of yellow, or green ,or blue, or whatever previously judged to be perfect shade of paint she had chosen some months prior to her wallpaper purchase,  seems to be  a reflection on the lack  of an outlet for her creative urges  which were not able to be met in those 'pre-blog' days of the 50's and 60's. (I have never wallpapered).

 As a consequence, Mom would  put her energy, money  and effort "one more time" to cover the chosen room all over, ceiling to floor, wall to wall,  with either flowers, leaves or fairies dancing among some type of fern, wood grain, storytime characters, sports athletes,  and so many colour and size variations of paisely that any woodland scene on the wall would have been more welcome. Once , in the kitchen, a design with stones accentuated with bits of  painted ivy growing out and about was hung in imitation of some far away Welsh kitchen on the banks of the Irish Sea. Mom  even took the next step into high interior fashion when she varnished the wood grain wall paper in the living room. It didn't look too bad except for the solid brown plastic corner strip that was nailed to the wall. What was with that anyhow? As if no one would realize there is a place where the walls meet in a corner! As if it was some sign of bad architecture or something if you didn't make them stand out. The room had CORNERS in it--four of them. Did we  need to have them marked?  

Mom papered every room of the house on a regular paper/paint  rotation with eagerness and a certain finesse rivalled by any paper professional of the era.  She could mix  paste, measure and cut , move furniture, and climb step ladders with  an ease and agility not  commonly found in most young mothers of four, even in the rural areas of Canada  today.

There was only one quirky little trade mark that made Mom's attempt at self-made home decor her very own.  I am not sure if it was an indication of any type of passive aggressive tendency, accidental or on purpose, conscious or unconcious,  brought on because  she never received any  help from my Dad except perhaps (and I am not even sure of this) a simple,  "I see you did some papering" comment whenever he came in off the field. 

This little trade mark showed up  even if the edges were done with a perfect  neatness of creases in the  corners,  the ceiling border  level to the eye, and  the pattern on the wall  straight as a plumb line.   For whatever the reason, practical or psychological, and never seen in any wallpapered rooms in any of my friends' homes,  the  electrical switch and receptacle plates, as well as the light socket fixtures were never taken off during any of these room renovations. They were, instead,  papered over with just the little black light switch and plug-in holes being  neatly poked through the newly hung paper. At day's end the radio could  perhaps be plugged into a clump of red roses, or the light bulb shining from a limestone rock in the ceiling or even a piece of colorful fruit.  I  well remember  my curling iron being plugged into (as fortune would have it) the mouth of  one of the cutest little kittens frolicking over, and over, and over, in a meadowland scene. 

                 

                
  It often didn't take long for busy kiddie fingers to finish poking all around those switch plates leaving the consequential ripped wallpaper to gradually get  dirty and worn away

                              .... just to be papered another day.