The year was 1956. The place was a dryland farm in central Saskatchewan. The house was a story and a half red shingled, wood sided structure with a porch connected to the back door. There was a front door but there were no front steps following the tradition of the local neighbourhood in line with the philosophy dictating that 'if it is not necessary it does not get done'. There wasn't a real set of front steps in the whole of the rural municipality if you did not count an occasional upside down apple crate or saw horse left by the front door after washing windows or knocking down a wasp nest in the eaves trough.
It was July. It was a hot July. The temperature hovered over the 85 degree Fahrenheit mark for over two weeks. The leaves on the quivering aspens had long forgotten how to quiver as much as due to there was no breeze but also because the water table was slowly being lowered and every leaf was hanging tenuously on an ever increasingly drying stem.
Everything and everyone moved slowly. Even the caw of the crow sounded hot and dry coming from its shiny black throat. The dog found shelter in the cool and strangely moist, dark, and blackened dirt under the porch steps. He would not re-emerge until the moon was up. I would be able to tell when he ventured out as his dog food was directly located beneath my screenless bedroom window. I would imagine his long pink tongue rough from the dry heat soaking up the bit of lard and table leavings followed by the sound of that same tongue moving rapturously through the bowl of water as it became lusciously engorged with the precious cooling liquid.
As I mentioned before the window to the bedroom and in fact the window to every room of the house was screenless as there were no mosquitos that year due to the fact that there were no standing ponds of water either in the ditches or sloughs. The horse trough did not even hold water for longer than a day as the heat would evaporate whatever the cows and horses left from their daily ration within an hour.
It was during this heat wave of 1956 that our parents were called away to Winnipeg on a family emergency leaving myself and my two older brothers ages 12 and 14 to 'take over the fort','man the bridge' or in Star Trek terms, 'We had the Com'.
Of course there was a list of daily chores to do such as weed the garden, feed and water the animals, and keep the house tidy.
The prime directive being 'Keep safe, don't hurt yourselves or each other, stay in the yard'. We were to run to Yanovich's, the neighbours a half mile away, if any emergency arose. They were to be back as soon as possible but no later than two weeks. Then they were gone in a cloud of dryland dust that quickly rose from the back tires of the '52 Ford then softly fell after the car had disappeared around the corner onto the gravel highway.
The first couple of days were pretty uneventful. My broyhers at first were quite diligent in doing the chores and making sure that I did mine. Mine being the weeding of the garden and keeping the house tidy. I also was in charge of meals but being all of nine years old that got pretty old really fast, at least according to the 'boys' and soon they were taking over the kitchen with me still doing the washing up.
After about three days of this arrangement and with little or no real improvement in the quality of the meals especially after it was mutually decided that one does NOT have to put puffed wheat cake in the oven in order to bake it it was decided that it was not fair that I should have to do all the washing up. This we all agreed to but at the same time the boys were not convinced that dishes had to be done in hot water, or rinsed, or dried. Heck they did not even think that they needed to use soap.I
It was about this time that I started to take notice that the house cats were never anywhere to be found during the day. I looked and called in the barn. I looked in the old half ton. I called. I even called and offered treats but no cat ever responded but every evening when a small breeze finally blew in through the open windows the cats show up and I finally realized that they had been keeping themselves down in the basement during the days. The cool cool basement.
Thinking of the coolness of the basement I decided the next day to take my book and do like the cats did and enjoy the cool dampness of the cement. A welcome respite from the searing hot inescapable driness that brought sweat streaming down your into your eyes if you ever tried even for five minutes to do any weeding outside or sweeping up inside.
It wasn't long before the brothers decided that I had found a good spot to be cool in and they soon joined me and the cats, bringing with them their Parcheezie and Steeplechase games
The basement was lined with shelves in one corner where Mom had her canned fruit, jams, and chicken jars all neatly in a row. One wall was taken up with the furnace and wood bin. There were some old boxes strewed in one corner and then on the other side was the wall. Well not really a real wall but a cement wall that did not actually touch the ceiling. There was about a 3 foot gap between the top of it and the ceiling. I had never noticed it before and pointed it out in wonder to one of the boys. He explained that that wall held the cistern. He had to explain that the cistern was the place where the water that ran off the roof when it rained went to. It was a collection area for rainwater . The water we used when we pumped the kitchen pump to wash dishes and put into the bathtub on Saturday nights.
I was in awe. All this time I never knew or thought about where or why the water came when one pumped the handle in the kitchen sink. "You mean to say that there is a whole bunch of water just on the other side of that wall?" I asked in wonder. "Yep" came the reply.
Still in disbelief I challenged the information wanting somehow that it be proved to me because having a big bunch of water like that right below our feet while standing in the kitchen seemed absurdly perpostorus.
Not to be disbelieved the brothers went out to the barn and brought back the long ladder used to fix shingles, carefully brought it down the dark basement steps and propped it up beside what was said to be the 'Cistern Wall'. As I was the one who disbelieved I was the one who had to climb up to see for myself. Sure enough, there it was, what looked like a whole room full of water just sitting there dark but clean looking trapped in its cement cell. No sign of anything floating. I went to the top rung of the ladder and leaned over and put my hand in. It was cool. Cool and clean. I called down to my brothers who were steading the ladder and told them what I saw. They each in turn climbed up and had a look and a touch. When they got down and looked at each other and then looked at me. Now as I am neither and inventor or a great scientist I am not certain if what was experienced was what one can call a collective Ah Ha! moment but if such a thing exists one occurred on that scorchingly hot July day in 1956 in the basement of a wood frame house on the Saskatchewan prairies with only the cawing crow and cooling cats as witnesses.
We were going to do something with all that cool water. We may not have been quite certain but something was going to be done.
The oldest brother ran up the basement steps two at a time with the other brother not far behind. As I waited I could hear the clink of dishes, some scurrying of feet, door bangings, and cupboard doors opening and closing.
They soon reappeared with binder twine, potato sacking, and a dishpan full of dirty dishes. All of a sudden I could see the possibility of all those items and we all turned and gazed up at the ladder and the top of the cistern wall.
It made sense that I should be the one to be the first to venture into the unknown as if there were any trouble the brothers were strong enough to get me out . So after I kicked off my shoes, I was tied up around my waist with the binder twine which was hooked up to the furnace door and I climbed up the ladder and carefully lifted my left leg up and over the 3 foot wide wall and then scootched over on my belly and sort of rolled into the water with a splash. I hung on to the rough edge and gasped as the coolness of the water took my breath away but a few seconds later I called out that all was good. I could hear the ladder creaking and then a shadow came over the wall and it was my second brother who was splashing around beside me also tied with binder twine. Suddenly there was a splash and there floating just beside me was the potato sack clinking away almost sinking beneath the surface and down to the bottom 7 feet away.
I touched it gingerly and realized it was full of dishes...the dirty dishes from the kitchen sink!
Another shadow and another splash! My oldest brother with us.
What fun we had! Splashing and swishing the potato sack of dishes back and forth singing
DubDubDub
Dishes in a Sack
You yourself will get a Wash
If you decide to Snack.
This new dishwashing routine continued for another four days just as the heat wave continued and even peaked at 92 degrees. Everyday just after our noon meal we all gathered up the dishes and excitedly went down the rickety basement steps to our own little cleaning spa. We splashed and laughed and tossed those dishes in the sack back and forth with barely a chip or a crack. What a great method and keeping so cool too. The cats on the basement floor just looked at us idley as we emerged soaken and dripping climbing down the ladder.
We probably would have enjoyed our dish washing chores right up to the last day before our parents were to come home but an unheard knock on the door around 1:45 in the afternoon on the fourth day brought it all to a splashing halt.
The dish bag had just been tossed up in the air and it was my turn to catch it when suddently there was a holler and shadowy face looming over the edge of the wall.
Mr. Yanovich!
He startled me so much that I missed catching the dish bag and it immediately sank down the
7 feet to rest sullenly on the bottom.
Being the good neighbour that he was he decided that he should take a little trip to our yard just to see how the three of us were getting along without our parents. He had knocked on the door but of course we hadn't heard as we were too busy 'washing'. He did not say too much but just listened carefully as we explained what we were doing. He carefully examined the binder twine and the knots around the furnace door. He told us that he had received a call from our parents and that they were due to come home the next day.
As the four of us made our dripping and soggy way up the steps I remembered the sack of dishes sunken in 7 feet of water.
Mr. Yanovich paused for a minute and told us to wait in the basement and he went out the door. Twenty minutes later he returned with a giant hook, an ice hook apparently. He took a piece of binder twine and tied it to the ice hook , then he told my older brother to climb the ladder and get back into the cistern. Mr. Yanovich followed him up the ladder and handed him the ice hook with 8 feetof binder twine tied to its handle.
It took only three tries before we heard a cheer from our lavish dishpan and soon Mr. Yanovich was carrying our treasured bag of dishes down the ladder. Our brother soon followed behind.
Mr. Yanovich then proceeded to warn us of the dangers of swimming in such an area and advised us to stop doing it. As he left he turned to my brother and asked for the ice hook. My brother looked surprised as he said he thought it had been hooked on the potato sack when he handed it all over to Mr. Yanovich.
Down we all went again and Mr. Yanovich climbed the ladder one more time and peered down to the bottom of the pool and sure enough saw his ice hook in its final resting place.
Mr. Yanovich assured us that he had other such hooks at home and hoped we all stayed well and safe until our parents returned. He gave us a wink and waved GoodDay and walked down the road to his home.
My parents returned late the next day. All was well. The ladder, pototo sack and binder twine had been returned to the barn. The cats kept silent and finally, finally, the heat wave was broken by three days of soft rainfall replenishing the earth and spirits of everyone around.
My dad only commented once about finding an Ice Hook at the bottom of the cistern the next spring when he was cleaning it out. He thought it particularly strange that it had Mr. Yanovich's initials were engraved on it.
It was July. It was a hot July. The temperature hovered over the 85 degree Fahrenheit mark for over two weeks. The leaves on the quivering aspens had long forgotten how to quiver as much as due to there was no breeze but also because the water table was slowly being lowered and every leaf was hanging tenuously on an ever increasingly drying stem.
Everything and everyone moved slowly. Even the caw of the crow sounded hot and dry coming from its shiny black throat. The dog found shelter in the cool and strangely moist, dark, and blackened dirt under the porch steps. He would not re-emerge until the moon was up. I would be able to tell when he ventured out as his dog food was directly located beneath my screenless bedroom window. I would imagine his long pink tongue rough from the dry heat soaking up the bit of lard and table leavings followed by the sound of that same tongue moving rapturously through the bowl of water as it became lusciously engorged with the precious cooling liquid.
As I mentioned before the window to the bedroom and in fact the window to every room of the house was screenless as there were no mosquitos that year due to the fact that there were no standing ponds of water either in the ditches or sloughs. The horse trough did not even hold water for longer than a day as the heat would evaporate whatever the cows and horses left from their daily ration within an hour.
It was during this heat wave of 1956 that our parents were called away to Winnipeg on a family emergency leaving myself and my two older brothers ages 12 and 14 to 'take over the fort','man the bridge' or in Star Trek terms, 'We had the Com'.
Of course there was a list of daily chores to do such as weed the garden, feed and water the animals, and keep the house tidy.
The prime directive being 'Keep safe, don't hurt yourselves or each other, stay in the yard'. We were to run to Yanovich's, the neighbours a half mile away, if any emergency arose. They were to be back as soon as possible but no later than two weeks. Then they were gone in a cloud of dryland dust that quickly rose from the back tires of the '52 Ford then softly fell after the car had disappeared around the corner onto the gravel highway.
The first couple of days were pretty uneventful. My broyhers at first were quite diligent in doing the chores and making sure that I did mine. Mine being the weeding of the garden and keeping the house tidy. I also was in charge of meals but being all of nine years old that got pretty old really fast, at least according to the 'boys' and soon they were taking over the kitchen with me still doing the washing up.
After about three days of this arrangement and with little or no real improvement in the quality of the meals especially after it was mutually decided that one does NOT have to put puffed wheat cake in the oven in order to bake it it was decided that it was not fair that I should have to do all the washing up. This we all agreed to but at the same time the boys were not convinced that dishes had to be done in hot water, or rinsed, or dried. Heck they did not even think that they needed to use soap.I
It was about this time that I started to take notice that the house cats were never anywhere to be found during the day. I looked and called in the barn. I looked in the old half ton. I called. I even called and offered treats but no cat ever responded but every evening when a small breeze finally blew in through the open windows the cats show up and I finally realized that they had been keeping themselves down in the basement during the days. The cool cool basement.
Thinking of the coolness of the basement I decided the next day to take my book and do like the cats did and enjoy the cool dampness of the cement. A welcome respite from the searing hot inescapable driness that brought sweat streaming down your into your eyes if you ever tried even for five minutes to do any weeding outside or sweeping up inside.
It wasn't long before the brothers decided that I had found a good spot to be cool in and they soon joined me and the cats, bringing with them their Parcheezie and Steeplechase games
The basement was lined with shelves in one corner where Mom had her canned fruit, jams, and chicken jars all neatly in a row. One wall was taken up with the furnace and wood bin. There were some old boxes strewed in one corner and then on the other side was the wall. Well not really a real wall but a cement wall that did not actually touch the ceiling. There was about a 3 foot gap between the top of it and the ceiling. I had never noticed it before and pointed it out in wonder to one of the boys. He explained that that wall held the cistern. He had to explain that the cistern was the place where the water that ran off the roof when it rained went to. It was a collection area for rainwater . The water we used when we pumped the kitchen pump to wash dishes and put into the bathtub on Saturday nights.
I was in awe. All this time I never knew or thought about where or why the water came when one pumped the handle in the kitchen sink. "You mean to say that there is a whole bunch of water just on the other side of that wall?" I asked in wonder. "Yep" came the reply.
Still in disbelief I challenged the information wanting somehow that it be proved to me because having a big bunch of water like that right below our feet while standing in the kitchen seemed absurdly perpostorus.
Not to be disbelieved the brothers went out to the barn and brought back the long ladder used to fix shingles, carefully brought it down the dark basement steps and propped it up beside what was said to be the 'Cistern Wall'. As I was the one who disbelieved I was the one who had to climb up to see for myself. Sure enough, there it was, what looked like a whole room full of water just sitting there dark but clean looking trapped in its cement cell. No sign of anything floating. I went to the top rung of the ladder and leaned over and put my hand in. It was cool. Cool and clean. I called down to my brothers who were steading the ladder and told them what I saw. They each in turn climbed up and had a look and a touch. When they got down and looked at each other and then looked at me. Now as I am neither and inventor or a great scientist I am not certain if what was experienced was what one can call a collective Ah Ha! moment but if such a thing exists one occurred on that scorchingly hot July day in 1956 in the basement of a wood frame house on the Saskatchewan prairies with only the cawing crow and cooling cats as witnesses.
We were going to do something with all that cool water. We may not have been quite certain but something was going to be done.
The oldest brother ran up the basement steps two at a time with the other brother not far behind. As I waited I could hear the clink of dishes, some scurrying of feet, door bangings, and cupboard doors opening and closing.
They soon reappeared with binder twine, potato sacking, and a dishpan full of dirty dishes. All of a sudden I could see the possibility of all those items and we all turned and gazed up at the ladder and the top of the cistern wall.
It made sense that I should be the one to be the first to venture into the unknown as if there were any trouble the brothers were strong enough to get me out . So after I kicked off my shoes, I was tied up around my waist with the binder twine which was hooked up to the furnace door and I climbed up the ladder and carefully lifted my left leg up and over the 3 foot wide wall and then scootched over on my belly and sort of rolled into the water with a splash. I hung on to the rough edge and gasped as the coolness of the water took my breath away but a few seconds later I called out that all was good. I could hear the ladder creaking and then a shadow came over the wall and it was my second brother who was splashing around beside me also tied with binder twine. Suddenly there was a splash and there floating just beside me was the potato sack clinking away almost sinking beneath the surface and down to the bottom 7 feet away.
I touched it gingerly and realized it was full of dishes...the dirty dishes from the kitchen sink!
Another shadow and another splash! My oldest brother with us.
What fun we had! Splashing and swishing the potato sack of dishes back and forth singing
DubDubDub
Dishes in a Sack
You yourself will get a Wash
If you decide to Snack.
This new dishwashing routine continued for another four days just as the heat wave continued and even peaked at 92 degrees. Everyday just after our noon meal we all gathered up the dishes and excitedly went down the rickety basement steps to our own little cleaning spa. We splashed and laughed and tossed those dishes in the sack back and forth with barely a chip or a crack. What a great method and keeping so cool too. The cats on the basement floor just looked at us idley as we emerged soaken and dripping climbing down the ladder.
We probably would have enjoyed our dish washing chores right up to the last day before our parents were to come home but an unheard knock on the door around 1:45 in the afternoon on the fourth day brought it all to a splashing halt.
The dish bag had just been tossed up in the air and it was my turn to catch it when suddently there was a holler and shadowy face looming over the edge of the wall.
Mr. Yanovich!
He startled me so much that I missed catching the dish bag and it immediately sank down the
7 feet to rest sullenly on the bottom.
Being the good neighbour that he was he decided that he should take a little trip to our yard just to see how the three of us were getting along without our parents. He had knocked on the door but of course we hadn't heard as we were too busy 'washing'. He did not say too much but just listened carefully as we explained what we were doing. He carefully examined the binder twine and the knots around the furnace door. He told us that he had received a call from our parents and that they were due to come home the next day.
As the four of us made our dripping and soggy way up the steps I remembered the sack of dishes sunken in 7 feet of water.
Mr. Yanovich paused for a minute and told us to wait in the basement and he went out the door. Twenty minutes later he returned with a giant hook, an ice hook apparently. He took a piece of binder twine and tied it to the ice hook , then he told my older brother to climb the ladder and get back into the cistern. Mr. Yanovich followed him up the ladder and handed him the ice hook with 8 feetof binder twine tied to its handle.
It took only three tries before we heard a cheer from our lavish dishpan and soon Mr. Yanovich was carrying our treasured bag of dishes down the ladder. Our brother soon followed behind.
Mr. Yanovich then proceeded to warn us of the dangers of swimming in such an area and advised us to stop doing it. As he left he turned to my brother and asked for the ice hook. My brother looked surprised as he said he thought it had been hooked on the potato sack when he handed it all over to Mr. Yanovich.
Down we all went again and Mr. Yanovich climbed the ladder one more time and peered down to the bottom of the pool and sure enough saw his ice hook in its final resting place.
Mr. Yanovich assured us that he had other such hooks at home and hoped we all stayed well and safe until our parents returned. He gave us a wink and waved GoodDay and walked down the road to his home.
My parents returned late the next day. All was well. The ladder, pototo sack and binder twine had been returned to the barn. The cats kept silent and finally, finally, the heat wave was broken by three days of soft rainfall replenishing the earth and spirits of everyone around.
My dad only commented once about finding an Ice Hook at the bottom of the cistern the next spring when he was cleaning it out. He thought it particularly strange that it had Mr. Yanovich's initials were engraved on it.
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