Homesteading II

The house that Grandpa built, with the help of his family, had two stories.  There were three small bedrooms, a kitchen, and a small living room.  Bathroom facilities were located out back of the house in a separate building.  Water was carried into the home in buckets from the hand-dug well.  In the kitchen was an old cook stove.  In the living room was a small parlor heater stove.  Coal was used for fuel in winter, but dried cow pies were used in summer when available.  Any extra were stored in used feed sacks for winter use.

Each summer many of the neighbors joined Will and Cora and family, and with horses and wagons made a temporary move to some berry fields about 40 miles from home.  The wagons were rigged with canvases for shelter.  It took four days each way for travel time.  Everyone including the smallest children would pick berries.  Then the women would build a community fire, put on a large kettle and can the berries on the spot for winter preservation.  This went on from two to three weeks until all were satisfied they had a sufficient supply for family use.  All those fortunate enough to own a cow, including my grandparents, took it along with them for fresh daily milk while away from home.  The cow needed milking daily anyway.

The area around Ernfold was entirely flat prairies overrun with gophers.  The government in an attempt to eradicate them, or at least cut their numbers, paid a ¼ cent bounty on them.  Evidence of their departure was a gopher’s tail.  Lloyd and Floyd were the designated gopher hunters.  A slip knot was made at the end of a heavy cord.  This was placed over a gopher hole.  When the gopher stuck its head up to reconnoiter the area, one of the boys would pull the noose closed, while the other one bashed the gopher with a club.  The gopher’s rearmost extremity was removed and the carcass thrown back in the hole.  School clothes money was obtained in this manner.

Every family had a dugout which was ramped into the ground, had a plank cover, in turn covered with earth.  The animals were housed there in winter, and the family also occupied them during infrequent tornados.

Homesteading

In the spring of 1911 my grandfather decided it was his destiny to go to Canada and homestead.

Now Grandpa had been married and had a couple of sons named Clarence and Clinton in 1893 and 1894 respectively.  Shortly after the second birth his wife, Mary, died.  Grandfather placed the two children in an orphanage where they remained until 1901 at which time Grandpa Will married a widow with three children.  Cora Baker Lester had birthed Ada in 1884, Raymond in 1886, and Charles in 1887.  After their marriage Grandpa and Cora had three children named Lloyd in 1905, Floyd in 1907, and Clara in 1911, as well as collecting his first two from the orphanage.

Before Grandpa Will made the decision to go west, and north, Ada Lester had died in 1896, Ray had married in 1908 and was on his own, while Charles, yet single, had left the nest and was working on a farm where he elected to stay.  Clarence Lawton, like Charles Lester his half-brother, was working away from home and remained there.

Thus Grandpa and his remaining son from his first marriage, Clinton, along with a team of horses, caught the Canadian Pacific train and ultimately departed it at Ernfold, Saskatchewan, Canada which had only become a province in 1905.  Grandma, along with the three younger children, remained in northern New York.  The plan was that Grandpa and Clint would plant as much of a crop as they could, and then build a shelter for the rest of the family to come in the fall.

Grandpa and Clinton each obtained adjoining quarter sections (160 acres) of prairie land.  They were required to improve the land, work it as farm land, pay taxes, and in several years it would be given to them by the government.  There was a slight rise in the sod near a corner of Grandpa’s land where it adjoined Clint’s.  There they dug a sort of cave into the side of the hill as a place to live.  On Clint’s land, but near to the dugout, they dug a well thus improving both places.

In that fall of 1911 Cora and their three children Lloyd 6, Floyd 4, and Clara a babe in arms also caught a Canadian Pacific to Ernfold to find only the dugout to live in.  All that winter of 1911-1912 the team of horses and a cow lived in the outer part of the dugout, while the five family members lived deeper inside.

It was in the spring of 1912, 100 years ago, that Grandpa and Clint built a small unpretentious home for the family’s use for the next several years.

This is a photo of that home a few miles north of Ernfold, Saskatchewan, Canada taken in 1917 when Lloyd was 12, Will was 51, Clara was 6, Cora was 49, and Floyd was 10.  Although I do not know it to be fact I assume Clint took the photo.

CB Radio Craze

It was late in the year of 1975 when my brother Fred developed an interest in CB radios.  While I was visiting him one day he showed me his newly acquired radio equipment, and demonstrated how he could talk to people within a few mile radius of his home.  I thought that was almost miraculous although the telephone would work just as well and reach a lot further.

Soon, I thought I’d like to try this form of communication also.  One Sunday evening Fred brought a small portable unit designed for use in a car to my home.  We attached it to an old lawn mower battery that was kicking around, and began to try various methods of trying to make something work as an antennae.  After an old set of TV rabbit ears had been hooked up, and turned in exactly the right direction we began to hear faint voices.  Fred rushed back to his home, about ten miles from mine, and very faintly we were on the air and talking to each other.  Oh, the wonders of modern technology.

Within a short period of time I had bought my own citizen’s band radio complete with antennae mounted on the roof of my home.  That Midland hooked to a Radio Shack Super something or other could talk all around my county.  Soon I opted for a Moon Raker 4 built by someone I can’t remember now, but it was a beast up on my roof complete with its own attached directional motor and gear assembly called a rotor.  With that I could talk for maybe fifty miles.

Within a short period of additional time I had attached a bit more power to the original 4 watts.  Let me assure you 4 watts multiplied by 100 will allow you to talk a lot further than you may have expected.

Within a few years though millions of people bought rigs, and with all of them alking at once it became almost impossible to contact your next door neighbor, much less anyone further away, so I sold out my equipment and left the fold of adventurous CB’ers.

The Northern New York Pulpit Rock

It’s not easy to get to the small hamlet of Oxbow.  The fact is it’s hard to find on a map, but if you search hard enough in the northern part of Jefferson County, right near the border of St. Lawrence County it is possible to locate.  That though is only the beginning.  After finding it on a map it is not easy to get there.  It’s sort of one of those places that you just can’t seem to get to from where you are.  No matter where you are.

However, with enough sheer determination it is reachable.  Once you get there you’ll have to do some mind searching to determine why you wanted to go there in the first place.  Oh yes, that’s where one can leave town on the Pulpit Rock Road.  Why would you want to do that?  Of course, so you can see the world famous Pulpit Rock formation which is about ½ mile out of town.

I guess those pioneers sat on the rocks, but I’m not sure.  I wasn’t there.

Feeding The Fawn

While slowly riding my ATV June 28, 2012 I rounded a bend on my own property and spotted this fully grown doe whitetail resting in my path.  I continued to creep forward all the while getting my camera into action.  The camera is a Sony Cyber-shot DSC H70.  She allowed me to get to approximately forty feet away before rising.

After standing she may have made a noise, but if she did I couldn’t hear it due to the engine noise of the ATV.  At any rate a fawn came bouncing from the surrounding brush.  It seemed rather wary of this intruder, but the mother seemed unconcerned.

With mama for protection the fawn gave me a good looking over.  It still was not too sure I belonged there.

Finally the fawn began to partake of an evening meal.

The mother doe took another look at me to insure I was photographing this historic event.  Apparently satisfied I was properly recording this, they continued with the feeding program.

In about five minutes, when dinner was over, they both looked away from me at something only they knew existed.  I saw nothing.  Soon, like a wisp of smoke, they were gone.

You Can't Go Back

When I was a young stripling between the ages of about ten and seventeen, when I joined the US Navy, I was being raised on a New York dairy farm.  In summer our entire family spent countless hours processing grass into hay for winter feeding of our dairy cattle.  This consisted mainly of mowing the grass, sun-drying it into storable hay, and then moving it from meadow to barn.

Day after day in summer we continued this tedious process.  It often was hot, dirty, long days of hard labor.  Nearly every evening we boys would go swimming in a neighbor’s gravel pit that had filled to a depth of six feet with surface water, when our day’s work was done.  While working in the fields during the daytime we often daydreamed of our refreshing dip in the cooler evening hours after the day’s milking was completed.  Anticipation may have been as fulfilling as actual fact.

As well as the swimming, I nearly always also had the pleasure of meeting a local girl just my age that happened to live very near the old swimming hole.  I cannot deny that more than half the pleasure involved had more to do with Kathy than it did with swimming.  I was only beginning to understand the pleasure of female company.

Today, fifty-seven years after I left the farm to enter the Navy, I drove to the old gravel pit to see for myself what remained of my memories of the good times there.  What used to be an acre or so of gravel and sand with the water pool in the center is now a wooded, brushy area with a stagnant pool filled with algae, and clutter of all sorts.  Had I not known the difference it would be hard to convince me anyone had ever used that for swimming.

As I sat in my pickup today staring at the stagnant pool, remembering what it was like oh so many years ago, it once more reminded me you can never go back.  Nevermore will it ever be like it was when you were there the first time.

Whatever happened to you Kathy P.?

My Father The Artist

For many years my father worked for the Standard Shade Roller Company.  The company manufactured rollers for window shades as the name implies.  My father’s job was to fuel the boilers used for heat to kiln dry the wood used in the rollers.

Dad worked 12 hour shifts three nights a week as well as a 14 hour shift all day Sunday for a total of 50 hours a week.  Normally the company operated on an 8 hour day meaning my father was never there when the company was manufacturing their product.  In fact he and an old night watchman named Bill Reader were the only two people on the premises most of the time.

There were time clocks located sporadically around and among the various buildings making up the complex.  Bill  had to make his rounds once an hour.  As he came to each clock he was required to punch in to prove he had been there.  It took him about 45 minutes each hour to make his rounds.  A few minutes was spent in conversation with my father each hour.  Hour after long hour this repetitious routine continued, day after day, for many years.

Most of these tedious hours my father spent alone surrounded by several large furnaces that turned water into steam.  The steam was piped to radiators drying the wood used in the roller manufacturing process.  Early in his shift each day he had the day’s supply of scrap wood and wooden parts to burn.  This required nearly steady shoveling into one of the boilers or another, but after the scrap was gone coal was used.  This extended the time required between tendings.

Possibly once or twice during a shift father would coordinate the watchman’s rounds with his boiler care chores so that he could nap for a few minutes.  Bill on his never-ending rounds, would then wake father to chat for a few minutes before continuing on.

Needless to say, father had numerous short periods of inactivity every shift.  He read a lot among other things.  However, as father was very mechanically inclined he liked to work with his hands, and forever searched for little things to do with a few minor hand tools within his sphere of expertise.  One night during the 1950s he found a scrap short piece of the heavy duty wire used to make the round pins for the rollers.  As a farmer he imagined forming the wire into a miniature bale hook used to handle baled hay.  Soon one had been bent and sharpened.

On yet another occasion he spent some of his idle time forming a carpenter’s wrecking bar.

On a whim, one day as he grew older, he gave the two objects, as well as several more, to my brother Ronald.  Ron treasured them for many years.  One day he showed them to me, the first I knew they existed.  I admired them immensely.    Shortly before his passing Ron gave these two to me and I treasure them highly.  Sometimes I hold them in my hand and imagine how my father sat one night long ago.  With little else to do he lovingly formed these small tools and now over sixty years later I feel attached to him because of his labor of love.