Three Score and Ten, What Then? Read online

  Us children were fortunate. We all successfully graduated from grade eight. None of us went to continuation school, though. The closest one was over thirty miles away. We would have had to be boarded out to attend. There was no money for that. It was just not possible. There were no buses or cars back then. Horse and train travel were our only mode of transportation.

  The teacher I had for grade one was a stern and humourless woman. Once I met her, I remember feeling a little nervous about being in school. I sure didn’t want to give her any cause to have to discipline me. The other children had already warned me about the strap. She would walk around the room carrying a ruler stick. If she asked you a question and you didn’t come up with the correct answer, she’d smack that ruler on your desk. That used to scare the heck out of me.

  Anyways, I settled into school life quite well. I took to learning pretty fast. I had wanted to be able to read stories like the other children could. Most of our studying involved reading, writing, and arithmetic. We learned some history and geography as well. It was enjoyable to learn about things in different parts of Canada and other places. Memory work was a big thing back then, too. Every week we had a spelling bee. Each grade was given words to study. We had to know their definition, how to use them in a sentence, and how to spell them properly. I guess you could say I did quite well academically. I was always at the top of my class, but that’s not saying much considering that there were only five of us in my grade and only three in my final years.

  Poetry memorization was another form of memory work. We would study a poem to try and understand its meaning. Then we had to memorize it and recite it in front of the class. Sometimes the teacher would turn it into a contest and give a prize to the person who did the best. That always made it more enticing to want to study harder.

  Developing really good writing skills was a big part of school in those days. There was a lot of emphasis put on penmanship. It was often considered more important than the written content of an assignment. Learning how to hold your pencil or pen properly was part of the curriculum. That’s how important it was thought to be. People took great pride in their writing skills.

  Recess was always a fun time. We’d have a game of baseball, hide “n” seek, or red rover. In the winter we had lots of fun building snow forts and having snowball fights. The older ones played with the younger ones. Mostly we all got along. Once in a while, a couple of the older boys would take to brawling. The teacher would break that up in a hurry. Usually both parties would end up getting the strap and maybe more disciplining when they got home. Ma used to remind us regularly that if we got into trouble at school there would be worse waiting for us at home.

  There was one day during recess in particular I recall. It has always stuck with me. Looking back on it now I kind of get giddy, but back then I didn’t think it was so funny. The teacher had come out to use the outhouse. She hadn’t been in there more than a minute when three of the bigger boys went over and started pushing on that old outhouse. After a couple of tries, it fell right over backwards. Lordy, Lordy, what a sight! The teacher had been in there doing her business, sitting on the throne at the time. When it tipped over, her bare-butt was hanging out through the hole. She started into the hollering. Most of us children were mortified seeing that. It took some doing for her to try to get the door open and get out to pull herself back together. Some of the older girls scrambled to her aid. I’ll tell you, though, those boys sure took a good strapping. She rounded them up and gave it to them in front of the whole class. I almost felt sorry for them.” I stopped for a moment. Beth was laughing so hard tears were running down her face.

  “I’m sorry, Gran. I didn’t mean to interrupt you. I shouldn’t be laughing. That was really mean of those boys, and they deserved to get the strap. But I can picture that outhouse on its side with that poor teacher’s butt sticking through. What a calamity!”

  “It surely was, dear. I guess that I was just too young to see any humour in the situation. I’ll tell you about another time that mischief came into play. It was the day the teacher’s horse was let loose. There was a small shed out back of the school where the teacher would tie her horse up for the day. That way the horse was out of the hot sun and weather, and she would feed it some hay and grain in there and leave a bucket of water for it. When they were in season, I always took extra carrots or apples in my lunch for the teacher’s horse. I’d go out at lunch time and give them to him.

  On this particular day, there was no horse. I ran back in and told the teacher. Well, all of us started out on a search for the runaway. Little did we know, but it had found its way home back to its own stable. We spent the whole afternoon trying to locate that dang horse. I found out months later that it had been let loose intentionally. I don’t recall if the teacher ever found out. It was kept quiet if she did.

  My school years passed by pretty quickly. Monday to Friday we headed off to school. We trudged off down the road on foot, no matter what the weather. We walked in the rain, the snow, the heat, and the cold. Once in a while, one of the neighbours would be headed out somewhere with their horse and wagon and would stop to give us a ride to school or back home. We were all thankful on those occasions, especially if it was the homeward trip.

  The school house was heated with wood. In the winter time, one of the older boys would be asked to be responsible to put the fire on every day. This boy was paid an “Honorarium” of $3.00 for the winter. He would have to get to school earlier than all of us so the school would have time to warm up somewhat. This same boy would have to make sure the snow was shoveled away from the front steps. On some of those cold winter days that old school house never really did warm up very much. That old potbellied stove would be just a humping, but never made much headway. Those old school houses had no insulation, and had vaulted ceilings which made them hard to heat.

  The children sitting close to the stove were too hot, and the rest of us just about froze to death.

  There were three different teachers who taught at our school during the eight years I attended. They were all women. We had the same teacher while I was in grade one to three. Then another teacher taught while I was in grade four and five. She quit, and we had a different teacher while I attended grades six through eight. I liked her the best. It seemed that one would get settled in to teaching us and stay for a few years. Then she would get married and quit teaching.

  Back then to be a teacher, you had to complete your eighth class studies, attend four years of continuation school, then go to normal school for at least a year. Normal school is the equivalent of Teacher’s College today. Most teachers came from a different part of the countryside where higher education was more available, usually a city. She would be boarded out with one of the families in the area.

  It was certainly a different time in the world back in the early twentieth century. There were no calculators, or computers, not even pens and paper as they use today. There were no libraries or surplus of books available either. We had slate boards and chalk to use in the early grades. When we got older and attended the higher grades, we had access to paper, pencils, and fountain pens. Text books were in short supply as well. Mostly we would share with someone else in the same grade. Sometimes as we got into a higher grade, we might get our own. That was because there weren’t as many children attending school to study in the higher grades.

  Anyway, those school days went by pretty fast. Looking back, I feel pretty fortunate that I was able to finish grade eight. Lots of children didn’t get that privilege. I learned to read, write, and do basic figuring. It has served me well over my life. Sometimes, when I encounter young people who can’t do short math figuring in their head or spell worth a dang, I come to figuring that perhaps I got a better education way back then. Imagine that!”

  “Well, you very well may have, Gran. You had to learn through memorization and you have retained the information that you learned. There weren’t any calculators or computers to do the
work for you. Most kids don’t even know how to write a letter with a pen and paper anymore. They do it all on computers now, and send their messages by e-mail on the internet. Handwriting is a lost skill,” replied Beth. “That must be hard for you to comprehend. Things have certainly changed. It’s a different world than you grew up in.”

  “That’s a fact, Beth. You said a mouthful,” I continue. “It’s a different world, for sure.”

  around the farm

  “It was during the latter half of the eighteen hundreds that Northern Ontario was surveyed and divided into townships and districts. In order to have people move north to populate these remote areas, Free Land Grants were given. People were allotted one-hundred acre parcels of land which would be deeded to them under the provision that they would clear and crop a specified portion of it and build a home in a certain period of time. Thousands of people came north in the anticipation of owning their own land. Most of these people were immigrants of English, Irish, Scottish, or German descent who had come to Canada seeking a better life. Having the opportunity to own that much land in the old country was unheard of for the average man.

  Many lumbermen had already preceded these enthusiastic pioneers. Most of the virgin timber had all been cleared, but there was still a lot of clearing to do before homes could be built and land could be planted in crops. Pa and Uncle Seth were amongst some of the early settlers. They were each granted two parcels of land. Pa’s farm was east of Uncle Seth’s. The south end of their farms abutted a small lake which provided them with a source of fresh water. They weren’t thinking in terms of today’s society where it would be considered waterfront property. Back then it was simply for practicality. Growing up on a farm was something I never even gave a second thought to as a youngster. It was just the way it was. It was the practical thing to do. There wasn’t much money, and most folks had big families to raise. Having a farm provided the opportunity to be able to produce enough food to feed the family.

  Since there was no electricity back in those times, everything was done by hand or with the help of real horse power. There was always something to be done. Most of it was time-consuming and back-breaking hard work, but it was done in order to survive. Nobody complained about it too much; it was just the way it had to be done.

  When I was a little one growing up, we had a half-dozen cows that we milked. This was done by hand morning and night. The milk was then separated in a hand-cranked machine, and Pa sold the cream. Ma kept enough cream to make butter. She did this in a wooden churn that was also cranked by hand. Any extra milk was fed to the pigs. We always had a couple of sows that had a litter every year. Pa often bartered some of these young hogs for other things he needed on the farm.

  We always had lots of chickens. Every spring we’d have a couple of old clucky hens that would hatch out a new bunch of chicks. Ma would fatten up any new roasters for meat. There always seemed to be enough new pullets to replace the old hens that didn’t want to lay anymore. If we had extra eggs, Ma would take them into town to the general store and trade them for flour, salt, or other baking supplies she needed.

  We had to grow enough hay and grain to feed all this livestock. Pa had a big team of percherons he used to do the field work with. They were a nice matched pair of mares. We had a neighbour with a nice big stud that Pa bred them to several times. He ended up with two nice teams and sold a couple of foals as well.

  All the ploughing, disking, seeding, cutting, and gathering of the hay and grain was done by hand or using horse-drawn equipment. Lots of the neighbours would join together to help each other or share equipment. Those horses sure earned their oats back then, and it sure was important to take good care of your team. You couldn’t do much around the farm without them.

  The men folk did most of the field work and barn chores, but there were always times when the women had to lend a hand, as well. All us girls took a turn at milking. We would help slop the hogs and feed the calves. Ma and us younger ones generally took care of the chickens and gathered the eggs. In the summer, they pretty much free-ranged and got all the garden scraps.

  Ma always put in a big garden. We had lots of potatoes, carrots, cabbage, turnip, onions, beans, corn, peas, and squash. There was never a day that the garden didn’t need tending once it started to grow. There was weeding and hilling the potatoes, hoeing, thinning, and weeding the rest of the vegetables. Sometimes, if it was a really dry summer, we collected rain water in big barrels under the eaves of the house so we could water if we needed to.

  From June right through until August, there were lots of wild berries to pick. Ma would give all us younger ones an eleven quart wooden basket and send us off picking. Usually one of the older girls was sent with us to supervise. The strawberries were the first to ripen. Then the raspberries and blueberries came in season. Sometimes we would get some blackberries, too. I really hated picking them as they have spiny thorns that would really scratch the heck out of you. We got to eat some fresh berries, but most were put down in quart sealers and preserved for the winter. When Ma had extra sugar, she would make jam.

  Usually about the end of August or early into September, the grain was ripe enough to harvest. The men folk and older boys cut the grain with horse-drawn binders. The sheaves were stooked together to dry in the sun. Then these sheaves were forked onto wagons and taken to the barn to be milled in a thrashing machine. Thrashing time was a neighbourhood activity. The mill was pulled from farm to farm until all the farms had their grain thrashed. Pa, Uncle Seth, and several other neighbours had purchased a used steam-powered thrashing machine. Some falls, when the crops were good, it kept Pa busy for near a month running that old thrashing machine.

  The women folk did their part as well. We would spend days making pies and cakes. I recall helping Ma and my sisters prepare a huge noon-hour meal on the day we would thrash. We cooked all morning. It seemed like a small army was coming to dinner. The old wood cook stove would be really huffing. The kitchen was so hot it felt like we were in the oven ourselves. Our faces would be beet-red from the heat. Sweat would be running down Ma’s brow and she’d take her apron to wipe it off. We were every bit as exhausted as the men by the time the meal was ready. That’s where the saying, “Slaving over a hot stove,” came from, and it’s so true.

  When Ma rang the dinner bell, a herd of hungry men came to have a bite to eat. They’d sit down at the table like a pack of wolves to a fresh kill. The other wives and daughters would come to help serve lunch bringing pies, bread, pickles, and biscuits. It was a real social. The youngsters played and frolicked and stayed out from underfoot. The young girls talked and whispered about their new beaus, or potential ones, sharing their hopes and dreams with each other. The women swapped recipes and caught up on gossip. As hard as the job of thrashing was, it pulled the community together.

  Before we saw the first snowflakes of winter, we had to dig the potatoes. We bagged them in burlap grain bags, then took them down into our basement and dumped them into a big wooden bin. The old basement wasn’t like in today’s home. It was more like an indoor root cellar. It was only six feet high and had a dirt floor. It stayed cool in the summer and was just warm enough in the winter to keep things from freezing. There were wide wooden shelves along the walls to store baskets of onions, carrots, and turnips, and all of Ma’s preserves.

  Late in the fall, just as winter was settling in, the butchering was done. Pa would kill a hog and one of the yearling calves we’d raised. The beef and pork was cut into usable pieces and packed in the ice house to keep. When Ma needed some, she’d just go out and get the piece she wanted to cook.

  That old ice house sure worked well. In the winter time the men would go down to the lake and cut big chunks of ice. Then they hauled them back and filled the ice house. The ice would stay frozen there all winter. The ice was covered with sawdust to help keep it frozen in the summer heat. Any meat that was left come spring would either be buried under the ice or preserved in quart jars to keep.
Ma would see to it that every edible piece was saved. We ate the liver, heart, and the tongue. Ma would scrape off the pig heads to make headcheese. All the excess fat from the hog was rendered down into lard. The hog intestines were cleaned and used for sausage making. We had a smoke- house where most of the pork was hung to make bacon and ham.

  During the winter months the men took their team of horses and headed to the bush every day. They’d cut enough wood to burn for the following winter. Their skill of using an axe and crosscut saw was put to the test. There weren’t any chainsaws back then. Cutting wood was just plain hard labour, but since there wasn’t any other source of heat it had to get done. The wood was cut and split, then hauled out of the bush in the sleigh drawn by the horses. “A lot of heat in that wood!” Pa often remarked.

  My favourite job on the farm came in the early part of spring. Pa and my brothers Colt and Linc made maple syrup. Us younger ones loved to ride on the big sleigh around the bush as the sap was gathered. There were pails hanging on maple trees that had been tapped. We went from tree to tree collecting the sap and then carried it in a pail back to the tank on the sleigh and dumped it in. Then off we’d go for another pail full. Those horses would just plod along around the sugar bush trails, and Pa didn’t even have to hold the reins. He’d tell them to go ahead and they would, and then he’d say whoa and they did. That used to amaze me. Pa said it was because they’d done it so often, and they just knew.

  Once the sap was collected, Pa boiled it down in a huge cast iron kettle over an open fire. It took hours to get it boiled enough to make syrup. Some of it would be boiled down into sugar for Ma to bake with. Sometimes, if we had fresh snow, Pa would pour a ladle of hot thick syrup onto the snow so we could have taffy. We sure did like that. It was a real treat.