Posts Tagged ‘Grandma Ella McNeill’
Birch Lake: A New Begining – Chapter 2 of 4
Photo (Collage of Mom’s Photos): Family and friends in Saskatchewan provided a strong draw, but earning a living on the farm was becoming increasingly difficult.
Link to Next Post: A Place in the Sun
Link to Last Post: Blizzard of Forty-One
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Community Dance: March 1941
It would be the first time since Harold was born that the new mom and her husband had attended a dance at the Meadstead Community Hall. In those days almost everyone in the family attended the dance including kids and babies. Because their were no carriages or baby baskets, makeshift items were used to carry the baby, diapers, bottles, etc. Laura used an old suitcase for this purpose. She would just pop open the top and she had a ready made bed for her little boy.
Arriving at the hall after a few months of being absent at the dances there were many people to greet who had not yet seen her baby and proud mom she was, took him around to meet everyone. When the dance began, Laura tucked him in his bed in the cloakroom and like the good little boy he was, promptly fell asleep so mom could go our and dance. Fifteen or twenty minutes later when she went to check on him, the suitcase now had the lid closed and it was covered in coats and scarves.
Frantically Laura began fling coats, hats, scarves, mitts and gloves about the cloak room of the Medstead dance hall as she uncovered the suitcase. From outside appearances she had gone stark, raving mad.
“How could I have been so stupid? My baby boy is probably dead and it is my fault – how could this have happened? Please God, please, please let him be OK.” These dire thoughts swirled through her mind as she searched for her baby boy.
(2043)
Birch Lake – A Place in the Sun: Chapter 3 of 4
Photo (Harold, 2010) Dad worked this field every year trying to make ends meet. He picked those rocks that came back every year as the frost heaved them out of the ground.
Link to Next Post: Fire Tower
Link to Last Post: A New Beginning
Link to Family Stories Index
1943
As the horses dragged the stone boat around the field, Dave trudged alongside picking rocks and tossing them on the platform. The fence lines and small islands in the field were piled high with rocks of every shape, size and colour, discarded there over three decades by Dave, his brothers and their dad. Each spring a new crop would appear so the men laughingly called themselves “prairie rock farmers” 1.
As searing heat rose in waves from the summer fallow, Dave looked out at another ten thousand rocks strewn across the seemingly endless field. God only knows, it all seemed to so bloody hopeless.
As he trudged silently along he mulled over a life that seemed defined by these rocks:
“What in hell am I doing here? I have been picking these same god forsaken rocks since I was ten and next year, will be picking them again, then again and again. Will it ever end? There must be more to life!
He shuddered, “I need a change or I will go crazy!” As he said this he grabbed a rock and flung it hard against the pile forming in the centre of the field. The horses jumped as it ricocheted loudly, rejoining the myriad still waiting on the field.
Mother Nature – there was no way she was going to be thwarted! Dave continued to think long and hard about why he continued to stay in Birch Lake. The thought of ‘chucking it all’ and moving on excited him.
(1470)