True Stories From My Youth

Little Oskar

It was near suppertime one fall Saturday afternoon when I overheard my Dad telling our hired hand, Little Oskar, that he intended to cut oats the next day. The field in question was a small triangular one next to the farm buildings. There could be no delay because the oats had grown tall and were at risk of being blown out by the wind. My Dad was surprised by Little Oskar's reply. Oskar flatly refused to cut the oats on a Sunday, saying to do so was a sin - and that furthermore, if Dad did the work on Sunday himself, his soul would be in jeopardy. Taking advantage of my Dad's surprise, Little Oskar pressed his case. Not only would he not cut oats on a Sunday, he refused to handle any such contaminated oats in their subsequent processing. This meant he would not stook the bundles that the binder had cut and tied into sheaves, he would not pick up and move those sheaves into the barn for winter storage and he would not retrieve them later to feed the livestock. As Dad processed the full extent of Little Oscar's refusal, he winked at me and wondered aloud if on Sunday morning, Mother was to make a delicious breakfast of steaming, hot oatmeal, would Oskar refuse to partake? After reminding his hired hand that he was being paid wages by the month, and that the level of those wages could be affected by the stand he was taking, my Dad considered his options. He first thought of a local United Church minister, new to the community, who had already been a willing worker on the farm. He had always appreciated the extra work as well as the fresh eggs, butter and cream that he took home to his wife and young daughter. However, on Sundays the minister had three church services to conduct so Dad realized that he would have no time to help out.

Later that evening a neighbour drove up to the house. He had come to give Little Oskar a lift into Macrorie so he could attend church services the next day. Dad agreed to Little Oskar's day off in Macrorie -but added there would be no need for him to return to the farm. The same neighbour said he knew of several Lutheran farmers in the district who needed help. The idea of relocating to a more rigorously religious community appeared to suit Little Oskar just fine so we knew he wouldn’t be out of a job for long. But this left Dad still needing help for the next day’s task. Although he had been taken aback by the afternoon’s revelation, Dad was in no way at his wit’s end. He had six daughters - my older sisters - the eldest who was nearly full grown. Dad called upon them to save the day. They willingly undertook the challenge and stooked the oats that were cut on Sunday. When the stooks were sufficiently aired and dried, my sisters then helped move them to the barn to be stored for winter feed. And thus was my sisters’ valour extended into the weeks and months ahead as our hungry horses and cattle gratefully munched their daily rations.





The Great White Terror

Life for a Saskatchewan farm boy was really pretty good. For the first couple of years, with my brother Harold and my seven sisters all in school, I had a lot of time to myself. Mothers, those days didn't have a lot of time to lavish on a solitary little kid. I had to learn to entertain myself. That wasn't hard to do because I liked sitting on the kitchen floor leafing through the pages of Mother's Five Roses cookbook. It had the most tempting coloured illustrations. When that palled, there was the Eaton's catalogue or the nice shiny attachments for the sewing machine which made attractive playthings.

Outdoors, in the summertime, the farmyard offered everything that any little boy could possibly want. It took up several acres and had vast plantings of trees that enclosed the entire farmyard and divided it into sections. With the gardens, the orchard, the machinery and all the farm buildings there was always something to explore or climb on and I cannot recall every being bored.

I think every one of us, from the oldest to the youngest, would have a story to tell about a bad-tempered white rooster we had that loved to chase little kids. Actually, we must have had a succession of such roosters because no individual bird could have had a career that spanned the twenty-two years from Melvin all the way to Arlene. Family legend has it that Norma, as a toddler, had been attacked by the rooster and was so traumatized the she wouldn't ever go near a white feather for fear that the rooster might be lurking nearby. Mother took advantage of Norma's phobia by placing white feathers on the stairways and other hazardous spots around the house and yard. It worked. Norma grew up without ever tumbling down the cellar stairs. I had my own frightening encounter with the old monster or one of his grandsons and well remember running for my life and rolling under a barbed wire fence to escape the Great White Terror.



The Sudden End to My Budding Career as a Scientist

As a teenager I was easily motivated to study, for I grew up with the shadowy awareness that, if I had to labour for a living, I'd starve to death before I reached voting age. So, year after year, and grade by grade, I did my thing until I had finished Grade Ten.

The school in Dunblane had thee rooms and three teachers with four grades in each room. The principal had the senior room and taught all subjects to the four high school grades. All was going well until the end of my Grade Ten year when our principal joined the air force. The war was on and teachers were so scarce that the local school board could not find a replacement, so for the next year, the local educational facility was reduced by one-third. High school was suspended.

That wasn't as bad as it sounds. There was an alternative available through the Government Correspondence School. Its services were widely used throughout the province, especially in one- roomed country schools where the teacher, busy enough with Grades 1 to 8, was still expected to help high school students with their correspondence lessons.

As farm help was at least as scarce as teachers, I chose to stay out in November. By then, I thought it too late to enrol with Correspondence School, so I bought their lesson material second-hand from a girl on a neighbouring farm and worked my way through it without ever having it corrected or graded.

A few other boys were also using correspondence courses, perhaps not quite as diligently as I was. Someone suggested that we might all do better if we did our thing in school where we would benefit from the powerful academic atmosphere and would have access to the chemistry lab. The school board and the senior teacher agreed that we could be accommodated in her classroom and just before Christmas, the noble experiment began.

It wasn't a good idea, at least not the part about access to the chemistry lab. We were in there one day intending to collect some hydrogen in a glass jar. As I recall, this was to be accomplished by immersing something called phosphorous in water and then collecting in a jar the bubbles that rose to the surface. I understand now that a careful teacher would have demonstrated the feat with a small pan of water and a miniscule piece of phosphorous, but, back then, we didn't know that. We had a water tank big enough to wash our collective feet and a hefty jar filled with golf ball-sized chunks of something the label assured us was phosphorous. The crucial moment began when I, in trying to shake one piece of phosphorous out of the jar, managed the task so deftly that half the contents spilled out and plopped into the water.

We weren't at all prepared for the reaction. The water contorted itself in agony, foamed and began to boil. We gaped in awe as it writhed and churned as if being spewed from the very guts of Hell. Millions of bubbles fought their way to the surface only to explode when they got there. That didn't matter because millions more were going born every second to follow this mad rush to the surface and apparent oblivion.

Fascinated, we watched this raging phenomenon, all thought of capturing any of these mad bubbles forgotten. At last, Johnny Lesyk decided it was time for a cigarette. Johnny was a year older than the rest of us and should have known something about the excitable nature of hydrogen. But apparently he didn't. And apparently, by this time, our tiny chemistry lab was almost bursting with it. I remember seeing Johnny put his cigarette to his lips and I remember seeing him strike the match.

It wasn't a huge explosion. There was only a whispered but clearly audible WHOOF and the lab lit up like the inside of a flash bulb. Hundreds of little bursts of light started popping on and off all around us. Balls of fire zoomed like rockets, one of the striking Johnny squarely in the middle of his forehead leaving him with a richly deserved scar that he never tired of bragging about to anyone who would listen.

That ended my budding career as a scientist. I am timid by nature and decided then and there that the excitement of scientific discovery could better be borne by spirits bolder than mine. So from then on, what few bits and pieces of scientific lore I have amassed, I gained by reading, not by doing.