Taking Turns in the Tub

The Old Wooden Tub

by Edgar Guest

I like to get to thinking of the old days that are gone
when there were joys that nevermore the world will look upon
the days before inventors smoothed the little cares away
and made, what seemed but luxuries then, the joys of every day;
when bathrooms were exceptions and we got our weekly scrub
by standing in the middle of a little wooden tub.

We had no rapid heaters and no blazing gas to burn,
we boiled the water on the stove and each one took his turn.
Sometimes to save expenses we would use one tub for two;
the water brother Billy used for me would also do,
although an extra kettle I was granted, I admit,
on winter nights to freshen and to warm it up a bit.

We carried water up the stairs in buckets and in pails
and sometimes splashed it on our legs, and rent the air with wails,
but if the nights were very cold, by closing every door
we were allowed to take our bath upon the kitchen floor.
Beside the cheery stove we stood and gave ourselves a rub,
in comfort most luxurious in that old wooden tub.

But modern homes no more go through that joyous weekly fun,
and through the sitting rooms at night no half-dried children run,
no little flying tots dash past too swift to see their forms,
with shirts and underwear and things tucked underneath their arms.
The home’s so full of luxury now, it’s almost like a club.
I sometimes wish we could go back to that old wooden tub.
From the Collected Verse of Edgar A. Guest
© 1934 by the Reilly & Lee Company

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Pixabay image

I had to smile when I came across this poem by Edgar Guest. It reminded me of what my employer told me back in 1978.  He was from a farming family of seven: six girl and himself. They grew up in the ‘Dirty Thirties’ in a very dry prairie region (west of Moose jaw, SK) so bath water was scarce, often obtained by melting snow, and all heated on the stove as the poet says.

On Saturday night my employer’s sisters all got to have their baths first (yes, in the same bath water) and he had to be the last. Even with that extra kettle-full of hot water added,  he says the bathwater was pretty murky by the time he set foot in the tub.

 

 

A Canadian Tale, Eh?

Today’s Daily Prompt, “Second-hand Stories” challenges us to retell one we’ve heard recently. A few days ago I read a little tale in an old Friendship Book of Francis Gay and have decided to retell it with a Canadian flavour.

One morning a Calgary police officer was cycling along on his usual beat when he saw a middle-aged man walking down the street. The man was dressed like a lumberjack and waddling along the sidewalk behind him was this beaver, eh.

The policeman braked and got off his bike. “Excuse me, sir, but what’s with this beaver and why is it following you around?”

The lumberjack looked back at the beaver. “He’s my pal, eh. I’ve brought him along with me so he can see what the big city looks like. But he’s having a hard time keeping up.”

“Listen,” said the officer, “we can’t have wild animals roaming around like this here in the city. You should take him to the zoo.”

“That might be a good idea,” the lumberjack replied. “Where can I find it?”

The policeman gave the lumberjack instructions on how to get to the Calgary Zoo. “You’ll have to take the bus from here, but watch out that beaver doesn’t bite anyone along the way, eh?”

“Don’t worry. He won’t bite anyone unless they’re made of wood.” He chuckled, then turned to the beaver. Come on, pal. We’re going to the zoo.”

The next morning the policeman was patrolling his beat when he saw the lumberjack again. This time he was going in the opposite direction — and again the beaver was waddling along behind him.

The officer stopped short. “Hey, Mister. I thought you were going to take that animal to the zoo?”

“I did.” the lumberjack replied. “And my little pal liked it so well I decided today I’d take him to the Stampede.”

Solitude

by Archibald Lampman

How still it is here in the woods. The trees
Stand motionless, as if they did not dare
To stir, lest it should break the spell. The air
Hangs quiet as spaces in a marble frieze.
Even this little brook, that runs at ease,
Whispering and gurgling in its knotted bed,
Seems but to deepen with its curling thread
Of sound the shadowy sun-pierced silences.

Sometimes a hawk screams or a woodpecker
Startles the stillness from its fixed mood
With his loud careless tap. Sometimes I hear
The dreamy white-throat from some far-off tree
Pipe slowly on the listening solitude
His five pure notes succeeding pensively.

 

Harry Taylor’s Hotel Rules

    HOTEL FORT MACLEOD
       Rules of Conduct

1.  Guests will be provided with breakfast and supper, but must rustle their own dinner.

2.  Boots and spurs must be removed at night before retiring.

3.  Dogs are not allowed in the bunks, but may sleep underneath.

4.  Candles, hot water, and other luxuries charged extra, also soap.

5.  Two or more persons must sleep in one bed when so requested by the proprietor.

6.  Baths furnished free down at the river, but bathers must furnish their own soap and towels.

7.  Jewelry or other valuables will not be locked in the safe. This hotel has no such ornament as a safe.

8.  The proprietor will not be responsible for anything.
In case of fire, guests are requested to escape without unnecessary delay.

9.  Guests without baggage may sleep in the vacant lot.

10.  Meals served in bedrooms will not be guaranteed in any way. Our waiters are hungry and not above temptation.

11.  All guests are requested to rise at 6 A.M. This is imperative as sheets may needed for tablecloths.

12.  No tips to be given to any waiters or servants.
Leave them with the proprietor and he will distribute them if considered necessary.

13.  The following tariff subject to change:
……Board, $25 a month
……Board and Lodging with wooden bench to sleep on, $50 a month
……Board and Lodging with bed, $60 a month.

14. When guests find themselves or their baggage thrown over the fence, they may consider that they have received notice to quit.

HARRY TAYLOR, Proprietor
    Hotel Fort Macleod, Alberta, Canada
    September 1, 1882

Washday on the Homestead

According to the Laws of Feminine Paradigms, Monday was Wash day long before the prairies filled up with settlers. Homestead wives brought this tradition from their far-off motherlands and planted it into the cultural soil of Western Canada. As Saskatchewan writer Robert Collins says in his book, Butter Down The Well, “To wash on Tuesday, say, or Friday, would violate God’s ultimate plan for the universe.”

My mother-in-law talked of scrubbing clothes clean on the old washboard until after WWII, when they applied for a washing machine. For some years after the war consumer goods were restricted to those deemed most in need and she was crippled, so they got their machine.

Grandma Vance, too, would have done her fair share of scrubbing on the board as a housewife in the nineteen-teens. With Grandpa running a threshing machine, going from farm to farm, there would have been grease and chaff-clogged coveralls to scrub clean. Likely they needed boiling as well. Mom Goodnough told me that whenever her brothers went on a threshing crew they always came home with lice, so all the clothes had to be boiled.

Before the wringer washer appeared someone had invented a washing barrel with a stick agitator. One of the family worked this stick back and forth; this would turn gears that would crank the agitator back and forth to agitate the clothes. Tubs of water were heated on the wood stove and dumped into this barrel together with Fels Naptha flakes that the housewife had shaved off a hard yellow bar.

In summertime clothes were pegged out in the sunlight; this heavenly bleaching agent could be counted on to get diapers and linens extra clean. They came in smelling of fresh breezes, ready for the flat iron — Tuesday being likewise universally decreed as Ironing Day. In winter the laundry was hung out to get the benefit of the sunlight and breeze, then carried in stiff as boards and hung to dry on makeshift clotheslines strung up all through the house.

The gas-powered wringer washer was welcomed heartily by hard-working wives, but you had to be so careful when feeding the clothes through that you didn’t get your fingers too close to those rollers. It happened many a time; I recall hearing of one little girl who got her arm in the wringer right up to the elbow.

One day Mom F told me about an incident from back in her youth when she was brave enough to tackle the washing herself. She’d wet the bed one night and woke up so embarrassed and afraid of the consequences that she jumped out of bed and grabbed the sheets off the bed. She was big enough already that she was able to heat the water and fill the washer. In went the evidence.

I’ve gotten the impression that Grandma was a strict disciplinarian and Mom was seriously afraid of the punishment she’d get for wetting the bed. When Grandma got up she was really surprised to hear the washer chugging away, but Mom told her she’d decided to get the washing started early this morning. I wonder if Grandma ever suspected the real reason?

Hopefully it was a Monday morning.

Boarding the Teacher

Vance Turner Connect

Spy Hill School, Bavelaw School District SK
Left to Right: Gladys Vance, Pearl Riddall, Wayne Riddall, Steve Vance
Photo: E. Whitney collection

How Grandma Met Grandpa

Our Grandmother, Emily Priscilla Turner was hired to teach at Spy Hill, SK around 1904, and was to be boarded with a local family, as was the custom of the time. According to Uncle Steve, she was hired by the school board of the newly formed Bavelaw School District for a salary of 20 dollars a month. The Barclay family were to board and room her for $10 a month.  (“I am quoting these figures from memory so I may be out a dollar or two.”)

Emily later married Allen Vance and they lived at Spy Hill.  Their children attended this school.  Today the school is gone and there is a cairn remembering it.

One old timer shared his memories in a prairie history…

View original post 451 more words

Cold Enough Here!

We all had a chuckle in church this morning as Jay Bullock, a visiting brother from Avera, (near Augusta) Georgia, got up with some opening thoughts to our service. He said that as he’d gotten off the plane and stepped outside the coolness of the air felt very refreshing–for a few seconds until he felt the real bite behind it.

I checked the local weather condition at 7am this morning: It was -34 C in the city with a wind chill factor of -51. In Georgia that would translate to -28 F with a bitter wind that feels just like -60. Somewhat colder than those folks are used to feeling. Neither the garage door opener or the command start want to work at this temp.

The temperature is supposed to inch up to -31 (-28 F) today. That should thaw our noses. On the way home from church my husband was wishing some of that “global warming” would waft down again. We’ve concluded that God is having the last word regarding this latest theory of man; ever since folks got all fired up about global warming the weather has been very –no, extremely– uncooperative in proving it valid. We’ve hit some record lows and seen some record floods in the past ten years.

Brother Jay came to pay his last respects at the funeral of our brother Dave Fehr tomorrow. Dave passed away suddenly of a heart attack Tuesday, just a few hours before the new year chimes rang. They’d returned from a trip and he had gone outside to shovel some snow from in front of the garage so he could put their van inside, but then collapsed on the doorstep, which is where his wife found him a few minutes later.

There’s to be a family service (mainly a sharing of memories) tonight at the church, then a funeral tomorrow afternoon at a large church in Warman. The family is expecting a huge crowd, as Dave was married and widowed twice before, had twelve children –eleven surviving him– numerous grands & great-grands and other relatives. He farmed in the Warman area most of his life.

The suddenness of his death has hit us all, some like us who are in his age bracket feel it more. He was 77 and in reasonably good health; the doctor told him a few weeks ago that his heart was very good. Now, without warning , it stopped. This shows us the need to be prepared. He didn’t join the rest of us in welcoming in the new year, rather he has been welcomed Home.

Here’s a little verse to encourage everyone. Do what you can today to make the world brighter; tomorrow may never come.

No regretting! Save your fretting,
no sense wasting yet more time.
Try today to live the right way;
leave a trail of blessings behind.

Don’t say “Tomorrow, no more sorrow
I’ll be cheerful and benign.”
Walk today that friendly way.
What joys along the path you’ll find!

–CEVG

Flashes of Childhood

The WordPress writing challenge this week is entitled Snapshots. Here’s the link if you want to read more about this:
http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2013/12/02/weekly-writing-challenge-snapshots/

Here’s my contribution to the collage: various flashes of memory from my childhood back on the farm where I was raised by my Aunt and Uncle. Some of this was posted yesterday on our Family tree blog, Vance-Turner Connect.com (see link below.)

DIM FIRST MEMORIES

My first memories stem when I was about three. I vaguely remember a tiny trailer or building on the farm yard where my birth mother and father, Allen and Louise Vance, lived with my brother Jim, age four; likely my sister Donna was a baby at that time, too. I don’t recall ever living with them there, but Jim and I ran around the yard all day together, completely on our own.

I have a picture of us as small tikes running into the old red hip-roof barn, going into the empty chicken coop and climbing up the ladder into the hay loft. The big side doors were open; Jim and I would stand there for a moment and then jump down to the ground — a distance of at least fourteen feet. Then we’d run back into the barn and do it all over again.

I know Allen & Louise had no electricity in their little shack because one day Allen had bought ice cream and put it in the freezer at the farm house where my Aunt & Uncle Forsyth lived. I was longing for this special treat, so I was hanging around hopefully and Allen promised we could have some ice cream after dinner.

That thrilled my little heart and of course I wanted to be helpful, so I ran to the farmhouse and asked for the ice cream – or got it out of the deep freeze myself – and carried it back to their shack. But it was way too early; Allen told me I shouldn’t have brought it yet because it would melt. He must have taken it back then – or sent me back with it. That I don’t remember.

Why did this incident stick in my mind? I can’t recall that he was so angry or punished me. It’s one of a dim collage a child collects, times when something unusual happened.

I have a few mental pictures of living in the farm house with Aunt Myrt & Uncle Fred and their son Verne. I remember sitting at the round hardwood table. It seemed vast at the time but when I saw it again in my teen years it was actually quite small!

My aunt kept a singing canary she called Dicky and I remember it died one day. She and I were both sad. Later that evening (unknown to me) Verne and Uncle Fred got a few feathers from my aunt’s old hat and fashioned a new bird. When I came downstairs the next morning and saw this bird sitting in the cage I was delighted!

“Look! Dickie has come alive again,” I announced, amazed that he would be a different color now. However, that new Dicky didn’t do anything. After a few days he, too, disappeared –the fun was over and someone finally tossed it out.

One memory comes to mind from when I was about three and a half. My mother had given birth to a boy, but she had that “RH negative factor” and the baby needed a blood transfusion at birth. Melfort was a small town a couple of hours from a major city, and the hospital didn’t have the needed blood, so the baby died.

I remember a group of people gathered around in the living room of the old farm house; I can visualize the little coffin Uncle Tom had made. They told me there was a baby in that coffin; they’d named him Martin. My aunt says I cried and cried because I didn’t want them to take the baby away and bury it.

At one point someone lifted me up and I looked into the coffin and inside it lay a tiny doll. (To my child’s mind, anyway.) I can still remember my feeling of disappointment as I looked down on that little thing, so still and white. I was so irked that they would tell me there was a baby and here it was only a doll! (Maybe I’d already been jaded by that Dicky bird incident?)

When I was four years old my aunt went to work at the hospital in the nearby town of Melfort for the winter. I don’t remember if Verne went with her, nor where my birth parents stayed, but I was left alone on the farm with my Uncle. This situation added another scene to my collage of memories.

The farm house “plumbing” was an old outhouse across the yard. I still remember waking up one night and needing to go to the bathroom. I was scared to wake my uncle up; I knew he wouldn’t get up and take me and I was safer not asking so I crept downstairs to the door and stepped outside.

The backyard trail I had to take to get to the biffy seemed so long! I have a clear memory of standing out there searching the shadows for creatures and gazing up at the night sky, seeing the tree branches outlined in the moonlight. I was quaking as I made my way to the outhouse, yet I was even more frightened to risk “an accident” and the subsequent punishment of a spanking. Uncle Fred’s temper was a force to tremble at!

Two Things We Don’t Tell Immigrants

Sam’s father was killed in India so his uncle raised him on a farm in Galloway (in southern Scotland.)  As a young man Sam attended Oxford and had big dreams of earning his living, but when he went job-hunting, he found no one hiring.  So he did the only thing he could think of at the time: he enlisted in the army and was sent off to fight in the Boer War.

He made it back alive, but then what to do?  One evening he sat down with his uncle in their parlour and discussed his future.   Sam informed his uncle that he was thinking of going to Canada–supposedly a land of unlimited opportunity to brave souls not afraid to work.

“Good man,” his uncle boomed. “Couldn’t do better!”  He’d been over there for a few years himself in his younger days and had some fond memories of those wide open spaces.

He told Sam there just wasn’t much future in Britain anymore; he believed the struggle between capital and labor would eventually drag England down.  “Yes, emigrate.  Excellent idea!” Uncle pounded his cane on the floor enthusiastically.

“You’re a lad with good stuff in you — and a lad with stuff can do well in Canada. I’ll come over to visit you when you become a successful farmer with acres of wheat and herds of cattle!”

Sam’s imagination and courage perked up considerably as he envisioned the vast holdings he might someday have.

“There are two things I won’t tell you about Canada, though,” Uncle added.  “The winter and the mosquitoes.”

vexans vexans a.k.a. mosquito

A Walk on the WILD Side

When Hugh McKervill was in training to become a minister in the  United Church of Canada, he was sent in the summer of 1955 as a student minister to the people of the Smoky Burn-Battle Heights-Papikwan area (at the edge of the farming land, north of Carrot River) in northern Saskatchewan.

When he arrived, he learned that his flock had scrounged together enough money to buy their student minister a sturdy old Model A. This car served him well that summer, chugging over roads that were almost impassible after heavy rains. However, there were times when even the Model A surrendered to the elements.

Min. McKervill writes about one evening in particular when he was endeavoring to get from Point B, where he’d been visiting, to Point A where he boarded. This was after a heavy rain and the road to Point B – which dipped down into the Carrot River Valley and then up the other side – had been passable during the day. However, sometime later a tractor had lumbered down this road after him, slithered down the one hill and then up the other, throwing up huge clumps of mud and carving deep grooves as it fought for traction in the gumbo clay.

Returning home, the student minister started down the slope into the river valley and found he couldn’t keep the wheels of his Model A from sliding into those ruts. To make matters worse, the car wheels churned up more mud so the engine compartment filled with the goo. Then its wheels slid into the deepest tractor ruts and he was not only clogged up, but hung up as well.

This area was sparsely settled and it was later in the evening; the chances of another vehicle coming along were slim. He saw no choice but get out and walk home. He wore rubber boots on those rainy days and they clump, clumped down the hillside, across the narrow bridge and up the other side. On level ground again he realized that the daylight was almost gone. He reassured himself again and again there was absolutely nothing to fear in this wilderness.

Granted, he could meet a charging moose…or an angry mother bear…or maybe some timber wolves. There was even the odd chance of a prowling cougar, strayed from its usual range in the wooded hills to the southeast. But other than that, he told himself, there was nothing in the descending darkness that would harm him.

As young McKervill trudged on, he entered a forested section where trees crept right up to the road. With every step he reassured himself that there was nothing to fear; at one point he did decide it would be prudent to hurry–so as not to be too late arriving home. He dashed off like a gazelle chased by a leopard, though not nearly as graceful with his rubber boots going “Splat! Splat! Splat!” on the wet road.

At last he reached an area where the trees didn’t close in quite so menacingly. When he could run no more, he slowed down, stopping to catch his breath now and then. During one of these pauses he heard a twig snap not far from him. Heart pounding, he listened for telltale sounds. The silence shrieked at him, so he hurried on.

A few minutes later he heard another sound, then a soft footstep or two. He stopped and the noise stopped. He started walking and “it” started walking. He heard a rustling sound in the brush beside the road. This time he had to admit it: this was not just his imagination. Some creature was stalking him!

He envisioned the newspaper headlines reporting his demise. Something like :“Minister Mauled in Northern Woods.” He stopped again – and the creature stopped. “Getting ready to pounce,” his mind announced. He plodded on, come what may.

In a little more open space he froze when he caught a glimpse of a huge black form. He dug out his pocket knife, realizing how useless the tiny blade would be against such a massive enemy. He walked on a little farther, his heart thud, thudding in his chest.

When a gleam of moonlight outlined the beast’s huge head, its eyes glinting in the light his heart almost stopped. Suddenly from this black shadow came a bone-chilling wail.

“Mooooooo.”

His heart rate settled down to something near normal again and he plodded on. The cow or steer walked along beside him most of the way to his lodging, then turned aside to join other animals in a pasture. Half a mile further down the road the northern sky burst into a glory of dancing northern lights. He writes that at that moment he felt like dancing, too.

His heart must have been very strong, for he lived to tell write his book almost forty years later. I’ve condensed and retold this story in my own words, the original version is so much more descriptive! You can read it in:

THE SINBUSTER OF SMOKY BURN
The Memories of a Student Minister on the Prairies
© 1993 by Hugh W. McKervill

Published by Whitecap Books Vancouver/Toronto
and simultaneously by Wood Lake Books, Inc. of Winfield, BC