But, like it or not, my pace has ground to a halt in the Saskatoon airport. My husband & I frantically arrived to check-in, well in advance of my departure. Frantically, because we were not well in advance of his. The loudspeaker was hailing the tardiness of 3 Winnipeg passengers as we were fighting with the ever-challenging self check-in terminals - 1 of which would, indeed, be the aforementioned husband. We got him through the process & on his way in the nick of time. And as for me, the following regalement awaited: flight delay of an hour which will put me in jeopardy of missing my connection, overweight bag entailing the purchase of, yet another, tacky carry-on bag & the end result that I may not get back to my beautiful little Okanagan oasis (& my dog) tonight…
I made a conscious decision, as I texted all who needed to know of my pitfal, that I was going to take the high road about this situation & see how the chips fall. My husband was having some trouble taking any road but the low ground of frustration, as he departed. I was not rushed, like him, so I could observe the candour of his plight, and it did not look good on him. It was my assumption that it would look even worse on me… So here I sit basking in the possibility of delay instead of the predicament & pain of losing my composure. (I think this may be a test as, just now, I was attempting to use my Thesaurus & thought I had lost the work on this document, so far - I know it does not look like much, but with the yammering that is going on in conversation around me - it is a feat!! Anyway, I held it together, & low & behold - all is well!!) And so, I am afforded the time to draft this blog that I have had simmering in my brain for a week or two.
Last night, we had dinner with some old friends, Lee & Dave Cole. Some old friends that are really more like family to me. When I was a young girl, growing up in a small southern Saskatchewan town, my father had to seek early retirement from his job, for health reasons. He & my mother were going to move back to our family farm in northern Saskatchewan to retire, as had always been their plan. I was heading into my graduating year, at that time, & although I knew I would miss them very much, I did not want to graduate with a group of people who had become strangers to me. We had left the farm when I was very young. All of this, to set up the fact, that when my parents returned to the farm, I stayed back in Loreburn, lived with the Cole family & completed my Grade 12 year with my peers.
Maybe it's my age or the fact that I am afforded a little head space to ponder these days, but the people that have made a difference in my life, over the years, come often to mind. A lot of people made a big impact on me from that small town, not the least of which were the Coles, who took me in & treated me like family when my own folks had to make a tough decision based on health & welfare for my Dad. I had been giving a lot of thought to that small & seemingly insignificant little town lately & meeting The Coles for supper just cinched the fact, for me, that I had to pen some of my thoughts & memories from that time.
If you don't have a "small-town-big-dreams" kind of background, you may want to cease reading now. But if that is part of your fabric, you may have had an experience where you can relate to some small part of the forthcoming blog.
My mind can clearly roam through the rooms of the houses I lived in, in that sleepy town. And in memory, I can much further traverse up & down the streets I knew all too well…every tree we climbed, every corner where a friend or neighbour lived; no one was unknown to another. Main Street is where a lot of memories reside. Small towns in the prairies used to thrive & support 1 or 2 grocery stores, a hardware, a Co-op sundry & gas station, post office, bank, credit union, telephone switchboard office, several churches, curling & skating rinks, lumber mart, cafe, car dealership, school, town office, bulk fuel outlets, elevators…or some similar line up of industry. These are the general identifications of the shops & businesses that I can see so alive & thriving in my mind's eye.
I can see how the buildings looked, smell the distinct aroma of each encounter & feel the familarity experienced by all that entered there. We were a community of 2 grocery stores, for quite some time. Hans Store, so big & white-washed stood sturdy, at one end of Main Street, & at the other end was Twink's Red & White. I have no real memory of who owned Hans Store but a graphic memory of Twink (& Vye) & the whole Vaughan family who generationally emerged, over the years, to run the store & small in-store butcher shop. I can see Twink, Normmy & later Myles wandering around in their blood-smeared aprons, wearing them like a proud trophy of their hard days work. And Vye, always on the till, with someone to help pack, on occasion. Her mood always reflected the stress that you, later in life, realize comes with the responsibility of running a small business, but as kids, we just knew to tread lightly at times. The aisles & shelves overflowed with attempts to give the small community what we wanted in the form of produce, baked & canned goods.
Next door was the Ford dealership run by the Stronski family. My Dad was a Chev man, but we did have the odd Ford vehicle, over the years, trying to support the local dealership, & people who became dear friends. They too, were a family business & father & sons worked side by side covered in grease & dirt, daily, trying to keep the community's vehicles in good working order. They manned the gas pumps clad just the same as they greased & pounded away in the attached work bays. That smell of gas fumes, fresh grease & oil lingered well out onto the street & was as endearing, in a way, as the flood of freshness that hit you when you walked into the Red & White.
Continuing on down Main, you would encounter the cafe, town office & small library all housed in the tall wooden structure with a dance hall on the upper floor. The town librarian, Velma Vaughan, who for many years encouraged people to read, ordered in their wish lists & exercised a patience, in all things, to be marvelled at. We all waited on that corner for the school bus, in the morning, & were dropped back off there later the same afternoon. You could lean your bike against the wall, in the morning, & it would be still standing in the same spot, when you returned for it, after school. Then, you would take your quarter & go into the cafe & get your salty or sugary treats from the big glass counter, much to your mother's dismay - she probably had fresh cookies waiting on the table for you at home.
Next door, you would find the post office, with only the huge old poplar tree in between. Every Halloween, that tree would be adorned with toilet paper from the pranksters. The post office was a solid red brick building with 2 distinct areas. Your first entry was through a door so heavy that you had to lean waaaaay back just to pull hard enough to enter there. Then, your eyes filled with shiny silver as the flood of personal mail boxes came into view & a large wooden shelf, hung off the wall, for you to sort through all the letters & bills. Attached was that delightful swinging door that was the excitement of every youthful soul; the way it pushed easily, all the way through, & flew back with such a vengeance the way you came. Inside the postmaster's area was the smell of ink, brown paper & adhesive - all combined to just smell professional & dignified to a young child. This is where Lee Cole worked for years! She always lit up smiling for all who entered & listened, in counsel, to the successes & failures of all who came in for her services. Only known by one other alias to me, & that was "the egg-lady." Before I ever remember Lee being at the post office, I can remember her showing up to deliver farm-fresh eggs, to my Mom, & the peel of laughter & friendship that always rose up between them.
Making your way down the street, you would yet encounter the pool hall, run by George Vaughan, for so many years, the Credit Union & Bank of Commerce. My most graphic memory of the pool hall was one of snatching candy from George, instead of taking it politely, & having the presence of conscience, to go back the next morning (accompanied by my Mom) & apologize to him for my actions. Really, I was just in a big hurry to get back to our town-wide game of Tally-Ho or Follow-the-Arrows. What a privilege to grow up in such a safe environment condusive to the actual development of imagination in a young mind. I guess, because I was a kid, the bank & Credit Union didn't leave a big impression on me. I do remember the Imperial Bank Of Commerce being a stately institution, in my mind, reeking of professionalism & a business-like reverence.
The Co-op gas bar does remain alive in my memory. Mr. Middlemiss ran the show for years, his wife a long-time friend of my mother & the woman that, with painstaking patience, taught me, Sheila Vaughn, & Linda Flink to knit in 4-H. I don't really know what kind of man Johnny Midd was, but by the nature of the fact that Noble Bartley (an aging cousin of my father's who lived with us for his last years) sat every day in the store chairs telling old tales & visiting with the customers, suggests he was a kind & patient man…Those old men, lined up in the gas station chairs, visiting & laughing easily is a memory portrait for me, one that I hold onto of Noble - the way I like to remember him, so full of life & joy…
Directly across Main from the Co-op stood Maclean's Hardware, run, of course, by Mr. & Mrs. MacLean. I can remember his name being Eugene. I can't remember hers. Maybe, because, back then, we did call adults by "Mr. & Mrs." and she may have simply been Mrs. McLean to me. They were, in fact, neighbours to our family, in our first Loreburn home, and I just loved, what I thought was, their huge bungalow. Turns out, it was very nice, but a modest place by any standard... In that store, children were treated in parody with adults. It didn't matter if you showed up to buy a little gift for you Mom at Mother's Day or if you were dawdling along, at your Dad's side, while he got pieces & parts for a home repair, they always had the time of day for a child. And, oh, the eclectic grandeur of that place…from the cloudy, big, glass windows across the front to the hopeless (to anyone else but the MacLeans) array of wares crowded into every orifice of that towering old shop. Rows upon rows of tattered cardboard boxes lined up with collections of nut, bolts, screws & nails; tools; housewares; toys; outerwear; collectibles; what they didn't have - they would source & get for you…dear, sweet souls…
And trailing back, past the hardware, on the same side of Main was Nan Ashworth's place. The front of her house used to be home to the telephone switchboard. I don't know if I can actually remember the telephone office being there, or if I have just heard so many stories of it that it seems solidified in my memory. Nan, however, I do remember, for sure. Her crossed eyes such a figuratively alarming thing to a little girl, though I remember Mom explaining it to me & suggesting (strongly) that I best not stare.
And there, back at the end of the street, yet another small gas station & garage ran by Elwood Peil. Elwood was a man that I remember often being at friends' homes; a kind man, always laughing & smiling, although, when he spoke his stutter slowed the conversation to his pace. It didn't seem to bother anyone & became so much a part of the cadence of the conversation that you barely noticed it.
Across the street stood the elevators sturdy & tall, flanked by the railroad. They both stood proud, in those days, railcars loaded regularly to haul the grain away from the lucrative farming region. I lost my car keys, for the day, once, when I led a group, through one of the elevators, in a friendly game of "follow-the-leader-car-edition." Two of my friend's fathers could support their families as elevator managers too. I remember Barry Flink & Lorne Stromberg dressed in their elevator colours whenever I saw them, one a UGG man & the other Pool.
The farmers kept the bulk fuel business alive too. Not too far from the elevators stood the bulk Esso station manned by George Tastad, for as long as I can remember. My Dad wasn't a farmer, in the area, but the Tastad family was part of bringing piano music into our home. I think all of the girls, except Phyllis, in that family, had a hand in teaching me to play the piano. When one grew too old or moved away from home, another stood in line to take up the cause. Cheryl, Susan, & Laurie Tastad all sat through, what I'm sure was an, often painful, process. But I wanted to learn very bad. My Mom took me every morning to practice on the United Church piano until she was able to save the $200 (from cleaning that same church) it took to buy me my very own, at Gudmunson's auction sale.
One can't speak of a small town without mention of the ice rink, second only to the ball diamonds in the summer. Were it not for small town beginnings, for me, I likely would have never learned to enjoy skating & curling, or ball, for that matter. The rink is the life's blood of a small town, in the winter, with curling bonspiels, hockey games for all sizes & spectators (I can still see Vye Vaughan leaning over the boards yelling "Kill 'em" to one of the Nineteeners as we fought our way to yet another win) & the long-awaited Turkey Shoot, in the fall. Where no turkeys were actually harmed, only given away as prizes, for Bingo or other games of chance. Bingo, where Frank Gall called out the numbers loud & proud as only he could, with his little limerick calls, such as "clickety click, ol' sixty-six!"
I am sure, for many of you, these sound like the wild ramblings of an over-sentimental writer & I have only scratched the surface of all I could say. Maybe memories, like these, will be all that remain of small-town Saskatchewan in days to come. Many of the enterprises & people, I speak of, no longer exist, & although Loreburn, SK, still lives on, I wonder if the "big dreams" will continue to come, unrelenting, out of the small towns. I, for one, am so grateful for the beginning I got in a small town and have so many of its people to thank for many of my "big dreams" coming true...
