Hi Everyone. HAPPY FATHER'S DAY.

 

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY

The United Church of Canada sent a student minister to small towns in western provinces to help them learn how to conduct a service and carry on other church duties. Our family did not own a car so most families walked the mile plus to attend church at the one-room school heated by a pot bellied stove that also heated our cocoa on winter days. Mother had finished getting the noon meal after we arrived home and she soon realized her new baby wanted to join our family. Telephones were not in use and unexpectedly company might arrive. The day I was born my mother's sister came into our yard with her family driving their horse drawn wagon. There was still no telephone service in Orion in 1923. Our two room home made entertaining company very difficult. Mother got very busy peeling potatoes and making a supper meal while her sister, my aunt, chatted constantly dredging every scrap of neighbourhood news. My mother wished they would hurry home and commented how they had chores to do also. Milking chores needed to be done at regular time or else the cow's milk would drip away on the ground. My aunt finally loaded up her children and left at around 6 o'clock. I asked her one day what time of the day I was born and she said it was around 7 o'clock since the cows needed to get milked by around 6 o'clock. I do not remember being born but when I was nearly two years old my father must have felt like throwing me away. That would have been about a month before my second upcoming birthday in July. Radishes would soon be large enough to eat. I saw our mother often pulling weeds from the garden and apparently decided to do some weeding myself and perhaps she would brag me up as setting an example. I had pulled out the whole row of radishes and my father must have been very angry and was said to have tossed me out of the garden and injured my emerging teeth that then would grow crooked. I do not remember it happening and in my late teens I required dental work.

I decided to go to College but found out that my Alberta high school credits would not be recognized in Canada since I had attended a high school that taught the same subjects but was sponsored by a religious organization - the same text books were used but one book which was called "Ancient History in Bible Light." By the time our elected officials talked and talked that over and they decided deserved to accept these high school credits if all grades were satisfactory. Meanwhile I had applied to a university in the United States. Seattle Pacific College, a church organization. Later our Alberta politicians decided they would recognize these credits but I had applied and had been accepted by this university in Seattle, Washington. It was expensive and I ran out of funds before completion. I thought a baby sitting job might be acceptable and answered an ad in the daily paper. A wonderful lady answered it but I told her my plight and said I might be in trouble accepting any money for it, since I had entered the U.S.on a student's visa. Later I found I was living in the home the family who had started Sternoff Iron and Metal Works. They were very kind to me and I was very grateful to them. One day when I answered the door two policemen in uniform were standing there asking me why I was no longer registered at the university with only a student's visa. They said they would give me ten days to get back to Canada or I would be arrested and never again allowed to cross the U.S. border. I had not taken any money and had enough left for one Greyhound bus ticket. I had been assigned to take care of their second son, 5 year old Ricky. His mother was helping other immigrants get started in the United States. I phoned Ricky several decades later when going through Seattle and asked him if he remembered me. He had become president of the entire metal works company whose huge printed sign towers high from the main highway when driving through Seattle. I asked him if he remembered how the breakfast routine went. If he didn't eat his plateful at supper I was asked to put it in the refrigerator to keep it safe but serve it (cold) for his breakfast. We laughed together about it and I learned the lesson also, and find it very hard to see food wasted. We had a nice telephone visit.