Tag Archives: Family

THRESHING TIME

Audio Recordings, Cowboy Poetry, Nostalgia / tagged , , , , , , , , / / by

THRESHING TIME

I remember at Christmas getting a great threshing machine
a block of wood with wooden spools nailed to the side
but I loved it as I loved the threshing

All through the long summer days I would walk
the fields with my dog
At night my mother rubbed strong liniment on four year old
legs: growing pains she said, although one always hurt
more and didn’t seem to grow any faster

And the grain grew too, and passed me, and was higher
than I was. And then the harvest and the wonder of it falling
to the binder and the magic of the machine as it tied the
sheaves and ke-chunked them into the carrier

Then the stooking – little teepees covering the prairie again
and the golden warmth of everything

And the threshing machine; they wouldn’t let me too close;
it might eat me like it ate those sheaves and like the men
in the crew could eat, and they could eat
even when it rained

While I sat for hours nose to wet window
watching the great gray dinosaur
deep in the timeless mists

And hot clear windless days when everything sang and
the big belt slapped and the machine came to life again
and wagons were on both sides
and the big horses were standing strong and ready
and switching flies with dignity

The sun caught the arch or the long plume of straw and
the chaff lifting and the old hands fed the machine in a
sort of easy sweat-oiled rhyme and the new hands stood
on the sheaves they tried to lift each time

And the old hands laughed, and the new hands laughed
and they were men together

GRANDFATHER

Nostalgia / tagged , , , , / / by

GRANDFATHER

My grandfather came to this country from Switzerland
by way of Brazil, working first in the kitchen of a CPR
hotel in Winnipeg. One wonders if he could have
dreamt that one of his grandchildren would own one
someday: perhaps he did, the pioneers of this country
had such a store of courage and of dreams that we may be
drawing on them still

And then to the prairies of Saskatchewan to try his hand
at farming. Prospered in the 20’s, replaced the packing
crate house with a large, verandaed mansion. Planted
ten thousand trees and created a special kind of oasis:
with flowers that bloomed all summer and fruit that
yielded sweet and tangy wines

Widowed early, he raised seven children through the
dirty thirties: Emil and Arnold and Walter and Werner
with daughters Rose and Ann, and Earnest lost at war,
who, so the story goes, appeared to him on his death bed

“There’s Earnest now, coming to get me with the wagon”

These things I remember as old family stories

My real memories are much more of the senses. The
senses of a 4 or 5 year old which seem now to melt and
run together. I remember not the man so much as the
aura of the man. The richness of old cheese and tobacco
the feeling of peace and the sweet rhythms of the earth
that surrounded him and warmed me as we sat together
in his favourite room so long ago.

FARM DOG

Audio Recordings, Cowboy Poetry, Nostalgia / tagged , , , , / / by

FARM DOG

My dad doesn’t allow pets in the house
they weren’t allowed in on the farm
where he grew up either

Once when he was eight
the dog came up the stairs

down the hall to the room on the right
where his young mother lay dying

Laid his head for a moment on her lap
and went out again

GRANDMA BRANDER

Audio Recordings, Nostalgia, Relationships / tagged , / / by

GRANDMA BRANDER

When we moved to Mossbank I was twelve. Mother
would sometimes stop us all from playing and send us
over to see her mother, who lived in a little house on
the South side of town

We never really knew what to say to her, or she to us,
and I never really until now thought about whose
shyness set that pace.

She was a nice enough lady and gave us cookies, and
she had diabetes and a leg that wasn’t there anymore.

She may have had grand stories to tell us, about her
family and childhood in England and Ontario and her
brother lost at sea, and the tough times and the good
times in the West, and our grandfather whom we’d
never met.

What was he like
Were we like him
Would we want to be?

These things would have been a leap into total honesty:
it was a leap we never took. We spent the afternoons in
leaps more comfortable to us all;

small colored marbles over
small colored marbles
in the inscrutability
of Chinese Checkers