THE MAN I CALLED DAD!

I said I was going to do a tribute to my Father's life here on my blog.  It has taken me a bit of time to gather some pictures, some memories, and some stories about my Dad.  It's been an enjoyable journey for me to put this together.  I hope you enjoy getting to know the man I called Dad.


My Dad was born in 1920, on a small farm in rural Manitoba.   Shown here being held by his mother, is the only baby picture I have ever seen of my father.  He was the third eldest of 11 children born to my grandmother.

This picture (one of my favourite pictures ever) was taken in 1933.  My Dad (on the far right) would have been about 13 yrs old.  When this picture was taken there would have already been 10 children in his family.

   My grandmother delivered her 11th child August 1934, and died of pneumonia December 1934 - leaving my grandfather with 11 children from the ages of 4 months to 16 yrs old.


Grandpa struggled after my Grandmother's death - it was hard times, the depression had hit, and he had a very large young family to raise on his own.  One morning the older children found him crouched behind the wood stove - incoherent.  Grandpa, so obviously very ill had to be hospitalized for quite some time.  My Aunt Margaret who was 16,  Uncle John who was 15, and my Dad at 14 were left in charge of their eight younger siblings - they struggled under the burden of caring for the family in Grandpa's absence.  When the authorities threatened to split the family up and put them in homes and orphanages, my great-grandparents came from Iowa to my Grandfather's farm in Manitoba to take over the care of the children until Grandpa was able to return home to his family.

It is very hard for me to read this story and reconcile that man to the man I knew to be my Grandfather.  I only knew him as a strong-willed, happy, sometimes goofy funny Grandfather.  Whatever treatment they gave him in his time away from his family, obviously benefited not only my Grandfather, but his large family of 11 children.  After Grandpa returned home - he, along with the help of his three oldest children raised his family to adulthood.

I believe my Father's young life shaped the person he became.  Dad took responsibility very seriously all his life.  He was always a hard worker, honest, caring, and always there to help anyone who needed his help.  He never quit anything he started... no matter what - he saw it through to the end.  The way he started his young life was they way he lived it until his death...

I am not sure what year he met my Mother, but I have this picture taken in 1940.  On the back of the photo she has written "Courting Days"!

They Married in January 12, 1942 in Noranda Quebec, where my father worked in the nickel mines during the war.  He did so because he had a heart murmur, which prevented him from entering the military, so instead he worked in a mine that supported the military efforts.

I have several certificates and plaques that Dad received during WWII, recognizing his efforts as a War Finance Worker in selling the Bonds of Canada's Victory Loans. .. which kind of makes me smile, because we all knew only Mom managed the finances in our home growing up. 

Dad became a father for the first time when my oldest brother Wayne was born in October 1943.  Here Wayne is 3 1/2 months old.

A year later he would become a father once again - to his second son, Mervyn.

After the war ended, Mom and Dad and my two oldest brothers returned home to Plumas Manitoba to farm.  My parents rented a farm and settled into a life that was familiar to them both.  Their third son, Norman was born November 1946.

My parents couldn't afford to buy the farm they were renting so in 1953 they decided to quit farming and move to the city...

to be continued.....

THE BEST OF DAYS!

Today, really was the best of days for me.

What would make you say that, I wonder?

For me the best days of my life have always been because I have spent some part of the time of my day with my family.  Yes, most especially my immediate family - husband and son... but also, parents, siblings, nieces, nephews, in-laws, Aunts, Uncles, cousins...

These days my parents and mother-in-law, have gone.  Most of my Aunts and Uncles have gone.  My siblings mostly don't want the family connection we used to have... one in particular - has told me goodbye and as the days, months and years progress, I feel he truly means it.

But even so - Today - WAS the best of days!

It was the best of days because I got to spend a couple of hours with a nephew I have not seen in a very long time.  Not only did I spend time with him - I also saw and visited with his wife and family.  It made my day!

Of course the passage of 11 years makes a difference to many appearances - but the man I visited with today, still is the little boy I cherished years ago.  He speaks and my heart sings.  Memories pile one on top of the other as we share our lives with stories, with laughter, with pictures - with love - and in the end - that is all that family should really be about.

How simple a day can be - how Blessed a life can be.

I am lucky that I can spend days like today with some in my family - I cherish these days so much, and I would love to be able to spend days like this one, with all my family.  But I have learned that you can want something very very much, but unless others want it as well - it can never be.

So - I will cherish days like this one has been - for sure it will go in my jar of memories to be visited again January 1, 2018 - yes I am still entering my weekly happy thoughts for New Years Day 2018!  Are you?

I am indeed a truly lucky woman - this week I will have yet another "Best Of Days", when one of my dearest friends and her husband come for a visit next weekend.  Although we keep in touch regularly, we have not seen each other in a couple of years.  I can't tell you how excited we are to have our friends come all the way from Alberta to visit us.

I have much to do to get ready for our company - even though my friend would be the first one to shake her finger at me and tell me not to "fuss" - well you know how it is - you want your home to be "ready" for your special guests... so ready I shall be!

I hope you all have "The Best of Days" many times this week.  It really doesn't take much - but the effects can last a very long time indeed!

ENOUGH SAID!

I was thinking about my Dad this morning as I walked home from the post office.  He's been on my mind so much as I relive memories of all the years he was here with us.

I was walking home looking at the trees, watching the birds, the sky, feeling the air around me, and I realized that it was my Father who taught me to appreciate the beauty and wonder of nature.

He always had his eyes to the sky, he loved birds and he loved to watch planes - and so do I.

But on this day, my eyes were focused on a bunch of noisy Blue Jay's who were taking advantage of the mild spring-like weather we are having, and going on and on in their chatter - and for some really strange reason it made me think of my Dad speaking "Pig Latin"!

Oh - he was a master at it!  He could carry on a conversation using Pig Latin, and never switch over to real English.  It drove me crazy , but it also made me laugh... and over years and years of listening to it... well he might as well have spoken English, because I could understand it so well that he wasn't fooling me anymore.

I asked him once why and when he learned to speak like that.

He said that he learned to speak it as a child.  It was a game that children played back in the days of his youth.  He learned from other kids, and he and his siblings used it to speak in a secret code so that his younger siblings  couldn't understand what the older ones were saying.

Pig Latin - actually has nothing to do with Latin at all.

It is simply the language you get by moving the first letter of a word to the end of the word and then adding a "ay" on the end.

Such as... pig is "igpay" in pig Latin.

When someone speaks an entire conversation using this form of language, it quickly becomes pretty confusing to listen to, because of all the "ay" sounds.

Thinking about it now, I realize that in order to covert common English to this language you have got to have a very quick and sharp mind to pull it off.

I can honestly say until this every moment, I never actually considered what a keen mind my Dad possessed.  I knew he was good at solving things, fixing things, making things, but switching, verbs, consonants, vowels and nouns around on the fly - requires a level of smarts that quite frankly I don't even have - and I have had much more education than he had.

So I leave you with this...

To my readers -

Avehay away Appyhay Appyhay Ayday!

and to Dad -

Ankhay ouyay orfay ivinggay emay osay uchmay.  Iway Ovelay Ouyay andway Issmay Ouyay!

ONE MORE TO SOLVE!

So what do you do when you are tired of rifling through paper?

You do a puzzle!

When I was a young teen, I lived beside the most amazing neighbour.  Over the years this woman would become the friend a young woman could turn to when they needed a Mother to talk to.   She would become the woman my son called Grandma, even thought she wasn't really, and she would become someone I missed so dearly when she passed away at 103 yrs of life.

My friend loved to do jigsaw puzzles.  She always had one on the go on her special puzzle table, and she had what she called "a system" to solving jigsaw puzzles.

She rarely tacked a puzzle under 2000 pieces, most were much larger than that.   I don't know where she bought her puzzles, but she had hundreds of them stored in the rafters of her garage, some very old, and I am sure very rare, which she would rotate by the year!  

I spent many evenings when I was a young teen, sitting with this 60's -something -year- old woman, doing jigsaw's.  My goodness -  the conversations you can have while doing a puzzle!  And I fell in love with solving Jigsaw's.

When we were in Dauphin last week, I wandered into the "Bargain store" which is really a dollar-type store.  I always stroll through the toy isles of any store I am in, just to see what's new in the doll world mostly, and so I did that here, and then stopped at a huge shelf of jigsaw puzzles.  I debated with myself for maybe a minute... and then I bought one.

1000 pieces... small compared to some I have done, but big enough to keep me going for a couple of days casual piecing.

I took it out of the box on Thursday evening, and finished it yesterday after breakfast.  Not bad, considering I only spent a hour or two each day on it over the weekend.

But now it's back to work I go.  I am 2 squares behind on my solstice challenge, and I have a few more projects I want to try and complete in the next few weeks.

Oh, I wish I had a stash of really big puzzles like my friend Iris did - puzzling is so good for the brain!

PILES AND PILES AND PILES!

I have been cleaning through paper.  Oh yes - I keep all those little cute poems, sayings, scribbles I see and like - have done for years!  I write my own on scraps as they come to mind as well - you just never know when you are writing what you are going to need or when you are going to need it!

When we moved from the city I emptied a bunch of file cabinets of paper into some computer paper boxes without going through them first.  We we arrived here, all those boxes ended up in the back of the spare bedroom closet.  Those were "for later", for a "winter" project - you know the kind I mean - projects that you know you really should tackle, but you really are not so keen to do.

I pretty much forgot about those boxes until last week.  I hauled my old laptop out of another storage place and all of a sudden I had the urge to play a early computer game that I used to play on my laptop called "Kings Quest".  The first place I went looking for the old game was the spare room closet!

Guess that was my first mistake!  I waded through all those boxes and didn't find the game - but I did find folders and folders of paper.  I hauled out one box, then another, then another, and pretty soon I had lugged most of them up to my office area and I was sorting papers.

I found such interesting stuff - like that little paper of my Mother's that I posted about a couple of weeks ago on her anniversary.

 I started organizing things in piles - you know, - like investment papers;  old resumes ( which by the way I gladly tossed); paper road maps... okay so that is kind of weird  - I tossed a couple,  but kept a few!

What really was an eye opener turned out to be the pile I called "writing".  In this pile was every story I had ever written, finished or not, every poem, thoughts I had jotted down just in case - little events I had heard about somewhere that were interesting... research I had done for novels, or research I had done because I was thinking about writing something -  4 completed manuscripts, one of which that has been published...

The writing pile is actually 3 piles each 18 " or higher, and it doesn't even include the 731 posts I have written here on my blog over the past eight years or so.  I was stunned, quite frankly!

It's true, I have been writing stories since I was in grade school.  There is always a story running through my head. it really doesn't take much to get one going... but I had no idea I had actually written that much down on paper... and yes - I am quite forgetting the files on the computer that have yet to be printed.

It kind of shook me up.  Made me a little ashamed of myself.  Here I have all this work and I have not really done much with it.

For me, the need is to write, much more than to be read.  Blogging has helped me remember to share, but I am not always convinced that anyone really gives a hoot about reading what I write.

I am going to test the waters a bit.  I have promised myself to get organized - organize the three piles and the 731 bog posts, and the stuff running around in my head needing to get out.

Guess we will see how that goes!

TWO VERY SPECIAL FINDS!

I haven't really been in much of a mood to do any crafts or handwork since I completed the third block to my solstice quilt.  I have thought about doing some knitting, but don't know what to knit... I have really wanted to do some stitching, but that requires me going through my trays and trays of floss looking for colours - and I don't feel like that... I had thought to do some spinning, but then changed my mind..

So I turned to the book case in the living room...

I have been finding lots of good books in my two favourite places... the recycle place here in town where the books are free and a little shop in St. Rose where books are .10 !

I have been stockpiling books since summer, for just the state of mind and inactivity I now find myself experiencing.

Last week I picked up a couple of real old books in the recycle place.

This one was published in 1903.

This is a story of a privileged 13 yr old girl living in London England, who gets sent away to boarding school when her father takes a prestigious  position in a far away county for 5 years.  She is a spirited girl, but when she arrives at the boarding school it doesn't take long for her to become a victim of bullying from a group of students.

It is really interesting to read about bullying as it was in the early 1900's.  In reality, it has not changed much over the years at all.

The second book I picked up is this one.  The cover needs a bit of repair, and there is no date on the book anywhere.

I did a bit of research on the author and the book.  Here's what I found...

Effie Adelaide Rowlands, was a British Novelist who wrote more than 250 six-penny (dime) novels in her career.

This novel, Splendid Love was published in 1911 and is a novel about WW1.  I have only read two chapters so far, but already I am hooked.

There is a most interesting article at the back of the book.  I have copied it here so you can read it.  I am quite sure the copyright, if even there is one on this volume is long expired.  I looked this up as well and this is what I found.

Pelmanism is the system of scientifically training the mind invented by William Joseph Ennever. He is described in the "New Century Cyclopaedia of Names" Vol 2. as the "English journalist who originated the mnemonic training system known as Pelmanism."

Who would have thought that in 1911 this practice would have been popular!

Well this is just as interesting as I can get for one day... but seriously - both books are such rare finds, and to think I found them both right here my little rural town...

TIME FOR REFLECTION.

My father passed away on Friday Jan 13th around supper time.  After a month of struggle and suffering his life journey came to an end peacefully.

Our journey with Dad came to an end as well, and now years and years of memories will be all we have to keep him alive in our hearts and minds.

I am preparing a memorial post on his life which I hope to share with you soon.  He had quite the journey in his 96 yrs of life and I hope I can capture his life in a way so you can know the man who was my father.

I rejoice that his suffering has ended and I rejoice that he is once again reunited with my Mother.  He almost made it for their 75th wedding anniversary, but I am sure she will forgive him for being a day late.

I will be busy going through pictures and stories of Dad's life while I write his tribute, but luckily I have some drafts ready so I can continue to offer you some new material while I am busy working on a Memorial post... so please don't go away....

I will be back very very soon.

Stay safe, everyone...