I Remember When

I REMEMBER WHEN……

– the cats eating out of old enamel pie plates. They were left outside and if they were full of water the next morning, then we had a good rain overnight. “Rained last night,” “How much?” “About an inch – the cat’s dish is full.”

– learning to use the first dial phones on Big Island in 1959. I can’t remember our phone number, but our old operator assisted number was 1035-J1.

– the licence plate number on our ’56 Plymouth. It was V8-252.

– sitting next to the cookstove in winter. We’d drop the oven door to a horizontal position and sit facing the stove with our feet on the open oven door.

– Ross having dinner with us and asking us to pass the “Massey-Harris,” his name for cheese. Massey-Harris manufactured among other things, binders.

– farmers asking to borrow the “ram-rod.” They wanted the bull – not a device for cleaning their shotgun.

– my father sitting on a chair in front of the woodstove, popping corn over an open flame.

– the smell of a freshly manured field on a misty morning.

– my father teaching me the proper way to spread manure on a windy day.

– my mother saying, “thanks for the beer, Gus,” whenever she burped.

– the taste of milk straight off the farm, untainted by pasteurization

– my winter alarm clock – it was my mother shaking the grates on the woodstove to drop the ashes into the ash pan below

– the heeby-jeebies – a name we’d give when any of our smaller dogs ate to fast resulting in hyperventilation and disgusting noises in the throat and through the nose.

– friends sleeping overnight upstairs and hitting their heads on the sloping ceiling when they sat up in bed

– sweeping down cobwebs from the barn. It was a rainy day job.

– listening after the morning milking for the distinctive sound of the neighbours’ milking machine vacuum pumps. To hear one still pumping away was a good sound for it meant that we were a few minutes ahead of everyone else, at least today.

– the smell of new mown hay

– cleaning out our septic tank, burying my clothes – then realizing we had to have a whole new system after all.

– prickly ash – it grew everywhere on our farm. Cows loved to wander through it and tear their teats.

– “the big ant hill” – it was at least six feet in diameter and was located along the edge of a field near the woods. We had never seen one before that was so large, and shaped like a horseshoe.

– the weasels that used to live in the stone reinforced bridge back the lane.

– hiring a friend to split a rock in the centre of a field with a stick of dynamite. He overestimated the charge needed, and I spent two days picking up pieces of rock over a seven-acre field

– wild gooseberries

– hampers of butternuts in the spare room closet. A vice was needed to crack them. They remained in the closet for nearly 20 years.

– hawthorns – we called them thornapples. The apples were inedible and the two-inch thorns were notorious for flattening implement tires.

– listening to Gordon Sinclair and the news on CFRB-Toronto.

– picking damson plums. My father always called them damsel plums.

– My Sunday School teacher taking me aside and enquiring if I had ever been saved. I proceeded to tell her the story about the time………

– My mother giving the neighbour a plastic pottie as a baby shower gift. As the neighbour untied the ribbon I proceeded to tell her that the pot was once mine, but I hadn’t used it much.

– field names. The apple tree field, hill field, sandy loam field, clay flat, three-cornered field and field by the spring all made perfect sense to us. Why couldn’t people who were looking for us find them?

– the field behind the house. It was nothing but stones, but grew some of the best crops on the farm

– Dad sitting on a tomato crate under the Manitoba maple hand sharpening hay mower knives

– attending farm auctions where numbered tags weren’t required. The auctioneer knew the names of everyone there.

– long johns – in addition to the wool underwear being itchy, the trap door never stayed shut. The right cheek was always cold and using a safety pin was risky.

My 10-year-old friends’s mother hanging up her phone and telling me, “Better get going. Your father’s on the war path. Says you were supposed to be home an hour ago.”

The Rawleigh Man selling us carbolic salve. It was called antiseptic salve, but farmers used it mostly on cow’s teats and unapologetically asked for “tit salve.”

The rumble of the cement boat as it made its way on the Bay of Quinte to and from the Point Anne Cement Plant.

Changing out of our bathing trunks in the garage. The summer heat in there was unbearable, the dusty grit on the floor stuck to the feet, and wasps hovered dangerously close to the wet buttocks.

The bread truck dropping off loaves of bread door to door. And I’ll never forget the high school bus driver slamming on his brakes when a student at the back of the bus yelled, “Look, there’s a woman getting bread!” Sure enough, the woman was being handed several loaves of bread from the driver of the bread truck.

Toppling over stooks of baled hay after a heavy thunderstorm so the bales would dry sufficiently to store in the barn.

seldom getting a cold. Anything worse than a cold was merely a bad cold. Only city people got the flu – farmers got the grippe.

Mowing hay and getting used to the sensation of myriads of insects crawling up and down my bare arms, back and stomach.