Your cat will kill for such a pill - as soon as you catch it
by Ann Landers column from years and years ago!
Dear Dog Lovers: Today's column will be of no interest to you.
Cat lovers, you will definitely enjoy it.

The column was written by Bob Story and appeared in the Laguna Beach, California Coastline News

How to Give Your Cat a Pill
1.  Pick cat up and cradle it in the crook of your left arm as though holding a baby.
Position right forefinger and thumb on either side of cat's mouth and gently apply pressure to his cheeks.
When cat opens mouth pop pill into mouth.
Cat will then close mouth and swallow.
2. Retrieve pill from floor and cat from behind sofa. Repeat the process.
3. Retrieve cat from bedroom and throw soggy pill away.
4. Remove second pill from foil wrap, cradle cat in left arm holding rear paws tightly with left hand
Force jaws open and push pill to back of throat with forefinger. Hold mouth shut for a count of 10, if you are able. Hold cat's mount closed as well.
5. Retrieve pill from goldfish bowl and cat from top of wardrobe. Call for assistance.
6. Kneel on floor with cat wedged firmly between knees, immobilizing front and rear paws.
Ask assistant to hold cat's head firmly with one hand while forcing a wooden ruler into cat's throat.
Flick pill down ruler with one finger and rub cat's throat vigorously.
7. Retrieve cat from living room curtain valance.
8. Carefully sweep shattered figurine from hearth.
9. Remove third pill from foil wrap.
10. Get a towel, wrap it around cat and ask assistant to lie on the floor with cat's head visible under assistant's armpit.
Put pill in one end of paper tube you've made for this purpose. Then force cat's mouth open with pencil and blow.
11. Check label to make sure pill is not lethal to humans.
Sip water to take taste away.
Apply bandage to assistant's forearm and remove blood from carpet with soap and cold water.
12. Retrieve cat from neighbour's roof.
Remove fourth pill from foil. Place cat in cupboard and close door on cat's neck with head outside cupboard.
Force mouth open with dessert spoon. Flick pill down throat with rubber band.
13. Fetch screwdriver from garage and put cupboard door back on hinges
Apply cold compress to cheek and check records for date of last tetanus shot.
Throw bloodied ripped T-shirt away and fetch another from bedroom.
14. Apologize to neighbour who crashed into fence while swerving to avoid cat.
15. Call 911, ask fire department to retrieve cat from tree.
16. Remove remaining pill from foil wrap.
17. Tie cat's front paws to rear paws with garden twine and securely tie to leg of dining table. Put on heavy duty pruning gloves.
Force cat's mouth open with tire iron.
Drop pill, previously hidden in one ounce of raw hamburger into cat's mouth.
Hold head vertically with nose pointed to ceiling and pour one half pint of water down cat's throat and two jiggers of whiskey down your own.
18. Ask assistant to call emergency room.
Sit quietly while doctors administers anesthetic, stitches finger, forearm and removes pill remnants from eye.
19. Drop off cat, along with a generous donation at animal shelter and adopt a goldfish.

Trigger - the exercise bike by Peg Pyner

          If there's one thing I don't need in my life it's more fantasy. For this reason I wish Barbie would stop tethering up my bike.
          I got an exercise bike at Sears mostly because I thought the bike would be good for my sore knee and I used to love biking and even biking standing still is more fun than lying on my floor flapping my legs. Jimmy calls those exercises "my roly-polys" and I suspect that bike riding has more dignity. I quickly discovered that it was fun to bike while watching TV so the bike isn't banished to the spare room anymore. It sits in the living room and is hurriedly whisked from sight if anyone real comes.
          Nancy and Barbie giggled a bit and said wouldn't it be fun if they removed the little bar from under the wheel so the tire would touch the floor. When I got on and started pedaling I'd go whizzing across the floor, through the big picture window and over the sundeck twelve feet down to the ground. Silliness I can take from the young and I ignored it.
         Barbie had no right to start patting the bike and saying, "Whoa there, Trigger. Whoa, boy." She had absolutely no right to get a rope and tie the bike to the chesterfield. "You don't want it stomping all over your living room," she said.
          She had no right to keep putting plants in front of it and accusing me of starving the thing. "Barbie!" I screamed, "I have enough fantasy in my life. I don't want my bike turned into a horse."
          I am a stolid, ordinary kind of person. I frizz not my hair madly, I dye it not blond, I flit not through misty meadows clad in wispy robes of white. I am sensible, down to earth, the kind they call a good, plain homebody, although with my hair just done I'm not all that plain. I do believe I look kindly and practical.
          I never invented all the mad stuff that goes on in this community. It's all true and I'm absolutely terrified that Barbie can take this ordinary bike and turn it into a horse. I'm resisting this fantasy with every atom of my being.
          Now I need to take this column over to the newspaper office. I hope it will clarify matters for those who think they hear whinnying from our front room. And on the way back I'll pick up a sack of oats for Trigger. I haven't got a plant left in the place.

Intro to Mom's life - 1914 - me

Marguerite Flora Anderson, Greta, born in 1914 grew up to be my mother. Greta's life didn't begin in a wealthy home - her father was an unwell man, older than her mother and poor. I hesitate to diagnose her mother in hindsight but from stories told to me by my mother and her siblings I can guess Em was not a good mother. In fact, she was pretty awful. Em's youngest child was diagnosed as an adult as having borderline personality disorder and being narcissistic. Several of my mother's siblings showed clear signs of those personality/mental health disorders. I suspect they came from Mom's mother, Em.

Em's upper-crust parents came to the colonies from England. How Em met and married Mom's dad Arthur, 17 years her senior, remains a mystery.

Arthur was the son of AC Anderson, a Hudson's Bay fur trader and his Metis wife, Eliza. In the early 1900's Eliza and her offspring were simply part-Indian or half-breeds. Therefore, Arthur their son was also part-Indian. It was a disgrace for Em to marry a part-Indian man. One of Em's brothers never spoke to her again.

Greta's (Mom's) early years were spent with her family on Valdez Island, one of the Gulf Islands in the Georgia Strait between Vancouver Island and the west coast of British Columbia. Greta lived as a wild child with her younger twin brothers, Johnny and Tommy and her youngest sister, Joan. Her two older brothers, twelve and fourteen year old children Elton and Harry logged the property. Rosamund, her oldest sister lived with Granny and Grampa in Duncan and developed the proper British accent that stayed with her for life.

When Greta's family moved to Duncan in 1923 the part-Indian label preceded them. Greta went to Grade Four as "one of the dirty Indian kids", squaw or papoose. The family's poverty coupled with Em's terrible housekeeping and neglect added to the stain.

When Greta turned fifteen her despairing letters to her older sister, who now lived in Winnipeg, became more desperate. Rosamund suggested that Greta join her in Winnipeg where she could go to school and be away from the family. Greta jumped at the chance - she knew Rosamund loved her dearly and she loved Rosamund. After all, love was in short supply in her family.

In Winnipeg, Rosamund suggested that Greta was an unattractive name and called her Peg - and Peg stuck. Mom was Peg to me all my life and I didn't hear about Greta until much later.

Life for Peg in Duncan, Valdez and Winnipeg impacted her life along with the genes she inherited. The stories that follow will cover some of those times and I will look at how those years and genes impacted her life and ultimately impacted mine.

I will be using Mom's letters to her sister Rosamund from Cortes Island when my sister and I were babies to uncover and open doors. I didn't understand when I first read them what sort of impact the letters, what was said and what wasn't said, would have as I fight to understand my own choices.

And the beat goes on.

Manson's Landing Mirror circa 1955

We have no policemen on Cortes so it would be a miracle if any of the members of the Ladies' Guild got themselves arrested for speeding or dangerous driving or such last Saturday night. Had they been, they would have felt very silly. Not for the fact of being arrested, heavens, that happens in the best regulated ladies' clubs but for the fact that the arrestees would likely have been tossed in the jug wearing naught but a diaper, a short frilly dress and hair ribbons, plus a wide-eyed innocent look that would surely wring the heart of a law minion even if we were doing thirty mph which is the equivalent of ninety elsewhere.
The event was the annual spring party, held at Mary Ward's house. Hazel and I were in charge of entertainment. We asked everyone who came to bring a brown bag of clothes. We traded the bags and each dressed in the clothing from the brown bag we were given. We looked mighty foolish but better foolish than dullish I always say. May Freeman was the winner and she was indeed cute in her frilly bonnet, long white nightie and shawl.
We played games and as always the games that Hazel and I had decided would be utter screams turned out to be rather dull and the quiet little filler-inners had us rolling in the aisles. We chose to  play a ridiculous gave wherein we divided everyone into four teams with captains and gave each team an animal name - cats, dogs, sheep and donkeys. The teams had to rush around and find beans previously hidden and make their animal sound until their captain came and collected the loot. What a madhouse it was, all of the bow-wowing and baa-ing and meowing at once. To her dismay, one over-excited sheep pointed out a pile of beans to her sister, instead of properly baa-ing for her captain. Said sister delightedly hee-hawed and I bet that sheep would have liked to back up and bunt her one. The donkeys were the winners, as fine a bunch of big-eared, loud-mouthed creatures as ever you'd hope to see in any zoo.
"Let's play Charades" sounds like bustles and bows, swooning ladies and gallant gents, plush filled parlours and beaded antimacassars, whatever they are.  It sounds like fun now to the Ladies' Guild anyway, most unexpected fun to most of us. Charades is a game of pantomimes. You have to "act out" a phrase without speaking, while the other members of your team try to guess what the phrase is as quickly as possible. We guilders are not afraid of overacting or overlaughing so it was a terrific success.
We threw a man out of that Guild party, too. Oliver Ward came home from Vancouver that night and expected to enter his own home and be greeted by his ever-loving wife. All reasonable enough I suppose but on LADIES GUILD PARTY NIGHT! We threw him out. We had to. He hung around for a while wistfully looking in the windows and then he went away.
If he breathes a word of what he saw that night......

Adventures in Cooking

From "Lurking Back" by Peg Pyner

 

There’s a book called "Adventures in Cooking with James Beard."  Well, I had one of my typical adventures in cooking and I don’t think James Beard would print it. Down the tube, into the compost that is, went three cut-up sausages, one slice of smoked ham, a gob of molasses, brown sugar, ketchup, water and two cups of beans. Who but me could ruin baked beans?

I relaxed on the chesterfield the other night, reading the newspaper while a clicky corner of my brain was asking, "What shall we have for supper all week?”  I know this is grounds for divorce but Jimmy never minds. When it's slop like stew, Swiss steak or beans, he’ll eat it all week happily and I add my own variations, a dash of garlic or a piece of toast.

I read a cozy little piece in praise of slow cookers.  I was fascinated by the recipe sent in by one woman.  She, like me, always forgot to soak the beans.  She dumped them in her slow cooker unsoaked and said in seventeen hours she had Lovely Baked Beans.

With a cry of delight I leapt up, turned on my slow cooker, tossed in beans, plus molasses and stuff and again relaxed.  Seventeen hours, I thought, that's tomorrow night.  In the morning I bethought myself of salt pork which I never have, so tossed in three leftover sausages and a slice of ham.  The beans at this point were very, very hard, about the same as when they went in and I felt a tremor of unease, which I shook off.

That night the house smelt lovely.  The sausages and ham had overcooked to a deep dark brown; the beans were still very hard. We had an omelet, which Jimmy doesn't much like. He begged me to fry some bacon and open the canned beans but I wouldn't.  What's the sense, I asked him, of opening canned dumb beans one night then eating lovely home-cooked baked beans all week?

On the third day the meat had turned black, the beans were still hard.  We had poached eggs for supper and Jimmy looked broody which may have been all the eggs but why did he eye me so malignantly?  On the fourth day with fears of botulism in mind, I tasted the beans and they were still crisp, so I've given up.  Even the dog can't have them.

Seventeen hours for unsoaked beans forsooth! Where do they get these fantasies? I'm for responsible journalism and if unsoaked beans can't cook in over 100 hours, all I can say is, “Don't leave today, Jimmy! I'll open the canned beans.”

Frozen water pipes Cortes Island circa 1950

I just finished my biddling around housework and am asking myself what to do next and feeling irresistibly drawn towards the new Journal or mayhaps another seam or two of my new shirt, howsoever I will fill the wondering time with a line or two to you. The curses are standing on cardboard cartons nosing around the counter. Pretty soon one will collapse and they will howl or find something splashy or breaky and I will have to remove them but let's not borrow trouble. I just went and put the brats on two eggs to coddle and they are slugging and guzzling them down. A gory mess but like I say, let them be.
The G.D. pipes froze up three days ago and the boys can't find where. There is 600 feet of pipe which is a lot of digging and Jimmy is furious. I am washing out baby stuff here and there by hand but life is very difficult. I hope it doesn't last much longer. I'm afraid they'll say that it's all so frozen they will have to leave it until they thaw out by themselves. Can't even let the kitchen fire get too hot in case the tank gets overheated and bursts. However the front room fire keeps going and with the kerosene heaters in the bedrooms we keep warm enough.
Barbie hurt her hand or thinks she did and is showing it to Nancy. Nancy rubs it for her and says poor little kid about 60 times. She also rubs her other hand and goes to the extreme of trying to tell Barbie she is going to call the hospital. They are very amiable with each other but daresay it is but a passing phase. A while back Barbie was in the car pushing herself back and forth with her feet. Nancy came along and draped herself across the radiator and Barbie happily pushed them both along, still with her feet.

Barbie & preschool circa 1950 Mom's letters

Breathes there a mama so baffled, so beset upon as the mama of a lonesome preschooler?  I think not.  For the mama of said lonesome pre-schoolers cannot knead a dough, beat a batter, wash a clothe, dampen ironing or toil at any other such task without great gobs of chatty hindering help from the lonesome little one.  And patient as the mama may be about being helped and even though she reads “Porky Pig” aloud fifty times a day, the child is still not content and would much prefer it were Saturday and Big Brother or Sister were pushing the pre-schoolers head into a mud puddle.  And, besides always the mama knows that some day soon there will be that icy plunge into grade One and better mama’s apron strings be loosened beforehand.   
Which leads up to the fact that five of the beset upon mamas of lonesome pre-schoolers are doing something about the situation.  We decided to hold a play school four days a week at one another’s home.  

The kids love the Play School and crabby is the kid who gets a bad cold and has to miss a few days.  They get a variety of active play, mid morning cocoa, story time, sometimes records and/or singing, followed by cutting out or plasticine, the latter being very popular.  They leave for home by 11:30.  Little Dinah Armstrong calls it Plasticine School; our Barbie, after her first day or so, said Play School was fun but when were we going to put on a play?  Must have thought it a Junior Little Theatre. 

The Pipes are Calling - by Barbara Warman 2005

The Pipes are Calling

Fog approaches, tickles the air, grips branches, tarmac, pulls itself out of the black above until it reaches those who live with cracked childhoods, broken souls who welcome lost horizons.

One of these souls touched my life, fleetingly.  His fog of choice was alcohol.  He turned to the streets at fourteen, wandered to my city.

I met twenty-two year old Danny in a writing group.  He wrote in anger, singed the ears of all who listened.  He spoke of the damage of a child who filled his mother’s vodka bottles with water, hid them.  He talked about the life of a panhandler and how it destroyed the small amount of soul he treasured.

I approached him in class and said, "I know more about Islam than I know about street kids.  Do you want to go for coffee and talk so I can learn about your life?"

For a year, we met weekly.  Danny always had a job – he drove the outreach van for a local society and, when they lost the grant money, he carried on for nothing. He spoke to young streetkids about options – education, housing. He told them the stories he also shared with me about the Christmases drinking himself blind and sobbing, outside, alone, while sleet fell around him.

When the outreach job ended, he cooked at a coffee shop close to downtown on the weekends. He knew the owners because the business was very generous to the streetkids, gave them coffee and meals whenever they could. They gave Danny the chance and he never let them down. I would meet him there as he closed up at the end of the day. Sometimes other friends with names like Lazar or Dogpatch arrived and, as we waited, I bought them coffee. The conversations bounced off the borders of any life I knew.

I still didn’t understand why and how he was there, but I saw the suction of that life.  I met some of his friends and felt their vacuum, their brokenness, and their fractures.

There were times when Danny stood proud, faced down the fog, believed he could find the horizon, step over it and magically become whole.

"I haven’t had a drink in four days," Danny said, but I knew the haze was around the corner with his friends ready to pull him back and he always went.

Danny shared dreams of a different life but he was unable to draw a picture of that dream.  It was foreign, beyond reach.  The anger that stretched beneath his words and smiles remained unfixable, entrenched.

I invited Danny to have dinner at home with my husband and me. 

"Yeah?" he said, "Really?"

"Really."

Then he vanished.  I couldn’t find him. 

I accepted that Danny had moved on from our friendship. After all, what could I offer. Then the phone rang.

"Are you the Barbara that Danny spoke about, the girl he met in writing class?’

"Yes, I’m that Barbara."

"I’m Danny’s father.  I’ve been looking for you."

Danny had phoned his father a week before.  "My friend Barbara has invited me to have dinner in her home," he said, "He was thrilled."

"I want to thank you, but now I need to tell you something else," Danny’s father said, "Danny hung himself a week ago – I wanted you to know.  I found your card in his wallet."

The fog filtered into an abandoned building where Danny drank.  It wended its way through across the concrete floor to a staircase where it formed a sheet, wrapped its tendrils around the railing and around Danny’s neck.  It crept into the cracks in his broken soul, swelled and finally broke him.

Now the fog is here, it touches my face and stings my eyes.

 

Mom and the fire warden cortes island circa 1950

Oh Heavens, I just had a most humiliating experience.  The new agitator for the washer came and the washer was going bang bang and I never hear cars come or people knock.  There is always a lot of mess the day after mail day and I was cleaning it all up and piling paper and envelopes on a big piece of corrugated, then I rolled the corrugated up with the papers inside it and went to burn it outside although it is fire season.  It was a bit windy outside so I took a match and lit it inside then carried the mildly burning stuff out to plunk it in the yard to burn and I ran into the fire warden at the door.  I let out a bona fide girlish scream and blew my flaming pyre out.  He laughed.  I couldn’t very well stand and talk and let it blaze up, nor could I bravely stick it in a corner and let the house burn down, nor could I nonchalantly keep on going out in the yard and burn it.  He was looking for Elton and Jimmy to see if they have the right fire equipment and I daresay he will order them to get a set of picks and shovels and extinguishers for our yard. 

Thank the heavens he wasn’t here yesterday. Elton burned a lot of garbage but seeing as it’s fire season I can’t even put this in my column.  After we burn garbage, we put tin cans and anything else that hasn’t fully burned into a sack so we can dump them later.  I went outside and saw smoke billowing from the sack of tin cans we hang on the side of the feedshed.  I tried to lift it off and it burst into flames.  I screeched for Elton and he came out and helped me tow it away from the shed.  He had put the remains of a shoe he had burned into the sack and it was just hot enough to start the fire.  Imagine if we had gone out – everything is so dry.  I didn’t tell that to the fire warden.

This being a day of high drama I’d best go and look for the kids.

Mom's column for Campbell River Courier circa 1950

Manson’s Landing Mirror

I open this column with a scream of protest, high-pitched, shrill, and outraged, like a cougar at bay or perhaps a squirrel protecting its winter store of nuts.  For I have been falsely accused.  I did not deliberately get lost in the woods to avoid attending the stone throwing work bee and the woods are not lovely at this time of year.  Unless you gaze at them from the roadside, the woods are horrible. 

  The Ladies’ Guild had a work bee to throw all the stones out of the churchyard so Ken Hansen can spread some topsoil around on it and make it all verdant, we hope.  I was there at 1pm, starting time, which is more than can be said for some of those others let me tell you.  I threw stones so fast and hard that several hit Dolly Hansen’s car parked out on the roadway.  Dolly, being unable to hit mine, was tossing pretty close to me after a time.  We were about to start truce talks when Jack Summers came up from the store with a message for Brother Elton, who was working in the woods.  I zoomed off in the truck, parked by Elton’s truck, plunged into the well nigh impenetrable bush, found a cat road, cannily followed it towards the sound of a power saw and found Jimmy.  He told me Elton was down at the beach with the Cat, I trudged the extra mile and delivered the message.  Then back to the bee, thinks me.  Followed the cat road back to the power saw, another cat road, a branch, a trail, another cat road, tried a plunge into the bush, back to the power saw, asked directions, tried again, plunged so far I could no longer hear the power saw.  That was it; I was lost, tired and hungry. Finally I sat down, I thought if they want me to get out of these *** woods they have to come and get me.  Then I tried one more plunge into the bush and fell out of a salal bush onto the road, a few yards above my Chevvie.           

  And what burned me up was Elton had come out and driven off in his truck.  He must have known I was lost, did know in fact because he admitted it.  He thought it was funny; he wouldn’t have thought so come supper time I’ll warrant.

  Then I went back to the bee, unfortunately just as it was finished and everyone was walking across and down the road to where the workers had been invited to tea.  The jibes I took.  Oh those catty remarks, I could barely swallow my third sandwich.  Now you know the truth.  I will take the apologies in person, fellow Guild members, or you can mail them to me.

Perils of seaplane travel from Cortes circa 1950

I took the kids to the doctor in Campbell River last week and what a frightening trip we I had.  The plane, just after leaving the water, was caught by a down draft and landed back on the water, hard.  The pilot had to scramble out onto the pontoon to make sure the plane didn’t tip, Barbie was screaming and I did a very sensible thing – I kicked off my boots in case we also had to get out.  The pilot did keep the plane level but we had to take off again, which scared Barbie anew.  Little Nancy was completely contained, but white.  I had to go to the doctor in Campbell River, too and he poked my finger several times but was unable to get any blood.  I told him about what had happened on the plane and he said that fear could do that – makes all the blood leave your fingers and toes.  Isn’t it funny it didn’t bother weevly little Nancy.  Barbie screamed last night and when I went in there she was looking all around the room terrifiedly and kept yelling, “Let me out of here, the water is coming in.”  We had to take her to our bed before she would settle down at all.

Now the kids are playing boat with the two armchairs pushed together and I can hear their conversation.  Barbie apparently pointed out a plane to Nancy in a magazine and said it was no good because planes tipped over and Nancy said they didn’t and told her just one plane did it because it didn’t have a strong wing and it flew again and it didn’t tip over.  Barbie said hopefully that she didn’t cry and Nancy said crushingly that she howled all the way over and then Nancy told Barbie how she looked out of the window of the plane and saw little houses on the sandy beach.  They both talked enthusiastically about planes then.  Maybe Nancy will get Barbie swung over yet.

Nancy, the writer, as a child from Mom's letters circa 1948

"Then Nancy walked into the kitchen shooing something in front of her.  “What’s that?” I said.  “Dat’s Atun, dat’s Addle, dat’s a lamb, dat’s a mice,” says she meaning Elton, Daddy, a lamb and a mouse." 

"Nancy has happily chanted out, “Humpy Dumpy sat on a wall,” and followed it with “Now what will we say, mum?” to which I testily replied I would say nothing which should have rocked her back on her heels somewhat but hasn't.  She is swinging into Georgie Porgie, figures if she gets enough said I'll be so deep in her debt, I'll just have to come back with Ride a Cock Horse or something. She adores Taffy was a Welshman. You should hear her say, “Hicky Dicky Dock, the mouse wan up the clock.” and “Bye Baby bunting, Daddy's hunting, He's gone to get a wabbit skin to put him's baby bunting in.” I hope to find a Mother Goose book; it will be such a shock to her when she learns to read and finds out the real words to some of them.  How I long to sit down and read something adult."

This same Nancy grew up to write "The Pathfinder: AC Anderson's Journeys in the West". Her blog is wwww.furtradefamilyhistory.blogspot.com

 

Badminton 1950 Cortes Island from Mom's letters

On Saturday, 13 members and 5 guests gathered at the Hall for a Badminton meeting.  Nominations were called for a new president, there was a murmur of voices, a flash of hands and Jimmy was elected President.  While I gave him a compressed-lip look of pity for getting himself into such a spot, there was another murmur, another flash and I was elected Secretary.  A most unhealthy situation I told the meeting.  With two members of the same family in office it was very seldom we could both be there at the same time and only natural if we were tempted to filch some baby-sitting fees out of the deal, but it was no use.  None so deaf as they who will not hear and most of them were off quarreling for their turn at badminton.  And speaking of quarrelling, I’ll warrant a wounded bull moose has nothing on the fury of a bunch of badminton players who met to play several days later but found there were no birdies because their executive forgot to order them.  Not to mention after three vigorous hours of play they find there are no eats because their Executive forgot to pick a hostess for the evening.  Oh, the Badminton Club is going to live dangerously this coming season, believe me.

Solid Gold Pets by Mom in her book "Lurking Back"

            I stride proudly down East Sooke Road, accompanied by my greatest shame. One of the lusty, tanned East Sooke residents jogs past me.

"Your dog has body rot," she says.

 “Yes,” I say, “I’m sure that’s what it looks like, but before you make hasty judgements, let me tell you the story of Jeannie.” 

Jeannie is one of the four-legged creatures we allow into our home, feed and pet, love, honor and cherish in sickness and in health, and in time, she should be made of solid gold. The irony of it is that quite often this solid gold pet, this walking monument of dollars, is a mediocre mongrel of a dog or cat that belongs in an alley. Ordinary as all get out, no way worth the money.

This is what I said to Barbie when she wished Jeannie on us. "She's such an ordinary little dog. I'm not sure I want her.”  Jeannie had been on her way to being shot because she'd evolved from a cute puppy into an adolescent dog in heat.  Barbie, a known sucker for pets, rescued her. She had her spayed and she brought her from Vancouver to us. 

We wanted a dog because we were moving out to the countryside in East Sooke but I wanted a cuter dog, possibly a dog with more class.  We said we'd keep her for a few days but I started composing ads, “HOME WANTED FOR FEMALE BLACK DOG, FRIENDLY.” etc.  

While we worked on our East Sooke home Jeannie quickly set about establishing roots. She spent her entire time on top of a pile of excavated earth, growl­ing, tugging and pulling out roots. We thought this was cute and we laughed. It seemed a shame to waste all that labour and we never did send in the ad.

While I packed our Victoria home, Jeannie unpacked.  One night she ate a whole jar of peanut butter. How she survived, I don't know; the peanut butter was all right but the jar was glass and it was sharp.

She survived my rage on moving day when tired and hungry, I went to the packing case on the floor to get the casserole I'd made for supper and found she'd knocked off the cover and eaten the whole thing.

But Jeannie is a kindly soul, large and black and a bit silly.  She tolerates most things, allows the cats to bully her, and gets along with the otters and raccoons.  But, by Jeannie, there is one thing that should have gone the way of the passenger pigeon, that scourge of the woods, that foul fiend, that mocking, sneering chittering beast, the squirrel.

Jeannie has worn a path all around the trees in our yard and into the woods.  She races along this path all day, whining and yapping with rage while the squirrels float overhead.  They’re mean to her. If by chance she forgets about them for a moment or dares to fall into an exhausted sleep, they come right down the trees and chirp at her and yoicks, tallyho, Jeannie’s away again.

She’s not always cute, however.  She grows an extra row of eyelashes, which irritate the eyes.  This has cost us a pretty penny, having them pluc­ked at first and then two opera­tions.  The last one made me a laughing stock.  Dr. Grigor sewed two white buttons above the eyes to hold the stitches and she looked funny.  At the same time she got an allergy and scratched all the hair off her back. This resulted in the appearance of ‘body rot’.

Yesterday she got her foot stuck between two roots, broke her leg, and now she has a cast.  She lies on the rug, her foot is swollen, she's uncomfortable and I wish I could help her. I'll phone Dr. Grigor in the morning and take her over to have the cast loosened.

Jeannie's body is solid gold, her eyes are rubies and her ears are set with diamonds.  She's cost us a lot of money but she's worth every penny - our blasted, precious dog.

Making butter/bathing kids - Mom's letter circa 1950 - Cortes Island

We’ve had a sick cow lately, she’s better now but she disowned her calf so now we have to feed it, which takes up so much extra time.  This farming’s a mug’s game and I’d be glad if Jimmy gave it up.  He hasn’t the energy or the patience to look after things properly and the logging and a bit of gardening seems enough to me. 

Today I made a ghastly error.  I drained the skim milk into a pan to put aside to feed the calf later and then mixed the liquid for the bread in another pan with the salt etc, I tossed the yeast mixture into the skim milk, thinking it was the liquid for the bread, and happily made my bread.  When I started to take the skim milk out to the calf, I discovered my mistake.  I worked the sugar and salt and a bit of water into the bread dough but it doesn’t taste awfully good and is a bit heavy so I will put it aside for the livestock and bake again.

 

While I mixed that first batch of bread I banged my head so hard on the darn cupboard door that will never stay closed.  Nancy consoled me by saying “Tomorrow it might get better” which I thought rather cold comfort as I reeled and staggered in agony.

         Our ornery cow, Zero, is calving in the next week or so. Jimmy never did get her milking last time, as she is hellish stubborn but hope he does this time. It burns me up not getting the milk as I could take on a whole bunch more butter customers. I make good butter and whenever I need a new customer, I donate some to them as a thank you for some favour they do for me. Next thing I know they want to buy my butter every week. 

          That’s what I did to get Molly to buy from me. She just arrived to pick some up and went to see the kids as they were having their bath. Barbie looked up at Molly happily and decided to make correct small talk. “I have a hole in my fanny,” says she. Molly laughed merrily. Nancy’s belly button was smeared all around with lipstick. What attractive kiddies to be sure.

 

Badminton - Cortes Island circa 1950 - from Mom's letter

 

And our poor helpless little Badminton Club, as nice a group of clear-eyed, high living citizens as you’d wish to find anywhere, has been getting into double-dutch all over the place, and all because we laughingly remarked about something a few times in the Lunch Counter. We didn’t even complain, all we did was laughingly remark.  It went like this.  Jack Summers painted the ceiling of the Hall white, as had been decided, made a wonderful job of it too.  When the Badminton Club next played, we found we couldn’t see the birdie anymore, and some of us being so inept at the best of times, found this quite a disadvantage.  We tried to dye the birdies but it didn’t work, the dye just slithered right off.  We still didn’t complain, we just remarked about it a few times with this light laugh, the upper lip stiff and a few unshed tears dripping around the back of the eyeballs.  Next thing we know the Hall Committee has ordered green paint, which Jack sprayed on over top of the white, whilst making a great many remarks, most unlaughingly.

  Jack, aided by Jimmy also got the walls done on Sunday.  The Hall looks very nice and much brighter with its green ceiling and sand walls, which latter exotic sounding color is a very pale yellow. 

  Once the badminton game was over a little spat broke out. I believe there are two sides to every question and here they are.  First we’ll hear from Jack Summers:

 Jack:  Well, I was sitting there in the Hall after the Badminton Game and Molly Milton came over and whispered that she thought that Peg Pyner had some of the Hall’s spoons in her purse and shouldn’t something be done about it.  So I waltzed over and very nicely asked Peg Pyner would she mind opening her purse and letting us have a look.  Well, she made a scene and instantly accused us of framing her and took the spoons out and even threw one at me while I was walking over to tell President Don Levey about it.  Quite a few gathered around and some said they were surprised and some said they weren’t and everyone kept asking her was she going to print it, which seemed to get on her nerves somewhat.

And now me: 

Peg: Well, just to be a good sport I went and played a game of badminton and left my purse with Molly Milton, fool that I was.  The minute I saw Molly go over and whisper to Jack I knew something was cooking and sure enough he asked me to open my purse, bellowing his head off the whilst.  I fished around for these measly spoons they had planted there and if one flipped out of my hand and hit him on the back it’s just too bad.  He shouldn’t have kept shouting so, it got on my nerves, though not as much as those dimwits that kept asking, “Are you going to print this, Peg,” as if I’d miss!

Breeding Ezzie - Mom's letter circa 1950

Excerpt from Mom's letter Cortes Island circa 1950

Jimmy took our cow, Ezzie, down to the Hanson’s last week to get her bred to a bull they have. She was very sophisticated about it.  She was artificially inseminated formerly so when he took her into the pen with the bull, she was in a terrific dither.  Each time the bull tried to mount her she would pull away and mount him so he couldn’t get the job done.  The bull, however, has a crush on Ezzie and showed up here this morning.  Stuck around until noon when Jimmy roped him and took him home. He took Ezzie back the next day and she cooperated in a very earthy and unsophisticated way.

After he brought her home, she was back to her usual self.  Jimmy came walking along to the yard gate with Ezzie fast on his heels hoping to get something to eat, he went through the gate and Ezzie stood close to it licking her chops.  Nancy came along behind her and wanted her to move so gave her a shove from behind.  Ezzie banged into the gate and looked quite annoyed. Later, Jimmy and Nancy went out to feed Ezzie, she walked deliberately to Nancy and bunted her gently on the front, hard enough that Nancy sat down.  A very unusual happening, in fact she never did it before.  Nancy walked up to her today when we were all out in the field and blew in her face but Ezzie was lying down and ignored it. 

CAGES - My Life with Multiple Sclerosis

CAGES 

 My mother always laughed at a photo of my nervous uncle babysitting me on a west coast rock and shell littered beach while the family hiked. My childless and overly cautious Uncle Harry watched his rough-and-tumble niece fall, get up and fall again. He chased me and returned me to his log but I wouldn’t be still. Needless to say I stretched his comfort level on tenterhooks.

In desperation he fell back on the tried and true method of containing wild beasts of all species – the cage. It was easy to build and did not interrupt his beer drinking. That was important. He puts chunks of driftwood logs in a square with me in the middle. When I mastered climbing those he put another log on top and then another until eventually all four driftwood walls soared above the top of my curls. I drank from my bottle, Harry drank from his bottle, I was caged and all was at peace. That was my first lesson about cages.

And suddenly I was going to be forty in nine days. The neurologist examined me, talked for a long time but all I heard was, “Barbara, you have multiple sclerosis.” I was gentle with him and told him it was alright, that I knew something was wrong and that it was fine. After twenty years of symptoms, a bevy of doctors suggesting everything from stress to small strokes, I could now allow the illness to take me where it chose. It felt good to have the weight of guilt and failure removed.

“I’m just so relieved I’m not neurotic,” I said. “I don’t need to feel like such a loser anymore.”

The elevator closed behind me and in that stainless steel and artificial wood paneled cage I began to cry. I didn’t stop crying for months. There were days full of sobbing with ugly gagging noises on every intake of breath.

The energizer bunny ran out of batteries. My sales job ended. I could not work in my own business. Friends vanished. I wasn’t fun anymore. I moved from a battery operated scooter to a walker to a cane as the exacerbation passed.

My rage did not heal at the same rate. How dare my body do this to me! Counsellors assured me that anger was a healthy part of grieving and I would finally reach the pinnacle – acceptance. Like hell I will! My pinnacle has been an agreement with my demon MS – an agreement which is a bit reluctant on both our parts. MS won’t cage me and I won’t abuse him.

Yes, “him” because in my case MS is a male. My symptoms increase at night, between the sheets. The traveling numbness occasionally reaches its tentacles up my leg and into my crotch. Yes, it’s a man. He caresses me, not always gently. My thoughts stop, consider what he’s doing and move on. When he pinches he wakes me from my sleep and I lie as still as I can hoping he’ll get discouraged.

He is not easily put off and sometimes I am forced to get up, pace and amuse myself in front of the computer. I try to explain to him that sleep is my strongest weapon against him. He challenges me in that chest bunting way that again assures me that he is a man. I know I can wait him out so I smile one of those patient womanly smiles that drive men nuts.

The pain that MS causes at random times in random places in my body has been unexpected. It takes my breath away and I am discouraged and depressed when I wonder why this particular symptom has happened to me. But what would I want to trade the pain for? Loss of eyesight?  A tremor? A wheelchair? Loss of the ability to speak? Thanks but I’ll take the pain.

I struggled to find out who I was, what I was, what my worth was. My value was less than it had been the day before the diagnosis. A friend suggested that I write my own obituary. Did I want to be remembered as a person who could sell a fine business form, could slice a ton of salami or would I want something else said at my funeral. Writing my obituary forced me to look at, really look at life and ask myself some questions. Am I my job? Am I money? How do I want people to remember me – smiling or crying? Am I a good friend? Do I love? Am I true?

I learned that I did not find out who my friends were when I got sick. I found out who I was. When my walking slowed down I had time to look at butterflies, buds and stars. It is a journey to learn how to look past obstacles, look around them and see the horizon. That has given a depth to my life that I didn’t have before. The freedom MS has given me is a blessing. It has given me the ability to understand aging, disability and death at an earlier age than I would normally have.

The photo of the child in a driftwood cage is a picture of a child waiting to grow up, to learn and become me. This new me walks with a cane - not well but well enough to allow me to enjoy friends and much laughter. I was a family caregiver for my parents, aunts and uncles and my spouse. I am involved with a family caregiving society and was named Distinguished Honoree at National Philanthropy Day. My involvement with a wonderful group of women who care for family members with dementia continues although Mom has been dead for four years. I also love that I am forced to rest, to breathe, to think and to grow.

MS, I think we need to talk. Today you will be quiet, you will stay out of my way, you will not cage me but we both know you are not gone forever. You’ll be back caressing me tonight for I get lonely in the dark. Just try not to pinch.

 

Mom's letter from Cortes Island circa 1950

The other day I went out to feed the sheep and the ram tried to bunt me.  He was such a timid little thing when he got here and has never acted tough at all, cares nothing if you pick up the lambs but I tried to chase him away from a new mother’s feeding place and he got mad at me.  So now, there is a little fillip of danger.  He stands and glowers at me and I make faces and growl a bit.

Jimmy hurt his eye on Wednesday and is in Campbell River Hospital but is coming home today, I think.  A chunk of wedge flew off and struck his eye when he was bucking logs.  It was very painful, of course, but he decided he wouldn’t need to go to the hospital that night and he went Thursday morning.  He spent a miserable night, and it was much more swollen in the morning, all down the side of his face.  Men!  When they have a little headache or nausea they would gladly let you start a public subscription to get the world’s most famous specialist all the way from Rochester or Vienna to look at them.  But crack a skull open or knock out an eye and their only desire is to hole up like a wounded animal and let Ma Nature heal the torn and bleeding tissue.

The Great Shopping Cart Caper

The Great Shopping Cart Caper

           Doctors generally ignore me.  I’m the person who drives Aunt Joan and accompanies her into the office, explains what medications she is taking and describes her symptoms.  They listen to Joan as she tells them what they want to hear, check that her heart is still beating and send us away.  Ask about my stress?  No.  Ask if I’m coping?  No.  It’s okay – I’ve learned to laugh.
          
          Most of us who are family caregivers would call this a thankless job.  My mother, who is blind, believes that in my heart of hearts, I really want to go grocery shopping with her, not with my husband and certainly not by myself.  The idea!

But within this thankless job there are moments of pure pleasure, if you allow yourself to see them.  Taking confused Aunty Joan to Safeway is always an exhausting but oddly stimulating afternoon.  She loses her cart and takes someone else’s.  I find her wandering the soup aisle, her favourite place, and notice a large salmon and three turnips in her cart. 

“Joan, is this your salmon?” I ask.

“What salmon?”

“This 14 pound salmon right next to the turnips.”

“Someone stole my buggy,” she cries out, and the search begins for a puzzled shopper wondering what happened to her fish and why it was replaced with three hand picked sticks of celery.  We transfer the cans of soup from one buggy to another and carry on until I next take my eyes off Joan and she resorts again to the “Great Shopping Cart Caper.”

Mother is always with us, too, and it is my greatest wish that I could have a leash for both of them.  Mom is wandering along peering closely at the Kotex boxes wondering if they are cereal, Joan is in the soup aisle and I’m looking for both of them.

The upside?  When Joan moves out of her house we’ll have enough soup to keep the food bank going for a week and enough Kotex to insulate our walls.

We then go to lunch where Joan says in her loud voice, “There are a lot of fat people in here today, aren’t there, Barb.  Would you like to taste my soup?  And what will I do with that salmon?”

 

Teeth and Crackers

Visiting an aunt who’s ninety-eight is wonderful.  Elizabeth was in a facility, in a wheelchair and was full of stories.  Not current stories, not even stories about the last 75 years but stories of her childhood, in Saskatchewan in the 20’s and early 30’s.

But she always knew us – “the Pyners”.  Her now dead husband, Harry, was Mom’s brother so Elizabeth had seen us weekly for years. 

The one thing missing was Elizabeth’s hearing.  Our visits were loud and tiring for us all as it was difficult to make conversation.

On one visit, the three of us were alone in the dining room.  Elizabeth asked me how Nancy, my sister, was doing and I said, “She’s doing well.  She has a new job in the cheese department.”

“What?”

“She has a new job in the cheese department.”

“What department?”

“Cheese.”

“What?”

“Cheese, like cheddar cheese.”

“What?”

“Cheese,” and this time I mimed eating cheese.

“Oh,” says Elizabeth, “Teeth.”

“No, CHEESE.”

“Teeth?”

“CHEESE.”

“Oh, cheese.”

“Yes,” I said, sinking back into my chair, exhausted.  That was when I noticed a lone staff member sitting across the room eating his bag lunch and trying to watch TV.  I felt sorry for him, as my explanations had gotten louder as time had gone on.

I went to get a coffee for my parched throat when the staff member walked past.  He leaned in close to me and said, “I got it, your sister has a new job in the cheese department,” and he left the dining room.

A thousand times since that day, I have wondered why it was so important to me that Elizabeth understood that it was the cheese department and not the teeth department.  Is the world really all about my need to be heard?

 

But I have to go now.  I’ve just got to have some of the delicious “teeth and crackers” that I heard about the other day.

Loving Turkey Vultures

Mom's column from "Lurking Back" about a wounded turkey vulture

All Things Bright and Beautiful

I have just learned to my surprise that I should only care for ‘pretty’ creatures.  What, pray tell, would happen to my family?  Oh well, let that be as it may.
What was this creature lurking along East Sooke Road?  It was big, big for a bird I mean.  It was mostly black and a bit hunched as it waddled along the road looking suspiciously at me.  When I approached it, huge wings were spread but the bird did naught but run, flapping.  I realized then that it was one of the vultures, who are known to gather in East Sooke before migration.  This one was obviously unable to fly and had been left behind.
I returned to my house and dragged Barbie out to look at this wonder.  She called the SPCA and they asked us to keep it at our driveway by feeding it.  What could we feed it?  The cats?  Jeannie?  Jimmy? Could it be that desperate?  There was liver in the freezer, surely that would do.
As I thawed bits of liver in my arm pits, I would give them to Barbie to toss to the hungry vulture who showed signs of ecstasy, tempered with caution, but he did stay in the driveway.  Finally, after eating a fair amount, he hunched over to a stump, jumped up and fell asleep.
Bamba, of course, being a mighty hunter, never sleeps and appeared at this juncture.   He stopped in mid-step and stared.  What was this?  A bird?  And bigger than a woodpecker even.  Just imagine.
“Barbie, grab the cat,” I screamed.  Thus was Bamba hastily thrown into the car where his now silent yowls gave both of us the giggles.
The SPCA, hiding how impressed they were at how much liver I could thaw in my delicate armpit, caught the vulture and sent him to a wildlife rescue place up-island where he was treated well and finally released.
One of the WI ladies, when told of our exciting escapade exclaimed, “But Peggy, vultures are so ugly.”
I learned that day that I needed to temper my kindness with judgement from now on.  Are you deserving of care?  Do you matter?  And, more importantly, are you pretty?

 

Mom's letter circa 1950 about naming the sheep

Oh you would have laughed. The other morning Elton was getting ready to go to work.  It was a howling rainstormy day but he needed to make sure his boom was intact.  While he was sitting in front of the fire putting on his logging boots, Barbie crawled over, picked up one of his slippers and threw it onto the porch.  Then she came back for one of his socks and threw it out.  It wasn’t until she was heading back to the door with his second slipper that he caught her.  My, I did watch with pleasure.

I am so excited, the new log house is finished and I am helping Jimmy pull down the old kitchen. It’s fun. He takes the shingles off and ties a rope around the corner uprights, I hold the rope, he keeps weakening things, I tug, and soon I tug the whole thing over.  What a collapse - I feel like the Almighty or something.  Jimmy takes some credit but I hog most.  We pack shingles and scraps away and get the mess cleaned up.  It lets a lot more light into our new place already.

I love our house now.  It needs a lot of fixing mind you, but I’m anxious to get started.  Even the old part of the log house is not properly done inside and I see many hours of hard work ahead but that doesn’t frighten me. 

The new kitchen has the same mammoth wood stove facing all who enter and Jimmy is in the process of building me a whole wall of cupboards and counter.  The sink has a large window above it so when I wash dishes I can look out at our garden.  Boy, I’m going to fix it up so much with some flowers and bulbs – maybe a rose or two. 

Jimmy is coming in, he can keep his eye on the kids for a few minutes while I do my favourite thing – see if I can bag myself a raven.  Our sheep are having lambs and none has died but I have been guarding them from the ravens.  Ravens just sit around and watch for a chance to grab the afterbirth; often in the process, they kill a lamb.  I dash outside every little while with the .22 and sometimes I see nothing in the trees but I shoot in that general direction and the black curses fly out.

 I’m almost ashamed to say that I have names for most of the sheep, which is most unfarmerlike.  We have nine lambs now, out of six sheep, and two more to hatch yet.  The lambs came unexpectedly early, the sheep usually are put in the yard when nearly due but two went missing before we got them in.  Jimmy found one of them, the Dowager, way up in the bush with one lamb.  They’re both all right but it’s easy for the lambs to get stuck under logs and things.  There is one particularly scraggly sheep that we named Popeye and she was still missing, then last night Jimmy yelled out, “There’s Popeye,” and the old devil was hiking down the cat road with a lamb beside her.  Jimmy hurried out to open the gate and she came full speed baaing her head off.  All the other sheep with families ran to meet her, they gathered around looking at her lamb and she ran from one to the other giving their lambs the once over.  It was like parents comparing children on the first day of nursery school.

Mom's letter circa 1950 about non-Treaty Indians and their plight

I had an interesting visit from a lady who was collecting any old clothes the girls might have.  She is the nurse and girls’ supervisor in an Anglican Native school in Alberta.  She says just Treaty Indians go to this school and the non-treaty Indians have a terrible time.  Sometimes the grandfather chose to be Non-Treaty and if his family tries to change status to become Treaty, it isn’t allowed.  They can never get back onto Treaty.  The non-treaty children can come to the school but only as day-pupils and in bad times have nothing but rags to wear and no help at all, no hospitalization or anything.  I gave her lots of clothes and books. 

Apparently, a Non-Treaty Indian woman showed up at the nursing station with her baby who had pneumonia.  She had tried to get the Catholic Hospital to take it and they wouldn’t because she was Non-Treaty.  The baby was dying and the nurses at the school would get into trouble of they were caught helping her but the Principal said they couldn’t turn the baby away so they took the baby and the Mother in. They kept the baby alive for two days in a vapour tent but the Indian Agent found out.  The only way they could keep their jobs was to prove that they had personally bought the Vick’s Vapor Rub that was used in the vapour tent and it wasn’t from the school’s medical stores.

I couldn’t sleep at all the night following her visit.  I could not turn off my memories.  My father was part Indian, my mother was not, but she had no interest in or training in how to keep house and she showed no interest in the six of us kids.  Our house was filthy and shabby.  It was known all over town as the house where the dirty Indian kids lived.  I didn’t look like an Indian but it didn’t stop Tommy Bailey from calling me a papoose.  On Cortes Island, I’ve been able to escape this history by simply not mentioning it.  All that remains is that worm that squirms in my memory bank and refuses to die.

(Mom was in fact Metis but in her childhood was called part-indian. Mom's grandfather was AC Anderson, Hudson's Bay Fur Trader who married a Metis woman. His life is written about by my sister Nancy Anderson in her book "The Pathfinder".)

This is a diary written by my Aunt Elizabeth as she walked from Saskatchewan to British Columbia alone in 1936

 

Wed May 6, 1936

 Left home soon after noon.  On leaving received gifts, peanuts and one dollar from Kirks, a pocket Kodak and one dollar for films from community. 

Went from home to Drumhellar with Willie Warnock, truck driver, traveling until past midnight.  The roads were dreadful part of the way.  Willie says the “straight and narrow way” was a high and very slippery road with water on both sides.  Out of Hannah, he broke the gearshift lever and had to shift with a screwdriver, which necessitated stopping to shift.  We traveled fifty miles handicapped in this way.  Willie knew where to find rooms in Drumhellar and we turned in after midnight plenty tired.

Spent 75 cents for room, 20 cents for supper.  Total 95 cents

 

Thursday May 7^th

Waited for Willie until eleven.  Found lovely little park to wait in.  Willie introduced me to Casey Jones, a fellow truck driver who brought me to Calgary and bought my dinner.  First sight of the mountains about noon.  Reached Calgary 2pm and took room in YWCA.  President of YW very disapproving of a girl traveling alone and very discouraging.

Spent 51 cents for film, 42 cents for parcel of clothes, 15 cents cookie, 15 cents paper, 20 cents lunch, 75 cents room.  Found one dollar.  Total spent $2.18

 

Friday May 8

Clear warm, very windy

Walked 4 miles, rode 290.  Three different lifts, the last of which is to continue tomorrow.  He is one of those arm or leg pinchers (for emphasis) but harmless I guess.  Name – Stanley Mcdonald from Edmonton moving to Kelowna.  The mountains are far beyond anything I’ve imagined.  “I become inarticulate” (Gene Wells)

Spent 30 cents for bed.  That’s better

 

Saturday May 9

Hot, clear, fairly still

Arrived in Kingsgate (still with Stanley) at 9 am.  Was refused entry into the US because I had no money.  Walked half way back to Yahk and camped near a school.  Had supper of bacon, chocolate and ginger cookies.  Washed all my clothes.  Intend to get into school or a barn when it gets cool.  Face cream all leaked out.

Reconnoitered school premises and decided to push on as school is locked.  Three miles further on, just outside of Yahk, I heard a laugh.  Found what looked like a gypsy in the woods.  She came out with an open jackknife in her hand and I kept my distance.  She was very dark and sharp eyed, but she spoke correctly.  On learning of my destination, she offered me a bed and took me up a path into the woods.  She told me to lead the way but I soon got behind again under the pretense of being unable to find the path.  I didn’t like the look of the knife, which she still carried open.  Perhaps she didn’t trust me either.  However, I had a good supper and spent the night.

She proved to be Mexican, a miner.  Her husband was Scottish and on relief.  Their name was Moore.  Their cottage was unbelievable bare, quite far up the mountain.  Their most precious possession was a big cabinet gramophone, which had been given to them.  They kept it covered with a blanket and I felt it a real compliment when they uncovered it and played all of their dozen records for me.

Spent 15 cents for breakfast.  Better still.

 

Sunday May 10

Mrs. Moore believes she has something worthwhile in the mine and dreams of the time when she sells it.  She pointed out her mine to me but I couldn’t take time to visit it.  She walked with me for a couple of hours in the morning.  We had coffee at a closed relief camp where only the caretaker remained.  She went back then.  I camped for dinner by a little pool.  Saw a Jay, Jack-in-the-pulpit, a kingfisher and a trillium.  Lost my soap and towel.  Walked seven miles in all.  No lifts.  Camped at night where some cedar fence posts were drying of which I built a rough shelter.  Rained toward morning.

No expenses

 

Monday May 11

a.m. rain,  p.m. fair and hot

Started early and got a lift on a flat bed truck to Creston.  Walked from Creston nearly to Sirdar.  Lunched and washed under a high bridge.  Near Sirdar I found an old Frenchman sitting by the road.  He invited me in for supper.  He was Mr. Provost, a war veteran and an ex-railway conductor.  He had no means of support but the beneficence of his neighbours.  He had asked for relief but had just come from the States.  Someone had given him a dollar that day and a lift to Creston.  On his way home, he saw me hiking and when I came along he was waiting for me.  He had already eaten supper but he got me a delicious and abundant meal including sausages he’d gotten in Creston that day.  He also discussed his family and showed me a few pictures and keepsakes, including a splendid old hand made trunk.  Then he advised me about a place in Sirdar to spend the night and sent me on my way rejoicing.  I camped about a mile further on, but didn’t like my campsite so I moved on.  I reached Sirdar after dark – and such dark – so I didn’t even try to find Mr. Provost’s friends but pushed on through.  I tramped half the night and nearly froze.  This was my first experience of being on the road after dark and I was panicky with fright until the moon came up.  At last, I built a fire in an old gravel pit by the road and slept there.  Broke my water bottle and threw away my cooking dish.

Spent breakfast 15 cents, face cream 25 cents, soap 10 cents, Total 50 cents

 

Tuesday May 12

Clear, warm (nights very cold)

Woke early chilled through.  Fixed fire and slept for about two hours.  Set out to find water.  Washed clothes.  Breakfasted on one ounce of chocolate and then walked until the sun was up high enough to warm me.  Slept on a big warm rock until nearly noon.  Caught ride to the Ferry.  Lunched there.  Crossed over and fooled along waiting for rides, as it was too hot to walk.  Thumbed for a ride on a road grader, then a road gang truck and finally the man who drove the grader brought me into Nelson in his car at quitting time. He was one of the nicest men I had caught a ride with so far.  I found a room and bathed.

Spent lunch 25 cents, powder 25 cents (for my feet) Ferry 25 cents, room 50 cents, supper 25 cents.  Whew! Total $2.50

 

Wednesday, May 13 (one week on the road)

Hot

Slept till the landlady called me to know if I were dead or alive.  10 o’clock.  Had breakfast and started out about eleven.  Caught a ride to South Slocan and left town on the wrong road.  Got another lift and went six miles before I found out my mistake.  Walked back to South Slocan and about ten miles farther on the right road.  Camped by the railway just out of Thrums.  Found a potato and cooked it for supper.  Did a big washing.  Will spend the night here or in Thrums Station.

Spent breakfast 25 cents, film 30 cents. Chocolate 25 cents, matches 5 cents, Total 80 cents.

 

Some young dukhobors walking along the railway after dark were attracted by my campfire and came down to talk to me.  They asked a few questions in English, then talked in their native tongue and laughed a little.  I doubt that they would have bothered me but I had an exaggerated idea of my danger all through the trip so I got scared and moved on.  I “ditched” whenever a car came along as long as it was dark and kept on moving until I judged I was some miles from Thrums. Then I slept in a crevice in the rocks until morning when I lit a fire and slept on until the traffic began.

 

Thursday May 14

Hot

At sunrise I started out and walked all the way to Castelgar, about seven miles.  A Dukhobor lady there gave me breakfast and sandwiches to take along.  She wouldn’t take money but I left a quarter on the table.

Just out of Castlegar I got a lift with a man who was going to Trail and then to Rossland.  He went on through Rossland just for my benefit and gave me 50 cents to buy myself dinner before going over the pass.  This pass, the Cascades, is the highest of the used passes in Canada I think.  The man seemed very much concerned about me attempting it and warned me to enquire in Rossland whether the snow was off the road.  I got sandwiches and milk and a few supplies to carry along and then set out for the thirty mile trip to Grand Forks “over the top”.  I planned to take it slowly and camp wherever night overtook me if I didn’t get a ride.  I walked about a mile, slept an hour, walked another mile and then got a lift clear through to Grand Forks with a Mr. Pearson, traveling salesman.  Mr. Pearson said he had passed me on Tuesday when I was sleeping on the rock in the sun.  He said he noticed the clothes hung up to dry and that they looked like a woman’s.  His home was in Vancouver but he was going from Grand Forks by train.  Since my feet are too sore for good hiking, I am lounging along waiting for a lift.  I sit at a good point of vantage and watch the back trail until a car comes into sight, then hike until it passes me. If I don’t get a lift, I have a straw stack picked out for a bed.

Spent breakfast 25 cents, lunch 20 cents, tomato juice 25 cents, total 70 cents.  Received 50 cents.

 

Friday May 15

What a day!  *-?*!  Rain!!!!!

Started out feeling fine after a fair sleep in straw stack composed largely of Russian Thistel and plentifully inhabited by mice.  Walked about four miles, then got a lift in a light delivery truck just as it started to rain.  This took me, after many stops, to Greenwood.  It was raining harder by the time we got there.  I stayed at the hotel and wrote until the rain let up and then set out again.  Took refuge under a bridge through one shower and in an old mine shed through another.  Finally I stopped at the largest of the only two houses in sight and asked if I could stay overnight.  It turned out to be a bachelor, a hired man left in charge while the family lived in town.  He gave me supper and said I could stay the night if I cared to.  I couldn’t walk another step anyway.  While I’ve been writing the Boss came and told the hired man that his wife was coming out to stay a few days because the turkey’s were hatching.  I suppose the man meant it to warn me to move on, but I was too dense to see it.  I only knew that it was lucky I wouldn’t have to spend the night alone with the hired man.  It was still raining hard.

I walked about 20 miles today.  One little toe has a big blister and one knee and arch are weak from a mean twist I gave them coming down a steep hill yesterday.

Spent 20 cents for lunch

 

The boss and his wife came along after a while and just at dark the good lady asked me where I was going to spend the night.  Of course, I knew that she knew that I thought I was going to spend it there.  It was intensely embarrassing, as much probably for the hired man as for me, not doubt.  I hope it didn’t get him in wrong.  Anyway, I withdrew as hastily and gracefully as I could and walked about a mile.  It wasn’t raining so hard but settled to it again soon and I took refuge in the first shelter I could find which was a deserted house without windows or doors.  I slept in the corner for as long as I could through the cold, then stamped around to warm up, then slept again etc.  Through that night I conceived the idea of wearing my sweater upside down.  I had only cotton drill pants and silk underthings but for my top, I had a woolen undershirt, a sweater and camel pile jacket.  My legs were suffering most from cold so I put my legs through the sleeves of my sweater, thus making pants of it.  Even this didn’t remedy it, though it helped and I wrapped my muffler and a woolen sock around my knees below the sweater sleeves.  Does this give you a conception of the cold I was being exposed to in those nights when I had no fire?

 

Friday May 16

Cool, cloudy

Got out soon after daybreak, about four o’clock I guess.  I had no timepiece.  Got picked up after about a mile by a man who had been driving all night.  He was so sleepy he pulled off the road a little further on and took about an hours nap right in the car where he sat.  He had a heater in the car, too, which made me warm and sleepy too so I slept intermittently then while he was driving.  He was a nice guy, just took me in hand and laid out a new route for me, which is lucky because the road I planned to take peters out off in the woods somewhere.  There was a bridge out and a flood at Beaver Dam so our way to Penticton was cut off.  We went by a circuitous way through sand hills.  I hadn’t intended to go to Penticton but he said it was the best way.  He took me nearly to Penticton and showed me the way to Princeton.  Just as soon as I was out of the car, I crawled into a pasture and slept like the dead for a while.  Then I ate one ounce of chocolate and went on.  I caught a ride in a truck and slept all the way.  The truck stopping where it was to leave the road woke me up.  In Hedly, I had lunch and set out again.  I stopped in the café long enough to bathe my sprained ankle and bandage it.  It was badly swollen.  The landlady was very kind and gave me sandwiches to take along.  Caught a ride to Princeton with a webfoot from Vancouver.  Smarty kid, attractive black eyes, smooth tongue, interesting but probably tiresome.  Started out again but found my feet pretty sore.  I took the wrong road here, the shortest of two but the least traveled.  The maps were often misleading.  They showed only five miles to Aspen Grove but it turned out to be fifteen or so miles from Princeton and nothing there but a post office.  So I got no lifts until an old hillbilly came along in a Bennet Buggy and picked me up.  I asked him about the chances of staying overnight at one of the farms in the valley and he said, “I’ll see what we can do at home,” so here I am with him, his wife and four daughters, four grandchildren, three hired men and a son-in-law.  It’s a sheep ranch.  The three married daughters and their children and son-in-law are only here to help through lambing time.  They are a jolly lot and dirty as all get out.  I stayed there over Sunday and one of the girls hinted broadly for a chance to read my diary but I had just written that last sentence and couldn’t let her see it.  Nor could I rub it out with her watching.

 

Sunday May 17

Fair, still

These people, the Oelriches took me to their hearts and treated me as one of the family.  Invited me to stay Sunday so I did.  All morning they worked at sorting the long tailed lambs and their mothers from the others.  I kept gate.  After dinner, they de-tailed the lambs.  I fooled around with Gertrude most of the time watching her care for the weaklings and motherless ones.  One is no bigger than a newborn pig.  I never want to keep sheep.  They are the homeliest, dirtiest, noisiest, orneriest animals I know of and they make the most work.  

I washed and mended all my socks.

 

Monday May 18

Fair, windy

Started out about ten am.  The husband was waiting for me about a mile down the road.  I picked up a small stone just in case, but managed to dismiss him without using it.  However, I was thoroughly scared when I met the old man and not surprised when I received the invitation I had expected.  Whether he knew I had picked up the stone or not, he didn’t insist. This was the only time, so far as I know, during the whole journey when I was in any danger.  No other man offered me the least indignity.

I came through the most beautiful forests of large trees all clear of underbrush.  Saw a long lake with oodles of fish jumping.  Stopped twice to soak my feet.  About seven miles along the road, I stopped a for drink by a gate and the lady of the house invited me in.  She gave me milk and cake and when I said that it touched the spot she thought it a good idea to give me some to take along.  She got a 40 ounce gin bottle but I only let her fill it half.  I drank it and threw the bottle away within three miles because it was so heavy to carry.  Caught a ride in a crazy light truck over the craziest road.  The car was just like a rope.  He had some rocks in the back to hold it down but it was still a job to keep it on the road.  He took me as far as Merritt.

In Merritt I got a cup of coffee.  An old gentleman was worried about that and bought me a meal.  I have a dollar room in a nice Hotel in Merritt, though I asked for a fifty cent room.  Have lost interest in hiking since my foot got so bad.  My only interest is to get there and get there quick.  I ripped my pocket and took out my five spot this morning but haven’t broken it yet.

Spent 5 cents for coffee, 50 cents for a room.  Total 55 cents

 

Tuesday May 19

a.m. rain, p.m. cool and cloudy

The landlady in the hotel in Merritt invited me in for breakfast with her.  She has a daughter and a brother in law in Powell River and asked me to call on them.  She put me up a lunch, too.  I left my purse in the post office where I’d been writing cards and had to go back half a mile for it.  I walked 12 miles and then got a lift to Boston Bar with a Burns Meats salesman.  He brought me to a tourist camp and waited while I got a room.  He knew the landlady.  I had supper and a bath.

Spent 10 cents for lifesavers, a dollar for a room, supper 15 cents, cards 10 cents, films 60 cents, liniment 30 cents.  Total $2.25

 

Wednesday May 20

Cool and showery

Walked nealy all day.  Two short lifts.  One lift was with a policeman who took me to Yale and advised me to stay there overnight but the prices in the only hotel were so high that I went on.  Got another seven mile lift between there and Hope.  Made Hope before dark, have a room and am going to crawl into bed.  Foot and knee much better.  Have seen marvelous scenery today.

Spent chocolate 15 cents, cheese 20 cents, breakfast 20 cents, room 75 cents.  Total $1.30

 

Thursday May 21^st

32 years old!

Cool and wet.  Rained steadily all morning and most of the afternoon.  Worst day in the whole trip.

Started about nine, walked 15 miles.  Finally got a lift into Chilliwack.  Got a letter from Clarence and started out again, though I knew I couldn’t make Abbotsford on foot.  Walked about 12 miles.  Tried to find a fifty cent room in tourist camps and failed so I resorted to begging and after several refusals was taken in by Mrs. Blinch and treated like folks.  Pretty well done in.

Spent breakfast 25 cents, lunch 20 cents.  Total 45 cents.

51 cents left in purse

$10.00 sewed into pocket yet.

 

Friday May 22

Fair, warm

Left Bliches with her boys, who go to Abbotsford to school in a car.  Mrs Blinch was wonderfully good to me although she was suffering severely from boils on her neck.  Out of Abbotsford, I got three lifts in fairly quick succession and reached New Westminster by noon.  I kept on through town in search of the Green’s place, stopping only for fish and chips.  Finally arrived at 2:30.  Margaret knew me right away, much to my disappointment.  I hadn’t seen her for six years or more. Have washed all my clothes, bathed and feel fine.

Spent lunch 25 cents, carfare 10 cents.  Total 35 cents.

 

Walked about 185 miles in all and the total cost of the trip was $12.63

 

THE OTHER SIDE

 

I have made a rather heroic yarn of my trip from Donegal to Kelly Creek. No one has written the other side; the animals dying for food, the boys bringing straw eighteen miles to feed horses too starved to pull the load home in weather so cold that when they abandoned the sleigh and rode the horses home they could barely stand.

Finally on a day in April, I think, Len said, "Let's get out of here!" Followed the heartbreaking task of selling the stock that was left, and the machinery which no one wanted. Planning how to travel, what to take, what to abandon. Buying a car, building a trailer.

 

The boys and my father took the car and I decided to walk.