Chapter 9
Sickness, Sadness and Hardship

That summer of 1929 Papa began having attacks of asthma. He couldn't get a long breath at any time, and every attack was a frightening experience. We would call Doctor MacDonald at Griffin and he would come down and give Papa a hypo, as it gave him quick relief. Maybe another attack wouldn't occur for a month. His ability to help with farm work became less and less, and we could see his health was failing. To be unable to help was almost as hard on him as the failing health. Mama had a light stroke late in 1928 and didn't really recover enough to take any active part in the household. She lived a semi-invalid for five years. Pearl was through school, or quit school to do the housework and to be constantly with Mama. It was probably the fall of 1928 when we got our first gas powered washer. Percy Speer brought it from Midale, helped by demonstrating it and we kept it. I don't believe Papa and Mama went any place by themselves anymore. Also that fall Edgar and Lillian moved from Heward to Halbrite and occupied the Lancaster farm, now occupied by M. Claybo. We were to see much of them the next five years. Lillian had always been our second mother being the oldest sister, and we learned to lean on her when Mama was away for even half a day.

Charlie and Hazel moved up near Hume in 1931 and that left all the farm work to Earl and me. Papa was unable to do much so we also had the milk cows to attend to. 1930 was a better year that 1929, and that was the last crop year that Charlie helped with. I don't remember much about the crop at home but we had 100 acres of wheat and 50 acres of oats up on Section 11. For some reason we had quite a large acreage of oats at home also. That year (1g30) we threshed 7000 bushels of oats. Somehow Papa was able to set up temporary open ship-lap bins on two fields to thresh oats into. It had one advantage in that it eliminated hauling grain while threshing. One of these bins was up on 11. The wheat on 11 made 20 bushels an acre and the oats yielded 50 bushels an acre. Section 11 was ten miles from Halbrite, Griffin and Huntoon, quite a distance to haul grain with horses, one trip a day. As a result we threshed quite a bit of wheat in piles on 11. It's difficult for me to explain at this date why I remember the details of what was threshed on Section 11 and not what was threshed at home. The most likely reason is that I was more or less completely possessed with the hope that the south half of Section 11 would be mine someday. I was very interested in all of it.

Also the summer of 1930, Earl and I put up two big haystacks up east we called it. We hauled hay from there all winter for the cattle and it was one of the few winters we could afford to feed our driving teams hay all winter. The snow came early in November in 1930 and I hauled the oats from section 11 to a granary in the lumber yard in Halbrite. We had just bought a new bobsled, and we put the big grain tank on it. It held 170 bushels of oats. I used four of my matching sorrel horses and I hauled one load a day. I would go the four miles to the oat bin and load up with a shovel and be back home for dinner, go to town and weigh the load, shovel it off and be home by dark. Adolf Nordquist was the Canadian Investment Lumber yard agent at the time.

I'm hoping my memory is right when I say that grain prices weren't good. I'm sure Papa realized only 30 cents a bushel for that oat crop and it was clean "seed quality". It was all sold the next spring for seed to the "Weyburn Security" land renters. On top of all this, the income from this crop all went as collateral payment on what Papa owed at the bank. We made another payment called Collateral in 1932. I sold "Bess and Belle" to Elmer Beckland and the price was $150.

During the early 1930's some of our horses, namely "Good Old Jack" were getting close to twenty years old. He was failing fast. Also Fly and Polly were about the same age. The mules too had failed since 1931 when they had been used quite a lot. Queen was probably sixteen years old. A lot of work horses were considered old at twelve years so these horses were of no sale value. The only way to dispose of them was to destroy them. Jack, Fly and the Mules were led away one day to be made into dog food. It was a lonely feeling to realize I wouldn't hitch them up anymore. It was especially difficult to part with such faithful animals as Jack and the Mules. I don't remember what we did with Queen. She and Beauty had made a nice black team after Dovey died, but of course Beauty was much younger and outlasted Queen by many years. One rather peculiar experience occurred during the winter of 1932-33. I arrived home one Sunday night, late of course. There was no snow and our horses were running loose, all those except the ones needed for winter use. Polly had come home alone and was at the barn door when I arrived home. I let her in and left her loose. She seemed normal but I wondered why she had come home by herself. In the morning when I opened the barn door to do chores, she lay dead in the middle of the barn. To this day I believe she had a premonition and came home to die. What else? Why would she leave a herd she was always comfortable with? Am I being naive? I guess I am.

In the fall of 1930 Papa's health failed enough that I guess he thought Earl and I needed help, as he was hardly able to be out doing anything. He hired Chris Eggum on a one year agreement. Chris was completely reliable and even though we had some grain to haul the daily chores were well taken care of. When we saw in July 1931 that there was no crop in sight, I asked Chris even at this late date if he wanted to be released from his agreement. We were harvesting some short wheat mostly with mower and rake which proved to be very unsatisfactory, but he wanted to stay until we had it threshed. I don't remember how we made settlement but it was an unhappy situation. If we paid him any money it must have been from the sale of some cattle.

1931 was the driest spring we ever experienced, and it stayed dry. We still had quite a few cattle and horses - I'm not sure how we managed to salvage feed for them. It was also the year George Johnson decided to farm his own land again. He bought some Weyburn Security houses - four were enough, and small machinery to suit. He built himself a very small house, twelve by sixteen I believe. He would come to our house every Sunday morning and buy a gallon syrup pail of whole milk. That was about all we saw of him. He farmed like that until 1938, without ever harvesting a decent paying crop. He let the bank have his assets and went back to Minneapolis.

We were partly through seeding when Papa had a stomach ulcer attack and asthmatic attack the same day. We called Dr. MacDonald and he took Papa directly to the Weyburn hospital. Dr. McGillvry performed surgery but he lived only a day or two. Earl and I were up to talk with him one day before he passed away. He was barely able to tell us what he hoped for. His last words were, "Do the best you can with what you have to work with." It was cool and cloudy the morning that Lillian came over to tell us "Papa died this morning." I had no idea of the changes which were to be experienced in the next few years. Papa was buried from the United Church in Halbrite on May 10,1931. Uncle Elmer hauled the casket in his ton truck. Pall bearers were Gust Peterson, John Nord, Jones Hodgen, Henning Anderson, Phil Jones, the sixth I don't remember.

We didn't get our seed back that year. Earl and I broke up two big sloughs that had hardly ever been dry before. We seeded them to oats and we harvested a good crop of sheaves that were a tremendous boost to our feed supply. In 1932 we put in what crop we had seed for, but it wasn't many acres. I don't think we seeded anything on section 11. It was soon to become a thing of the past.

The only event of 1932 that remains in my mind was that Johnny asked me to go with him to Nipawin in October. He had a 1928 Chevrolet touring car with side curtains. We left home on October 6 (my birthday). It was raining when we drove out of Regina on number six Highway which was gravel then. We arrived at Oscar Baker's by dark that evening. He was living east of Spalding and had been there no more that a year. We went on towards Tisdale and Nipawin the next day. I don't know where we got the lunch we had along but we went out of Tisdale a mile and sat beside a spruce tree root that was to give us shelter from a cool rain and ate our lunch. Johnny's wife had a cousin living out of Pontrilas a mile and we stayed at their place overnight. We slept in an outbuilding, very small and cold. In the morning there was snow on the oat stooks. We spent the day there and "Hoby Carrigan" went with us to Aylsham, a new town on the CN [Canadian National Railroad]. There were no sidewalks yet and it was wet and sloppy. Later on we went north to Nipawin, White Fox and west as far as Smeaton. There were lots of log buildings and five and ten acre clearings. The crops weren't threshed yet and the fields were small. Gardens looked wonderful to us from a drought area. Most people were picking potatoes, turnips and cabbages galore. We didn't have any of that at home and it looked very good at first glance. We were probably gone five or six days at most. I wasn't all that enthused about the north but I think Johnny had already made up his mind that they would be moving the next summer. They loaded what they could on his "bain" wagon box. He had a team of old horses. They moved along with some other families from south of Halbrite. I don't remember them by name anymore. Johnny and Maude had two small children and we weren't to see much of them anymore.

In 1933 Earl and I put in what crop we had seed for. I don't remember the acres. It was a little better crop than 1931 and 1932. Prices were very low. We didn't have any grain to haul to the elevator but we had plenty of feed for the livestock. The cream cheques bought the groceries and we tried to have a garden, but we weren't the best gardeners in the world. We tried to use our parents experience but that wasn't easily transferred to us. We had to learn some things on our own. The light rainfall we were getting didn't produce a good garden. One reason we didn't consider moving was that we were too hard up to re-establish ourselves in a different or better community, and after all we had lots of company that was in the same financial position. We were all more or less at the same level.

A neighbor lady came one afternoon and took Mama to some meeting, either Homemakers or Ladies Aid at Gust Peterson's. That evening she suffered a stroke. She was soon unconscious and we called the doctor and some relatives. I'm sure the afternoon meeting had no bearing on her condition. I don't remember who came to be present the following day, but Pearl and I and Uncle Charlie were there when she passed away that afternoon, two years and a few days after Papa's death. Papa was buried in a casket made in Halbrite by George Everdell and Charlie Smith. I'm not that sure but they may have made Mama's casket as well. Again Uncle Elmer hauled it on his truck. I don't remember Mama's pall bearers. Uncle Charlie felt the loss of our parents as much as we children did. He became an important Uncle to me. I had always looked up to him and from now on I was to do so more than ever. If there is such a thing as a second father, it was him.