Chapter 16
Limited Options

The spring of 1939 looked better and we put in a crop that turned out very unfavorable. It was dry again and very little worthwhile crop was harvested. Glen and Beulah drove from Illinois to visit with us and encouraged me to go back home with them. This was still about the middle of August. I packed my bag, had very few dollars and started out with them as far as Portal. The immigration officer was not at all satisfied with my answer "I was going to visit", but neither Canada or the United States were in the mood to accept travelers unless you had a pocketful of cash. I didn't have that and I was denied permission to go across the border. It was slightly heart breaking. Glen and Beulah bid me good-bye and I turned around to go back home. While I was making up my mind what to do to break the monotony of no work and no money, Ray Peterson "invited" me to help them thresh a few scattered stooks of wheat. I don't know what other help he had but we got it all gathered up and I was home again. It eventually dawned on me that I should go north and find work harvesting. Somebody said there was some crop even as close as Yellow Grass and I decided to give it a try. I suppose I walked, ran or thumbed a ride to Yellow Grass and went directly to the grain elevators, as that was as good a place to get advice as to who was looking for men - experienced men were more in demand as always. One elevator agent mentioned Albert Muir, eight or ten miles east. It seems he even found me a ride and away we went. Albert Muir and his brother threshed together, and I had a job, hauling bundles of course. They were ready to start threshing within a day after I arrived. I was assigned a team and wagon and we were soon gathering bundles and threshing quite long days. We were at work at 7 a.m., stopping for dinner at 11 a.m. and threshing until 7 p.m. Many days we hauled 12 loads of bundles. We had six bundle teams on a 28 inch Goodison separator, the power supplied by a 15-30 McCormick Deering tractor.

Albert Muir was a very fair man to work for but he didn't put up with any carelessness. There were a couple young men (big boys) on the crew but they held their place after a few days of learning. One young man and I became good friends and he went with me "up north" after we were done threshing at Muirs, a job which lasted fourteen days. He was Stewart Kirby, from Gainsborough.

We left Yellow Grass walking toward Regina on highway 39 gravel. A motorist soon stopped and offered us a ride for $2.00 each and we were in Regina by 1 p.m. We had something to eat and carried our luggage to the north side of Regina where north bound trains departed to various part of Saskatchewan. The freight we were looking for left at 11 p.m. I had ridden it in 1934 when we shipped up to Naicam. There were "side door Pullman" travelers scattered along the right of way for many rods. We walked past them all and I knew we'd be near the front end of the train. Eventually our train came along. It had to stop to close the switch and Stewart and I got on an open tank car close behind the engine. It wasn't a good place at all, being out in the open it was cold and also dirty from soot and smoke. We never stopped till we arrived in Bulyea where the train did some switching, leaving or picking up some cars. We were nearly frozen as it was really cold going through the Ou'Appelle Valley. So we grabbed our luggage and ran back looking for an empty box car that was open. We jumped in and were surprised to find it was already well occupied. I wasn't too well pleased to find so many men in one car and I quickly had to feel safety in numbers. After all, we had a few dollars on us.

It was daylight when we arrived in Lanigan and all the Hobos departed for the nearest cafe, just a short way from the railroad. We took up all the seats in the cafe and when the train crew arrived a few minutes later, they had to wait for a table. Ironic. Our train out for Melfort and Gronlid didn't leave for two or three hours, so Stewart and I walked out of town where our train out would be going and found a warm sheltered place in the sun. We lay down and had a brief rest. There were a few flat cars loaded with machinery on the train we were boarding and we chose these to ride on so we could sit and keep warm in the sun. Leroy is about half way between Lanigan and Watson, and here the train stopped to unload some freight. The conductor came along and said "OK boys, there are lots of farmers here looking for men. So off you go." Stewart was reluctant to leave me but I said "You're on your own now, I can't be of any help." The conductor asked me, "Why are you not getting off?", I told him I had a job in Naicam, so could I go that far? Surprisingly he allowed me to stay on and I was alone. The train eventually arrived in Naicam and I was fortunate enough to find a ride out to Lillian's. Harvest was hardly started yet and there was no harvest job available. So I helped a neighbor Jim Smith pull stumps for a very few days. All we needed was a horse and chain and an axe a piece. When that job was finished I went back to Lillian's and conveniently learned from other neighbors that harvest was getting under way a little farther west over by Daylesford. So I decided right away to move on. Daylesford was fifteen or more miles straight west. Lillian took me at least half way and I walked the balance of the way.

My first destination was the grain elevators and immediately found a farmer hauling grain with a team. He offered me a job which I accepted at $2.00 a day. What he didn't tell me was that he was a bachelor. Well it was still a job and he seemed easy to talk to. He was Jim Boland and lived about two miles out of town. Daylesford was only a hamlet, two elevators, two stores and post office, maybe a school, I'm not sure after almost 49 years. Jim's place was a rented farm and not too much had been invested in buildings. After the first night I realized we had a lot of company in bed every night. They are called bedbugs. Even I got used to them or immune, I'm not sure which. I learned the first couple of days that I was allowed to get the meals and milk two cows twice a day and stook, for the huge sum of $2.00 a day. Jim's crop wasn't that good and there were lots of wild oats and sow thistles. It wasn't really difficult for me to stook and keep up with his one binder. He told me at an early date that I could take one of his teams and go on a good threshing run with the man that would be doing his threshing, Alec Turkington. Coincidently, Alec's mother-in-law owned the land Jim farmed. Jim didn't have much of a well and he watered his livestock out of a dugout. Even it was almost dry and by the time harvest was finished he was hauling water from Lake Lenore. Lake Lenore has a hard sand bottom where we hauled from. "Believe it or not" I hauled more than one tank of water by driving out into the lake in water a foot deep to load the tank with a pail at the end of a strongpole, with two horses.

Jim managed to find a housekeeper through threshing by taking on a married couple with two small children. The husband herded sheep for a neighbor and was there at night and for supper and breakfast. The lady made a raid on the bed bugs and the situation improved to some extent. I expect cleaning up our clothes was almost as big a job as cleaning the beds and house. I thought afterwards that she was a very patient person or needed the job very badly to put up with such difficulties. It was probably both. The threshing job was eventually finished and I trekked back to Lillian's walking all the way and carrying my luggage. If I hadn't been strong from being work conditioned I don't think I'd have made it. Boy, was I ever more tired? I can't remember when.