TALL GRASSES and WARM WINDS

                “Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind…”

              -Nathaniel Hawthorne

They walked this earth. Tilled the soil. Worked , slaved, toiled,  till their fingers cracked in the dust. They saw war. And hope for  the changes that  made them one with another. 

They called Bethune home. Where sky reached beyond tomorrow. Where Saskatchewan ,(“kisiskaciwani-sipiy” in the Cree language), meant swift flowing river. The famous Long lake  bordered their farm district. 

My grandparents took the children for paddle boat races. The air fragrant with  tall grasses  and  warm winds.  

In 1934 cowboys  came sauntering thru. Cow drives. Fresh fertilizer for the garden in the dried up slough.…..

1920’s saw the first air show  come to the prairies. My mother said most people were in disbelief. Most  had never seen a plane. 

She watched it fly . It made her giddy. Up and down went the flying machine….

So many weddings. Those Flapper styles. Silk cost about $1 a yard. Very expensive for those days. A family visited  with  their first car , were nice enough to let my mother and her siblings play in it. Which would have been fine, but they put the baby chicks in the back seat….

The endless farm work. Horses loved my grandfather so much and  took turns nuzzling his face. In later years he sold off the horses. He missed them. But the years moved on.

1919 Old Granny , east Main Street in Biggar, Scotland, expected a letter at Christmas and easter.

So, dutifully, my mother , being the oldest, wrote to a granny she had never met.

Dec 1933 it was a farm holiday. In the snow

The Cutter was rigged up. Laden with blankets and  mittens, three times thick. Afterwards, hot tea with scones and homemade jam. Sticky fingers washed afterwards in the snow, and a snowball fight.

On the farm, Grandfather  loved  guiding his work horses on the plow. My mother came out to the fields, carrying dinner in a pail. Treats and water for the horses. They ate as they walked. She would gather tall grasses to buzz and squeak, pretending to be a cricket calling into the late afternoon.

In  summers of the 1920’s,  there was diving from the Trestle bridge. Sploosh. Into the cold water of the lake. Fishing for pike, dreaming away the days. Then doing it all over again.

It was a quiet time. Horses and buggies, even though there were some cars. Carts broke  down, while horses snagged  their harnesses. Long walks to school  thru fields of grain, chasing gophers, finding arrowheads.

On  special days,  there was ice cream. Churned in the shed and paraded around to  be given out to happy children and adults, all dressed in their finest whites. 

My mother played in a basketball team. She really didn’t like the new bloomers they wore as a uniform.  She felt they looked too poofy. 1933 was a great year for their team. Kedelston was the best.  My mother  used to sing the team song “Milk n Mush and Sunflower seeds….” with her teammates. Some stayed on the farms. Others, like my mother, moved away looking for change.

June 20^th, 1933 was a red letter day. Rides in a Bennett Buggy. During the Depression it was a car which had its guts yanked out to be pulled by a horse. (In the States it was known as  a Hoover Cart.) My mother said Richard Bennett ( Prime Minister of Canada from 1930-1935) made them all poor. Poor as happychurch mice. My grandparents  soldiered on.

In 1936, my mother married and moved away , like she always planned. She wanted to be free. Though for many years she and my dad  returned for weeks at a time. Then she walked those fields again, with the tall grasses and warm winds. I think she missed it. Years later I went with her, and I felt the pull of that place.

May 29^th, 1940. Many of the farm “boys”, now young men,  left for war. A war they knew little about. My grandparents grieved . My Uncle Stuart wanted to be with his chums.  It was so difficult. My mother thought he should stay and work the farm with his brother, Bill.  Stuart was raring to go like all of those young men. Mugging for the cameras as they went. So many did not come home again.…..

 Till one day, he appeared . Snow had vanished, like it does, when spring peers from the shadows.  He was older and a little broken, maybe  wiser. Tall grasses and warm winds, welcomed him home.