After Mom Died

After mom died we kids were all split up for a few months. I remember visiting my Uncle Bob in Trail BC. My brother Bob was living with him at the time. That was our first introduction to TV. We sure enjoyed seeing the Lone Ranger and his white horse racing across the desert and then Roy Rogers would come on and then our neighbor would close the curtains. We never did get to see the end of Roy Rogers. The nose prints on his glass probably bothered him.

We were quite the bunch of hooligans. Discipline wasn’t dad’s strength and when Grandma wasn’t around, we pretty much ran the place. Although I do remember the one time dad spanked me. Byron caught my friend and I in the back house. That’s what we called our out door plumbing. Every Halloween our neighbors back houses would get knocked over but not ours. My dad was smart enough to give ours a foundation. We were always proud of dad the day after Halloween. Anyway, me and the neighbor kid had undressed each other and were doing what little boys do. We were discovering ourselves. Byron told dad and dad found a pine needle branch and my totally bare and exposed bum was beaten with that branch until it was red as mom’s lips. Shame on me! Obviously l had committed something seriously wrong. I don’t ever remember getting spanked by my dad again. It must have pained him worse.

Looking back, there were plenty of other things dad could have spanked me for. I lit the largest field fire in town and all the fire engines were called to put it out. It started small but all you had to do was grab a handful of dry grass, set it ablaze and run like hell dragging it behind you. That’ll do it every time……and then run to the house and never show your face until all is over. The secret kept until I found it could be a good opener in conversation, especially if you were feeling a little irrelevant. Little did I know at the time, but that story would become one of my kids super dad favorites.

And my sister Ruth, well I don’t have many child hood memories of Ruth. She was a teen-age girl and as such wasn’t much fun. She had boy friends and always seemed to be in trouble. I remember dad and mom staying up late worrying about her. It seemed harder for her to adjust to a new mother. She was embarrassed to ride in the Hillman, always keeping her head down in town. She had some very worldly friends who liked rock and roll music and so did her cool boy friend Tim. One day he even pulled us behind his soupped up truck with the straight pipes sticking up behind the hood, around the field of snow on our toboggan. I remember that Ruth sat very close to him in the front seat. It must have been for the warmth. What fun with the windows rolled down and that amazing rock and roll music filtering out over the night air. But she left home one day unexpectedly to live with our aunt Ea out in California somewhere. I never saw her again until the day of her wedding, years later. I just knew that she, and Byron and Bob worried my mom and dad a lot.

Oh I forgot this part. This is so amazing. We got a new mother.
Oh yeah, we did. We took a train from British Columbia to Ontario. It was the kind of train with the exposed top cars where you can look out and see the country passing by. Dad left us with our Aunt Florence, a tiny little woman with a hearty laugh and sweet temperament. And it was a farm with real live animals and haymows etc. One day dad showed up with our new mother. I immediately took a liking to her. How cool is that… we got a new mom.

I guess it was a little harder for the rest of the siblings. But me and her, we got a long like old friends, Story goes, she had been my dad’s first sweet heart and he had never had the gumption to follow through and marry her until Ruby convinced him on her death bed that he might need a little help raising the four of us. She was an amazing woman. In fact she had spent many days after my dad left wondering why God didn’t have that for her. He was the love of her life and for some odd reason he didn’t have the courage to follow through way back in his twenties after he’d popped the question. She had never married and instead stayed on and served the Bible School (Elim) by raising the founder’s children. She eventually became the dean of women. In the years after she married dad, whenever we visited Elim she was like a celebrity. Everyone told stories of her heroism and greatness. In fact one of the buildings was named after her and still is to this day. Not her new name but her maiden name. Watson Hall. We had a new mom and we were now doubly blessed and wealthy beyond measure. Actually dirt poor, but yes, wealthy beyond measure, we were loved.