By Ron Baker
This past weekend was both a family reunion and the burial of my mother’s ashes (along with a memorial service for her) here in Kindersley. We had about 30 or 40 relatives or friends attend. The voices were loud and the stories equally raucous. I must admit that some seemed a bit stretched but the punch lines were amazing. I even wonder if my own memories haven’t been exaggerated as the years have passed.
Of course, sitting in a restaurant and ordering from the seniors menu was revealing. As I sat with siblings and in-laws we could hardly believe we were that old. We should have known – our mother passed away this year at the age of 90. Expectation would be that most of us would be somewhere in our sixties or seventies.
We visited the homestead my grandfather established in 1909 just on the far side of the Motherwell dam. There was a dugout from which water used to be hauled for local businesses. Not much else was still intact. The shop, original house and barn, and other original farm buildings are no longer there. But the dirt is still there (a bit of a joke related to the Great Depression when you could expect your dirt to be blown into your neighbours yard!).
My early recollections of Kindersley relate to a snow storm in 1955. I had been taken to the hospital in town for some sort of infection. My parents headed home as the hospital staff cared for this young child. A blizzard rolled in and the farm was surrounded with walls of snow. The hired man was able to make it through to the hospital and I was transported home. My recollection was of my parents leaving me at the hospital – and perhaps there is a repressed memory that I’ve not been willing to admit of the trauma that caused??
In the 1960’s family reunions were held in Kindersley – when the roads were more dirt than asphalt. A good rain (which was always a blessing) could mean being stuck in the muck! I’m thankful by the 1970’s we had paved roads!
As our family reunion progressed this past weekend some of the grandchildren (and even some of the siblings) were surprised to learn of the beef ring that my grandfather ran out of the farm. The blank stares as we mentioned the beef ring meant an explanation was in order.
In the case of my grandfather, a group (a ring) of farmers all contributed a cow/calf to be butchered on a weekly rotation. With no supply of electric refrigerators, fresh beef was welcomed. My grandfather served as the butcher and received $5.00 and the hide for the service he provided. Talk about knowing where your groceries came from – you could look the source in the face when you dropped your cow off!
More stories talked of my mother coming from Ontario at the age of seventeen. She was delayed at Kindersley, accepting a job as a nanny, then working in the local hospital. She met a farmer with a red Fargo pickup truck – and waxed eloquent about the truck to her family back home. Of course the farmer was more the attraction and Mary Merritt was married to Calvin Baker in 1951 at the age of 19. In seven years she had six children and added another in the late 1960’s. She loved to travel and saw the world. In her last two decades dementia robbed her of coherence but not of joy.
And so we celebrated!!
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