Various Veins
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Time to fall back once again. The weather was pleasant for trick-or-treaters on Saturday night. I spent the evening with son Doug since I don't know any of the young folk. It was so different when Martha was able to identify almost every caller just by looking into their eyes. Being Kindergarten relief and librarian brought dozens to our door.
I set the digital clocks on the stove and microwave ovens Sunday morning, and my wrist watch, non-digital so I'd have time on my wrist no matter where I wandered.
My phone rang Sunday afternoon. Ron Howe was in a rage at the conditions in the Straffordville Public School. I won't go into details, but Ron and I were on the same side which freed us to wander back over our intersecting lives.
Ron's father, Clarence "Tanner" Howe left farming to work at masonry and carpenter work, often with my great uncle Walter McDowell. I watched them make the bricks and concrete blocks to build Lyle Grant's garage opposite the Straffordville school. They did the same for Horace and Ivanel Johnson on the northwest side of Highway 19 above the bridge over the Little Otter.
I stopped there the day before my wedding. When he heard the news, Uncle Walter said, "There's still time to get to Alaska!"
At that time I had my Grade 13 diploma and considered I was educated. Martha married me expecting to be a tobacco farmer's wife. In just over a year, after our first son, David was born, I made the decision to leave farming.
My first job was with Hotchkiss Appliances in Straffordville. Just then Tanner Howe was remodelling Blake's parents' house in the village. Blake didn't have much for me to do and I was sent to help with the house renovations. I had served Uncle Walter from time to time on the Bowes farm where I lived for 16 years. Now I was to have opportunities to work with both men.
Tanner was hired to add a bathroom to a house on East Talbot Street in Aylmer. He hired me to help. Living on less than a shoestring in those lean years, I had no work boots.
It was soon evident as we started to dig the hole for the septic tank that moccasins were inappropriate for hacking through maple tree roots. I drew a cash advance to get a pair of real work shoes.
When we reached the interface of roots and Aylmer clay, Tanner borrowed a spud from the Hydro workers to chip out the clay. Can you picture the blisters from new boots on tender tootsies?
Life marched on through changes of occupation until it brought me once again into a job with Uncle Walter, Tanner and his son Ron, and son-in-law Peter Neufeglize. They were building a house for Howard Ravin in Tillsonburg. My first assignment was to move about a zillion concrete blocks down a ramp into the area inside the footings.
I went at the Herculean labour with the energy I'd learned with this crew and finished it in two days. I never knew that Uncle Walter expected the job to last a week until his daughter Cathy confided it after his death.
This feat gained enough time for me to help mix the cement and mortar in a small mixer to lay the blocks and fill the first two and top courses with concrete. All this with bagged portland and shovels. This was no cottage. I forget the dimensions, maybe forty by sixty feet.
Now be aware, strikers in the Straffordville School, this conversation with Ron Howe may have saved you from a very angry citizen armed with a mop coming to your door to push out you and the accumulated filth in the halls, police or no. I admit I share his contempt for what's going on, and I am almost sorry I cooled his desire to emulate another Ron facing striking air controllers in the USA.