We came to Canada as immigrants with limited means but with bright promises and good prospects as we were young at 32 and 34. We had rented Mom’s parent’s farm with all equipment furnished for which we have half of the crop and stood half of the expenses of raising it and all of our personal expenses. For those times our sale in Illinois had been a great success, although it hurt me to see the things sell which I had bought and raised over 8 years of farming. The cost of the settlers’ fare was reduced from the regular railroad fare, but it cost considerable, so our nest egg was whittled down, but we still had enough money to see us nicely through until I could seed, harvest, and sell the 1927 crop of spring wheat, we thought.
July 9, 1927 one of the most disastrous hailstorms ever to hit Yankee Valley, pounded our bright prospects into the ground in a short half hour while we sat in the house and saw it done. Hail stones as large as golf balls lay all over the fields between chicken coops, and on the windward side of building and fences posts — the leaves were gone. The crop insurance was a mere pittance as I faced a long winter in a strange land with six mouths to feed and bodies to clothe, so I started buying chickens, killing what we could and bleeding and feathering them for the dressed chicken and fowl market of butcher shops in Calgary.
I had to spend money buying, fattening some, time killing and dressing, and money to run the Ford to the markets and back but we continued to eat and be comfortable, though some of those trips in an open touring car with just side curtains were a severe test of my endurance against sub-zero weather. The crop came back as the hail had come quite early so we harvested and threshed most of it but the number of bushels were down and the grade was No. 5.
We threshed the next spring, giving an exorbitant price per hour, then hauled the crop to Kathryn during the next summer. The second and third years were a repetition of the first, excepting the second crop was frozen with an early, heavy frost, but the third year I stood in Forest Lawn, a suburb of Calgary now, and watched a hail cloud to the northeast. I knew what it meant — Switzer was to have No. 5 grain for the third year running. That hail came on August 15, 1929.
Our lease expired the next February 28, so we had to move. At times our prospects for finding a home were very remote but there was a family in Airdrie, who were losing their home on the a/m date. They wished to get what they could out of it and sold to us and gave possession for 2 Shetland ponies, 2 halter, 1 saddle, 1 bridle, 1 red cow, 40 hens and $40 in cash with me assuming a mortgage of $1100 which I was to pay at $20 per month plus taxes, plus 6% interest, plus upkeep. Inasmuch as the sellers did not come through with part of their agreement we refused to include the cow and kept her for our own use.
The cottage was located on a 1/2 square block next the school and church. It was 30 feet square with 3 bedrooms, kitchen, dining room and front room and with a concreted basement 14 by 20 feet in extent. It was built in 1907 but was warm and comfortable, especially after we shingled the sides to the ground in 1941 when I came home from Fort Garry, Winnipeg, Man. on sick leave for 30 days from a broken muscle in the back of one of my legs. Harry dipped the shingles in a wash boiler of linseed oil, George carried shingles, paper, nails, etc., while Ken, who was 17, and I nailed the shingles on, then we all set in to paint the house a maroon red with the corner boards and window casing white. We lived there 31 years, lacking 11 days, and disposed of it with regret.
The Dirty Thirties were starting in and we tried every possible way to feed and clothe ourselves that someone else had not gobbled up, reported for the Calgary Herald and delivered both in Airdrie. The children drove a herd of cows 1 mile to pasture and thereby got pasture four our cows. Moms sold Watkins products and I continued to buy, kill, sell and dress chickens for the Calgary markets.
During the mid-thirties the chicken business fell to pieces as people got too poor to eat chicken, in fact they could hardly eat at all. Bread lines were set up in the cities and a form of relief was granted needy families in the towns and villages. I took whatever work I could get and threshed in below zero weather for $2.50 per day and bed and board. It was a short day of about 7 hours as it was in mid-winter, but it seemed very long from start to finish of each cold day.
That threshing was a memorable job as the stook haulers wore heavy coats outside other coats when going to and from the stook rows, and stomped around high rubber snow boots while wearing woolen mitts inside leather pullover mitts on their hands. The ground was frozen so hard boards would jolt loose and fall from the bundle racks when going to get a load and the bundles were sometimes slid off by the severe jolting on the way back to the thresher. The oil and grease pails were taken to the house every noon and night to soften the contents enough so it could be used and all was activity to keep warm.
One morning the John Deere engine would not start, so a pile of straw was put under it to warm it enough for starting but a gasoline line leak caused a holocaust with the result the engine never was used again. In previous after supper conversations I had described how cattle in Illinois bloated on clover which was wet from dew or rain, so I was ordered to tie my team one day and go to the barn to stick a cow which was near death from bloat. I whittled on her back until I got a hole through her skin, then pushed the knife into her down to the hilt. A very welcome sound of escaping gas resulted and in a half hour the cow was out of danger and I was ordered back to hauling stooks again.
What a feeling of depression came over me, as I had been working in the warmth of the barn filled with livestock with no mitten nor coat. I faced the prospect of ceasing to be a Good Samaritan and volunteer veterinarian to be retrograded to become a stook hauler again, however I donned sheepskin and heavy mitts, untied my team and started for the stook rows again with a team which was so fractious from standing a half hour in below zero weather, I could hardly manage the. It must have been a sticking good job as the cow recovered; the grain was eventually threshed and everyone laughed and chatted lightly while fingering frosted noses, ears and fingers.
People ate, drank and wore what they could. We bought 11 sheep at the Calgary stockyards for $2 each and someone brought them to us. I gave him a sack of potatoes, worth about 50 cents, for the trucking fee and he accepted it gratefully as he could eat them. People became so poor they could not buy gasoline for their car, so rigged a tongue and doubletrees to the front and drove a team of horses for motive power. That contrivance was named the Bennett buggy as that was the Federal Premier at the time.
Old clothing was renovated and remade, no one looked down on anyone else as all were feeling the pinch of the times and thumbing rides were highly in fashion. One haberdasher told me he had inquired if his clerk had sold anything that day and upon receiving a negative reply, said, “Well let’s lock and go home and not spoil a perfect day, I haven’t sold anything either.” That was at 4 p.m.
The old sheep fattened well on prairie wool hay on the stem on what is now the recreation area of Airdrie, plus the square block east to about where our house stands now. They pastured every day there when there was no snow. When one was fat enough to kill, we ate her from her front knee joint to her hind knee joint. Each one of us got one “lamb chop” each meal and with potatoes, carrots, etc., from our garden we carried through until the Thirties passed.
When World War II started in 1939 money appeared in thousands and times became good overnight. I sold Watkins goods in what is now Forest Lawn subdivision of Calgary in order to take a refresher course in military tactics at the Calgary Armouries. Twice a week I walked the 34 blocks to the Armouries, drilled for three hours and walked back. That was after I had peddled my wares all around during the day. If I had had a good day, I would indulge with my buddies in a cup of coffee for 5 cents and a piece of pie for 10, then start walking. My route home led past the Union Packing Company where they were roasting meat for the markets. Added to my coffee and pie, that glorious smell was a real stepper-upper as I passed about midnight.