Shaun Newman Podcast - Ep. 55 - Lloydminster Community Pillar - 90 year old Terence Bexson

Episode Date: February 5, 2020

Born in 1929. He went through the dirty thirties & remembers the struggles of WWII. He has been married for 65 years, has 11 children and has just a wealth of knowledge. Unreal to sit down with Terence and walk back through a great life. We discussed his love of horses, all things Lloydminster & hunting with dogs ... and no gun.... seriously

Welcome to the podcast. First and foremost, I've got to give it a little bit of a shout out here. Sidney Smyth had sent me a message this week saying, hey, Sean, I've got a confession. I haven't listened to any or many of your podcast to date. I'm sitting at Starbucks breaking down a video before meeting. She's talking about hockey, folks. And threw on an episode, at 17 minutes in and people are looking at me funny because I keep making quirky giggling noises and smiling to myself. No exaggeration.

You're a talented conversationalist and got a good thing going, buddy. Thanks for the entertainment and enjoy listening to you. Looking forward to listening many more. That's a pretty good compliment. That comes from a woman compared to a man. Man's like, you're awesome. I get like, that was perfect. Like that's amazing.

Now, if you want to get a shout out on here, hit me up via social media, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook. That's probably the quickest, easiest way. You can be like some and track down my phone number and shoot me a text. That's totally cool too. Now, on this week's episode, I sat down with Terence Bexon. And here is your factory sports tale of the tape. Terence Bexon is 90 years old. Yes, 90. He's been married to his lovely wife, Betty, for 65 years, going on 66. They've had 11 children. He was born in 1929, lived through the dirty 30s,

remember his World War II, and times that were a little bit, people didn't have a whole lot of. He's a lover of horses. He spent his life training and breaking horses. He's been all over the country doing that. He's a community pillar for the town of Lloyd Minster and community. He served on the board at the Lloyd X. for over 20 years, and he was inducted into the Hall of Fame at the Lloyd-X in 2019.

And I am talking about, of course, Terrence Bexon. So, without further ado. So first off, thanks for joining me. I'm sitting across from Terrence Bexon. And did you just celebrate your 90th? Yeah, in December 15th. December 15th. It actually is on the 16th, but we had the birthday party on the 15th.

Okay, okay. And 65 years, going on 66 years of being married to your lovely wife, Patty. Yep. Right on. We're going to dig into that in a little bit because, I mean, you know, it's funny. You just don't hear too many couples. No. That's a long time.

Yeah. You know. It's a long time. Been a great life. Well, let's start out, let's go back to your childhood, your early days. You were talking about the night you were born. Maybe you could talk a little bit about that. were you born? In Lloyd, straight across from the exhibition grounds. Okay. Yeah, the little house up there,

there wasn't much around it, just the odd house up there. Ross Lister lived up there, and that's where I was born. There was a little house in the barn, and that was about it, and dad had, he used to drive livery, and that's what we were doing up there then. We left Lloyd when I was three, and moved back to the farm, he'd say, Grandma and Grandpa Bexon's. Which was out by maidsdale? No, they were out on 303. You know, Glenn Pollard lives now. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Seven miles east.

Yeah, that's where we lived, yeah. And then we moved from there up to the Hamilton Place and then for a year. And then we moved over to the Mortimer Place and then Grandma and Grandpa left for England and we went back to the farm again, the original farm. You had eight siblings? Betty and I? No, your parent, growing up. You had, how many brothers, how many sisters? Seven boys and two girls, nine.

Nine in total. Yeah. What was that like? Oh, pardon. Where did you fit in, Terrence? I was the oldest boy. You were the oldest boy. The girls were the oldest, and then I was the oldest boy.

So your parents had two girls and then seven straight boys. Yep. You were talking about the warriors. My first memories of war years was coming out of school when I was 11, and sitting on a plow with five horses, plowing. Couldn't get no help. Crop had to go in. 11 years old, and I had four lines in my hands plowing.

What was that like? Oh, fun. Just loved it. No school, that was the best part. So that would have been 1940? 41. 1941, because we were saying this, I believe, before we started, you were born in 1929.

29, yeah. Almost 30. I was December. 16th. December 16th, yeah. 1941. Started plowing on the 9th of April. And... With five horses.

Obviously, no help around. Everybody was gone, doing, or being pulled left, right, and what else do you remember about those years, or is there much? Oh, just a lot of hard work for everybody in them years. A lot of stuff you couldn't get. What couldn't you get? You couldn't get gasoline to run a vehicle.

You had to use horses for everything. A lot of people turned the car. cars into what they called Bennett Buggies. They took the motor out and put a kind of a, what he called, a steer or something. Yeah, so they could steer it and hooked on the car and sat in the car and drove the same. The first time you saw that, did you have to take a double look? No. I was kind of born with a day. They were there when I first. When you first got, okay. First I realized. I didn't even realized what it was. I think I'd only ridden in the car once before I seen that. They called them Bennett Buggies. What else was hard to get back then? Oh, food, some food, they,

they was hard to get. Yeah. And there was no money to buy it with anyway. Everybody was poor. Neighbors was all just kind of neighbors and helped each other and you got through. It wasn't a whole lot. stuff around. Do you remember hearing, like, I assume the radio was a big thing back then? Yeah, we had a radio. Was there a time where you all gathered around? Were people concerned about the war? Quite a bit.

We weren't too much. We were too young to really realize, I guess. But, yeah, people used to gather around the radio to hear what was going on. Battery operated. You get halfway through, and the battery go dead. A couple of choice words might be said. Oh, damn. Too late now.

Yeah. Same with hockey games, like you used to listen to the hockey on TV, on the radio. Foster Hewitt? Yeah, Foster Hewitt would be an ounce in. Yeah. All of a sudden, you'd go dead on you. So then what would you do? Nothing you could do.

Nothing you could do. You were done, yeah, unless you had another battery to hook on to it. How would you charge your batteries? I don't know how they charge. They probably took them to town. I don't know. That was maybe not my job, so I don't remember it. What about the 1930s?

Everybody remembers, you know, from us looking back, it was the dirty 30s. Do you remember anything about that leading up into the war? Some of it, not kind of vague, a lot of it. But yeah, there was a lot of hardships. Like you'd get a carload of cattle and ship them and probably get a bill for the freight. For one thing, grain was worth little. Yeah. Nothing sometimes.

But most people didn't grow a lot of grain anyway. We fed most of it at our place anyway. I remember going to the elevator one time with a load of wheat. My dad sent me over, and the elevator aiding that phoned and said that the price of wheat had gone. off a few cents. So he sent me with a load of grain to the elevator. When I got there, there was about probably eight teams lined up waiting to get in. Finally, the elevator agent walked out and said, sorry guys, price went down. Well, there you're sitting with a load of grain

at the elevator. What are you going to do? So then I had to go in and phone my dad. And he said, oh, hell, no, he's bringing home. We only got to shovel it off. Metaple let her go. Yeah, there was a lot of that happening. You'd get there and all of a sudden I think it was 10 o'clock in the morning they used to get the call, the price of grain. Yeah. And all of a sudden, down you went.

Never went up. It always seemed to go down. Yeah. What do you think then, thinking back those years that were absolutely tough and now you're, you know, today's day and age, like you've seen an awful lot.

A lot of change. Some of it, don't think much of some of it was all right I guess the biggest change that helped us was the power

it was great to get do you remember that day? Oh yes I remember the power coming in yeah about 19 what 50 I don't know

early 50s I think late 40s yeah what did you guys do when the lights went on oh God it was just I don't know it's just

too bright Everything looked too damn bright because you're used to the old coli lamp and then the barns switch on the switch and you had all kinds of light just like daytime yeah it was quite a change yeah great

hospitalization was another thing that was great great changes some other changes I don't know what other changes don't you know about what's something that stick out to you that I don't particularly care for airplanes

and flying. I've flew some, but I don't like it. It seems like should be on the ground riding a saddle horse. Yeah. And there's a few other things that, like this,

all this technology they have today, I'm not into it at all. I'm not one that likes a lot of that kind of change. We don't have, even, I don't even have a credit card. That's probably a good. thing. I used to like to deal eye to eye, shake hands and that's a deal, eh? Yeah. There's not a whole

lot of that anymore. No, no. Actually, that's pretty much gone. Yeah, you miss that. Like, now they look at you as if they don't trust you at all, eh. Yeah. Yeah. And probably rightly so. I don't know. A lot of crooked stuff goes on. Yeah. But back then, if you said to a guy, I'll give you a 50 bucks, for your horse and you didn't have the $50, he'd say, take it, pay me when you got it. And nobody ever got stuck with it. Well, I shouldn't say maybe nobody, but very few. People were honest, and a handshake was, that was it. I'm still like that. If I tell somebody you want to do something, I'll do it. It don't matter. But I know there's a lot of people that don't. with a few of them.

Is that something you learned from your parents? I was going to ask. Yeah, well, it was kind of everybody the same. Your parents taught you that and your grandparents taught you that and other people, neighbors and stuff. They trusted you, you trusted them and you kind of learned it as you grew. Yeah. Did you ever get in any trouble as a kid?

A little. I had to strap a few times at school and... and mostly just miscevious things. We got in trouble one time. We had a furnace in the basement, and there was an eight-by-eight wooden post to hold the school up, instead of steel teleposts.

Okay. They were just wood. And we used to cut the wood, split the wood for the furnace, and then we chopped the axe into that post day, and that's where the axe stayed. I don't suppose we're supposed to do it, but we did.

But then after a while, this post got kind of chopped, and well, I wonder what happened if we chopped that right off, eh? Yeah. We got caught at that and kind of got a little trouble. We built a ski slide one day in the schoolyard, and we had it about, oh, I'd say probably 10 feet high at the high end, and then it went to nothing. And then we had old planks and boards and rails, and God, we could. down that thing we'd probably killed ourselves but anyway that one of the trustees drove by one day and seen this structure in the schoolyard and demanded it come down again and I always remember teachers saying we went into school that

morning and she said you grade five sixes and sevens can go out and take that monstrosity down out of the school yard yeah and we got in that terrible trouble over that. How far did you walk to go to school or did you walk? We walked a lot, two and a half miles. Two and a half miles one way. Yeah. We actually was in the Kempton district and it was three and a half miles and we couldn't get into the Trafalgar district, but Mr. Luke, old Freddie Luke, he's traded quarter sections with my dad just on paper and that put us into Trafalgar district and then we could go to Trafalgar you wouldn't see that happened today either no you most certainly wouldn't no but that's that's what

happened they farmed their own quarter sections but they had a thing written up that they traded quarters and that was that we were in the district how many kids in your school there's both average about 30 yeah there was thirty four I think that most and the least I remember was about 20 What would that be kindergarten to grade? Grade one to ten. One to ten. Yeah.

And the grade ten would be maybe one or two, maybe just one. Grade nine should be the same, maybe two, three. But they'd take it by correspondence. Did you go to high school? No. No, when grade eight was finished, I was done. You were done? I was out in the field with six horses floating breaking

And school started and I never seen the school yard again. That was it. On to the horses you went? Yep. I was floating breaking until freeze up that year. We had 40 acres of new breaking. And when I was finished floating and it snowed, I went hauling hay from Furness with the four horses.

10-20 hay rack. How old would you have been at that age? 15. 15. Yep. Yeah, I was 15. I was all on feet from Furness. All day job.

You left early in the morning and went down, tied your horses in the bush and fed them some hay and started loading. When you got the load on, you hooked up again and went home. And then the next day you'd put it in the hayloft and feet around the yard maybe a little, and the next day another load of hay from Furness until it was all home, eh?

Yeah. We put a lot of hay up down there, Purveau, the Furness country. In 1945, your parents had a house fire. Does that stick out? Burn fire. Barn fire. Yep. Yep. Burnt the barn down. Do you remember anything about that? I wasn't home at the time. I was working for Jack Brown. But yeah, I remember it well. We lost a good saddle horse in that fire.

She didn't get out of the barn. She had the saddle on and the saddle was burnt and she was blind. when she come out from the fire. From the fire? Yeah, Dad had to shoot her. Yeah, that was a big loss, old Pippi. I used to ride her to school when I was a kid, and the rest of the kids would walk, and I'd go and help Dad hook up his horses in the field,

and then I'd get on her to go to school, and then I'd come home at night and grab lunch and take him lunch to the field. So I got to ride the horse. And that was old Pippi. There wouldn't have been any help trying to put out a fire like that. I mean, as soon as it started, it's pretty much gone. Try and get everything out. Yeah, my younger brother was apparently making some rope,

and when you got the rope made, you took a match and scinted all them long hairs off. Hair's off. Okay, yeah, that makes sense. And he went and tied the damn thing in the barn that had a straw roof. And, of course, the fire went up the rope. Yeah, it wouldn't take much. Into the ceiling and gone.

Dad was in the field with an outfit of horse. He had 10 horses on a one way, so the harness and them horses were safe. But the old mare in the barn, and there was three, I think, in the barn. They rescued two. They chased the chickens all out of the barn, and they turned on back in again, so, yeah, crazy chickens. Yeah, he lost the barn and the feed, and the feed stacks, and the granary of oats, and all that good stuff. that good stuff.

I was saying to you before we started that I was, the Lloyd Minister Archives has an audio recording of your dad and in it he had mentioned everyone milk cows and some milk to England. I don't know what the year was on that. Do you remember anything about that? Moking cows and sending it to England? I sure remember milking cows, but I don't remember that other part. Going to England, you say?

Yeah, yeah, that's what it said in the transcript. I wish I would have had a year. No, I don't remember that. But I do remember milking cows. That's it. Yeah. Tough work? Well, actually, it wasn't that bad.

You sure built up some arm muscle, I'll tell you. But we used to milk about, oh, anywhere from 12 to 15 cows, night and morning. Yeah. That would take some time. Yeah, I used to get to milk four about in the morning, four at night. Yeah. Real privilege. We'd take the milk in and cool it in the pump house, run cold water through it, through the cans,

and then every morning you take it in Loi to the creamery. And sell it? Yeah, and where it went from there, I've no idea. Do you remember you and any idea how much you used to get for milk? No, not a clue. I don't really remember now what we used to get for a can of cream, do you? Because we sold a lot of cream ate. Growing up, what was some of the main social activities he did?

Oh, dances. There was card parties. Card parties? Yeah. Like poker, crib? No, crib. Well, not so much crib, but we played Canasta, and we played, oh God, I can't remember what they called the other game we used to play. What was that card game we played?

You still play it, I think. I never was a card shark. I hated playing cards. So you just went for the social aspect? Yeah. I didn't mind Canasta. It was quite an interesting game, but they played a lot of rummy.

Oh, yeah, rummy, yeah. Yeah. And I can't remember what they called that other. What would you used to play at Wildwood? They used to have card parties. You remember? I don't remember what they called it. Remember what your first vehicle was?

The first one I owned, 1929 Pontiac. 1929 Pontiac? Yep. Yeah, with the oval window at the back. Bought it up with a guy by name of Ed Larson. What was that like driving that thing around? Oh, good. It was a good car.

It was a heavy car. Quite a bit heavier than a Model T or a Model A. Did you ever have the opportunity to drive a Model T and a Model A? Yep. I owned the Model A for a while. Did you? Yeah. Did you like that? Yeah.

There were nice little cars. We rolled one one night. You rolled one? Yeah. Murray Orr was actually driving a Model A coupe. And we come from Travalga school down to the highway, and his brother said to him, slow down, you got to turn, and he turned.

And we weren't there yet. There might have been a few drinks involved in that. Oh, how the years have gone by, but nothing's changed. Yeah, but anyway, he wound up with his hand out of the window somehow, and it was laying on its side, and his hand was pinned. We all went out the top, and he couldn't get out. He was pinned in there. So then we went down in the ditch below the car.

We're trying to push this car up. Yeah. We could have rolled on the top of us for God's sake. Did you get him out? Yeah, we got him out. We got it loose enough that he could get his hand out. Yeah. And then we got him out to top and just left her there.

I got to ask, what beverages would you boys be drinking back then? Mostly beer. Mostly beer? Was there a beer choice back then? Not very much. Calgary and I guess Pilsner was there then too. Yeah. Mostly we drank Calgary beer.

Calgary beer. It was called Calgary. It was called Calgary. Yeah. That was the name of it. I don't remember any other beer particularly. I remember taking a case of beer to Banana Belt School one night about that same era. And we headed in the Carraganas outside. And when we went back out to have a drink, we couldn't find our beer.

But we found a gallon of wine. So we just assumed that probably the guys that was looking for the line had pound our beer, so we drank their wine. Yeah. It was kind of, we never heard no more about it, so I guess it was all right. How did you meet with Betty? Actually, I was floor manager at Landreau's school one night. The Fantorp's were playing the music, and you used to have to call the square dances

and the circle two's and stuff like that. And you used to go to the music and say, well, what are we going to do next? Fox Trot, Chautis, square dance, whatever. And then you'd announce that, eh? And if it was a square dance, then you had to call the square dance. Circle two, you called the Circle Two.

And this little pretty girl showed up at the dance that night. I don't know if she remembers that or not, but do you? Yes, maybe it do. Yeah, she was with her folks. Actually, we never, I don't know if we even talked that night, but I kind of knew where she was after that. How old did you have been at that time? Probably what?

No, not right then. I wasn't. I was probably 19, maybe. Then, yeah, 18 or 19. I got to stop for one second, because this is going to bug me all podcast. When you say you were the floor, manager and calling out dances. You mean you're going on a speaker and calling out with the next... No, you just done it. Just hollered it out. Just hollered it up. Yep. Your voice. There was a specific guy that had to do that? Yep. That was your job.

Somewhere people are listening to this and they're way older than me and they're going, you're a dummy and you don't know. But I've never, never seen that before. No. I don't know when it really quit. They went to ordinary square dances where they had professionals and all the rest of that stuff. So you had a band playing, and the band would let you know what was coming up next? Yeah, you'd go to the band and say, what do you want to play next? Or they'd ask you, what do you think we could play next? The aim was to get people up dancing. Absolutely. And if things got slow, you'd have a square dance.

Well, then you had to get so many couples on the floor, right? Right. Because it took, what, four people to make a square. Four couples. Yeah. So you had to involve a lot of people. And then if they were short of one, somebody just ran over and grab somebody off the seat and haul them up.

Yeah, you used to get everybody going, get the old school rocking. How late did you guys go? Do you remember? Two o'clock. 2 a.m. Yeah. Went to 2. Usually that was it.

Or there was the odd time when everything is rolling pretty good. You'd go a little later. Not very often. And would those be out at the old halls then? The old schools, yeah. Oh, the old schools? Landrose. Mostly we went to Landrose and Trafalgar,

Southminster, Kempton. Yeah. So let's go back to this girl, you see. When is it after that then you finally meet? Probably a couple of years. I went up there to work. I think I went up to Stook. I'm not sure now, but yeah.

And then I kind of got more interested in what was going on. Yeah, it was a nice place to go. Like I worked there quite a bit off and on at Follards, trash and stook and stuff like that. And then I just kind of made a lot of trips for other reasons. I'm putting you on the spot because she's watching you now, but what was it about, Betty, that stuck out to you back then? Oh, her looks, her mannerism, mostly.

Pretty cute little girl and behaved herself pretty well. Yeah, what more do you want? It's very true. Yeah. And I enjoyed her parents. They were nice people. It was so easy to go there and just kind of be there. It was almost like going home to me.

to go up there. There was her folks, and then Raymond and Patty were there too. They farmed together, the four of them. Yeah, I think that's, I broke a horse for her dad, and I think that was the worst bucking horse I ever owned my life. Yeah, they'd trained him pretty good. He'd bucked a few people off, yeah. I don't know if they ever used him when he went home, that banner.

But boy, he could buck, and he'd put the saddle over his head. That was his big trick. But I tied him down behind and said, nah, nah, and ain't going over your head more. Yeah. See, in them days, we didn't have double-rigging saddles. They were just one, just a three-quarter rigging, one cinch. So I just added a back cinch and surgery up,

but he didn't like it because that's probably what made him buck more, but that's the only way to keep the saddle on him. because he had no withers. They had just put his head down and... It'd go right over. We'd go. No, we were married, living in Grand Center at the time. We had a duke ranch up there for the Air Force Boys.

A little closer. Oh. I know we were just mentioning or talking about... I lost my uncle, Tommy, to a car crash. And that was Betty's parents in that. Yes. and their aunt Patty was with them

yeah the train the rail liner hit them one morning crossing 48th Street down by Sproul's blacksmith shop they were in town that morning and they were looking for a place

for the boys to stay to go to high school in Loyday and Robert had gone to school at Broughton and Tommy was staying there so he went into town with him and then they were going to take him home and they were looking for this place

and they crossed that railroad track and I don't know, I've never seen the train or what happened but boom and that was it. It's a little different time I mean like now you can't get across the railway crossing in Lloyd pretty much anywhere without lights

and arms and everything else. Yeah. It would just cross. arms there at that time and took your own but the thing was there they had that blacksmith shops, scrolls blacksmith shop there and it was really close to the track and that rail liner we had proved that the in battle for that the trial that it was speeding that morning it was late hey but the problem was there was no speed limit till they hit them radiant and this was on 40 was it 48 I

or 47th, whatever it is out there. Yeah. And he had three blocks to go. You had there two blocks before the speed limit took effect. There was a trial? Pardon? There was a trial? Yes.

Oh yeah, we had a trial over it. In North Battleford? Yeah. Yeah, I was a witness at the trial. It was the trial was actually the insurance company trying to get something out of the CNR. to pay for the calamity. And did anything ever come of it?

No, we lost the trial. You don't win against them people. They had lawyers coming out of their yin-yangs. Yeah, they just, they had the best lawyers on earth. We had some pretty good lawyers, but we could never prove nothing on them. Several things came up. Some I wouldn't want to talk about at the trial,

but mostly it was because there was no speed limit until he hit the meridian and what could you do with them? And they admitted speeding that morning because they were running late. But there's nothing you can do about it. Yeah, her mother and Tommy and Patty were killed, Pirkner instantly. And her dad lived long enough to make the hospital.

And then he was talking a little on the way, and then he just expired, and that was it. We were in Grand Center, and I was out Stucan, actually, that morning. And I came in for dinner, and Betty said there had been an accident, Lloyd Minster, and these people were killed, and they were driving a late model car. Well, he had a 1956, wasn't it, Chevy car? And it was fairly new, eh? And she said, what would they mean by a late model car? And I said, well, your boat's drive a late model car.

We had no phone or nothing out there, eh? And it was only what, maybe an hour after dinner. I was just going to go back to Stuken. And my brother-in-law drove in the yard. My sister and him were living up there at the time, too, at Grand Center. and picked me up and took me down the road, and he said, Betty's folks got killed this morning. And I opened the car door and jumped out, just like that.

Just hit me so hard. I guess I didn't know what I was doing, eh? Tumbled off into the ditch. You wasn't going very fast. But, yeah, it was a terrible day. I really appreciate you sharing. That's something I know from... Hard to talk about.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Those are things that, you know, that's my dad's brother in that vehicle. And all of us kind of know bits and pieces, but a lot of that I've never heard before. Yeah, great little lad and great people. He was probably the carefulest driver ever rode with in my life, Betty's dad, eh? And I rode with him a lot, hunting and stuff like that, eh? So what the hell happened that morning?

I have no idea. No idea. I never could put it together why it happened. Yeah. And I give it some thought, too. I'll tell you wholly. Never ever made sense, but anyway, it happened. You know, maybe that train, maybe they seen it, and it was just coming too fast, and they figured they had time, I don't know. Yeah.

But as far as they know, there was never anything said in the car. It was just kaboom, and that was it. And he had stopped. Like they said that the car stopped. at the railroad track and then moved out across. I don't know whether that was Sproles or I think that came from the engineer of the train. Yeah, we had to, Betty was expecting our first boy actually. And I told, Milton, I said, you had to Coal Lake and get something for Betty, tell the doctor

up there what's happened. And I went home and got her, put her feet up, off the chair on the chair. to another chair and then we started talking about the accident that morning and I'd let her more or less kind of guess what had happened because I know when he told me outright like that it just about oh great so I didn't want that happening and then he came with some stuff for Betty sedated her a little and yeah then we jumped in the vehicle that afternoon and headed for was there any way to call home like to talk to anyone no we did I guess we could have.

We could have gone to the Grand Center, but we just got in the vehicle and headed down, headed home. How long of a drive would it be from? Oh, Grand Center would only be a couple. Well, actually, I don't know what had been back then. Yeah, and then days, about two hours. Two hours. Yeah.

Yeah. If the roads were decent, it was all gravel, and there's no hard top then. Yeah, about two-hour drive, unless you got stuck for a couple hours in the mud hole. We came down to her parents, her grandfather's funeral. and we come to this damn mud hole.

And so I stopped and looked it over, and I thought, well, we got to go. We got to get across somehow. So I backed up and give her, and I got about halfway and plon. But anyway, there was an old guy that lived east of there. You could see the yard, and I walked up there. And when I got there, he had a little wee international tractor. What did he call it, a grassland? hopper, he called it. But anyway, he had only one leg. And we brought this tractor down,

and he eventually got me out of there. Yeah. Why were you guys living in Grand Center? We went up there. We had a dude ranch for the Air Force boys. We lost 30 head of horses up there that summer. Swamp River hit us. There weren't all our horses. We had horses of different people throughout the country. And I was breaking saddle horses and steady. And then anything that turned out we used it to do with. We had a 32 horses we could saddle. We had more than that, but that's all the saddles we had. But yeah, sometimes they were all out too. Yeah, a dollar an hour to ride. A dollar an hour to ride. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Two dollars for an over. heated horse and you paid for the horse if you lost him and the equipment. I can tell you

story about that too. Well, by all means, I'm curious now. Yeah, the rule was that they stayed on the lease. We had a thousand acre lease and the river cut it off on the south side and the airbase cut it off on the north side. Okay. The east side was open. If you went far enough west, you just run into the river and the fence. You couldn't go. And the rule was that's where you rode down that way. Well, these two guys were hired up my team, actually, old Dick and Dusty. And I went into Grand Center at noon to get some dinner.

My dad was up there at the time, helping out. And here's the team tied to the cafe side of the cafe. So I turned around and went back to the Dood Ranch and picked my dad up. and drove back there, he took the truck and went and got dinner. I went and got the team, took them back to the Dood Ranch. And those fellas rented that team at 10 o'clock that morning. They come back in the Dood Ranch. I was just ready to leave at half past 10 that night,

and they walked in to tell them they'd lost the team. Yeah. Well, I charged them right up to the time they walked in. And then I said, and you know that you're probably going to have. have to pay for that team. And I said, but you come back tomorrow and we'll talk about it. And I didn't think I'd ever see him again, eh? I thought that'll be that. But they did come back. So I gave them some of their money back for the overcharge and told them what had happened, hey? Yeah. Jack came back to ride, but Andy never, ever came back. That fixed him.

scared that devil out of him. But rules are rules. Rules or rules. And it was dangerous riding out that way because there was all kinds of traffic. 11 kids. Yeah. Why 11 and at what point in that

did you go, oh, let's just have another? Did you always want a big fan? Never really give it much thought. Never gave it much thought. No. No. Loved kids in a way.

Very loved kids. and I guess that was just... Six boys, five girls? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And how many years? 11 kids and how many years?

13. 13? Yeah, it must have been a little more than that, maybe. I don't know. One other kids. What was... They get out and said. Oh, really.

Because Sharon was born in March 18th, 1955. And Kara was born in March 17th, 20th, 1956, and Margie was born March 17th, 1957, all in March. I have three children below four right now, and at times I think I'm a little bit off my rocker for today's world at least. How was 11? That means 11 under, like 13. It's kind of one of them things actually when the 11 kids and us lived in a little wee house

and we built our new house in 1959, 1969 and the 11 kids was all there. How many bedrooms was that house? The old house? Yeah. We had three bedrooms. Three bedrooms for 11 kids plus you. Plus you two? Yeah.

We had bunk beds. Bunk beds on bunk beds? Yeah. We had bunk beds side by side for the boys. Yeah. And they doubled up a lot. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Feet to feet kicked out of each other. Yeah. Yeah, and besides that, people used to come and stay. And I don't know. You found room somehow. I always think of Grandma and Grandpa's out on the farm, Don and Dora's. Yeah. When you look back at pictures, all the cousins and our family,

everybody's family being this little tiny house, but somehow it was cozy. Just made it work. Yeah, it worked somehow. Weren't worried about everybody having their own space. Everybody was happy to... There was no running water. We had power, but there was no running water in the old house.

And then when we got the new house in 69, we moved in in November, early November. We had the house warming on the 22nd of November. remember. It was colder than the devil. And that night, the propane had run out. And we phoned the propane provider in Edmonton at the time, eh? And yeah, they'd be right out. And they'd only talk them two hours from Edmonton day. And we come in that night, we had sandwiches for dinner, and sandwiches or whatever get for breakfast. We come in that night still no propane, So I phoned the co-op in Lloyd, and they said, well, you know, we can't put propane in another person's tank.

That's right. And I said, hell you can't. I said, get some bloody propane. And Gordon Seeson came out. Remember Gordy? Yeah, he came out with propane. He didn't fill the tank, but he put some in it. So we could have some heat again.

Yeah, yeah. And by the time that propane, he didn't. pain got there, the party was well underway. We just went through minus wind chill of minus 51. I think it was minus, I don't know, 36, 38. In your 90 years, do you have a winter that stands out that you were just like, man, you couldn't do anything? It was so cold?

Not really. There was always some 40 below. But, you know, I don't remember a winter that was really bad like that. But I know there was several winters one that didn't let up much, but it never got, it would get to 40, but it was never usually around 20, somewhere in that area below. How about snow accumulation? If you look back, was there a winter where you just had a crazy amount of snow? 1955, 56. Just horrible winter.

How much snow are we talking? Well, I don't know. It blew so much, eh? It was hard to really telly how much there was, but there was a lot of snow. Like the roads, they gave up on the roads altogether. Back then you had. So then what do you do when they give up on the roads?

We went across fields. Yeah, headed off across different fields. Yeah. We left that spring before it thawed, but we came back and I had to start in Minburn at the ranch. I run a ranch for a guy up there. I had to be there April the 1st. And we came back May the 3rd, I think.

And it was pretty much over, but oh, my God, that was water. But yeah, like Betty's dad and Bill Selmer and Billy Ritchie, they'd put three tractors on a V-plow and head down the road just to go on there. Yeah, that's how they kept their roads open. But even then, a lot of them plugged, and they'd have to go so far on the road, and then head across the field somewhere. I know at the nine-mile corner up here north of Marshall, that the road cut off across that land that Miller has now.

And it came out just east of our old place, back on the road again. Johnny Hunter came down from his place. I don't know if you ever knew Johnny. He lived by Landrose. He used to run cat. And he started out at his place with a cat. one morning, and he went all the way to Lloyd right up to the railroad tracks. Then it was open from there on, and by the time he got to the railroad tracks, this side of Lloyd,

there must have been 15 vehicles behind them. Yeah, because then they could all get out to the, and get in for some groceries, and a few spirits in this and that. Yeah, and we went, followed him with shovels just in case, eight. We had a team in sleigh, and we followed the cap. I think there was 11 of us in the sleigh. We all had scoop shovels just in case he got in Iraq. Oh, yeah, it was a fun winter that 55.

And then there was one winter down in Kitskotty. He must have been, I want to say about 75, 1975. It was a horrible winter for snow. I know I drove four horses all winter feeding. He couldn't. The team wasn't enough. The snow was so deep. That snow was probably, oh, I don't know, most places, three feet deep.

Other places, it was six feet deep. Yeah. Yeah, I had a little pair of hackneys on the lead and a perching team on the pole. And then little hackneys would jump through that snowway and bust her down. And then I'd drive into the stacks and then I turn around go back out and then go back in and load and then come out. I used to load with the cable, loose hay, throw a cable around the stack, and hook the four horses on the cable and flip around the hay rack. They called it the Larson Load.

The Larson Lod. The word got its name, the Larson load. There was an old guy at Meadow Lake, and his name was Larson. And he worked for Dan Krause, I think it was he worked for. and he always told Dan, why don't we put a cable on there and see if we can pull it on with a team instead of forking it all day. And he'd never let him do it.

But old Dan went to Saskatoon for a few days for something, and he took the back off the hay rack. He drove down the field. He took the cable off the farm hand down the field at the hay meadow and napped her on the bunk of the rack and pulled up to the stack. around hooked the team on it and pulled a load on and he hauled three loads they said that

first day with that cable way and then he cabled one on and when when Kraus came home the next day he was coming in the yard with this load of hay and there was still snow on the top of it and he said how did you get down on there like that and then he told him i used the cable oh it brings up what dad always tells me don't work harder to work smarter yeah exactly That's making a way of taking the grunt out of it. Yeah, you betcha. And I use that down at Ketchguddy for all my head, sweep it in with a farmhand. And you know, you put that cable around, cable that load on, and run the cable right around it and tie it up at the front corner so it hold it there.

Go to the feedlot, cut that string that you tied it with and it would pop, right? That cable had loosened up. And you could roll that hay off there just like nothing, because it went in a bunches-e-a-and-and-you-just-roll it back off the rack. back off the rack. Like somebody said it'd be damn hard to unload, but it wasn't. You might get a pretty big pile in one place and not much in the other, but you'd roll off a lump and pull ahead and roll off another lump. Nothing to it. Save a lot of work. But you had to be able to skin them four horses to load it, because it put in here took four horses a load a big load. I had a 1020 hay rack, and you could haul a pile of hay on it. A team would have to scratch.

That's pretty hard to load that with Ford pumping on there. You could dig that cable in around the bottom. You put your rack out there and dig that cable off the rack in here, and then flip it up over that corner there and pull ahead. And it would just take that bottom of that stack and just upside down onto your air rack, just like that. Boom. Unreal.

Growing up, did you have someone who mentored? Was your dad your mentor? Did you have somebody who kind of showed you the way? Yeah, pretty much. Him and Grandpa Fox. Pretty much my mentor's. Jonathan's son, but he was only 10 years older than me, so I didn't believe it were the stuff he told me.

I learned to listen to him later in life. But yeah, Grandpa Fox and my dad was... And what did they teach you? Get out there and get her done, and this is how you do it, and you better listen because they only told you. you once. Yeah. And they taught you how to handle a horse, you know, how to hold or break a horse, stuff like that. We used to use the Barry Hitch to, to, to, uh, hold or break horses at one time. I don't use it anymore. It was pretty severe. You could spoil a horse

quicker than you could if you didn't know what you're doing. And it, old Professor Barry taught that. And it was, uh, just two half hitches. and it put pressure on both sides of their cheeks as well as the top of their head, eh? And you could only use about four to six ounces of pull to hold a break a colt. And if you went higher than that, it would pinch the hard, they'd strike at you. And you'd teach that horse to strike, eh? Yeah. I know lots of people tried to use it, and they're just too severe, eh?

Does the love of horses then come from your father and grandfather? Yep, yep. Is that what you guys always had on the farms? Always, always. How many horses grown up? Oh, we used to keep about 50, 60 head. At a time. Yeah.

Grandpa Fox probably had 200 out there at his place, Perchins, mostly. He used to keep four or five stallions and root mares. Why perchance? Well, there was several reasons for having Perkins actually. The first thing was they were. better minded horses. Clydesdale was not a bad-minded horse, but the Clydes were hairy-legged,

and they'd get wet, and then the dirt would stick to them, and they would get itch under their hair, and, oh, it was a mess in the field. If everything was dry, it was okay. But even dry, that dust would get up in that hair. Yeah. And you'd had to keep cleaning it and cleaning,

or you'd get a mess underneath of the, And a Belgian back in the day, there were poor-legged horses. They used to go lame a lot. And bad frame of mine. They're nice today. They've taken that mostly out of them. But I broke all breeds of horses in my day. I've done thousands of the damn things.

But that would always be my preference of percher, good-minded horses. So good-minded, meaning temperament, they were better? And learn easily. Learn easily. Yeah. What is it about horses that attracted you so much? Oh, just the smell of them at first. Oh, I love the smell of horses.

I used to get on horses back in the field before I even went to school and ride up and down the field and smell that sweat. Oh, Jesus. Yeah. But, yeah, I just liked the animals, like I was an animal person, dog's horses. Not so much cows. I had lots of cows, but. Never had a whole lot of love for them, but horses different.

Yeah. It's quite amazing, actually. Like I formed a method of breaking horses. I have tapes on it. I read that. There's CDs out there about to break horses by you. Yeah. And when you start in with that horse and see that the way it develops

over just a short period of time, if you use the right kind of method with him, It's amazing just to watch them. I remember going to Grand Prairie. I took my clinic up there. And they brought in. I always took three horses that were started at different stages of the 10 days of disciplines,

and then I'd have them bringing a green horse that never seen before to start on. And they brought this Belgian horse in that Grand Prairie. And this old guy walked up to the fence where I was, And he fingered me over. So I walked over and I said, what can I do for you? And he said, you're the guy that's going to make this horse stand still in one spot in 15 minutes or left. And I said, yeah, I'm going to try.

And he said, you know, he's going to do it. And I said, really? I'll come. He said, I know that horse. He's a bad backer. And I said, oh, it could be. I said, you know, bad don't always mean that they won't do it. it. And he waived $60 in his hand, eh? And I said, what's this? And he said, we've got a bet going on

that you're not going to do it. And I said, oh, he said, me and two other fellas. And I'd seen them sitting there, two, three old guys, eh? And so I said, so what's going to cost me 60 bucks get in this deal? No, no, no, he said, just throw in your 20. He said, we'll have coffee on you. And I said, okay, so I give him 20 bucks. He took it and gave it to the lady who was running the arena. And I said to him, when's the payoff? And he said, if you get that bugger to stand still in 15 minutes, that's the payoff. It's done.

That horse that started on him, and he snort. Oh, my God. And anyway, I had him cross-tied and loosely so he could move. And the trick is you bring them back to one spot. You pick out a spot and that's where they go. And if they move off that spot, you take them back. You don't get mad or not, just put them back. And then you go to scratch them, and if they move off, you put them back.

And that's what you do. And pretty soon they're standing there in one spot and you were scratching them all over and I was scratching his hind legs in less than 10 minutes. He just like that caught on to it. Yeah. If I stay there in that spot, nobody pulls me around nothing, then I get scratched. And, oh, God, they were just like that.

My God, and that's the easy $60 every every in my life. What did you do with the $60? God, I don't know, spending on gas, I guess, coming home. A long drive home with a load of horses. Yeah, but, yeah. But that's the way they are horses. If you use the right method, you can. Like, I can hold a break of course.

cold in five minutes. And he followed me all over the farm. Is there, do you still break horses in? A little bit, yeah, not too much. I don't get much time anymore, but I've done a few. Okay. I've done that cold in the crowd down there. But it's just so simple that, you know, I've seen guys fight horses and fight horses. You don't have to fight them. Just let them do it themselves, you know. You just guide them. and when they do it right, you give them credit.

They do it wrong. You give them a little discipline. And who did you learn that from your grandfather and your dad? A lot of it, the halter braking, I learned there, but the system I use, I taught myself. Just picked up different things from different clinics, tried different things. And then after a while, you put the whole thing together, eh?

How many horses do you think you've worked with over your lifetime? Oh, God. thousands of thousands yeah thousands is there any that stick out

that guy right there stuck out pretty good is that the famous Charlie that's the famous Charlie yeah and what was it about Mr. Charlie he was half American saddle bread and half perching

and the smartest horse I ever dealt with in my life he just knew so much like I could take that horse to a clinic like up in Grand Prairie Everything's strange. I didn't take him because I used another horse up there

because I didn't have room for him. But I taught it in Lloyd, what, four different times, I think. I taught it in Prince Albert. And you could take that horse and stand him somewhere. He'd stay there for a week if you didn't move him. And when I used to harness him up, send him out at my barn here, I'd harness him by and send him out to the kraal. I didn't even have to say, whoa.

He just walked out of the bar. barn stopped and stood there. And I'd bring the cold out of the barn and snap him on to him. He'd turn like that and look as if they'd say, oh no, not another one. Yeah, it was just amazing to watch him. Oh, he was smart. We went one day. I had driven two colts that morning, and we were supposed to be in Lloyd at noon, and Betty hollered out to me down to the crow, and she said, you better get up here, she said. She said, you've only got 15 minutes and we're supposed to be in Lloyd. So I just hightailed it up here. I left old Charlie standing in the damn crow with a harness on. I had put the cold in. And we went in Deloid. We had dinner and done our business.

And it started to snow and blow. And I said to be, you know, I left that horse stand in the damn growl, came home. All he'd done, he'd turned a little bit and put the wind in his back and he was still standing in the crowd, gate wide open, barn door wide open, never moved, just switched a little bit and that was it. You don't get many horses like that. Well, by sounds of it won in a lifetime. Yeah. Jack Ritchie, he was probably some relative of yours, was he, by Groves Richies. Yes, that would be. But old Jack had a team and When we got Howard Newman's team and Jack Ritchie's team to thrash with one fall at Pollard's.

And Jack phoned one day, and he said, are you done thrashing? And actually we were just finished thrashing, and we were stacking green feet. And her dad said, yeah, we're finished. And he said, well, I need my team. And lastly said, well, I'll send Terrence up with them. And he said, no, no, no.

He said, just hook them on the wagon and send them home. They'll come on their own. And he said, oh, I better send it. He said, no, no, just tie the lines on the peg and let them loose. So her dad said to me, I don't know. But he said, if you want to try it, go ahead. I don't want to do it. So I hooked that team on the hay rack, tied the lines on the peg,

turned them towards the gate, and sat on the side of the rack, and spoke to them. and the way they went. And I rode up the highway, the road north from Follards, oh, probably half a mile away. And they're just walking along, heading for Home May. So I just jumped off and went home. Yeah. And Bugger said, go home. He'd send them out of the field home, all on their own. But you see, that's what you do. If you're good with horses and they trust you, they'll do things for you. Yeah, nobody could believe that. And I told Peter Bygrove one time, I said, yeah, I said, I remember Jack Ritchie's team, and I told him that story.

He said, thank God somebody else knew. Yeah, because he said, I've told lots of people, they don't believe me. Don't believe you. Yeah. But it was true. They would do that. See, that was what? That would be probably six miles from Pollards up to Jack Ritchie's.

Yeah. Because he lived, I think, where Peter is now, somewhere right there anyway. Yeah, it was a long-windy road, and the way they went, just walked along. Yeah. And it's things like that, I attract you to the horses, you know. Yeah. I guess I broke my first horse when I was six to ride. I was great gelding called him Schizix.

Skeezix. Skizix, yeah. Got him from old Reese Jones. Dad brought him home, and, And I saddled him up and got on, I thought, God, I've got to try this. Yeah. And that was the start of it all. We used to get a horse and tie it alongside the hay rack when we were feeding as kids.

And going out to the field, we'd jump off the hay rack onto its back and teach it to have somebody up on its back. Walk along beside the rack. Oh, you get chucked off in the snow once in a while. But, yeah. Interesting. That childhood stuff was. But you know, there's a lot of people that never got along with horses. They just weren't horse people. That's all was to it.

I'd have to say that most of the new ones were good horse people. They had some really, really good horses. They never won't much for getting horses and training them, but they bought good teams, they and had good teams. They had good horses in the field. How about the black gelding that you raised, train, and then sold to the Eminton chair posse? Oh, that. I got that horse from Howard Bygrove.

Really? Yes. I was hunting coyotes on saddle horse up in that area. And the hounds took off across the pasture after this coyote. And I used to put my hand on the top wire, and he'd jumped the fence at my saddle horse. see. And we got up in there and this little black horse run out of the bush, tail in the air and his head in the air and just putting on a performance because I guess the hounds had gone by and kind of startled me. Yeah. And I stopped my horse and I looked at that little horse and I

thought, my God, I got to have that horse. So I phoned, I found out of whose it was and I phone Howard, and he said, have you got a quiet horse that boys can ride? And I said, yeah, I do. He said, you bring me that horse, and you get that guy out of the hills the best way you know how. And that's how I got him. I got him off of Howard. And that was in beginning of June, and I think the rodeo was on the 10th. And I brought him home. I halted broke him. He wasn't even Haldorbroke. I Haldor broke him, let him home. And on the morning of the 10th of June, I put the saddle on him and headed for Lloyd Minnesota to ride fence. First time he was ridden.

And I was in there, what, three-day rodeo, I guess. And when I came home, he was pretty well broke. What do you mean you're in there three-day rodeo? We used to ride fence. We had no fence, say, to keep people out. Yeah? And so we used to get two or three saddle horses and ride that fence. Just to make people go around to the pay booth. Yeah.

I always remember Harry Yerke. Even back then people had tried skirt around paying. Oh, God, yeah. You'd be surprised. Then a native group put up tent on the east side of the old racetrack. Well, it still was the racetrack. But anyway, there was a bush there. And they would come from that tent and try to walk into the rodeo way.

And it was in front of the grandstand there out in the field. And Harry Yerke one day, he was helping ride fence, and he caught this old girl come and walking in, and, of course, he went and intercepted her and told her she had to come to the pay booth. And he come riding in, and she was hanging on to his stirrup leather and walking along beside him, and, of course, poor old Harry got teased for hours out.

But he took her to the bay booth. Yeah. Oh yeah, I've done a lot of that. Even rodeo or truck wagon races. We used to ride fence out there. Ride fence? Yeah. They don't do that anymore, do they? No, no. No, they don't. They got all fence now, high board fence. Yeah. Yeah. Did you make anything doing that or was it just volunteer? Volunteer. Volunteer. Yeah, yeah, just done it. Well, you got to see the rodeo. That's true. Yeah. And you got to know the people better because you were part of it, eh? Like old Jerry Myers used to come from Mooseyaw to put that rodeo on.

And I got to know Jerry, and I got to know what was his name, Bill. He was a wild man. They used to get him bail him out of jail every year to go on the circuit. Bill Pryor, his name was. If Dan and Christy and Ross Christie and Slim Makers and Peart, Pat McKivitt were still alive, they could tell you about old Bill Pryor. Years ago, when you went in a hotel in a beer parlor, there was no ladies, eh? But Lloyd, Alberta, I guess, was the first one to put ladies in the bars, say, they'd come in and drink.

And, of course, Bill, he wasn't used to ladies in the bar. But anyway, he got up and went to the bathroom, and he went to the ladies. and he wasn't well educated and he looked and he told me afterwards he thought it said laddies but it said ladies well Ross Christie was sitting at the table and Dan and

and Evelyn was in the damn bathroom well Ross took exception to that and he challenged old Bill and Bill said look he said we don't want no trouble around here tonight he said And anyway, he said, I got another day of pickup. He was a pickup man, eh?

And he said, I don't want to get all messed up. And he said, Ross said, well, there's a dance in Blackfoot the next night. He said, meet you there. Okay, we'll meet, have it out. So Bill goes to Blackfoot, and I think Slim Acres didn't last long. He got knocked down or out or something. one of them got a broken arm and one of them got some broken ribs

and old Bill swapped his hands off and got in his truck and went home and I said to Bill I said now look at Bill I said what's this all about I mean how can one man handle four men like that and do all that damage

I think it was Pat McEvitt got the broken arm and he said if you're fighting one man you've got to fight fair He said, if you're fighting for, you can bite, you can kick, you can do anything you want. He said, and he grabbed Pat by the hand when he went to hit him and spun around and put him over the shoulder and flipped him over his back and broke his arm. That's how he got the broken arm. And I thought, oh, my God. And of course, that's why he wound up in jail all the time.

He'd get into riots and get put in jail. Well, then old Jerry Myers had bail him out in the spring. and take him rodeo. He was probably the best pickup man I ever seen in my life. It was old Bill Pryor. I don't suppose Bill Pryor's still alive. No, he'd be gone now. Gary Myers, too.

I always remember him we were going in payday, and I'd done some work for Jerry, rounded up a bowl or two for him, a Bremma bowl got away and whatnot. But anyway, Jerry told me to come in at payday. And payday was every day at 10 o'clock in the morning that paid you. So I was in the lineup, and somebody back there was Raisin Cain, and Jerry Myers said, Bill, he said, throw that guy out of here.

And Bill was standing pretty close to me, and he says, oh, why, oh, why does everybody pick on me? Turn around, flip the guy out of there. Yeah, it was interesting to what. watch. Yeah, old bill would be long gone. But he could ride up beside a bucking horse and pick a guy off so quick. It was just like magic, you know. Mind you, he rode a good horse, too. Made a difference, but. When we started this whole story talking about this black horse he gave to the Emmington Posse. Yeah. How do we get off? Well, we got talking about you riding the fence.

Oh, yeah, first time he was ridden. But anyway, yeah, I wrote him for years. I took him to Minburn. I caught coyotes with him in Minburn. I passed the bus one morning with him, catching a coyote. And I took him to the Dude Ranch in Cold Lake when we moved up there. And Sheriff Posse was looking for a black horse. The Sheriff Posse had all Palomino's except the flag bearer. Okay. And he had to be black.

And my dad said to me, he said, And you know, he said, you can get a pretty good price for that horse. And I said, no, hell, I'd never sell that horse. And he said, well, or offer, whatever it was, now it was, I don't remember what we got for him. But horses were selling pretty cheap right then. You'd buy a good horse for $500. And so I decided to let him go. And that's where he wound up in Edmund.

The last time I seen Shorty, that's what I called him, he was in a padded stall at the Edmund exhibition grounds. He had all the hay and oats, and he had a little, oh, I suppose, about 10 acres where they used to turn him loose and let him, yeah, and that's where he wound up. And did you go see him? Oh, yeah. And as soon as he saw it, he didn't. Oh, he knew him.

Yeah. I used to whistle at him, and he'd come right to you. And I just went and whistled, and he just perked his ears up and over he come. Was that a tough thing to do to sell a horse like that? Oh, God, yeah. Oh, yeah. I kicked myself for weeks afterwards to never have sold him. But, well, you needed the money, so what do you do? Price was right. And dad was kind of prompt, and he said, you know, we ain't going to last forever anyway. So where he went.

That was a good horse. We was, I run that ranch at Menburn for George McClanigan and I was doing chores one morning early and oh I'd be probably in February about this time of the year and this coyote was howling just a little ways from the yard. So I jumped on Shorty and the two hounds and away we went and that coyote it was a mile out to the main road. He made that mile. He turned north, and he passed the bus just before a wheel before school. And all the kids on the bus hanging out the window. Yeah.

And they flipped the coyote into the ditch just ahead of the bus. And then there was two little guys on the bus, Frankie Nash, and what the hell was the other kid's name? But anyway, they seen this, and they came over because we had no phone there. They came over and they said, could we go for a hunt with you? And I said, sure. I said, come on over someday. They came over one morning

and they said, there's a coyote on the straw pile just outside the yard, and that was two miles away. And I said, yeah, but that's that old renegade. I tried him three or four times and never could get him. And anyway, we went around the road to their place and the Nash boy and what was the other boy's name? Do you remember?

Elliot, the Elliott boy. And the one boy was riding a pony just a boat. Not just a Shetland. And the other kid had a pretty good saddle horse. And we started to that straw pile and that bugger dropped off the straw pile and I said, oh yeah, that's him.

So I took off with Shorty and, of course, soon as I started running them, hounds, they're gone right now. and they spotted him. And he went on a hillside, kind of come around a hillside. And I went up the hillside after him, and I knew they were going to get him. You could tell they were going to catch him that morning.

And I looked back, and the one little guy was, stopped looking down the hill, and the other guy, his pony was at the bottom of the hill. He lost his footing and tumbled down the hillside. But yeah, we got a picture of them two little guys with that coyote. somewhere here. It's a beautiful segue into this hunting coyotes with thoughts. You don't hear too many.

No. Not that I know of. No. And I was reading your introduction into the Lloyd X Hall fame, the Egg Hall fame. And in it it talked about your children talking about going to hockey practice or school or whatever it was. And if you saw a coyote on the drive, you'd stop the, the vehicle, out would go the hounds, and away you go. Yeah. True.

True. So how in earth did you start hunting coyotes with hounds? When I was before, I went to school, my dad had hounds, and that's what he done was hunted. You could get $25 a pelt back then, eh? And that was big money back in them days. And it just was exciting. Get out there in the saddle horse and chase after that coyote, and watch the hounds perform. It's like a lot of other diseases that's catching, and it's just in your skin you can't get rid of it. I still hunt with the hounds, not with the saddle horse anymore,

but I've had hounds. The game warden stopped me one morning here three years ago, and actually I was just exercising dogs. I had my little granddaughter with me, and this game warden stopped me. And he said, what are you doing? And I said, I'm exercising. No, I said, I'm hunting.

No, he said, are you hunting? And I said, well, yeah, I guess I am. And he said, do you have your license? I said, I don't need a license. And he said, yes, you do. He said, where's your rifle? I said, I don't have a rifle. And he said, what are you hunting?

I said, I'm hunting coyotes. And he said, coyotes. Well, he said, you need a rifle. And I said, no, and I went like this, eh. And he looked back in the dog box and I had four dogs back there, and he said, you hunt with dogs? And I said, yeah. And then he said something else that tick me off, eh,

and I give him a little pressure. I told him I'd make it damn well do what I pleased and know what he was going to stop me anyway, sort of a thing. And about then, two guys went by dressed in red. and he left me I think he was glad to leave and way he went after them too and I took off down the road

and my little granddaughter says Grandpa you shouldn't talk like that to them guys but they made me mad of it I don't remember what they done now but it kind of ticked me off and I said yeah well whatever but you see that's just the way it is

I've taken lots and lots of guys hunting some get so excited they just about jump out of the truck. How about volunteering? From what I've read about you and Betty, it sounds like you volunteered just about everywhere. Yeah. One of the, well, maybe you can correct me on this,

but have you both been inducted in the Alberta Softball Hall of Fame? Is that something? I think so. They put us both in, didn't they? I don't know what's the Hall of Fame they put us in. it was just a kind of an honorary kind of a thing. Okay. And then obviously you were inducted by the Lloyd X. Yes.

Yeah. Last year, correct? Yeah, just a year going on. What about volunteer? I'm always curious. What drove you to do it? Well, we always volunteered. Like the boys played hockey and the girls played ball.

and I got started coaching hockey and then I got started coaching the ball and Betty kept score and whatnot and it just, you know, we done, I guess I coached hockey for probably 15 years from Peewee up to the senior team and I coached the girls' ball from probably maybe the same amount of time.

We had five girls on the team at one time. Yeah. But it was, you know, it gave them something to do and it was good for you too. It didn't hurt you to get out and do things like that. And then the same with the 4-H. You know, you volunteered to help with the 4-H and 4-H day and whatnot. And then one time I got a phone call from Tommy Halstead, and he's asked me if I would be interested in being on heavy horse.

committee at the fair in Lloyd, on the exhibition. And I said, yeah, I would be interested, so that's how I got started in there. And it was over 20 years, right? Yeah, at least 20 years, yeah. I was chairman for a lot of years on the heavy horse committee. And I judged a lot of shows, and I judged four. I used to go in every year with four horses and talk to the four-h kids every for the whole day,

that four-h day, animal day. Yeah. Since I quit doing it, what, two years ago, they dropped the heavy horses, eh? Really? Nobody does it anymore. But you spent the day talking to the kids and about how to judge a horse,

what to look for and whatnot. And, you know, it was absolutely, to me anyway, it was just a fun day because them kids were just, I'll tell you, it was amazing watching them what they knew and the questions they'd ask. Yeah, it was good. Where, is there a memory that sticks out from judging horses? Did you get to go any places that, or was it just around here? Just around here.

Just around the way. I've had lots of phone calls to go, but well, you've got 11 kids, and, you know, you've got to get your knowledge. those in the Grosstein, the grindstone, most of the time. And, you know, it was fair, like judging horses is always in the summer, right? And you're haying or you're doing something, and it's, if you're going to put the feet up, you better get at it and get it done because, you know, it rains and you're held up. And I just never wanted to get involved and be gone.

Because I know them guys, they'd come to Lloyd. They're there for four days, say. So if you're going to go summer for four days, and when you come home, you've got hay to put up, or you've had it down and it ain't bailed, and, you know, and it's wrecked. Yeah. If it rained or something. So, no, I just, I loved it.

I didn't mind doing it. My dad done all kinds of it. He judged in the States. He judged all over B.C. And he judged it to Toronto Royal. How have you two made 60 years? Well, 60, going on 66. six years of marriage work.

Is there a secret in there? Talk things out. Talk? Always talk things out. Yeah. Sit on and talk things out. Stuff happens, you know. It ain't always been smooth.

But yeah, you've got to talk things out and sort it out, get it right. Maybe not right, but it suits the two of you. That's right enough. Have you done anything special on any of your 65 years of wedding anniversaries? I don't think so. There's 65. Yeah. Yeah.

I don't think so really, hey? 25th we had a do. A dew. Dance and Blackfoot. Nothing special. Just. How about 11 kids? What did parenting 11 kids teach you?

Patience. A lot of patience. Yeah. One thing that's probably missing a lot today in my mind anyway is the fact that people will say no, don't mean no. Yes, don't mean yes. You know, I've seen parents with kids, and they're screaming and hollering and want something,

and they'll say no, and a few minutes later, they let them have it. And to me, we never done that. If I said to one of the boys, no, that meant no. that was done it. And they never asked again. They knew that was it. And if it was okay, I'd say, yeah, that'd be fine. And so it's okay.

But that saying yes and not meaning yes, saying no and not meaning no is to me is taboo. And they get the idea pretty fast. And then they kind of take that into life, and they're that way themselves. I've seen it so many times that what parents do at home, the kids do later too it kind of gets entrenched in their brain somehow and if it's

good it's good if it ain't good well it ain't good and then a lot of kids get left in limbo nothing to do the secret was raising the family is give them some jobs to do keep them kind of employed a little way I see so much of that today kids are bored and kids are committing suicide and and and all this stuff and I'm sure if they had something to get up for in the morning and do and get busy I didn't ever have time to be bored I'll tell you that much ever in my life and our kids never had a chance to be bored they were busy like the boys had to get up in the morning and milk cows that was their job get up and

milked the cows have you back us and be on the bus girls had their jobs too around the house safe. And I think that was a lot of the secret to raise the family. Everybody helped out, had their little jobs to do and done them. Oh, there was little rebellions and whatnot too, but that's all right.

I numbered you quite heavily. Yeah. But you had to have patience, you know, with kids like sometimes they didn't understand, and it's up to you then not to get cranky about it, like say, well, I guess they don't really understand and get them to understand what it's about. Makes a difference to a kid if they really know what they're doing and what they're saying. Over 90 years, is there one single event that sticks out? Could be on the

world stage, could be around here, that when it happened, you went, holy moly? Yeah. Betty's parents, I guess, was the biggest thing. Is the biggest. Yeah. For me, in a way, imagine Betty, too. when your parents got killed. That was... Well, going to, I've kept you for an hour and a half now. So I do the Crude Master Final Five, where I give you five questions. They're just...

It can be as long or as short as you like. The first one is, if you could go back to your 20-year-old self, what advice would you impart? Go back to which? When you were 20. What advice would you give? I don't know. I guess you'd take your time. Like you're about that time of life you're thinking about getting married and stuff like that.

And my advice would be take your time and be sure what you're doing. I think probably so many young people snap into things too quick. And then two years down the road, it's all done. Like we were engaged for, what, four years? No, we went together for six years. that we're engaged for one year. And it gives you time to think things over, you know. And that would be my advice

because there's so many divorces and upsets and stuff. It's not only hard on the families, it's hard on the kids, too, that's involved. And that's probably the thing that worries me the most about. We've been through thoughts of it ourselves. We've had lots of experiences at it, and that would be my experience.

advice at that age was be sure you get your life right and get your marriage right and then stick with it I mean too many people they some little thing happens they fight and scrap over it then next thing it's all upside down said on talk about things and iron it out and if it ain't working I ain't working that's you know you can't help that I guess but we're too too easy too quick to to jump off the opposite way. They don't try hard enough to, maybe don't try hard enough at first to get it right

and then don't try hard enough after they've got married. Like I've been asked a question several times, how come I stay here and look after Betty? Why don't you put her in a home or you know, whatever they think that maybe should happen? And I said, I

made that decision when the minister said until death do your part. And I've made up my mind. That's what we do. And that's what we will do unless I can't do it anymore. And she's in a hurry to go anywhere. She don't really want to go anyway.

And I guess that's what happens when you respect each other and, you know, stay with it. Second 10. And if it's working, let it work. But that's the one thing I see in life that goes wrong so much. that. That's kind of what we've been sold, is that there's never going to be any rocky times or life is always good.

Yeah. Indeed. There's lots of things come up. Like there's things that drive you, like somebody, like that accident happened, that could have upset the apple cart. Absolutely. Awfully easy, eh? But you stick in there. Like I admired her folks.

And I guess that's one reason why it always worked out. That was a hard time. We've had a few of them. When we moved down to Kitskotty, we had nothing. Absolutely nothing. We moved down there in 1961, about seven quarters of land, and I had trouble getting, well, actually farm credit was run by the Soldier Settlement Board then. And old Kaiser and I had the deal all worked out.

Well then they switched over to Farm Credit Corporation, and that all went for Haywire. Well, then we had to start over again, eh? And the guy they had in where a million was, well, won't say what about that. I say we agree with that. Yes. And we had no luck at all.

Well, then the people that had the land, had the land, them returned people got maturity money. And if they stayed with what they went into for 10 years, they got that gratuity money back again, or they didn't have to pay it back. But if they quit before 10 years, they had to pay it back. Well, these guys, they were only there seven years, and we bought the place. And they never said. saying to me, and then all of a sudden they wanted the farm back again. And I never knew what was going on. They never said. And then I found out afterwards, Almer told me that, well, he said, we had to pay that Gertrude money back because we'd only been there seven years. And I said,

they mightn't just tell me that. I could have rented for three years. You could have still owned it, and we'd got around that. And I said, that would have suited me fine, and so did you find, too. But they ever said nothing, they And that's why I say Sit down and talk about things And get it right That was a bad experience too But we finally got

Went up the ladder Littleways and got a Guy by the name of Rose involved Him and I sat down We had the thing worked out in Ten minutes Had it all down on paper

And He said to Deke Here he said take that back to your office and send and he said, this guy might even make it. And that was the end of it. We got the money. But yeah, it was hard times back then, but you know, you got us hang in there.

If you could go for coffee or a sassparilla with one person, could be anyone. Who would you want to go with? I don't know anymore. The guys that would have gone with are probably gone. Well, if you could go back in time or

you could travel to any place. Yeah, Mike's at Orkin probably one of my choices. They won't sit down and talk to and have coffee with. Glen Pollard would be another one. Most of my close friends are gone. Disappeared on me. Mike's very interesting. I enjoy sitting Mike and I hunted together quite a bit, eh, over the years.

And he's an interesting man to talk to. He's like his grandfather. Mike is. He was an interesting man to talk to. He was the secretary for Thorpe and Hamilton when Slim Thorpe and Frank Hamilton had that auctioneer business. Oh Walter was their secretary. And if it hadn't been for him, them guys had lost their shirts because they were both drinking men. But the time the sale was over, they wouldn't have known whether they made a dollar or lost a dollar. Yeah.

But old Walter, he had a head on his shoulders, man. When the World War II was on, they called him down to Montreal for foreign exchange to help make foreign exchange, hey. Yeah, he was smart man. How they found a war, I don't know, but they found him. To help make foreign exchange, what do you mean? Work with foreign exchange, different monies from different countries. Really? Yeah.

They called it foreign exchange. Yeah, and dealing with different countries and stuff. Like they had the Japanese to deal, the Germans to deal with, and whatever was involved in it. I don't really know, Mike would probably know more about it than I, at least ways Hazel would. Yeah. But, yeah, Walter Ther was a smart man, very smart man. You know, I hadn't really thought about this until you kind of alluded to it. But being 90 and having friends come and go,

you're at a very, I don't know the word, stage of life, that not many people get to experience. Yeah. It's okay, you know, it depends. Age is just a number. Yeah. But, yeah, it's the losing the people. Like you sit down once in a while and you start thinking back.

and all our old neighbors where I went to school, they're all gone. Everybody's gone. You just, you know, so many people that they're just gone. And, you know, you used to like old Bert Ritchie was one guy that I used to work for the Big Gully Telephone Company, climbing poles and fixing wires and whatever. And one time, Jack Ritchie, or Bert Ritchie, phone from Lomas's and said that his phone was out. So I went up there, and I had to climb his pole. And that old Jack come out of the house and he hit that pole,

hit that pole of a wop with the back of an axe. Oh, my God. But he was like, you knew Billy Richie. That was his dad. And Billy was like that too, eh, kind of a fun character. Always looking for a little devilment. And that was old Bert. Yeah.

And guys like that, you really miss them when they're gone, eh? Yeah. What's the best lesson you've ever learned or had imparted on you? I guess the best lesson I've learned in my line of business was how to handle a horse. It served me well over the years. I've made a lot of money training horses. And unless you've learned that at a young age, you don't learn it. You know, it's just one of them things.

You need the hands, you need the attitude, and you need to know a lot of things like approaching a horse and stuff like that. And you learn that pretty young. And I did. I learned it young. I know I've tried to teach people how to approach a horse, how to handle a horse, and sometimes it's just an impossible task because they don't have it. I had a young lad that come out here.

He had a perching mares. and he wanted to train him himself, but he wanted me to be with him, and put it through that 10-day discipline. And he was absolutely useless. It was just hopeless to try. So many times I thought I'd have to tell him to give it up. Like he didn't know how to put a bit in a horse's mouth.

and his fingers were so short, I realized afterwards, like you have to put your thumb in their left up here and touch their tongue, they'll open their mouth, and then you gently slide the bit in, eh? And his fingers were too short, he couldn't do that, and he would get the bit up in their teeth up here, down here, and they were all red and sore where he'd been pushing and trying to get that bit in their mouth, eh?

And I couldn't get him to, you know, change it and quit doing that. And several things that he'd done that I tried to tell him, you know, no, no, no, don't lose your, just keep cool. Don't do that. Don't lose your temper. And he'd get mad, eh? And then, well, as soon as you get mad, that horse is done with you right now. That's enough.

They ain't learning no more. And another thing he'd done, like when you're training a horse, a young colt, three-year-old, say, you only work so long, about half an hour, quit, get away. After that, they get bored, and they don't want it like a young kid, eh? They can't absorb anymore. And then the next day you can go three-quarter of an hour, and you can kind of work into it, eh? And after a while, he's tickled to death just to learn and learn and learn. But if you press him at first and try to make him learn too much. They get sour on you and they don't want to do anything. Their learning capacity kind of shuts down and they think that this is hell for me. If I've had a horse

here for three or four days, even a snorty bugger after three or four days, he'll want to come in the barn. He'll ask himself to come in there because it's nice in there. He gets treated right and he gets a bit to eat and that's what you've got to do with them, mate. Make them feel comfortable and how you can teach them anything. And that's probably the lesson I learned young that served me the best all my life. That and being fair and honest, that was always trumped into your headache.

Be fair and be honest. You see a lot of that not happening today too, that honesty thing. With 11 kids, did you ever take a family road trip or I don't even know how you get there you'd need a bus but I don't think we ever took a trip with the whole family

did we like we'd take some of the family with us to Meadow Lake when the folks is up there or the girls would go with the ball game the boys would go with each or the hockey game when they were playing and things like that but I don't remember ever going Here come the Bexons in a Greyhound bus unloading the football team Yeah, yeah.

Like dances, some dances, some weddings and stuff. I guess we were probably all there at different times. But nobody ever went in the same vehicle. Yeah, well, I... We'd have to have a school bus. The reason to ask is now so many families, myself included, I'm married to a girl from Minnesota. So we take our three kids and we fly to Minnesota for Christmas or we fly, you know, Arizona. Or you hear families going to Mexico or kind of that thing.

And I was thinking with 11 kids. No. There was none of that. Didn't happen. Didn't happen. Anyway, there probably wasn't a lot of money to do them kind of things back then. Well, for your final question, if you look back across, you've been through essentially nine decades now,

what was your favorite decade if there is such a thing? Oh, man. I think probably when we first got married and started the, heading out into the world together. I think that was probably the best time of my life. I've had great times. Like I've had great times on the board and the exhibition enjoyed a lot of it.

Enjoyed the 4-H. I've enjoyed a lot of things, but that's probably the time of life that I'd say was the best. Well, I want to thank you. Thank you for sitting down and doing this. It's been a lot of fun. I've enjoyed the last, we're at an hour and 50 minutes pretty much, so I won't sit here. I hope you're not going to put all that over there.

Oh, I certainly am. Who are you? I guarantee people sit down and listen to it. It's been fantastic. If I'm still sitting here and is entertained, I'm sure there's people out there that are asking for more. So I really appreciate you sitting here. Yeah, I've enjoyed it.

Yeah, well, thank you very much. Like I didn't know what we were going to be doing, but it's been easy. I've enjoyed it. I love sitting down talking. It's one of my favorite pastimes. A lot of people come here and I'll say, well, you know, stay and visit a while. Yeah, well, it won't be a while.

Like that Alec that was here today, he's popped in every once in a while, eh? And he was the one time he said, we went hunting together because he wanted to see that. The hounds, they hunt. And so we went, we went the whole damn day, putting there, and it was three o'clock, finally kicked up a guy who caught it. It was a good run.

And Alex said to me, he said, you know, I don't think you quit talking all day long. And he said, when I come to your place, he said, I'm always thinking, wonder if there are any more stories, because I should get out of here. He's an honest man, Alex. He says what he thinks, and I appreciate that.

Well, I appreciate you sitting down and, like I say, doing this, there's been a lot of, it's just part of what I do with this podcast. I try and find people from your generation that want to sit and talk and can still remember the good old days. And, you know, there's just, as time marches on, there's fewer and fewer. So it's, you know, something my, our generation and moving forward. I don't want them to lose and hear these stories. They're just fantastic to hear directly from you, right, the person who went through it.

Yeah, it's been a ball. Well, thanks again. I enjoyed this. It was good. You know, it's funny, I tried ending the podcast, and then we sat there and kept talking, and finally I flicked it back on. I'm glad I did. I caught a couple more gems here before I let Terrence off the hook and left for the night.

but here's another quick little couple stories from Terrence before the podcast is over. I certainly enjoyed it. I think you guys will as well. Donnie did. Yeah. And it was in Kitchcocki. I can't remember what the devil it was now. It's just, that's what happened.

Now, I can remember what happened when I was a kid and things happened. But lots of times I don't remember. of what I ate for breakfast this morning. You know, and I keep a diary enough. I don't write that down in that book what happened that day. Tomorrow, I have to think pretty hard what I'd done yesterday.

That, remember, that short term seems to be pretty vacant. But, you know, 40 years ago, it was easy. It's all still there. Like, I recite a lot of little lyrics and stuff, And this girl that comes here, Debbie Roy, she likes them little. And every once in a while I'll think of one of them, they, like something will happen, and I'll think of it. And I'll recite it to her. She always says, how in the devil, you remember that, for God's sake?

But they're all there. Like I told her the other morning about the monkeys in the coconut tree. like we were talking about human beings and the different things they do somehow. And I said, well, I said, you heard about the three monkeys sat in a coconut tree discussing things that were said to be. One monkey said, now listen to you to the certain rumor

that can't be true, that man descended for an our noble race by the very thoughts of dire disgrace. For one thing, a mother monk will never leave her children, with others to bunk before they barely know their mothers. And another thing a monk won't do is go on a night and get in a stew and take a gun or a club or a knife and take away another monkey's life. Another thing you'll never see is a monkey build a fence around a coconut tree. Let all the coconuts go to waste and forbid others to take a taste.

Yes, man descended the iron recuss, but brother, he never descended from us. Yeah And little ones like that And they stick up there just I don't know why but they do Well I'm glad I turned it back on and caught that Oh did you? I certainly did

Yeah I know a few bad that ain't You wouldn't want it Yeah We were talking about it earlier That those were simpler times back then You missed those days Oh terribly

terribly so when you think back now I didn't you know for many years but when you get older you start missing them days quite a bit because your mind goes back there a lot to them days what was some of the fun things you would have done back then when you went out to Holmont around Hillmont when I started going there most of the time was buying horses it was the time when horses were the cent of pound everybody was getting enter the horses and I was around buying horses and and chipping them out. I used to buy horses from all pretty everybody old uh fisher remember fisher lived close to Helmand there on there on sure yeah and versions got horses from them I got horses from from oh leo lives there now

Ostriker. Okay. Yeah, what that was, Erna's dad, Dan Otto, bought horses from them. That old Fisher lived just out of the home and bought horses from him.

So everybody was selling horses and you were buying them? Yep. Yeah, horses were down to about a cent a pound day and I was shipping them out of Lloyd to Edmonton and I was getting about two and a half cents and paying the freight.

Yeah. You weren't making a little. a big lot of money, but it was interesting. Interesting, how? Yeah. Well, I was going gathering them up, talking to guys, driving them home. Yeah. Went and rounded them all up and brought them home with a saddle horse to my dad's, and then we'd take them in the Lloyd from there.

How far away would your dads be? You're seven miles out Lloyd. Seven miles out of Lloyd. How many horses were you bringing back at a time then? Well, you'd get 22 in the car load. Yeah. So I'd round up 22 head or whatever, and then take a load in. It depended on the box car. Some box cars, 22 heads, some 20 had.

And then it shipped them to Edmond. And if anything was big enough and broke when they got to Edmondon, I'd get paid for a little more money because they'd go to the bush in Hinton. They were using horses in Hinton right then. Okay. Yeah. So you'd take them right to the rail station? Yeah, load them in.

I used to load them in John Slend's siding. He had a little little. yards there, stockyards of his own, John Slent. How many days would you go on the road? If you went out and toured the country to go grab horses,

was that a one-day thing, or was it multiple days to go? Usually you went up and looked at the horses and bought them, then you'd go back and get them later. Later, yeah. And you'd make it a day trip. You'd leave early in the morning, three, four o'clock in the morning,

and get up there, and then you'd have all day to bring them back. Was there any ever wrecks bringing horses? A few. I think of cattle drives and you can have some fun. What was taking 20 to 22 horses to town? The first three or four miles, a little scary, but once they got the idea, it wasn't that difficult.

It didn't that difficult. They stick pretty good, yeah. Once you got into town, there was things that scared them a little, but so long as you were awake and kept on top of them, you were fine. And in them days the town wasn't that big anyway, not that much traffic. Yeah, it was interesting. And John Flynn was on that.

We used to go across the old golf course. Yeah. And then he was on that street. There were the Co-op Farms Plies now. Yeah, yeah. He was on the north side there. North side, yeah. So he was kind of out of town anyway.

It wasn't too tough to get there.