Shaun Newman Podcast - SNP Archives #41 - Ron Person

Episode Date: May 11, 2022

Born in the 1940's we discuss 45+ years of farming, collecting antique tractors & historic harvesting. Let me know what you think Text me 587-217-8500 Support here:⁠ https://www.patreon.com/ShaunNewmanPodcast

Welcome to the podcast, folks. Happy Wednesday. I got the little girl, Miss Mela in studio with me today, as we rattle off a little intro to today's episode, another archive episode. Always enjoy these ones, hearing a life story, hearing some of the wisdom that comes out of it. And I got a four-year-old trying to make funny faces out to me

to see if she can get me to laugh. And she's done it very quickly. Now let's get on to today's episode sponsors, the deer and steer butchery. A couple weeks ago now, I got to go out with Barry and help butcher a steer half of it. And I tell you what, like, that was a cool experience. And maybe one of the coolest, I don't know, weird experience, cool experience, I don't know. You cut up the animal and then that night I cooked the family steaks for the first time that I cut up. And I'm like, oh yeah, this is, hey, I like this.

Well, you can have the same experience. Just call 780870-8700, talk to Barry. He'd be happy to have you in the deer and steer to help butcher your animal. And I think I can sit here and say that I think everybody should try it. If you've got the time, you save a bit of money. And on top of that, you get the first-hand experience of cutting up your animal, which is super cool. They are on Range Road 25 and Highway 16. They are the old Kathy and Norman Jan's James, that is, family built butcher shop,

which has had a makeover and now, of course, has Barry the Butcher there. Give them a call once again, 780870, 8700. Agland. Agland history started back in 1957. I am all over the map. I got Mela sitting here singing in the mics. She's all dressed up. She just had her, yes, me, thank you, Mila.

Serenating Agland is there. roll in. Well, they started back in 1957 as a John Deere equipment dealer with the staff of six. Today, 60 plus years of business with three locations later, 60 plus years later, they have three locations, Louis-Mistramar,

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dot CA to check out their full inventory new and used or give them a call 780875 4471 Jim Spentrath and the team over at three trees tap and kitchen with lake season coming here soon it's it's I mean it's starting to warm up certainly here we're getting closer and closer the the golf courses are are I've heard of guys going for their first rounds of the year and that type of thing well three trees is going to be operating the pro shop and restaurant at the Loon Lake Golf Course under the name Three Trees on the Lake. They'll be opening here in May with a bunch of the three trees favorites, a couple of cold bevvies on the course.

Ooh, that sounds all right. They want you to know if you're having a tournament or they're up there or they're happy to host, you know, any special occasion, anniversary, birthday celebrations, that type of thing. Give them a call 7808774-7625. That is the number here in Lloyd. Please do not take the misses out for supper like this donkey where you get there. and it's always busy. I swear I've got to take my own medicine here.

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Farmer, collector of antique tractors, husband, and community pillar. I'm talking about Ron Pearson. So buckle up. Here we go. It is June 20th, 2021. I'm sitting with Ron Pearson. So, first off, thanks for hopping in. You're very welcome.

Now, I always go back with these to the, your first. memory right being born in 1942 it would be a little bit different of a world than we're sitting in today so when you rack your brain and go back and try and you know remember some of those early memories whether it's you know early four or mid 40s I guess or whether it's into the 50s what what's something that sticks out to you yeah I don't really remember a lot of you know when I was very young I remember starting school but But, you know, as I was when I was very early, I don't have much recollection, some, I guess,

of bits and pieces, but not a lot. Well, you know, we lived in a pretty small house, and, you know, they built onto it so that I could have a bedroom. and that house eventually went and another house was moved in. But from the time I started school on, I've got some recollections, yeah. Were you an only child? Yes, I was. Your only child, hold on the farm. Yeah.

What did you do to keep yourself entertained? Oh, boy, you need a good imagination. I rode horseback a lot. you know, we were the ultimate cowboys. Some of the neighbor boy and me would get together. And we tackled a lot of things. You know, you just, you have to have a good imagination and, you know, just carry on from there, I guess.

You didn't have cell phones or Netflix or TV? No cell phone. I think of sometimes now, and I have, you know, friends and stuff with kids and grandkids. When I was, you know, maybe in grade two or three or whatever, mom would saddle my horse and I would go and I'd go over to a neighbor and him and I would go somewhere else and they didn't know where we were or when we'd be back or anything and nobody seemed to worry about it.

You know, we showed up sooner or later. I guess when we got hungry, we came back. When you would go with your friend, you ride, you get the horse saddle up, you off you go, you pick up your friend, where would you guys go? Where would you? Was it down to the river? Was it? No, we didn't.

Actually, we didn't go that far. They had some interesting pasture land where they were really hilly and a lot of trees. And we could pretend we were anything in there. But sometimes we just rode down the road north a few miles and came back. And we didn't go terrible far, but we could. spend the whole day at it, you know. You mentioned lots of your early memories come from going to school. I remember my first day of school.

I went in the school. I don't remember how I got there to tell you the truth, which is odd. I don't think my parents took me. Went to Willow Lee School, which was south and west of us. And I went right into the school and sat down to desk and tell somebody come in and said, well, you know, you don't have to do that until the teacher rings the bell. And then I was standing outside, and there was two girls come walking from the west. And I have talked to those people in the last few years.

I think one of them's gone now. But I asked this fellow that was beside me, the other kid, I said, who's that? You know, and that's it. That's the end of my memory right there about that. But I suppose that'll never go. It would have been an interesting for an only child to go to a single-room schoolhouse to see so many children running around. It was a big school too. I mean, the building wasn't that terrible big, but there was a lot of kids went there.

Do you remember how many kids? No, I don't. I could probably count them up if I really tried to. I only went there not even quite two years, and there was another school east of us. It would have been two and a half miles, two miles west, where the Alcurve store is today. And they wanted to open that school. It had been closed for quite a long time. So they took two kids myself and another girl from Willa Lee and two other girls from Greenview

and brought them to Warwickville. And I think we had nine, eight or nine kids to get started. But I think at Willoughley, when I was going there, there had to been probably 15 anyway, maybe, all grades from, I think even grade 9, one to nine. When you look back at, well, A, you just said about two miles west of Elker. So you were going a little ways to get to school. That was three and three quarter miles, yeah. And my dad had to buy me another horse because the horse I wrote to Willough Lee wouldn't go to. work, Phil. She would go so far and he's turned around and come home because that's far enough

I don't want to go any further. I guess I don't know what she was thinking. And he bought another horse and actually south of Blackfoot and got to be good friends of a fellow down there because of that horse. But anyway, this horse, second horse, he could run away no matter which way you were going. No matter whether I was going school or coming home. If you wanted to go, he would go flat out. No pokeyness. He was gone. Somebody asked me,

this fellow, a friend of mine, he said, do you ever race him? And I said, yes. How'd you make out? I said,

oh, pretty good. The race wasn't bad, but it was that two miles took to get him stopped. It was the hard part. And he laughed. His kids had had the same problem. Going back to the first horse,

do you remember when you were trying to go, Was it Warwickville? Warwickville, yeah. When you're trying to go there, the first time he wouldn't go? Like, what did you do, hop off, or did you all of a sudden just show back up at the house? Yeah, I just had to hang on and go home. And then Dad would chase me with a truck until I got by that spot, and then she would go the rest of the way.

That's an interesting day of school. Why are you late? Well, Dad had to chase me with the truck to get the horse here. He may as well have drove me there to start with, but anyway. So that was. But the second horse, he was good. He would run. They won a few races with him.

Won a few races? Well, I mean, just against neighbors. Some of them that thought they had the fastest horse in the country suddenly found out they didn't. Was that just for bragging rights? Yeah, it was never any prizes or anything. It was just taunt the other guy. And they knew I couldn't hold him.

So they edged their horse ahead. I couldn't hold him. need me gone. How many times you fall off a horse? I don't really remember falling off of them. The last horse I had, I fell off of that one. I was moving some cattle one day, and it was wet after harvest, and one cow decided she wanted to go somewhere else, and I had this horse that I had been, I had to take her, I guess, in a way, or him. And we were going down this hill at a pretty good clip, and he stumbled, and he shoved his head down between his knees and over he went. And I knew that I couldn't stick with this, and I bailed off to the side.

And I slid down the hill with this arm stretched out until I had mud right up to my armpit. And I didn't feel it getting up, but he was getting up. And I thought, boy, if I don't catch him, I'm going to be walking home because he wasn't going to wait. he was just green broke and he wasn't going to stay there. But that's the only time I really remember taking a bad fall. Do you miss those days riding horse all the time? Because I assume maybe you still do. No, it's been 19 years since I rode a horse

and that was at my wife's family reunion in Manitoba. One of her cousins had a dude ranch, so does call it, I guess. And when he found out that I used to ride, he was determined to get me on a horse than he did. But it's not as enjoyable as it used to be. The bones aren't quite the same anymore. Sticking with the one-room school houses, you know, I've heard different stories about whether it be water

and having to get the water for the schoolhouse, whether it be showing up early to, for fire and to get it heated up and everything else, whether it be cleaning jobs with the stables or anything like that. Did you have any of those duties? No, I didn't. No, I have no idea who did what, at Willoughley, but at workville we had a janitor that came in.

He brought water and he started the fire in the winter. Oh, some kids would have said you were a special. spoiled. Yeah. But, you know, that was, he was there for all the time I went there, I think. And how long did you go to work? Well, Bill started there in 51, I guess, 49. 51 went, went on the bus to Marwain in 1957.

So went on the bus to Marwain? Yep. What was, that must have been a cool adjustment to make. From walking and riding a horse. and getting chased by the truck and everything else, and just a one-room schoolhouse to being on a bus and being hauled across the countryside. Yeah, it was a big adjustment for sure.

I knew some of the kids that were in grade 9 beforehand from, I don't know just how I did or why I didn't, but so I had a few friends, and I made lots of friends. It was, it wasn't a bad time. I think I was fortunate to have had a pretty good crew at school. When I say crew, I mean all the kids, we were, it wasn't a very big school. So each grade had a room and just one, grade nine was in one room and 10 in another room and so on. And some of the kids that were older than me treated me very well.

I have no complaints about anybody, no hassles or, you know, no problems whatsoever. I don't think that carried on a long time afterwards I was there. I hear anyway, but there's people that, friends that I made, then there's still friends today. Now, in going to Marwain, that would have probably been your first experience with multiple classrooms, I assume? Yes, for sure, yeah. Yeah. And I guess, I'm curious, because before we started, you said, you know, you don't look back or you look back at grade 10 if you would have just stopped then.

Yeah. And went on and carried on to do a trade or an apprenticeship program. Your life would have been, would have changed immensely. Yeah. So did you not enjoy school then? I did up until grade 10. But then after that, it was, I mean, it was, you were, you were sort of told that you had to have grade 12 so I kind of stuck it out and and we had some poor teachers on you know I don't

think it was totally their fault but it wasn't just me there was other kids some of them left after 11 and went somewhere else went to Vermillion or other places to take their 12 and some of them it was one girl that was ahead of me through the whole time and she repeated her grade 12 and she was a brain you know she came back and did it over again and I just didn't want to do it I was frustrated and what was uh if you don't mind me prying a little bit what was it about the teachers like they were just hard on their marking or was that discipline no they just I think the thing was they they probably should have been teaching in university and not in high school you know they were way above us and we just they weren't getting that

across to us and uh but I don't know how to explain that but I don't know how to explain that but Oh, really? They were just that high and above, or that far and above. I remember the one guy used to fill the blackboards up with a, he was teaching math, and he'd fill the blackboards up with all his, all the numbers and all the stuff, and then he would write QED at the bottom, quite easily done. Well, it maybe was for him, but by the time he got that far, we'd forgot what we asked him anyway. I don't know I played a lot of sports growing up and I just think when you get a good coach versus a bad coach

that's no different than a school teacher you can just make or break it for you right you have a great school teacher you're going to do well and you're going to bring along some of the guys there or students that don't get it you're going to pull them with you whereas you get a bad one even the best students don't like being there yeah I know I say kids left went to other schools after the one year. And I really didn't probably have that option or didn't think I did anyway.

So what did you want to do when you were done with school? You know, you mentioned the apprenticeship programs. Did you have something you always want to be? Well, I kind of like mechanicking. One time I thought I'd like to be a parsons. I can remember numbers, unbelievable even yet. I can forget your name before I get out of here, but I can remember numbers. But I ended up working in a shop.

for a while but what I always wanted to do was to farm was to farm which is what you end up doing with your life then is you get to do what you want to do I got to pick your brain then on numbers so you're a numbers guy so what are what are

I don't know maybe this is a very large question but what are some of the numbers that stick out to you then in your lifetime well phone numbers a place I roomed in town here their number was 8753084 guarantee it. My number at the shop was 3997.

Guarantee it. Egglands 4471. Guarantee it. Civic tires 4411, guarantee it. So you don't need a phone book because Ron is the phone book. Now I start to use the phone book because I don't trust myself anymore. But when I used to use the phone a lot to phone all those places, I never need to look it up.

I have neighbors. I still know all their numbers. When you graduate, or actually before you graduate, did you grow up being active in sports? Did you play? I played ball. Ball? I never played hockey.

I was too small to play hockey. And, you know, when we got home from school, we didn't have the opportunities to go back to town. You know, and I didn't have any. Some of the kids had grandparents that lived in my way and so they could stay with them and partake in sports. but I played baseball. I liked baseball.

I believe we had the championship team the first year I was in Marwain at the track meets. Speaking of track meets, this might be backtracking a little bit, but when I was in grade one, I went to the track meet at Streamstown, Alberta. Streamstown was our municipal district way back then. And that, I would say,

That was my first visit to the big city. And I didn't, you know, partake in much sports because of being, you know, young and small. I did some races, I think, and kind of hooked up with another kid. I have no idea who he was, but we walked down the street to the restaurant, and we opened the door. And it wasn't a very big place. It might have been twice as big as this. And, of course, you know what it's like when you walk into a restaurant? Everybody turns their head.

and we slammed the door and run like crazy. We were scared. Going back to the big metropolis of Streamstown for a second here, what did it have back in the day? Did it have a store and a gas station and stuff like that? It had a bulk dealer. There was the hall. You know, I don't really remember a lot.

There was elevators. There was three or four grain elevators. Oh, wow. Yeah, three for sure, anyway. And now it was Curtis. There was three Curtis brothers. One had a store in Marwain, one in Streamstown, and one in Lloydminster. And so they had the grocery store, and there was a BA fuel dealer there, bulk fuel.

And I think they had pumps too, but I don't remember. I wasn't driving much then, so I don't remember that sort of thing. I was just in Streamstown a couple of weeks. weeks ago at the hall. Yeah. And we got looking at the original, what was it, the original diagram of Streamstown, the map. Yep.

And got talking about it. Streamstown back in the day must have been, you know. Yeah. Well, it was a bustling little community, I think. At one point. At one point, yeah. Interesting over how over time, everything has been pulled, you know, in this area, has been pulled into Lloyd, right?

like everything's coming along. Sure. Mar Wayne, when I first went to Mar Wayne, even when I was younger than that, there was, what would there have been, three car dealers, three implement dealers, two lumber yards,

seven grain elevators, and it's down now to just a bedroom community. Yeah. Two grocery stores, meat market, two restaurants. What did you do? when you're done with school, you're done with school, you're no longer going to school, you're now working. You said farming was always your dream of you wanted to run the farm. What did you do

after school? Where did you go? Where did you work? Well, after I was through school, first summer, and that would be in here, I guess if I can look at that briefly. Yeah, for sure you can. If I can follow this just for so I don't get lost. I worked, well, I kept, I used to work for different farmers when I was in school for quite a few years, driving tractor, working summer, fall, raking hay, those sort of things, and actually bought my first car. I had a little pickup truck, but I bought a car with the money I saved from working all my summer holidays. Didn't go to the lake, you see. What type of car did you buy? Well, I'll get to that.

It was a 1954 Ford Crestline. which I discovered many years later was a rather a rare model. I bought it from Stieg Brothers sales, and they were east of here. They were in a clearing in the bush on the east side of Big JSO. Okay. That was out of town. And I saw, if I can use names, if I'm allowed,

to have Stieg at the, in the Dr. Cook one day quite a few years ago when I was visiting a family member. and he was just sitting in his wheelchair by the door and I stopped and talked to him, how are you doing? So, Alan, and I said, I bought my first car from you. He said, was it any good? Yeah, it was. It was a very good car.

But I should have kept it longer. But you always want to have something newer, you know? You know, talking about working with always want something newer, isn't that the truth? Talking about helping all the different farmers out, I assume when you talk about tractors, was that open air? Oh, absolutely, yeah. There was no cabs. Nobody even knew what a cab was then.

Were they steel tires or rubber tires? No, I didn't think I run was on rubber, fortunately. Yeah. But I spent a lot of time on Model D, John Deers, which weren't a particularly comfortable tractor to ride on. You know, if you could go back there and just transport me and the listener there, What are some of the things you remember about the open-air tractor bouncing around the fields? Gee, I don't know.

I put a lot of hours in doing that, and I used to go with us, two brothers that farmed close to us, and we've been friends forever. They actually took me to school, and I started school, I think, to start with. And I would go there end of June and work summer follow with the Model D and an eight-foot tiller. and then they would start putting up hay and I would rake hay. And then we got the hay done, I'd go back on the summer follow and get that done just in time to go back to school. And I was a lot of, watched a lot of seagulls, I guess, and it was lonely out there.

You know, there was no radio, no cab, no. Just go to work and drive it all day and have a lunch kit with sandwiches and just just you and your thoughts as you slowly trudge along yeah I did a lot of when I not so much I guess then but when I was farming on my own that's where I did all my planning when I was on the tractor planning for well well you know what yeah well all of that next day harvest whatever is coming up I was fortunate well I I seem if I can back up a little bit here. In 1961, when I worked in town here at Faber Brothers Farm Equipment,

and I quit in the fall and went out to help my dad combine because he was a lot older than me. And I sort of knew if I didn't stick around some, I was going to lose it. And made a deal with another neighbor who had a lot of, a lot bigger combine and I would haul grain for him and he would combine for dad. And it was a nice open fall and after we were done, he got a job custom combining and we went and did that and he taught me a lot about running a combine, setting a combine, a lot of stuff that you really kind of need to know. He let me run the combine, you know, I was, that's how

I really got experience with combines and it proved to be pretty significant. in a few years in my life. But the next year I got a job in 62, I got a job driving gravel truck. Our first job was straight west of town here where they straightened out the road first at Blackfoot. They used to be the two, some people called them suicide corners, and they built the road the year before.

They built the grade straight through for about two and a half miles, I think. And we hauled gravel from north of Isley to put on that road to put the base, for paving. And I didn't run it on there all the time, as other guys drove the truck too. Some big days, drive sometimes 500 miles. You know, narrow old, highway 16 with no shoulders.

But again, I made friends, you know, and it was interesting. But did a lot of gravel in town here, like I said, to basements because there was no. no cement plant, no mixer trucks, so it was all mixed on site by hand. And I hauled gravel to that separate school that's behind the mall. We had to go down south on Highway 17, somewhere maybe where the co-op is or maybe even further south, and then come back through the trees to the school. And I distinctly remember this telling somebody, what on earth are they building it so far out of town for?

And so 65, they gave me a new truck to drive, which was kind of nice, but I didn't stick with it. I had taken time off to help my dad's seed, and a fellow that was a salesman from the local case dealer had changed hands by then. And he stopped in to see, you know, chit-chat, what do you want? Do you need anything? And so on, he was a nice old fellow, and I think he was pretty successful. salesman because he didn't push it. And I must have told him that I had worked at Case at one time. And a few days later he was back and he said, we've got a job for you if you want it. So I, in probably June of 65, I came into Lloyd, worked at Parkland Power and Equipment.

And it was good. It was a good job. I liked the work. I liked the people I worked with. There was five of us in the shop. One was a shop foreman. They were very good to me. They shared their knowledge. They trusted me. I did everything. I was the flunky. I delivered tractors and combines.

I washed tractors. And by winter, I did major engine overhauls. And they were, of course, there was always somebody there keeping an eye on me. You know, they knew that if I was stuck, they would ask, you know. And one person, you know. particular job that I did I was kind of proud of. I guess the fellas towed a tractor in it. It had had a major wreck and anyway they one of the fellas that was working there took it all apart. They sent the crankshaft away to be regrounded and before it got back he

quit and we got parts in boxes all over the place and the shop farm and said to me one day how'd you like to try to put that tractor back together? Well I did. I did. I I had to back up a few times because going through stuff, you find something that should have been in a little bit sooner, but I got it together and it went back out to the farm. So that was kind of good. I got to ask then, no, like you didn't have any degrees in mechanics. No.

Well, that's how you learned then. You generally worked on site for a year. Then you would go to school for a couple of weeks. maybe go to Calgary or in Melbourne, Belgrade was the main place in Seat. Did you ever think about, I mean, you're doing major engine overhauls. Did you ever think,

maybe I should go get my schooling for this? Well, I probably would have, you know, but things took a major twist in the spring of 66. I had a chance to rent some land close to the home place. And so I did that. and as some people would say the rest is history I guess I've been a dirt farmer ever since Before we get into the farming

The other thing I was wondering is you mentioned your travel Drove Cravel truck Did you need your class one back then? Well yes but it wasn't a class one I had a B class license Which lets you drive anything but a school bus and a taxi Wouldn't allow you to haul people essentially No that's right yeah

And, of course, there was no super Bs or anything like that then anyway. But a Class B license would let you drive, Sammy's any kind of truck. The reason I bring it up is, you know, today in order to get your class one, it is a lot. And I just had Dad in here before you, and he was talking about, I forget what truck he said, Datson maybe. I can't remember. It was a stick shift. He said it wasn't a big truck by any imagination. and that's how he got his class one back in that would have been late,

probably mid-70s is when he got his class one. Yeah, I eventually updated to a class one, but I had to take it. I took the test with a semi, but I had been driving at lots as a, I was going along as a swamper, and I could drive as long as with the class three, as long as the guy with me had to class one. I could drive as a learner and that was actually a good way to do it because I learned from watching him. I learned from experience and so I can't remember when I got my class one back probably early 80s I'm thinking but I'm not sure about that yeah but yeah when I got it first all I took was my dad's one-ton truck and away you went yeah that's all I needed to get the

class B license Well, yeah, I guess once again, the reason I bring it up is because today to get your class one costs a little bit of money, actually a little bit more than a little bit. And you've got to jump through some hoops, essentially. You've got to take some hours of training and that kind of thing. And it sounds like back the day, it was, can you stick shift? And if you can, here you go. That was about it, yeah. And I know when I updated from the class three up to the class one, I was.

I had a truck from, well, it was Tingley's then, John Deere. And the guy got in, you know, we got in the truck to go, and he asked me a few questions, and we took off down the street and went through a few things. And I'm expecting some stuff that I wasn't real sure of. And he said, well, we may as well go back to the shop. He said, I can see you've done this before. So that was it.

That was it? Yeah. when I turn 65 I let it go you let it go I'm not using it anymore I didn't have my truck anymore I had my own semi for a while and I didn't

I didn't have the truck and I didn't really want to drive for anybody else so well fast forward then you say you get the opportunity to rent land and you'd always want to farm so that must have been like when you saw that thing coming out you must have been it's time

Yeah, that's what I wanted to do, yeah. And, of course, then I, in, that was in 66, in 71, 1971, I bought my first quarter land. Did it myself. Nobody helped me. Well, I mean, I had helped. I had a bank manager that had faith in me and believed in me, and he lent me the money. I had borrowed it, I bought the land from the credit union, but they couldn't lend me the money because it was a Saskatchewan Credit Union.

At the time, they weren't cross-border shopping, I guess you'd say. Mind me asking, can you remember what a quarter of land cost back then? I bought two quarters that year. I paid $14,000 for one and $13,000 for the other one. And at the same time, I rented more land. It was a little more secure. Some of it I rented for, oh, I don't even know how many years, years and years and years, 25 years probably and from family from relatives and

does it ever uh can you believe how high land prices are these days well no not really it's uh but it's uh everything is the same way uh this 20 dollar plus canola i've never ever seen that before uh we sold barley last winter for 550s and I think it's actually been hired than that. So I remember hauling barley to the co-op feed mill. It was 270, which was a really good price. This was in early 80s. And they dropped the price to 270, and I kept hauling.

They dropped to 260, and I kept hauling. They dropped to 250, and I thought, yeah, I'll wait. Let's see what happens. sold all that barley that was left the next year to a neighbor for a buck and a quarter. That was a valuable lesson I never held on to grain ever after that. It was a good thing during the 80s when the interest rates were high. I used to sell grain as quickly as I could get it moved off the farm, put the money into a savings account.

And there was times I was drawing 18, 19%. I remember telling somebody, one time on my canola, I made 10 cents a bushel per month over winter. That's easy money. And it never did go up to match that any time. So, I mean, like this year, it's gone up a lot. Then, I guess in 1978, I bought my first antique tractor. Wasn't that terrible old?

And it looked nice, but we knew when they had it running. I was at an auction sale, and there was some problem. with it but I bought it anyway and scared myself because by the time I got it all fixed up it cost me a bit I mean nothing like doing it now but I scared myself I was guilty I felt guilty about doing this you know that's that this is not a good thing to be so yet and so anyway I didn't buy anything more for a few years a couple of years maybe and I got over that guilt and I I've been buying ever since. Well, the last 10 years maybe I haven't done much. What was it about antique

tractors that, you know, like... Well, because I drove them all when I was younger, you know, not all of them. I mean, this one I'd never had. This is one I bought at that sale. That's one I wished my dad had. And what was it? An Oliver 880. And today I've got an Oliver 880 in the shop. It's a different one. But that was the first one I did. and this one that's there now is probably going to be the last one. I just got it for myself, that right there. Well, mine is not a tricycle. It's what they call it a wheatland, a standard front axle.

More like that, then. Yep, that would be it, yeah. And that was the Cadillac back in the day then? Well, I don't know whether it was a Cadillac. They never really had all of it. Never, never had a good dealer organization in Canada, so they weren't a big seller here. But in the U.S., to call the U.S. Midwest, there's a lot of them there, close to the factory. I always find it interesting what people get into, right?

Like, you know. Well, see, that was one I wanted when I was younger and never got it, so then I had a chance to buy one. And I thought, well, I'm going to use it. That was my justification for buying it, is that I can use this. But anyway. So do you like a tractor with a cab or are you? All the antique stuff I have is no cab. No cab.

But right now I have a little field of summer fall for next year's crop. And I have one of the leftover tractors from my farming days that I kept. It has a cab. And I really kind of like using it to do that. the old ones kind of, the novelties kind of wore off a bit. What do you think of all the new tractors and the size and the computers and the, I don't know, everything? I don't know. I mean, it's happening. It doesn't matter what we think about it. There's a lot of good stuff. It stems from it. The guys that rent our land now, I mean, I get to ride in their stuff once in a while.

I used to, a few years ago, I would run the grain cart for them at harvest time. And I've run the combine. You don't even have to, you just sit there, turn around, push a button, and the header goes down to the right spot, and you just sit there until you get to the other end of the field, then you've got to push a button again so you can turn around. It's strange. It really is. Well, the hard part for me now is getting in them.

Just because they're so big. So high. It's unbelievable. I'm not scared of heights, but geez, that's hard climbing up that ladder. The guys bought a track tractor this spring, and it's neat to get in because the steps just run up on a gradual slope over top of the track. And that was really easy to get into. But, yeah, so. You know, all the technology.

This is what, I didn't know what to think about, there's questions about surreal. Yeah. And I didn't know what I thought about that or what I could. And my wife helped me out there. She said, well, what about the new, all the technology? And I guess if that's surreal, I guess that's, is because I, it just blows my mind what can be done.

I was riding with the guy one day and they were seating and we were talking away and he of course doesn't have to watch anything you know and then he looks over at this monitor and he says whoops I missed the spot and when we come back down the field he went over and he said I would have seen that you know it was he wasn't blaming me but it was the fact that he was a bit distracted and come over a sharp hogback hill and the thing dripped out of the ground out of the ground so quit seating from there to the end of the field but he could go back and see that strip exactly what he missed. I mean, jeesh. I had chains come off the seed drill a few times. I was along the road where the neighbors saw your strips, you know, but you didn't

know about it mostly until you've gone a little bit further or sometimes not till the grain came up, but oh oh. I may have missed some. Yeah, yeah. And it's sprayers, unbelievable. Just You know, the technology just... The trouble is when something quits, you're sunk, you're done for. Last fall they had a swathor. They left sitting outside for a while, and the squirrel got in the tube across the back of the frame,

chewed off a wire, and by the time they got figured out what that was wrong, I'd forget, it'd cost them thousands, and days, and by the time they got it fixed they didn't need it, they'd straight combined everything. They usually swathed canola, but that got straight combined because they didn't have a swather because some wires were chewed off. And, you know, it's...

When you look back at fixing all the old equipment you used, what was the best fix you had then? Oh, golly, I don't know. I don't know. You know, I built, it took me a long time to pick up this one model of tractor. And when I got it, it was bad. It was rusted solid. And it took me two winters, I think, just to get it apart.

And I have rebuilt that tractor from the ground up everything. Wheel bearings, kingpins, brakes, engine, total engine, pistons and sleeves, water pump, generator, gauges, steering wheel, seat. It looks kind of rusty yet, but I'm not going to paint it. They're only original once. But that was a big job. Very big job. I'm working on just your attention to detail to stick with it for that long.

It's always impressive. I got friends who rebuild old trucks and they get their little, you know, I've never been the mechanical guy. I'm not a, I destroy things. I would not be given a tractor engine and be like, hey, could you rebuild this? Maybe. You probably don't want me doing that, right? So it's interesting to hear you talk about all these different things and how, I don't know,

you fell in love with some old tractors and then that's become a lifelong passion hobby. Yeah. How many do you have? I think about 60. You have 60 old tractors. Yeah, not all running. There's a few of them that are, uh, were projects. When I started buying them, I wanted to have something to do when I retired.

Just that retirement's not going to last long enough. But, yeah, this is one I'm putting together now. Well, I've got it all together. I'm just waiting for the, well, time, I guess, that I can get it started, and then I have to retorke the head bolts. And I'd rather have a cool day for doing that. And that's probably going to be the last one. What's one of the, maybe the best lessons or maybe even tagged in with the best lesson, maybe a mentor?

Is there someone in your life that really has helped you along the way or giving you a piece of advice that's really been beneficial? There would be a number of people, I think, that I would say it'd really help me a lot. I don't know whether I should name them or not, but yeah, there's people that some of them are gone. Most of them are gone now. Yeah, they, like, you know, and I, I guess I probably skipped over that a bit. When I talked about running the combine when I was first out of school, and when I worked for a case, they put a real push on to sell combines, and they sold about 30 plus combines that year, which was kind of unheard of.

and I did the PDIs on if not all of them, very close to all of them. And I went out to the farms when the guys started combining, I would be there, if not the first day, probably the second day or something, just to make sure everything was going good. And I made some friends over that, farmers that were friends for the rest of their lives. They were all older than me, so all gone. But, yeah. And that fellow that gave me the instructions on the combine, he helped me an awful lot.

And then they knew when I started working on combines that I actually knew something about them. And that gave them, and they trusted me to go out and set a combine for somebody in. The old tractors, I did an interview one time for the paper, the source. And, but when we do a toy show in town here, I've been involved with that since it started. And I said, you know, asking me things like you are now. And I said, well, it's like it's a disease. It won't kill you. Your wife might.

But it, you know, it's just a, so I have about, I know, I have over 200 pieces of toys, tractors, machinery as well as the big ones. That's a lot. Yeah, well, I had friends, had friends that had a lot more than that. But you bring up your wife. You mentioned you've been married 31 years. How did you guys meet? Actually, she worked in the Smitty's Restaurant down in the mall. And my mother liked to eat in Smitties.

And we kind of got together on July the 1st, 1988. and we had supper together and the rest is history, I guess. What is, I'm always, I always love to ask, you know, 31 years of marriage, what does that tie you? I don't know. Well, we're very, very similar. We like the same things. We think alike on a lot of stuff. She does all the gardening.

I worked the garden in the spring, and after that, I'm not allowed in there. That's her domain, and the other day she was healing potatoes. And, you know, she'll dig all the potatoes herself. She'll dig a pail a day because if I'm going to help, I want to do it all at once, and that's work. So, but. That's work. She doesn't want to work. Well, I mean, that's big work.

That takes the enjoyment out of it. That takes the enjoyment out of it, yeah. I know exactly what she's saying. Yeah. Yeah. Did you guys ever think of having kids? Well, I had a problem many, many years ago, and the doctors told me my chances of being a father, we're slim.

So we would have at, you know, I mean, we thought about adopting and tried to go that route once, but the hoops to get through just discouraged us, I guess. And so we didn't follow. up on that. But neither one of us were, you know, I was 45 when I got married, so not that that was a deterrent, but old enough that it made you question of them about whether or not to go down that road. Yeah. I hauled grain to a guy at Acadia Valley back in the 80s, I guess, but anyway, one day he asked me in for dinner, because I usually get there.

about 11 o'clock in the morning. And he introduced me to his wife and kids. It must have been a weekend or something because kids were there. And he said he was 45 when he got married. You said I was old enough to know better. But I never really believed that. But anyway, he was a good guy to deal with. I hauled quite a bit of grain to him.

You'd mentioned going back to your harvesting. You'd mentioned And I don't know, I don't know the word for it, but I'm going to call it historic harvesting where you have people out and you do that. You haven't been able to do it in the last couple of years. But that's become something I suppose you look forward to. Hopefully you get back to. Well, for sure.

Yeah, I've seeded this year. You know, last year I let the guys that are renting it, they just combined it. You know, they seeded it and combined it because. And I had a couple of years where I, I went. It wasn't quite as gung-ho, I suppose, as was in March 21st of 2018, I had a heart attack. And I, but I'm thinking I'm back in the swing of things now. I've got my mind straightened out, and that was kind of major shock, I guess, more ways than one. but found your way back yeah that's i was uh having problems for well that first year i was

pretty good but then we had a really wet fall and couldn't do it and then next year was kind of that way in 19 2019 i just wasn't uh or yeah yes well last year 2020 2020 i didn't think anyone would come out anyway so we didn't worry about it But this year I hope we'll. We're going to do it. It's fun. I just stand back and watch these guys go, and I just got to, well, the guys that rent or land,

they give me the seed, and they lend me a truck when we're combining, and we put the grain in the truck, and they get the grain, because what am I going to do with it? And my crop looks really, really good right now. It looks fantastic for being as dry as it was to start with it. Have you ever thought, because you've grain farm now for, geez, 50 years? Something close to that? Yeah, well, it was 73, it was in the barn burn.

74, I sold the cows. So from then on it was straight grain, 75. That's 25 and 20, that's 45 years. So for 45 years, you've dealt with the weather and everything else. Have you ever had moments where you just went, what am I doing? No, surprisingly not. I had a fellow that I knew many years ago. He had a hard time dealing with Harvest.

In fact, he committed suicide many, many years ago. And that was a joke to me too. But Harvest never bothered me. If it rains, so what are you going to do? You know, there's nothing you can do about it. You know, you can be mad, you can stomp around, but you can't, there's nothing to do about it. So you may as well relax and enjoy it as one of my old friends used to say. And that was, I never thought about quitting or doing something else or, you know,

Just the way things go. You know, it might be one of the things I don't understand about grain farming. I grew up on a grain farm or mixed farm, I should say. And then by the time I got old enough, we were out of it, essentially. We sold off all the machinery. We'd rented out all the land to be, you know, and now, as I'm older, we run, my oldest brother and my dad runs steers on all the land, right? So cattle, and we just have never gone back in the grain farming.

And as an older guy, I just look at grain farming. I just, it feels like so much gambling because what happens if you don't get rain, now you got rain. Now you're getting too much rain. Is it too hot? Is it too cold? All these different things. Yeah.

For sure, that's, I don't know, you just have to be a certain kind of person to deal with that. I guess one of the questions you had in there was what, who is my, biggest influencer or whatever my mother and she was very steady very calm uh i learned a lot from her she had very little education uh moved around a lot when she was young she was born in canada but her parents came from minnesota and we uh we do go back to minnesota and visit there periodically where where boats if you don't mind me asking minnesota uh uh painsville which would be where in the state In Minnesota, it's about an hour west of Minneapolis. The reason I ask you is my wife is from Minneapolis.

So we go back to Minnesota quite a bit too. Anyway, sorry to cut it. Not a problem. I had a cousin that farmed near a place called Greenwald. And just a little small town. If you blinked, you'd miss it. But that was their telephone. They got their 100th year plaque, farm plaque,

in 1964. Wow. That's where my grandmother was born and raised. I don't know whether he's still farming or not. I haven't, we don't, we've never talked on the phone. I don't know whether it's a bit of a family trade, I think, a little bit, but some of the ones down there we do visit with a lot. I try to get to see him when we're down there.

The last time we came through, we didn't have time. to go around by his place, but their original homestead was a quarter section and he rented another quarter and that's all they'd ever had. And he milked 80 cows. And they were nice people. We don't, you know, we only got to know them the last, I don't know how many years, but nice people. His wife's a super nice lady. She said, she always said when she was younger, She was never going to marry a farmer, never mind a dairy farmer. Just look where I am. But, yeah, she's super nice.

So I hope they thought they had a daughter that was going to take over the farm, but she didn't want the cows. So I've been surprised they haven't driven up here because it's maybe six or seven years ago. They sold all the milk cows. But the son didn't want a farm. They had one boy and two girls. When you talk about your mom as being most of the, influential person on your life. What were some of the things, you know, you said steady and calm and

what are some of the things that you, obviously calm and steady, but what were some of the things she taught you or in passing? I mean, it's amazing to me what she knew about playing baseball when she never really had a chance to do that much. And there was a lot of other things. I can't even really think of anything specific now where she seemed to know stuff that I didn't think she would have known and they moved around a lot before they got to Lloydminster and they moved in a few places here but yeah she was just she was a rock that's no matter what I always find it interesting a the, well, dad when he talks about Grandma Newman.

Actually, all of us Newman's talk about it. Grandma Newman was the matriarch of the Newman family, right? She was the rock, to use your word, right? And if you remember Dora, she just, she was always out in the boat, always doing things for the community, for family, friends, everything. She always had time for everyone. And yet she was an old BS lady. She laid, it was black and white with her.

Yeah. Yeah, my mom did a lot of work with the Al Curve Hall when they first started building that and afterwards, you know, things like turkey suppers and all the things they put on. Interesting time, too, I guess. That was where I learned to dance, you know. Was the Al Curve Hall? Yeah. It was built in, I think, 58, I think.

and yeah we used to we had a there was a band a local band here called the Western Aces and they were good they were popular and we

I think they were under kind of it would have been a handshake deal I guess but they were under contract to play at the hall every other Saturday

all winter and they were good they got $55 the whole works of them $10 a piece and $5 for the guy

that had the station wagon and yeah they were they were good the all curve hall was a bump in place back it was yeah yeah went to a lot of dances went to a lot of dances in hillmond too hillmond and uh the odd one at north bend that was a good place to go to dances too people were really friendly there at north bend and well they all were i mean there was no unfriendly i don't think anywhere but uh i said the first time the guys took me over to North Bend, they'd left me there. I'd have been still there trying to find my way home because there was no highway three.

And I don't know how we went Rex Green Street, you know, here and there and around and finally got there. You bring up Rex. There's an elevator still there. Was Rex just a stop on the railway, or was there more to it? I don't know that. I think there was a store there at one time. there was two elevators there. I remember hauling grain there for somebody

and just about couldn't get in the elevator. But, yeah, two elevators, and I'm sure there was a store and a post office. They would have been together probably, and they would have been, you know, at least a couple of houses. The elevator men would have lived there. I don't remember much about wrecks.

What sticks out to you about the railway back in the day? Like, you know, when you go back, the train would have been not a spectacle, I mean, but at the same time, it was a big part of life back then. Oh, yeah. Yeah, there was, I mean, it was important. The CP train came through Marwain, and we could hear the train whistle lots of times, I suppose, they were over in that Streamstown area from home. And when we got the, mom and dad got the power put in, I think that was, I think, 55. and the first thing Mom wanted was a fridge. I mean, that was the most important thing.

And one of my cousins who lived in Edmont said he would buy one up there, and they put it on the train and we picked it up in my way. Because I don't even know if you could have bought a fridge in town here at that time. You know, I don't know that. And that fridge, it was called a Roy, which I'd never heard of before, I over cleanse. every sense. And many, many years later, she wanted another, she wanted a newer fridge. And a neighbor that was a bachelor, she gave him the fridge. Still in his house today, still running. No kidding. No. I'm not joking. Well, when they say they don't make things like they used to.

That's true. That is true right there, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. So it is old. And it looks old. You know, when you walk in his house, I noticed that. But, I mean, I know the fridge anyway, but I mean, it looks out of place because it's old. Still chugging along. Yeah, it still works, yeah. Brought in on the train to Mar Wayne. That's a great story. Yeah.

Did you ever take the train places? Oh, yes. In 1951 and 1953, we went on the train out to BC, too. I don't remember what order we went to things. Mum's sister lived in New Westminster. We went there. Dad had a niece at Langley. We went there, and he had a sister in Colonna.

I think we took the bus back from Langley back to Colonna, and then, I don't know how, maybe we went by a bus up to a, when we salmon arm and then caught the train back from there. I don't know, but we were on the CP train once left here in the morning, and we got out by Stinking Lake, which is north of Streamstown and the engine and the tender

jumped the track and we were there all day. I would have been about nine or ten years old or something like that and I've never asked mum what did you do with me? Everybody just sat in the train because couldn't do nothing

and it took all day before they brought and got another engine from somewhere and backed it all the way out from town here out there to hook on to the back of the cars and brought it back to Lloyd and then we got out at the CP station and walked over to the CN station, got on a train there and continued on. A little day late, but we're still going. Was that a fun way to travel? You know, I don't really remember that much about it.

I think it was probably better than the bus because you could, you know, you could walk around quite a bit on the train and go around, but I went through that spiral tunnel on the CP train and where you're coming out of the tunnel and you can look back and see the other part of the train going in the tunnel. Which would have been an interesting feeling. Yeah. Yeah. What have you thought about the last 16 months, you know, COVID and everything else?

We've lived through something. Yeah, you know, I feel. very fortunate to be where we are. I can go out and mow grass all day and nobody cares. You know, we're not really as isolated but not as isolated as some people had to be in town. We lost a friend here, I guess, about a month ago. He was a few years older than me and he'd had one shot, one vaccine, and he died of COVID. And he didn't go anywhere. He just stayed in his house in town here. They got him out to get the one shot, but he wouldn't go.

And I don't know if they've ever figured out how he contracted it. His wife was negative. Was negative then? It was still negative. And my wife talked to her one day, and she said they just don't understand, because he never went anywhere. He was just absolutely terrified to go anywhere because he had asthma, and he thought, if I get it I'm gonna be gone.

But for us, we just we have friends with this one neighbor that has the old fridge. He was one of the guys that took me to school in early days and I phone him every, well at least probably every couple

of weeks or so and just touch base with him and how are you doing? How are you feeling? And blah, well, make sure he's still there and Our mailbox and his are side by side, so if his mail doesn't get picked up, I'm going to be going to have a look. But otherwise, we, you know, we just, it hasn't been a whole lot of difference. To life before. No.

We don't come to town quite as much as we used to, but that's okay. I don't really mind that. So. If you could go back to your 20-year-old self and give him some wisdom, if you'd listen and take it, what would you go back and say? When I was 20, I don't know. I just said, get out of this truck and go do something else. But anyways, I'd have been haul of gravel then. But it was interesting.

I mean, everything I did was interesting, and I learned and I met some really nice people. From my gravel hauling days, there was the last friend I made just passed away this last week. And, you know, we were, We didn't visit or anything, you know, our families, but we'd see each other once in a while and have a good, good little visit. And I liked him a lot.

I think he, it was reciprocal, I think. And, you know what, that was, I would have never met him if I hadn't been driving the truck. Frank Tuplin, if I can mention names, he was. Yeah, for sure you can. He was, he was a good guy to work for him. I didn't work directly for him. The truck I was driving was leased to him. But another man, Gordon Thieson, he passed away a long time ago.

Really, really good guy. Is it not the, obviously, hard isn't the right word, but I don't know, strange or whatever word you want to slide into there with having friends pass, you know, you're getting to a stage in your life where you've mentioned a lot of people have passed on. That has to be, you know, go back to work we used earlier about technology and equipment. It's got to be a bit of a surreal feeling

to see friends and family pass on. Yeah, for sure. The fellow that died from COVID, I had, I knew him for a long time. He worked in town here and actually did end up farming out north of Hillmont, but he worked at Civic Tire and he worked at Arjaroid. and places that I was at. And I knew him for a long time,

but I got to know him very well probably since I retired. And he went to the mall every day for coffee. And I didn't go every day for coffee, but every time I went, he was there. And we became good friends. And it was a real shock. And this fellow that died the other day, well, I talked to somebody that lived in the apartments

close to him, and he told them a few months ago, that he didn't have much time to live. But I talked to him last year, and he just seemed like the same old guy, you know. But something is, they discovered something, I guess, probably a cancer. But, yeah, he was, I, I went to, actually,

my cousin's husband's funeral. And this is a long time ago, too, but we were going south of town afterwards. He was buried out. at a little country church, I forgot the name of it now, south east of, well, me south of McLaughlin, I guess probably. And when we were going south, there was a line, you know the line of funeral, the procession,

and there was a truck pulled off onto the side of the road onto an approach. And when we got there, I thought that you don't see that much anymore, you know, that's what we were taught to do. One of the things was if you meet a funeral process, pull off the road, take your cap off. And we met this, got close to this truck, and this fellow sitting there holding onto his cap,

and I said to my wife, I know that guy. I said, he's got to be the only guy left on the road that'll do that anymore. But, yeah, he was a good guy. I liked him a lot. He was a good guy to work with. your final one over your lifetime

you know you mentioned Lloyd and things being why would they build things out there so far out of town and everything else obviously Lloyd has expanded exponentially since then what is what is maybe is the biggest change to Lloyd Bennett's size or people or what's something that

sticks out to you that one I think that's probably the biggest thing I have a picture that I bought at a grad sale in town here and I'm going to give it to the archives at some point, you know, when I get tired looking at it. But it's been framed with glass over. It was really nice. I only think I paid $4 for it. And I said to them, you're going to sell this? He goes out, nobody wants it. So I did. Somebody had taken a picture out of an airplane from the southeast part

of town and the trees at the Weaver Park that are this side of the Weaver Park, those spruce trees, they looked to be about decide. There was a bus in a car on the highway. There was a bus in a car on the it was gravel. There was a greater coming by the hospital, that'd be 48th Avenue. That was gravel. When you went east of 48th Avenue, there was outhouses in the backyards.

And it was probably taken on a Monday because there was laundry hanging on the lines all over the place then. Was it dumb question then? Was Monday Laundry Day? Always was considered laundry day. Really? Yeah.

I don't think my way. She just doesn't do that. She just doesn't, we don't have a ton of water either. So, you know, it's do some today, some tomorrow, whenever you think about it. But we have friends in town or live in apartments, and they have to do their wash on Mondays to be able to fit into the scheme of things. So, but anyway, you would have had, you know, you mentioned outhouses too. I didn't even think of this going back. You mentioned getting power out on the farm. I bet running water was. Well, running water, there. They put water in in 19, hmm, I think, I don't know, I want to, I don't actually remember about 1970 maybe. We were a long time after some other people did, but yeah, it would have been 71. And it was so dry that spring that we almost quit seeding. By the end of May, we almost quit seeding. We were starting to seed canola because all we grew, we grew that, we were starting to seed canola,

all we grew then was Polish canola and said this is never going to come up. But anyway we kept seating. And later after we were done seating it started, well, Plummer came from Marwain and he putting the in and he had our yard all dug up and it started to rain and it rained and it rained and it rained and it rained and we couldn't. I had summer fall that never got work till July and because we just couldn't get up. And a mess. We've got really, really heavy clay.

You could hardly walk across the yard. Your feet got so big that you couldn't lift them after a while. It was horrible. But that's how things change, as you, where you can be so dry one minute you don't know what to do yourself. Up to your knees and mud the next minute. Well, I appreciate you coming in and sitting and doing this with me on this afternoon. Hopefully it's still a beautiful day out there. Yeah.

Well, I hope so. We go for our second shot of vaccine on Wednesday. But I'm not planning to go anywhere. One thing, if I could, if we have a couple of minutes. We definitely do, you bet. My dad was born in Tyndall, Manitoba. What did I do with that page now? Stuck together.

His parents came from Sweden. I tried to find out a little more about that. We were in Pier 21 a few years ago, and oh man, couldn't believe how many Eric Robert Persons came to Canada between about 1895 and 1920. And we had his birthday, but we just, they couldn't track it down. But anyway, they came to Lloydminster in 1906, and dad was born in 195. And, you know, a lot of things that I should have asked about this when and where.

I didn't. But my grandfather had a 110-horse case steamer, which was the biggest farm engine they built. They made one bigger than that. There was supposed to be a road locomotive, but it didn't pan out. And he pulled a 12-bottom plow with that and they did custom plowing. I don't know whether around Lloyd here or whether they did that after they moved out in our area. They were north side of the gully for a while and then they moved to a mile west of where we're living now.

And somewhere along the line that's where they did the plowing. He also had a second steam engine that they ran a lumber, sawmill. with North. I've heard Horse Lake and Government Crossing. Some people up there, older people, Edgar Mapletoft, he knew about them. But my dad had his steam papers, and I still have that. And my dad and his older brother were the engineers on the machines. And but They moved out to Colonna before I was born, so when we were out there twice, as I said in the 50s, I met them, but I don't really have a memory of them. Somebody said one time that my grandma was always cranky and somebody else said, well, they

had power and running water when they left Sweden. Can you imagine what she felt like when she got here? You know, no wonder she was cranky, but thumbs the hazards, I guess. But I... What it would be to ask, you know, if you could reverse time, because, you know, dad and I just literally talked about this. To talk to some of those families who immigrated and had to take the train and then the horse wagon and everything else to get here to live in what they did live through.

Yeah. That was not an easy track. I read a book last winter called The Revenge of the Land. What an education that was. I mean, I've read the books about the bar colonists here and stuff. I don't know how they survived to tell you the truth, but that book was amazing. It's amazing. The lady that wrote that book did an awful lot of research, and it was a piece of ground there in that area near Mooster.

It just seemed to be disaster. You know, people lost it. Their family split up, or their wife died, or the husband died, and at the end, the grandson shot his grandparents in the house on there. That was sort of the end of the book. But that whole history of that land going from, and I can't remember the years that the murder happened, but I think it was in this century, in the 2000s.

But going right back to about 1880, that piece of ground was just disaster. Anything that could go wrong did, you know. It's a phenomenal book to read. I'd recommend it to anyone that's interested in that sort of thing. Cool. Well, once again, appreciate you coming on here and sharing a bit about your life and everything else.

It's always enjoyable to hear about someone's life and the things that have impacted them and some of the wisdom they've taken out of your lifetime. Well, I wasn't sure when, Linda, I guess, wasn't that for me? That's correct, yeah. You know, and I've known Vic for a long time, but I had never met her, and I'm making things like what they want to talk to me about.

I mean, I'm... I'm kind of a nobody here, but... Everybody has their story. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you, sir, again. Hey, thanks for tuning in today to the podcast, folks. Certainly enjoy...

Yes. What do you think of Dad podcasting? Good. Just good? Well, that's my daughter. And thank you for being awesome. I hope everybody enjoyed today's episode. And certainly, if you...

You just stumbled upon it. Leave a like, subscribe, pass along, leave a review. Appreciate it all. If you want to support financially, there is a Patreon account link in the show notes. Regardless, we'll catch up to you guys Friday, so go kick you from my ass. Enjoy the week. And, well, we'll see you Friday.