Tisdale Tales

Growing up in the “Land of Rape and Honey” back in the 50's was probably as close to being in kid-heaven as anyone could imagine. 95th street was filled with oodles of kids to play with and many fascinating people. The board sidewalks rumbled daily with our bicycles and home-made carts, and during winter we skated and played hockey non-stop on the rink George Butt made for us on an empty lot on the street.
George's brother, Jim Butt also lived on our street, and his little cottage at the edge of town was a favorite spot for all of us. Jim was a watch repairman, and he and George owned Butt Jewelery on main street. Jim had no children of his own, but he welcomed every kid in town as if they were his own.
He could fix anything, and broken hockey sticks were his specialty. We would all faithfully attend each Rambler hockey game, waiting around the penalty box for the broken sticks to show up.
If they weren't smashed beyond use, Jim would nail, glue, and tape them back together so that they were often as good as new. He also had a wonderful collection of George Formby that I still sing today.
Our milk man was their brother Herb Butt, father of famous actor/comedian, Brent Butt. He was a wonderfully kind man, always sporting a hounds-tooth engineers cap, cocked sideways a bit on his head. His horse-drawn Milk wagon was a daily attraction, and he often let us ride on the back as the horse plodded along. It knew the route so well that Herb never had to do anything but walk along delivering the jangling bottles of milk and cream to each house along the street.
Along with a couple of dozen kids of all ages from up and down the street, there was also a man that was certainly bigger than life to me. Cecil Hearne was well known in the area as a famous horse trader, racer and breeder, and he kept a barn right in town on our street.
There was always a couple of horses around, and he regularly took them out for training and exercise. Mr. Hearne was a huge man who always wore a big ten-gallon Stetson, and smoked fat cigars that warned of his arrival long before he appeared. In winter, he would hook up a horse to his sleigh, put a few hot bricks in the cutter, and take us for rides. He had an old buffalo robe that he threw over us all, and with a light snap of his whip we would tear off to the fields around town.
The smell of those cigars, the horse, and that old buffalo robe, are memories that still bring back tears to my eyes now. I know I will never have another chance to experience the pure joy and thrill of such a ride again, but I cherish what a treasure they are. Mr. Hearne never had any children of his own either, but every kid on that street loved him, no matter how gruff his voice was.
He often asked one of us to ride the horses up and down the street as a warm-up before hooking them to the sulky carriage for a real run. As harness racers, these horses would not normally be ridden in this manner, but as we were all small and not too heavy, he let us ride them.
One horse in particular was his pride and joy, and she had won several respectable purses at the races held at Marquis Downs in Saskatoon each summer. Her name was “Lady Jean”, a dappled-gray mare standing over seventeen hands, and she loved to run.
She usually spent the winter at a farm South of town, where she stayed in a bigger barn with many other horse. In spring, he would bring her into town where he could begin training again.
One afternoon when I was ten years old, Mr. Hearne called down the street in that gravelly voice of his for me to come over and help him. Always ready for a horseback ride, I ran to his bidding and soon found myself sitting bareback high above even the big man's hat.
With his mouth stuffed half-full of cigar, he told me to “take er' around the block a few times, but no faster than a trot”.
The fact that I had no idea what a “trot” was, turned out not to be that important after all, as he handed me the lead rope and barked, “Hang on to er' mane.” I was just about to do that very thing when the air was shattered by the mind-numbing blast of the CP freight train coming into town a block away.
Lady Jean had never been so close to the new diesel trains being used then, and certainly not when they cut loose with that horn of theirs. With one giant snap of her hind legs she was off as if out of the starting gate, and one very surprised kid went somersaulting off her back side like a sack of potatoes.
The streets were still unpaved, but I landed shoulder first on dry mud that felt like brick to me. Finishing my fall with a head-bonking plop, I was knocked senseless for a minute.
When I came around after a bit, Mr Hearne, and my mom were standing over me looking like they were sure I was dead. The pain in my shoulder assured me I was not, and I cried out as they checked me over. A crowd of my friends was gathering, and I bit my lip to keep quiet as they took off my shirt.
It seemed that my collar bone was sticking out at an undesirable angle, and I began to get that sick feeling when you know you are in for it now. I had already broken one arm at five years old, and I had no desire to go through that again.
“Its just dislocated”, Mr. Hearne pronounced after a quick examination of my bare shoulder. “It's best fixed right away before the swelling starts Evelyn”, he advised my mom.
“You hold him still on that side and I'll pop it back in again real quick.”
My mom had grown up on the farm, and seen her share of injuries. She knew he was right, so before I had had time to argue or ask questions they got down to work.
While I was distracted by some silly comment from some body, he gave my arm a quick jerk, at the same time pressing down on the collar bone. It popped back into place and I learned for an instant what real pain is.
A blinding stab shot into my skull and I think I passed out again for a moment, but when I opened my eyes again, at least everyone was smiling.
They helped me to my feet and although it was sore, my shoulder seemed to work properly. Mom thanked Mr. Hearne and apologized for the runaway horse, while I headed for the couch.
Later that day Lady Jean was found out at the farm where she had wintered, completely plastered with mud and covered with scratches. She had taken off like the devil was on her back and run directly back to where she felt safe. Had I tried to stay on her back, I would have undoubtedly been swept off sooner or later at full speed.
That was the last time I was entrusted with Lady Jean, and to be honest I wasn't really that anxious to get back on her again. Falling off a horse, “teaches you a lesson”, as Jake always said.
Jake's real name was Allen Jacobs, but I was seven or eight before I figured that out, as everybody just called him “Jake”. He and his brothers and sisters lived with their mom next door to George Butt, and he was a regular at Jim's house too. Jakes' dad had died right after the war from his injuries, and the Butt family were wonderful neighbors to have in those days before social assistance was available.
Jake and I played together nearly every day, even though he was a couple of years older than me. He had a bit of a speech problem, but he was always game to play anything going, and I loved him like the brother I never had. He had boundless energy, especially when it came to shoveling off the rink after a big snowfall. He was a bit awkward and gangly, but he could work like a Clydesdale when he got going.
In summer, Jake's favorite thing to do was going bottle picking with our bikes along all the roads around town. He had a huge carrier mounted on the front of his bike, and could carry more than three of us other kids.
In spring, he loved to go rafting, and living right beside the Dog-Hide River, we always had lots of opportunities. It flooded regularly in those days, and there were many surrounding lowlands that became a rafters dream once they were filled and a nice sunny day came along.
When I was twelve or thirteen, we built a really nice raft out of some railroad ties laying beside the tracks, and some lumber we scrounged from sources I'd rather not mention. The floods had been high that year, and the pasture beside the river near the golf course was under a meter of water. We decided that there had never been a better time to pretend to be Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer.
Using a couple of young poplar trees as poles, we launched our raft, and were thrilled to find that it road high and stable. In the calm backwater of the river the water was clear, and we could sometimes see fish darting here and there. The Suckers were spawning in great numbers, and my fishing instinct came out in full force.
Suddenly obsessed with the hope of spearing some, we spent the next hour trying to trap one in the shallows so we could jab it with our sharpened pole “spears”. Jake got lucky a few times and jabbed some nice ones, but they kept slipping off as he try to pull them up. We decided that what we needed was a barb to our spears, so we quickly set to work, whittling away at our spears to make a better harpoon.
I'm not quite sure how it happened, but as we stood up again to begin fishing, we suddenly realized that we were now moving with the current back into the main stream of the river. At that point the river bank was too high to jump off the raft, and the current was too strong to push against, so down stream we went.
As the river wound around towards the Drive-In, we could see that the whole valley was flooded to the point where there was now way to get ashore. The water was now too deep to touch bottom, and we were quickly swept into the main channel.
By now we were both properly scared as we simultaneously realized the mess we were in. The raft spun around uncontrollably, and we looked in vain for any sign of help. I could swim, but the water was so cold that I knew I wouldn't make it very far. I couldn't leave Jake in any case, so we just hung on and rode the torrent. It might have been fun if we hadn't been so scared, but the excitement soon turned to terror as we spotted the bridge directly ahead.
It was one of those double-arched concrete structures that were common all over Saskatchewan, and usually it hung several meters above the river. With the flood brought on by the the sunny conditions, the water was now nearly touching the bottom of the bridge. There was no way we could go under the bridge and remain on the raft. That sick feeling came over me again, and I searched desperately for any hope of salvation.
As we came round the last bend in the river, I saw that a farmer was coming into town on a tractor from the west, and I began waving like a madman. As he rolled onto the bridge he seemed to have spotted us, for he stopped the tractor and jumped off and ran to the side. I didn't know what he had planned, but I was game to try it what ever it was!
Swiftly approaching the bridge in the middle of the river, we readied ourselves for what was about to happen. The man had run to where we were likely to hit the bridge, and was leaning over the concrete rail that ran along the side.
“Take my hand!”, he yelled above the roar of the water as it rushed under the bridge.
Needing no further encouragement, we both dropped our poles and got ready to jump.
When the raft hit the side of the bridge, we both leaped up onto the side of the bridge, each grasping one of his hairy arms. He effortlessly lifted us up over the railing and onto the road as if he were choosing two turkeys out of the pen for slaughter.
Jake had run to the other side of the bride to see our raft come out, and it was a sorrowful sight when it finally emerged. Bashed to bits, it was nothing but flotsam now, and I pondered a moment to imagine what might have happened if we hadn't been lucky.
That is a strange word, lucky. Some people are “lucky” and others aren't. I have always wondered why I was so lucky.
The emergency over like a thundercloud, we were offered ride into town. No kid will pass up a ride on a tractor, and before we knew it, we were on our way home, bouncing along as if nothing had happened. We weren't even wet!
The events of those glorious days are burned indelibly in my mind now, and like Jake said, “It teaches you a lesson!” I never went rafting on the river again, and it was twenty years before my mother heard about our ride. Even then, she scolded me for being so foolish, but I knew it already.
Somehow I made it through my childhood without major injury, and my life has been filled with such “lucky” adventures, but Jake was not so fortunate.
He lost his life at an early age when he fell out of a car during a rollover. Growing up on that street never included wearing seat belts, and that was the last lesson Jake ever taught me.
Everybody has to grow up somewhere, if they survive, and wherever it is makes a tremendous difference in their futures. Having lived in cities, towns, villages, and thatched-roofed huts all over this planet, I am thankful I grew up in Tisdale.
I know it gave me the kind of fortitude and experience I needed to make it in the world, no matter where I went, and I attribute that to the people who lived there then. Bless you all.
Doctor Bob

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