There were thirty kids spread over grades one to nine. Only two were in grades one, two, and three — Kenny Newans and me. Kenny, skinny and undernourished, came from a big family. I remember that his folks were so poor that each of them would bring white bread slices with lard in the middle to make a sandwich. That constituted lunch.
Kenny grew up to become sports director of a Calgary TV station. Two children in the same grade out in the middle of nowhere and both eventually going into the media business. How strange.
One of the major projects Kenny and I worked on was to snare gophers. First thing in the morning, the teacher handed out assignments to each grade. When they were finished, we were allowed to go outside. Kenny and I were prepared. We had binder twine and water ready for the catch. The field by the school had plenty of gopher holes. One of us poured water down a hole while the other was ready at the other end of the tunnel. When the soaking-wet gopher poked its head out of his hole, he was snared by the binder-twine noose.
After we snared two gophers, we took them back to the classroom and tied them to the legs of our desks. As Kenny and I sat across the aisle from each other, we watched and manipulated them as the gophers fought furiously. To us it was great sport. No wonder Kenny became a successful sports director.
Of course, there was always a scandal in a school so small. In those days in the Depression, there was no money to pay the schoolteacher, who was usually a woman. So one of the farm families provided her with room and board. That was her pay. The farm families were very protective of the teacher. After all, she was responsible for their darlings’ education.
Our teacher, Lillian Moen, at the end of one school day was in the barn outside where the schoolboys put their ponies each morning. One of the boys (I think it was Uncle Dick, who was in grade eight) took a stick and, showing off in front of his pals, stuck it up the back of Miss Moen’s skirt. This, as could be imagined, was the scandal of all scandals in the community.
One day we little guys in grade one or two were astounded, not knowing anything about the incident, to see all of the senior boys, including Uncle Dick, go to the front of the room and apologize one by one to Miss Moen. Their fathers had heard about the deed and laid on the punishment. My Uncle Dick never mentioned that day to his death. (No wonder he was my favourite uncle.)
And, like today, when school kids watch a hotshot pull into the school parking lot with a Ferrari or a Porsche, we little kids gawked at the big boys as they came in on their ponies. The star was a guy who rode a pinto stallion pony, black and white, which snorted and had wild eyes and was hard to control. That guy was the star like the kid with the Porsche today.
My first recollection as a young child (about three or four) was of a large cactus across the only street in Hearne. I said to my younger brother, Jack (who must have been two or three), “Let’s see who can sit down closest to the cactus. You go first.” I can almost remember thinking at the time: How dumb can you be to take that offer?
As soon as he squatted, I, of course, shoved him into the cactus. He ran screaming home, and my mother almost killed me as she had to pluck out all the offending needles. That was the start of a long-standing feud between Jack and me.
Jack and I once played on the same basketball team at high school in British Columbia. When we went to practice from our home three miles away, I stood fifty yards distant from him hitchhiking, and he had to hitch a ride with a different car. I was captain of the team then, and when we came out on the floor, we had to pass to each other before hitchhiking home again separately.
We shared bunk beds, and once during a disagreement, I took all his clothes and threw them out the bedroom window onto the roof while it was raining. At one point, for a whole year, we didn’t say a word to each other. A feat unto itself since we shared the same bedroom, and bunk beds at that. (I suppose it was due to the Irish blood we had both inherited — Northern Ireland Protestant, of course.)
When I was supposedly a grown-up adult, I asked Mother why she thought Jack and I fought so much. She surprised me with a very calm, reflective answer. “Because,” she said without a moment’s hesitation, “without a father in your lives, you were fighting for the attention of your mother.” I thought that was a very wise (if obvious) Freudian statement.
It is said that when you lose your father at a very young age, your mother becomes your whole universe. The bond between the children and surviving parent becomes greater than if there are two parents. The parent gathers strength due to the children, and the children rely solely on the surviving parent. To this day, I think my mother has had the greatest influence on my life. She was not only the strongest woman I have ever met, as I have mentioned, she was also the strongest person I have ever met.
As is the nature of growing up, all children innocently experiment with sex. In my case, one day when I was about eight, all four of us were out and saw two dogs “doing it.” A group of men stood around watching and laughing and using appropriate words to describe what was going on. We all came home and mother was out. When she returned, I was lying naked on top of a naked Irene who was on a circular carpet in one of the bedrooms. My mother shouted, “What are you doing!”
I said, “We are fucking,” having just learned this new word from the men. Fade to black.
Eight years went by before my mother was noticed by the only bachelor in Hearne. His name was Doug Fotheringham, and he lived across the street. He was a quiet man, religious and a teetotaler — apparently because his father was a bad drinker. Before long they became an item. We were mother’s world, and she was ours. I didn’t think there was any room for this intruder.
The courtship wasn’t hurried; there was no need to hurry. The family rule was that the first daughter to marry inherited the family china. Since my mother had previously jumped the queue by marrying my father, she already had the “family jewels,” which angered her sisters.
However, the day came when Mr. Fotheringham joined the Canadian Army at the start of the Second World War and was to be transferred to Regina (they couldn’t transfer him to anywhere else on the bald prairie). I don’t know whatever possessed him to take on four brats, but he proposed to my mother and she accepted. Although my sisters disagreed with me, I felt that my mother wasn’t so much “in love” with him but married him to get us out of Hearne and not become dirt farmers. I was wrong. Her mature love for him in later years was apparent to everyone.
Memories of Hearne? I still remember Grandfather Clarke on the farm, calling out “Jim … I mean, Dale … uh, Jack … no, Dick … er, Lloyd …” before finally settling on who he was looking for: “Les!”
What does a boy remember? Getting left behind at a Hearne church picnic at the Moose Jaw Zoo and winning three races and 75 cents at an adjoining church picnic until rescuers from Hearne arrived back hours later. A survivor? Hint of a future life path?
And the most evocative memory of all, that tells everything about Saskatchewan in the Depression years: of weeding in the cornfields at Grandpa Clarke’s farm and whenever a car went by — perhaps two or three in a day a good fifty yards away on the road — there would be an instant wave from whoever it was, a total stranger, and all the kids in the field would wave back wildly. A very lonely land but a very friendly land.
2
To the Garden of Eden
As I mentioned, Regina is fifty miles north of Hearne. For a nine-year-old that was like going from Kansas to Manhattan. But my world became my new school, the unfortunately named Wetmore Elementary where I entered grade three. I had an early interest in school games, which were a precursor to my interest in sports. At recess and noon hour the favourite game was dodge ball. Because I was so quick on my feet, I always won. This was a good game that stood me in good stead when, in the future, I had to dodge arrows in the journalism business.
But, by a fluke, and this was a formative thing in my life, there