Big, Actually

Big, Actually

       By Dumpster Doug Dempster

Papa played “Pretty Pines” plenty of times at those dances in the thirties. You’re asking me to tell you what it was like and what he played. I was young then, maybe twelve or even only eleven. He was a black-haired and lively little guy. He was big, actually. I saw him once in the bath when I was old enough to know about such things and he was a big guy down there. I walked in to go for preserves and there he was with it! He stood only five feet tall and could fiddle like a chicken with her tail on fire. In those days you drank at these dances in the Pembina Hills. We made our own because you couldn’t buy it anywhere. Because of the prohibition. My uncle Raymond, Raymond Jacuzzi, from up around Crystal City, drove a grain truck of whiskey up into the Pembina twice a year and that tripled his farm income. Girly, our neighbour’s catalogue model of a sprightly thing, sixteen then, got to go along with Raymond on one of his trips on a frosty night in December and she would never do it again afterward. She liked it, you could tell, but she said later it was for men.

       You wouldn’t want to know about my ma so I won’t answer that. No, she was not a gentle person only a good one. She plucked a hen each Saturday for our Sunday dinner. We would get our bath water warmed as we sat in it. I remember calling to her that it was too cold and she told me to wait, she would be right there. Then the kettle would arrive and she would get me to scrunch right over to one end so I wouldn’t get scalded. Mama never drank liquor. She didn’t care for it and called it the devil’s tonic. She drank tea, coffee, water, buttermilk and sometimes a glass of wine. She made her wine from chokecherries. Lift that stone jar lid and the smell knocked you back.

       Grandpa? No, he never lived with us after the incident with the harrows. Papa said he needed to learn to be independent and so he ended up at the Kovajak’s across the allowance. We were not homeless, quite. Grandpa got to keep the baby but afterwards the Mrs. Kovajak wouldn’t let him near it and said it needed a mother more than him. That boy is now reeve here, did you know? He’s doing a lot for the hay farmers. They could use a knight. The grain farmers can’t get him to say a word on their behalf, though. Larks abound along the river in May this time of year. They flit about as if their lives depended on it. Other birds, too but the larks outnumber all the rest two to one. We had a gift shop along the allowance for a few years selling carvings and corn. We made enough to keep us from going hungry those years. Pity. Billybob died after the fourth year when townspeople had just started to come round to buy from us. I do roll my own, yes. Now, in the last year of the depression we had no other income than what we as a family could generate and the children earned a quarter now and then stooking hay for the Stmikvas over the allowance. None of them were strong and three died during the early forties of allergy-related illnesses. But we survived those ten years of depression anyways, and here I am. The girls were the strongest. 

     One of them plays the double bass even now for the Round-up Boys over in Mather. They sing at a lot of local events. I think she is one of the most beautiful women I have ever met. She wonders if I will ever get married. At cards the other night she beat me as she usually does. We don’t play together often the way we once did in our sandbox by the chicken coupe. The one time the pigs got out and we were surrounded in the sand. They looked so big I wanted to run but Bretullia, that’s my friend, well, my sister, whispered to stay put. I did and a pig bit my arms. Here, see. Chickens are wonderful. I find that the books on farming have declined. The sales of them has increased. Mama wrote a Best Breast bill for the medical team that came here in the fall of fifty-six. They pictured her on it. She was so thrilled. I need to run. I’ll be back in ten minutes. The outhouse is only just behind the pig barn.