{"id":1764,"date":"2010-10-21T18:46:59","date_gmt":"2010-10-22T02:46:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/2010\/10\/21\/poor-boy-off-the-farm\/"},"modified":"2010-10-21T18:46:59","modified_gmt":"2010-10-22T02:46:59","slug":"poor-boy-off-the-farm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/2010\/10\/21\/poor-boy-off-the-farm\/","title":{"rendered":"poor boy off the farm"},"content":{"rendered":"
My Tribute to My Dad<\/strong><\/p>\n (An earlier article on my dad \u2013 here<\/a>, here<\/a>, here<\/a>, and here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n A few years ago, my dad began writing his memoirs. His title was \u201cPoor Boy off the Farm\u201d. It reflects the reality of his life story and something of his insecurities as he battled honorably through life. He was far from \u2018poor\u2019 in my mind, though he began life in humble circumstances.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n My dad was born as the fifth of six children to a prairie homesteader and an immigrant school teacher from Ireland. My dad\u2019s father could have been better circumstanced, but he rebelled against his father\u2019s insistence on good behaviour at college and decided \u201cI\u2019ll show him,\u201d coming out to Alberta to homestead. My dad\u2019s mother was the daughter of a temperance worker and fine Christian gentleman in Ireland, a charter member of a Baptist church that still stands.<\/p>\n My dad came into the world just in time for the Great Depression, followed by the Second World War for the backdrop to his teenage years. He turned eighteen the year the war ended, so thankfully was spared that conflict. Growing up on the farm during those years meant a good deal of privation \u2013 everyone lived in tight circumstances on the prairie farms in those years. But those years made for wonderful stories that my siblings and I will always treasure. \u201cTell us a story about the farm!\u201d we used to beg, and he would begin, \u201cOnce upon a time, there was a farm where lived Charlie, Nancy, Betty, Tommie, and Jakey\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n I am afraid the details of those stories will fade into mist for me now. I won\u2019t be able to ask him about them for a while. Once they cured a dog of stealing eggs by filling a shell full of mustard and hot sauce. Another time they were up and after a fox or a weasel trying to get at their chickens. Once he confronted an aggressive badger out in the fields, armed only with a machete-like knife \u2013 no blood ensued, the badger backed off\u2026 but for us, what excitement to hear of it later! There was a story of revenge against the bully of his one-room school house\u2026 perhaps not too glorious, but we all felt that justice was done.<\/p>\n My dad was a self-taught man, for the most part. His one-room school house only went to grade 9. High school was twenty miles away and meant boarding in town. Dad was needed on the farm, so he took grade 10 by correspondence. It took two years, but I guess that would have caught him up to his age group, he had skipped a couple of grades early on. Later, when I was a little lad, he took some grade 12 by correspondence also. But he was a reader and a thinker. He read constantly, books on business and Christianity mostly. He read a lot of John R. Rice, as I remember, as well as commentaries and theology. His books are going to be a problem to me, shortly! I think I am going to open a used book store!<\/p>\n As a young man, my dad worked very hard. He spent one winter in a logging camp, somewhere in BC, I think. He worked on a ranch in southern Alberta another winter. And, like many an Alberta lad, he worked in the oil patch after the big discovery in the 1950s. He had stories about that, too. Working on the drilling rigs was tough, dangerous work. The oil patch brought him eventually to my home town where he met my mother. But I need to tell another story before I get to that one.<\/p>\n On one occasion, my dad was headed to his home in east central Alberta, but he stopped off to see an acquaintance from one of his jobs. The man offered him a drink, which led to several more, before my dad got in his car and continued his journey. Fortunately, a police officer spotted him and provided him with an overnight jail cell to sober up. My dad was so embarrassed about this incident that he went to his mother\u2019s pastor when he got home and confessed his misdeed. His pastor counseled him wisely and led him to Christ. My dad never touched another drop of alcohol again. He used to be quite fierce about it. \u201cYou\u2019ve never tasted the stuff,\u201d he said to me one time. He didn\u2019t want me to go sideways with my university learning and take any kind of a weak stand about alcohol.<\/p>\n When my dad got work near my home town, he started attending a little church there. It was the first church in our town, part of the Church of God (Anderson, Indiana). My mother was working at a drug store in the town in order to be a help in this particular local church \u2013 she was an RN and had also gotten a degree in church work at a Christian college in Oregon. Well, you can see what happened. They met, they fell in love, they got married. And they started a Christian home.<\/p>\n In their first home after marriage, they furnished it partly by making chairs out of orange crates. It was humble beginnings. Dad spent a couple of years trying to sell life insurance in the big city. (I had come along by this time.) After some frustration with that business, he headed back to our home town and the rigs. But he had another idea, general insurance (fire and auto).<\/p>\n While working the rigs, he opened a tiny office to sell insurance. His desk was set on a landing he rented from the local bakery. It couldn\u2019t have been more than 8 x 8 feet \u2013 I remember being at his desk as a little boy. He would work graveyard on the rigs, then come to his office during the day and sleep in the afternoons. He told me that sometimes customers would wake him up at his desk in order to buy insurance. After a while (he was too cautious and waited longer than he needed to, he always said), dad quit the rigs and went full time at insurance and real estate. That is where he spent his business life. He was modestly successful at it, expanding his business to a neighboring town (60 miles away, this is the Canadian prairies we are talking about\u2026), and served several terms on our town council as well as most of a term as acting mayor.<\/p>\n