Herbert’s Story

This is the autobiography of Ralph Herbert Knowles.

It seems that I was born on Friday, October 13^th, 1932.  (Editor’s note: October 13, 1932 was a Thursday. According to the notes in the family Bible, he was born at 7 A.M.) I can still recall being about three or four and going down the road to visit Granny Dahl, a distance of about one-seventh of a mile; I understood they had a sheep that would chase and bunt people because Henry had teased it.  Fortunately, it considered me too insignificant to bother with. Some said that Henry had sleeping sickness as a kid, but I don’t know how that affected him.  I don’t think he was stupid, just knew how to get out of work.  As I was walking home, I saw another neighbor, Mr. Stensland, working in the field with his tractor, and I thought it was Dad, but I guess I didn’t want to disturb him so carried on.  I was scared of Dad most of my life, but I don’t know why; he certainly never hurt me or anything.  I wouldn’t have wanted to walk in his tracks – leaving home and going to a strange country at eighteen.  He didn’t have much schooling but he could do a lot of things.  He was a half-decent blacksmith, not such a great carpenter, but he built the house and the barn.

Another vivid recollection is my first day at Wolf Hill School after Easter break in 1938: I was riding bareback behind George and acquired a dandy crop of blisters on my rear which prevented me from sitting down for a spell.

Another time I recall being at the Calgary Stampede and getting tired of it, so I decided to walk to Gramma and Grandpa’s house some blocks away on Gladstone Road.  As I was walking along, none of the houses seemed right; from that point my memory fades.  I was later to learn that I had been walking along 17^th Avenue; Lillian, Betty and Shirley found me sleeping in someone’s car.  It seems that I had an inclination to wander off without telling anyone my destination, if in fact, I knew it myself.  I recall Betty saying that if I was missing I could usually be found eating out of the pigs’ trough. 

Getting back to school days – I wasn’t an honour student, nor had I any aspirations in that direction.  One thing that stands out is the bigger kids putting Richard (Stensland) and I on bicycles and pushing them down the hill toward the caraganas.   After many spills, scratches and bruises, we learned to balance and rode our bikes many miles over the dirt roads, prairie trails and cow pastures.  We covered most of the neighbourhood in a summer.  As a child, Richard was probably my first friend and we got closer when we went to school.  One time I remember we went swimming in the slough east of Stensland’s house and got our clothes wet.  I had to wear Richard’s home and, boy, was his underwear scratchy.

From school, Richard and I used to walk the one half mile to the closest neighbours, Bayson’s, to get water, sometimes carrying it and sometimes spilling it.  At least one time, we made a sled out of small poplars and wore the bark off the skids by pulling it on the road.  The poplars were in a brush pile by the school and were bent in about the right shape for runners.  I don’t remember what we used for containers; I think those ceramic ones with the spout were too sophisticated for us.

Leland McCormack was another friend; he used to stink up the whole school with his farts, and Richard would say, “Don’t plug your nose or it’ll get in your mouth!”  Leland was a great one to philosophize, usually with a sandwich in his mouth.  I recall one time when he told Shirley that, “Doves are just like crows only white,” and “you could always change your name from John to Henry”; that’s what the term meant.

For the benefit of the younger readers, I should relate the daily or twice daily trips to the Kirby Yard which was something over a mile northeast of home.  The house was a big rambling two or more storey structure that had been abandoned for some time and was a great place to exercise our imaginations.  One time George, Leo and Jack Waters took off their long underwear to make ghosts to scare the girls and me.  There was an old well to the east with a metal casing that created a huge echo when you hollered down it. I recall Frank Carless purchasing the house at a later date and moving it to become part of his barn.

It was quite an undertaking.  The men jacked it up and put it on sleighs which kept breaking.  It was too heavy for the Hart Parr to pull so they borrowed a cat from the municipality.  They pulled it across country to avoid the ditches and hills.  I don’t recall what time of year it was, about Easter, I think.  There must have been snow.  Uncle Jontie and Aunt Ethel were both in the hospital at the time; I don’t know what was wrong with her.  Uncle Jontie and Ed were doing something on a hay stack and he fell off and broke his leg.

  Sometime later, Dad purchased the Kirby section where the house had been located and we tore down the remainder of the barn for lumber to build granaries.  Also at that time or thereabouts, the SW of 14-34-17 became part of Sunmound Ranch.  About 1950, Mom and Dad bought homesteader Rufus Duval’s land to add to the holding.  I guess I’m getting a bit disarranged here.

Going back to 1941 or so, Betty and I went to live with Uncle Herbert and Auntie Mac (Benita), where I was to have my tonsils and adenoids removed again.  The first time was at a clinic in Endiang when all the parents brought the kids to have their throats worked on. Another fellow, whose name I have forgotten but for some reason they called him “Cow”, and I were fooling around on the bank of the Old Man River; he had my bathing trunks on and you wore what? I was sliding down the bank and somehow went under.  Fortunately, he realized I was missing so he fished me out.

Evidently, it was a mild, snow-free winter at home and they were able to use the car all winter.  Dad had traded Mom’s Model T, so called because it was purchased with her teaching money, some horses and cash for a 1941 Dodge which was fated to have a relatively short life.  I guess it lasted about five years before George wrecked it on the way home from Hanna.  What I remember from that time is Uncle Jontie and Aunt Ethel coming in the morning to say that George and Ed were in the hospital; Mom started to cry, but I think Dad was just mad.  Ed wasn’t badly injured; just his elbow, but it bothered him for years.  When George got out of the hospital, Dad set him to seeding down the garden to alfalfa with the garden seeder.  I expect he was pretty tired but he kept at it.

We came back to Calgary to meet Dad and some of the family who had come to attend the Stamped and take us home.

I guess that says quite a bit for snail mail as it was the only means of news then.   

So after the summer holidays were over, it was back to Wolf Hill to school with Mrs. Kenny as teacher; she was always really nice to us kids.  I guess because she didn’t have any of her own.  Eventually she and Morg adopted two girls.  Most of the other teachers were single young women who boarded with the neighbours.  Before my time there was a Miss Dyson who was a gypsy and no one would take her in, so she slept in the cloakroom of the school.  One time there was a dance and some young bucks trod on her toenail and ripped it off.  She kept it on the windowsill; I never saw it, but Betty and Shirley told me about it.  A lot of the teachers were just ‘supervisors’ who were paid to oversee correspondence and keep law and order.

After the hard winter of 1947-48, I attended high school in Castor for two terms where I lived in the dorm.  It was an old three storey building with the bedrooms, the furnace and the coalbin in the basement.  The girls had an outhouse off the kitchen but the boys were expected to go outside. The first floor was for junior high and senior high on the second floor with the labs at the top.  There was a long wooden bannister that curved around all the way down and some of the boys would use it to make a quick trip down.  You had to depend on the good Lord flying around those corners at seventy miles an hour.  It was rumored that someone put phonograph needles in the bannister which really gouged a rut in the butt but put a stop to the buffoonery.  The year after I left, they moved in an old school for the bedrooms.

REMEMBERING MY PARENTS 

Dad came to Alberta when he was 18 years old to a barren land with no fences, people or houses, only surveyor’s markings. I understand he & Jack Giles arrived at the same time although they didn’t get adjoining land. Uncle Jack, his half- brother, had the quarter south of Dad’s. He homesteaded in 1908.

I would suspect that Dad was the next thing to a “green Englishman”; he evidently picked up or acquired the skills needed to sustain himself.  In the summer, he pursued his homesteading duties & in the winter, he hauled gravel in Calgary for the much needed capital.  I remember Uncle Jontie, who had come to the area 3 years later, telling me that Dad was prepared to give up his homestead & remain in Calgary, but Uncle Jontie persuaded him to return to the homestead.  Uncle Jontie had acquired the quarter west of Dad’s which had been abandoned.  Dad & Uncle Jontie lived together until after George & Ed, their first sons, had been born.  Dad built the house in 1918 doing the plastering of the walls & ceilings at night with a coal oil lantern for light.  The house is still standing almost 100 years later & so is the barn. 

Dad was a horse fancier & probably was a good one, but he was no judge of cattle.  However, he had the foresight to purchase 8 purebred Angus heifers on which to found the Sunmound Angus herd.  For those who don’t know, ‘Sunmound’ was the name of a hill near Dad’s birth place.  Unfortunately, Leo & I lacked the stamina & fortitude to maintain the ranch to warrant a 100 year residency which would have been 2008, twelve years short.  Dad needed very little sleep and was voracious reader, reading Star Weekly novels or anything he could get his hands on.  I remember when I was in my early teens, Dad, Leo & I went to thresh a neighbor’s crop.  Dad & Hiram would yak until about 11 at night, and then we would go home.  It seemed like I had just gotten to sleep when DAD STARTED HOLLERING TO GET UP! so we could be at Johnson’s & have breakfast before daylight.  Dad had a habit of supplying neighbors & friends with potatoes & vegetables which were grown, I suppose, to keep us busy & from rattling around to the Kirby house or wherever.  In later years, Dad’s hearing was impaired, not surprisingly, and it would amuse me that he and Uncle Jonty would have lively conversations, each with his own topic.  Bystanders couldn’t follow when they were talking about different things.           

For some reason or other, I don’t remember Mom coming to the district to teach at Wolf Hill School. It must have been quite a transition to come to the wide open space to teach a group of country kids when she had been raised in the city, having lost both of her parents at an early age.  Mom & her siblings were raised by their Uncle & his wife who were childless.  Mom credits Aunt Ethel with having taught her cooking and other skills to maintain the household.  It was a daily ritual for Mom and us kids to do the milking.  She could milk cows easier than I could.  Mom would do the milking & have to be careful not to set the pail of milk down or Commodore, the orphan milk drinking colt, would empty the pail for her.  I remember Mom held up her end stooking bundles in the fall; I expect she might have even hauled bundles.  She used to sit up most every night mending clothes and socks; she would even be still up mending when Leo got up to go to the field. 

I understand that Mom rode to teach school on a half broken bronc or at least according to Ned Potter, who had been one of her charges.  I don’t suppose Mom taught school for very long; after their marriage, Mom, Dad and George, Uncle Jontie, Aunt Ethel and their kids, Kathleen and Ed, lived at Sunmound until ‘The JK’s’ moved to the Powell place where Jack was born.  I believe Dorothy & Joe were born at the location where Joe lived until recently.  Some of the winter entertainment was go to various homes to card parties and in the summer it was picnics & berry picking.  That is probably why I’m not fond of canned saskatoons and rhubarb.  It seems that dad would take some of the kids to the Calgary Stampede.  Shirley tells me that she was always left home to run the place.

One Christmas I got coal or ashes for a present & that was the saddest Christmas I remember. I remember when we used a tumbling mustard for a tree as we didn’t have a spruce tree.                                                            

COMMENTS ABOUT SIBLINGS

George went away to high school in the fall of 1938 so I didn’t see that much of him in later years.  I remember my first day of school I rode bareback behind Geo and got a dandy crop of blisters on my behind.  That was at Easter in 1938.  It seems Geo was always in a hurry when he got behind the wheel & narrowly avoiding hitting the ditch; he would laugh and say, “An inch is as good as a mile”.  I remember he always seemed to listen to what I had to say and at times, would consult me about something.  When he went to the West Indies to work, he left his car for me to sell, not realizing I’m not a salesman.

Leo could be generous or annoyingly inconsiderate.  I expect some might disagree, but I lived with him for many years & know how unkempt he could be.       

Lillian was kind-hearted and took the side of the underdog.  She and her family provided a place for my helpers and I to stay when we showed cattle at Calgary in 1975.  Lillian & Betty stayed with the Vances’ to go to high school.  I still remember Lillian & Marg Mortimer hitch-hiking whereever they wanted to go. It seemed that Marg was part of the family.  I remember her helping me stack hay; when the stack was finished I helped Marg down to the ladder which was about 6 feet short.  I thought I could slide down to the top rung which I overshot!  I had the back of my pants and some skin torn loose.  I think I hit every nail sticking out.  I landed on Dad’s shoulder to the exclamation of “bright spark”.  Lillian & Shirley used to haul bundles on the threshing outfit.  Uncle Jonty used to give them a bad time about the old grey mare they drove; I don’t recall the horse’s name.

Betty seemed to be the helper around the house, so she never had to do the manly duties except to pull weeds in the garden.            

Shirley must have felt she was my guardian angel as she always looked out for me.  In later years, it was a custom for her and her girls to come to the ranch on the 24th of May weekend to help plant the garden and later to deal with a bountiful apple crop.  In later years, Shirley was always ready to mend my jeans.  For this I will be always grateful; I mention this when I present her daughter and granddaughters with bursaries.                    

Bing was always a big help with the chores which I suspect helped make her fit for married life with very little money but lots of determination & boundless generosity.                                                

Nora seemed to be the indoor type; whether that was intentional or not I can’t say.  I remember she considered Miser to be her horse and, as usual, he got sold or traded for pots and pans – a sad day for her.  I remember Leo coming home with the Model A truck and aiming it to the north-west corner of the yard and letting it roll back to the house, trapping Nora between the truck and the house.  Dad held her until the noise subsided somewhat. She was taken for medical attention; I don’t recall the extent of her injuries but she survived.   

Karen seemed to be kind of undernourished and small.  She seemed to have quite a few tame ducks over the years and some dogs namely Mickey.  It seemed that sometimes I would be the one to take Karen and some of her cohorts to school, as I did with Bing and Nora when they went to high school.

Sandra.  Well, they must have saved the best for the last.  When Mom was in the hospital when she was born, dad sent me to Ridley’s to inquire after Mom’s condition.  Richard and I rode across the lake and I remember that I was quite embarrassed or perturbed at the idea of another baby.  Anyway Richard told his Mother of Sandra’s arrival.  Sandra was the outdoor type and was a great help to us around the ranch.  I used to con her and Karen into cleaning my truck if they wanted the use of it.  I remember her saying, “If you had to clean the windows you would quit smoking”.  Eventually I did or else I would have died. 

FAMILY GATHERINGS              

I suspect the family gatherings started before I was born.  It seems that at Christmas & New Year, Uncle Jontie’s & our family spent the day at each other’s homes; also at Easter.  Generally we travelled by team & sleigh so it was usually a daylight venture as there were farm chores to be attended to.  On the rare occasion when we could travel by car, then someone would generally go home in late afternoon to do the chores.  I recall Easter 1948 as Uncle Jonty’s were coming down with a team.  The trail ran through McCormick’s yard and up to the big hill in the Kirby place.  I skied up to meet them and there were lots of crows flying around.  Their clocks must have been out of kilter that year as there was snowdrifts 4 ft. deep & more.  A lot of the roads were under water that spring.

Berry picking time was a season for Sunday get-togethers at the saskatoon slough in the Kirby place.  It seems that the usual conveyance was in the back of the Model A truck.  Quite often berry picking would involve a picnic lunch & lots of horse play or nonsense as some would call it.

There were trips to church in various places, sometimes a school, but mostly to Farrell Lake church across the lake from home.  As I recall, we were the only ones from north of the lake.  There would have been Phillips, Sverdahls, Smyths, Cammidges, etc.  The services were generally presided over by student ministers who came to preach as a summer job.  These student ministers usually travelled by horse back or some charitable soul might bring them in their car; I expect being a student minister was a way of earning money to continue their theological studies.  In some cases, I would suspect that it would help them determine if they wished to continue this path.  

In later years, someone suggested that we have a picnic or family gathering near July 1st to commemorate Mom’s birthday; these events are being continued at various place where we can get inside if it rains. In July 1996, we had our last picnic at the ranch as we were about to abandon ship.  Since then we have gone to Victor Hall, Webers’ or Lauderdale School.  For the 2014 location, we had our gathering in the Byemoor Hall in conjunction with interring Leo’s ashes.  I understand that the gathering will be at Lauderdale in 2015.       

HERBERT’S PHOTO GALLERY