I REMEMBER -

From: Murder Incorporated - In a Keg

by Harold J. Treherne

one afternoon in the Winter of '25 listening to a little two-tube radio on the head phones. It belonged to F. and I heard the announcer say quite plainly; "Telephone buildings, Havana, Cuba. Just luck and freak reception.

the fire that destroyed two stores in the village. Just in time an adding machine was rescued from one of them but I heard afterwards that the owner threw it back in again. Probably was worth more dead than alive.

when D. became too familiar with the tractor pulley shaft. He was divested of half his pants in a jiffy. The tattered remnants with maximum coverage still left spots exposed. He camouflaged himself as best he could till I showed up with the truck. Then he hid his nudity and hit for home and other pants. He came through scratchless.

that stormy day in the Winter of '25 F. driving Mrs B. home in the sleigh. I was batching with J. just across the road at the time and F. said afterwards he thought of asking me to go but he was sure, being a green Englishman, I would get lost too. The joke was, Mrs B. was lost when by luck she hit F's place.

poking into a dark corner of the closed-in house veranda, the house and veranda both full of wheat. There was no movement but I found four dead and stiff kittens not very long abandoned.

slipping into the ditch backwards with the car and it wouldn't start afterwards. I pulled it out with the tractor but stubborn like it refused to go. Cleaning the dirt out of its wind pipe did help some.

intending to plow that first day out, in the Spring of '24 but my six wouldn't tighten a trace, and didn't for all of 45 minutes. They knew I was new. Lucky for me I got 'em animated before the boss showed up. B., another hired hand, had left on the mile stretch and had started his second round before I joined him.

"Blighty," he said, "you've just got to make 'em mind." another day, another field, the same six wouldn't stir a stump. I was about to harrow or thought I was. I walked a quarter mile for B. He bawled me out for leaving them standing but I figured they were permanent fixtures. One bawl from Bill and they lit out. "It's just the way you hold yer mouth," he said.

in the late Fall of '23 taking a bunch of turkeys to town in a covered wagon, when out popped a turkey. I stopped and fixed the leak but I lost another before I drew up at my destination. The two condemned prisoners were recaptured. fooling on the train that day in August 1923 on our way to Saskatchewan. Bill back-flipped his lid from the seat in front without looking. I missed it and it shot out clean through the open window.

the Sunday our daughter was baptized. Under the pressure of the moment it became a juggling act transferring her into the Minister's hands. It was just pure luck she wasn't christened the wrong way up.

we acquired her in the dry Thirties on the installment plan and it was three or four years at least before the Doctor and Hospital charges were paid. After that she was ours for keeps.

when eggs were five and six cents a dozen in these same Thirties. A batch of dirty cackleberries came in from the hen-house. Was D. going to clean these up at half a cent each? She heaved a baker's dozen, under hand, and splattered a stone pile.

that morning starting out with four horses and E. saying, "Go ahead I'll bring the rear four." The cultivator was about 150 yards away. My four in front and the four close behind stepped smartly into place. "Thanks," I shouted; I looked round but there was no one in sight.

my watch and the stem winder that didn't always work. To make sure that it showed correct time I would wind it when the actual time and watch time agreed. This Sunday afternoon I was winding a clock and all at once remembered the watch hanging in a small glass dome. It had been stopped for a week. They both showed exactly the same time - seven and a half minutes past three.

several months later I forgot to wind this same watch one night and it stopped at — you've guessed it - seven and a half minutes past three. I will swear to the truth of these statements on a stack of Bibles with one proviso: an allowable error of fifteen seconds either way.

the little pig getting his head jammed in between two boards. He made more row than the squeals of a dozen stuck hogs in chorus.

a kitten belonging to Syd. trapped in slushy ice and frozen in over night. After being chopped out the next morning and warmed up on the oven lid, ice all round him he came to. He hobbled around the rest of his life minus one front foot and an ear and when Mrs. Syd. some time later grabbed his tail, he and his defunct stringy tail parted company. He still navigated.

riding the tractor along a field trail in the late Fall. Six skunks bobbed up and ambled off in single file, Ma, Pa, and the nipper skunks.

once going seven or eight feet down an eighteen-inch bored well to plug a vent hole in the pipe. There were forty feet of water below. I missed the last rung or it broke and I floundered for half a minute but I plugged the hole and at last bobbed to the top. But never again.

the year 1940 near the end of the hard times when new machinery was sometimes repossessed after one year; I had had my new tractor just about that long and young J. asked me, in all seriousness: "When are they coming for the tractor?"

one day in the Thirties. R. coming round with the stallion and, suddenly caught off guard, found two massive feet on his shoulders one on either side. Another Atlas was he!

meeting a car at the top of a knoll and pronto flipping into the ditch. It was done subconsciously and was I surprised to find myself traveling in such different terrain and on such short notice.

stopping the tractor one day at the end of a round and there, two inches to the side of the hind wheel and covered lightly with dirt, was a wrench which had been lost for years.

that day the wind played fast and loose with my venerable G.M. one-ton truck. Coming out of a neighbor's house I found it backed up and crouched down in a six-foot ditch, a tear in each eye.

the missing ten ten-dollar bills and traveling many miles checking every clue and then finding them, a few hours later, hiding in a basket full of dirty clothes.

during the Thirties a neighbor bringing the mail out, accidentally lost our Relief Order check in Town. It blew around for days and then was picked up outside the town limits rained on and dirty but still good.

the time we borrowed a hundred pounds of well fleshed pork from a distant neighbor. We returned half a pig of similar weight but learner meat; the swop didn't suit, the lines buzzed and sizzled and our "neighbor" became truly "distant."

being stuck with the tractor in soft ground one mile from home and saw C. (one-waying for me) leave the field to pull out W. and J. also stuck. On his next round C. would have been only a quarter mile from the bog I was in but now I had to foot-slog it a mile all the way back to the shack.

once digging out some hens caught in a drift of snow over night between a granary and the hen-house. The dopiest one, limp as an industrious dishrag, was set on the oven lid to thaw out and maybe perk up. She did both with alacrity and back to the hen "hoose" she went.

two hogs, one white, one black, following me for three miles to a neighbor's place. They arrived soon after I left with the Dort. Then I had to go back with the team to claim my "brothers." Such devotion!

one Summer in the dry Thirties Mrs E. retrieving beans by hand which were planted weeks before in the same manner but never germinated. The next year perhaps!

F. telling me about the badger bellying it along the same furrow towards him that day he was plowing. Apparently it had no intentions of leaving. He stopped the outfit in deference to Mr. Badger's wishes. Before scaring the horses it ambled off to the side and F. breathed easier.

batching one Winter in the early Thirties, using only the kitchen. It was a very cold and windy day and I had my coat and overshoes on hugging the stove. There was nothing amiss from the outside but moving the bed and scouting in the Hall I found the front door a third open. The storm door was only a shell.

the mice I sat on the last year I used the truck. One would show up in a seat rip. The axle and propeller shaft was their scampering ground. For many miles they were hoboes and rod riders. Not until I dismantled the old truck did they leave "home," not that they were the reason.

that night combining after dark and son John following with another tractor to help pull out of soft spots. I started my last round expecting no trouble but three quarters of a mile away I stuck again. John had gone to bed. He didn't say so but I think he enjoyed leaving his warm pillow!

D., soon after coming to this country, standing a few feet from a granary about dusk. A small animal almost jumped over her feet and disappeared under the granary. She was in time to notice it had a white streak down the middle of its back.

the skunks which invaded bachelor E's cellar in the late Fall of '25. They were disturbed in their nefarious schemes and we were skunked for days, right and left.

when E's horses broke out of the pasture one Saturday midnight in Harvest time. We went after them with his little auto and spotted them an hour later harvesting a neighbor's crop.

the team on the low wagon running away while I was in the barn. They circled round a small hilly pasture, lines and boards flying and through a deep slough. The second round through the deep water really damped their ardor and they called it quits.

the Minister calling one Sunday afternoon. His '27 Chevy started down a slope by the house while he was at the door. Before he caught up with it, it had thrust its nose in a bunch of willows and we never heard a thing - till afterwards.

driving with B. in the low wagon and W . was standing up in the center. B. snapped at the team, a lively pair and suddenly they jerked forward. W., caught off balance, smartly stepped backwards, jumped and landed neatly on his feet behind the wagon.

starting out with a neighbor's Tin Lizz for town to do a favor for a lady. On turning round in the yard, the light showed a slow moving tractor and stoneboat. Uncannily I was drawn to it and an extension lug hooked the Tin by the tierod. I originated vertical take-off but came down to earth again only slightly bent.

being witness to a minor tragedy when a fast chugging speeder and a jack rabbit, hitting on all fours and being chased from the opposite direction, met head on, with a dull and gory thud.

our three kids playing baseball in our small kitchen, as a special favor but game was over when the 24 by 36 inch double-diamond glass in the door was buckled by a direct hit.

doing the impossible by returning a "borrowed" garden cultivator to a neighbor. This roaming asset mostly always has a "home" away from home and we should have but didn't, recognize our own.

running into a soft spot on the road with the car and walking nearly a mile to the nearest neighbor, who of course would be and was, away from home. Another 'neighbor' a quarter mile farther on pulled me out - for a price.

our five bar ten-foot kitchen clothes line, every rung full, fortuitously descending as B. just happened to be under it. His head came up between two of the bars topped by my wife's lingerie.

one Winter's afternoon, late on, helping up two lady visitors in quick succession as they slid and sat down on the icy ground just beyond the door steps, on leaving.

many times years ago clapping the earphones on C. who was very deaf and turning up the volume on the radio. Could he hear? He nodded his head and so could we - in the next room.

another day taking a deep breath and bawling in C.'s ear prepared to converse with him the hard way. He backed up affronted: "Please, not so loud. I can hear better today."

that Winter's night coming home from Frank's, the Chev. developed a high fever after I had filled 'er up with water, and was limping badly the last mile. Then, in the garage, standing well back I poured a kettle full of boiling water in the radiator. It ran through like a dose of salts, just a gurgling and a sizzling. The wood plug had dropped out on the road.

when Frank's barn went up in smoke and they were all sitting down to dinner and, in the excitement, Frank's 300 pound sow went berserk and crashed through the sod shack window right into their dining-room. The sow was scared and surprised but not any more than the family.

the time I dug an ice well in the late Fall, 8 feet deep and put in a pail or two to "set." Then I dumped in 200 pails of water and the next morning only a dry hole remained, and those pails of water sitting outside caught in a deep freeze, in the morning the ice bulging and the pails just splitting their sides.

the day Frankie was phoning a neighbor from our place and after pattering away for ten minutes straight and getting no response, realized he had been talking to nobody.

the morning Edgar's month-old colt slid a bunch of harness off the peg and round his neck. How he departed the barn, jet propelled and did a couple of fast laps round the pasture, then zipped into the barn, reappearing calm and unruffled, minus the hamess.

when the two boys decided to harness the team and after 30 minutes one horse and one collar was seen trotting down the road, the other, in the barn, was still naked.

the Sunday afternoon while reading the paper, looking down and seeing a mouse sitting on my knee reading the paper from the other side and how we caught five young ones in one trap inside of 30 minutes.

another Sunday afternoon, we were snoozing and the "lady" barged in with a gramophone, wound 'er up and gave us, unwanted, a Judge Rutherford spiel on the Judgment Day or something and how I was so far gone I even bought a book, just to be rid of her.

our young son, five years old, saying, "Chicken bone car" when we met a Tin Lizzie on the road one day.

once running out of gas a mile and a quarter from home after dark. I walked back with a gallon bottle of gas and the furrow was my only guide. The night was blacker than black cats. If I had only left a headlight on -

when we bought two rabbits for our young son, intending to raise young ones for profit and for a long time we were afraid we had paid ten bucks for a couple o' bucks and never any dough.

one Sunday morning, intending to go to Church, I cranked the old Tin Lizz for more than half an hour straight, finally to discover the hardware man had given me a 5-gallon can of coal oil instead of gas.

neighbors telling me about Fred, one day in town, completely absent-minded, tried to check the gas in the tank of his car by holding a match to it. He was around afterwards but the car wasn't. Lucky he suffered no harm.

zipping along out of town in the Tin Lizz one evening after dark when the spokes in the left hind wheel all gave up the ghost leaving me stuck on the road like a lame duck; how, in the morning going back for the crate, a new tire was gone, swiped by some thieving crook.

Bill telling me about Bob, the young fellow, green and straight from the old country, never having been on the farm, seeing a boar for the first time, asking naively: "Is that a gentleman pig?"

from the same source, Bob enquiring in all innocence: "Do you often 'barth' the horses?"

standing on the peak of the roof, 26 feet up, scanning the countryside, north, south, east and west looking for cows and there they were by the trees, no farther than twelve yards away.

when Archie, a close neighbor, changed his John Deere D. lug tractor over to car type steering. He had it in backwards and to turn right he had to turn left and vice-versa. He survived one day in the field before setting it right.

two gophers, one at each corner of a granary, 14 feet apart, standing to attention straight and stiff as pokers, for fully three minutes, like Buckingham Palace Guards.

friend Charlie, mounted, a little uncertain, on a borrowed bike, failing to make a down hill turn and disappearing headlong into a bunch of willow trees and his determined but futile efforts to ride the old bike again but he couldn't make it. He was too mad and his ego had suffered a slump.

one morning walking a half mile to investigate what appeared to be a stalled auto in the middle of a side road. I retired, without any further ado after one quick look through the rear window revealed a tete-a-tete between W. and J. The joke was on me.

while hired by Jack I was threshing for Johnny and at midday showed up all unexpected at Jack's place for dinner. Jack was away but his wife was home. Johnny was often called Jack and I was told to eat at Jack's and, like a true homing pigeon, I did. Johnny was a bachelor but I supped with Jack's wife.

the time Spot and Snap, two terriers, flushed out a jack rabbit at close quarters one Winter's day. One had one end and the other had the other. It was sure tough on the br'er.

our daughter Peggy, four years old then, sitting on Tuck's back as he was lying down in his stall. She had no idea he was a corpse.

when C. and borrowed the buzz saw. The flywheel came off and it was plum full of momentum it just chewed up the ground. It had sinister designs on J. but he stepped smartly aside and before it lit out, conceded wholeheartedly, might, in this case, i s right.

the duck which flew up in front of Bob's three ahead of three tandem outfit. The lead three did a quick right about face and telescoped the others and he had a no-account outfit for a few minutes.

pitching straw up to H. in the loft and heard him say afterwards to J. his son: "That damned no good no-account Englishman -!"

that foggy morning when J. swore he wouldn't water his horses in the pasture before the next morning. "Let 'em chew fog," he said. Then, right on his words, out of the fog loomed about twenty horses: They had broken out and legged it three miles just to see J. They had their own ideas about it and J. changed his.

that pound of rank store butter Johnny threw out in the Winter time. It hung around for three months, its potency frozen in. I missed its familiar contour when Spring finally claimed it.

Finally I remember the stupe who, all unthinking, attempted to milk on the wrong side - and so does he!