Memories begin

Tales from the backyard…in 1945 my dad went to work on the Alaska-Canada Highway.  No sooner than he arrived, he came down with acute appendicitis and was flown back home.  I often wonder if he had gone back and finished the road and then homesteaded like so many others, how my life would have been different.  I know he would have liked it there with all the hunting and fishing and especially the drinking, everyone drinks in Alaska.  But he didn’t and we moved to just south of Wyoming MN to what I refer to as the ‘farm’.  Not a real farm, abandon years before, buildings neglected and not used, but the house stood tall and proud and was kept in good shape.  That’s where my memories began and here is where I will relate them to you.  Living on the farm did have disadvantages, the biggest one, no inside plumbing.  But we did have what was called a 2 hole’r.  To this day I never have never figured that out, maybe a family that poohs together, sticks together.  With so many divorces these days, maybe we should design our modern bathrooms with 2 side by side toilets and instead of reading the paper, we could converse, I mean text or take selfies with our poohing partners.  The big disadvantage of the outhouse was my brother, in a race to it he was always faster and always got there first.  In the winter I think he would miss on purpose just because he knew I was waiting and had to sit down as I wasn’t tall enough to stand and reach the seat top.  On some cold winter days it would be frozen already.  By the way, if we ran out of paper, we did use corn cobs or pages from the Montgomery Wards catalog, lingerie pages always last.

The Bathurst family at the farm, me, I'm the littlest.  From right to left.  Cousins Nancy and Bob, me, Sisters Shirley and Helen, brothers Paul jr and Jerry on right.