Raising Turkeys

Well dressed newly wed couple with the turkeys

My father with the turkeys at the back of the "white dorm"

 My father with the turkeys looking toward the "old tabernacle" 

When my parents were married in July 1950 they lived at the church campground that was a Bible school at that time.  My mother taught in the high school there and my father worked on the grounds, before he started the milk delivery.    Their first home when they were married was in the building we call the "white dorm"  with one room as a bedroom and an adjoining room as a living room.  At that time the rooms in the white dorm just had partitions that didn't go all the way to the ceiling rather than full walls. 

One of the interesting stories about when they were first married was raising turkeys.    One of the ministers at the Bible school got 1000 young turkeys and my parents took care of them.  When the turkeys were small they kept them inside the building that we now call the "west building" at the campground.    In fact they told of sometimes staying in that building with the turkeys to make sure they were OK.   It appears from the pictures that when the turkeys got larger they had a fenced off area behind the "white dorm."   I  am not sure if they raised turkeys more than one year.   But the west building at the campground continued to be known as the turkey building after that.
  

Visiting Grandpa and Grandma

In 1962 my Grandpa and Grandma Hingston moved to North Battleford where we lived.  They had a small one bedroom semi-detached  unit at a senior's lodge.  I remember them moving very well since I was 9 years old when they came to NB.   They lived there until Grandpa died in 1975.

The pictures are in Grandpa and Grandma's  unit  in 1962 soon after they came.   Note how well dressed our family is for visiting which was traditional for us.  Visiting was a "dress up" occasion.  I was looking sharp with bow tie and sweater.

I have many memories of visiting Grandpa and Grandma over the 13 years they were there.   Grandpa was very deaf so made up for it by doing most of the talking.  My Mom had a strong voice and could still carry on a conversation with him.  But mostly I remember Grandpa telling stories, and Grandma's high pitched laugh at all his jokes. 

Grandma would sing for us children.   She sang "The Ninety and Nine"  and "Dare to Be a Daniel."     Visiting my Grandparents and seeing their strong faith in God, and in particular Grandma's singing for us had a strong effect on my life and my own faith.  
   

My Father in the US Army

Since tomorrow is Father's Day I am posting some pictures of my Father in the US Army. They would have been taken in 1941 when he was 23 years old. In the lower group picture he is standing at the left. I previously posted about when he was in the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in the late 1930s.

My Father joined the army in NY state in December 1940 and later was in North and South Carolina in training. While in South Carolina a family on a nearby farm invited some of the soldiers while they had some days off. The farm had some mules and my Father was going to show off to the other guys how he could run and vault onto the mule's back from behind like he used to do with the mules they had back home on his family farm. Unfortunately this mule was larger and he didn't make it all the way on. The mule kicked up his hind legs and shot my Father up in the air. Then he landed on the hard packed ground behind the mule.

He ended up in the army hospital with a broken wrist. Unfortunately the xrays did not show up the break in his wrist so they were making him exercise it. It became more swollen and painful. It worsened to the point that he was in the army hospital for 6 months. Finally they xrayed from a different angle and saw that his wrist was broken.

While my Father was still in the army hospital at Fort Dix, New Jersey, there was the attack on Pearl Harbour on December 7, 1941 and the US declared war the next day. My Father was given an honorable discharge from the army for medical reasons on March 21, 1942 since his wrist had not healed up properly. When my Father told this story he always said "A mule kicked me out of the army."

That Was Cold

This is part 3 of the stories about my Mother teaching at Speedwell in 1942/43. I remember her telling about the temperature being -60 F. My Mother said that she had to be at the school early to make a fire to try to warm up the school. I assume they had a small wood stove in the school. Those that came to school when it was that cold stayed close to the stove to try to get some warmth from it. But I am sure that in a log and plaster school with the outside temperature -60 F, it would still be mighty cold in there.

I looked in the records of Environment Canada and saw the coldest temperature that winter in northwest Saskatchewan was January 20, 1943 ranging from -50 C to -53 C. A temperature of -60 F would be equivalent to -51 C. The school register shows that 6 of the 31 students came to school on January 20. Many of the younger students were away for several days around that time with the reason shown as "C" which I assume was for "cold".

In the picture above the small building to the right of the school was the teacherage. My Mother would not stay there, so a family at a nearby farm let her stay with them. She would have walked to the school from there.

The school also had an outhouse (not shown in picture) which would have been a very cold experience at -60 F. Another story my Mother told about going out from the school to the outhouse one winter day and the students were lined up with snowballs ready to throw. She just walked straight along with a smile and thought "They wouldn't dare throw a snowball at me." As she went past a boy hit her in the back of the head with a snowball. Then all the others turned their snowballs at him. She said "We all had a good laugh."

While I am telling "cold" stories, my Mother used to tell a story from her own childhood about going to school in the cold. On a very cold winter day her Father picked them up from school with a horse and wagon to take them home to the farm. But her Father had been in town to get coal, so the children were riding on top of a full wagon load of frozen coal. My Mother remembered they were so cold that their Father took off his coat and put it over them. Then he ran along beside the horse to keep from freezing on the way home. In later years when my Mother was riding with us in our van if she said it was cold I would reminder her "It is a lot warmer than riding on a load of frozen coal."

The Mouse Chewed History

I posted last week about my Mother teaching at Speedwell in northwest Saskatchewan in 1942/43. One of the stories of her teaching there is about the mouse chewing the school register.

Rudy Wiebe in his book "Of this Earth" started a chapter with this story, "Over sixty years ago the Speedwell mice found our school register in Miss Hingston's desk drawer sweet chewing. They gnawed away the bottom of it, I recognized now, into a pattern like the west-central Arctic Ocean coastline of Canada. ..."

The school superintendent would not accept the mouse chewed register to send to the department of education in Regina. My Mother had to recopy the whole register, and then kept the new one in a tin box to keep it safe from the mice. The new one was given to the superintendent when she left. That is why we still have the mouse chewed register.

The front page of the school register shows my Mother's annual salary as $800. There were 30 students in grades 1 to 8, with their attendance shown in the register for each day. Rudy Wiebe was in Grade 2 that year.

Rudy Wiebe has won many awards for his books including two Governor General awards. Because of this there are archives of all his writing and papers. He asked if we would donate the Speedwell school register to the archive. We are contacting him again to see how we arrange to send it. I have taken pictures of the pages of the register for us to keep after we donate the original to the archive.

My Mother the Teacher

My Mother was a teacher. She taught in schools for a relatively few years, and then she dedicated her life to teaching her own children. For Mother's Day I would like to tell some stories of her first teaching job in 1942 at Speedwell School in northwest Saskatchewan. She was asked to go out teaching after barely starting teacher's college because of the teacher shortage during WW2.

When my Mother was first at Speedwell she was told that the oldest boy in the school was a trouble maker, and would likely just end up in jail someday. On the first day of school my Mother talked to this boy and said "You are the oldest student here so I am going to need your help. Some people say you can not succeed but I do not believe that. I believe you will do well." And he did. My Mother always had a heart for people that others looked down upon, and believed in emphasizing the positive in people.

Speedwell was in a relatively poor area and the children felt inferior to the better nearby Jack Pine school. In the book "Of This Earth" Rudy Wiebe writes: " I remember grade two very well because of Miss Hingston: she very much wanted us Speedwellers with our weathered log-and-plaster school -- Jack Pine four miles away now had beautiful board siding painted creamy yellow with brown trim around the door and windows -- to be proud of ourselves. So she took individual pictures of every class and when we told her we had never won a softball game against Jack Pine she drilled us every noon and after school ... and we won both games first on our diamond and then on theirs."

Of course this is a story that I know well from my Mother, teaching her students to believe they could win the ball games even if they had never won before. This was her nature to cheer for the "underdogs" whether in sports or everyday life. She taught her students the basic subjects, but more than that she taught them to believe they will succeed.

Great Grandparents

These are pictures I have of my great grandparents Samuel and Elizabeth Hingston. Samuel was born in the Whitehall/ Cunnamore area near Skibbereen Ireland in 1818 and died in 1888. Elizabeth was born in 1852 in Bantry Ireland and married Samuel in 1876. She was left to raise five young sons when Samuel died, with the oldest being 10 and the youngest (my grandfather) being 4 years old. She came to Canada in 1906 and died in 1926.

I don't know the years the pictures would have been taken but the upper younger one of Samuel could have been in the 1840s when the first photography studios were established in Ireland. This picture looks like it is printed onto the back of the glass. The lower picture of Samuel says it was by Lauder Bros photographers of Dublin. This studio was established in 1853 but the picture was likely in the 1880s.

Elizabeth looks quite old in her picture but she would have been only 54 years old when she left Ireland. She likely looks older by the style of dress and the type of picture.

You can see by the lower picture that Samuel was a large man. I previously posted about Samuel's brother John Hingston and the information about him was that he was well over 6 feet tall so Samuel was likely the same.

My Grandparents

This picture is of my father's parents Alex and Anna Kaczur probably taken in the 1930s. Alex died in 1939 at the age of 63. Anna lived to the age of 88 and died in 1967.

My grandparents came from the village of Jaworzec in Galicia which is now in the SE of Poland. At the time they lived there it was part of the pre-WWI Austria. My grandparents were married in 1899 and then my grandfather came to Pennsylvania USA in 1900. My grandmother followed later in 1904. The spelling of the family name was changed when they became US citizens in 1921.

The family ethnic background is referred to as Rusyn, or Carpatho-Rusyn, or Lemko which are pastoral farmers that inhabited the Lower Beskid range of the Carpathian Mountains. Many people of this group identify themselves as Ukrainian but it has also been identified as a distinct ethnic group. The villages in the area were destroyed by Stalin in 1947 (long after my grandparents left) and people resettled to Russia. I have found some interesting websites about the history of Jaworzec and this area. I have also been studying maps of the area (click on map page 90 for Jaworzec.)

My grandparents settled in the US on a farm near Starford in western Pennsylvania. They were very poor but hard-working people. My grandfather worked in the coal mines as well as farming. My grandmother had 10 children (with 2 that died in infancy or childhood) and worked in the garden as well as in the field. She was very small (well under 5 feet tall) but must have been quite strong.

I of course never saw my grandfather but I did see my grandmother when we went to the US by train when I was 4 years old. In that post you can see a picture of what my grandmother looked like in the 1950s.

Christmas Card from the Past

This is an old Christmas card that says "With best Wishes for a happy Christmas from John and Eliza Hingston 1891" My grandfather would have been almost 7 years old when his mother received this Christmas card from his uncle and aunt. John Hingston was the younger brother of Samuel Hingston, my grandfather's father who died in 1888.

I remember my grandfather telling about his uncle John Hingston who lived near Dublin Ireland and was chief steward at Trinity College. And I found reference to John Hingston in several websites, both in reference to him at Trinity College and as an Irish musician.

In an archive of the Trinity College Academic Calendar for 1892, John Hingston is listed under officers of the college as chief steward. Other references say he was chief steward until his death in 1893.

Several websites refer to John Hingston as a well known Irish musician, quoting from the book Irish Minstrels and Musicians by Francis O'Neill in chapters XVII, XXI, and XXXII. These say that he played for the Prince of Wales who became King Edward VII, and refer to him as "the late Mr. John Hingston. T. C. D., at that time the leading authority on matters pertaining to the pipes." The instrument he played was called the union pipes or Uilleann pipes which seem to be similar to the bagpipes. Chapter XXI of the book referenced above says:
"Music was in the family -- for his brother was also a performer on the Union pipes. Born on a farm not far from Skibbereen, County Cork, Mr. Hingston was a splendid specimen of the Munster peasantry, considerably over six feet in height, and it is little wonder that his prowess as a life-saver in Phoenix Park attracted the attention of Prince George, Duke of Cambridge, who, in recognition of his heroism, secured him the position of head steward in Trinity College Dublin. His experience on the St. Lawrence river, Canada, in early manhood, schooled him in the knowledge which in after years he turned to such good account."

I have had these references about John Hingston for a while now but thought this would be a good time to post the Christmas card from the past.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that I was also amused to see a story about John and Samuel Hingston seeing a sea-serpent in Whitehall harbour.

My Father in the Civilian Conservation Corps

Since December 20 was my Father's birthday I have been planning to post some history about him. In the later 1930's (after graduating from High School in 1935) my Father was in the Civilian Conservation Corps at camps in both the eastern and western US.

The Civilian Conservation Corps was part of the New Deal by US President Franklin D Roosevelt to help combat unemployment in the Great Depression. The CCC was established in 1933 and continued to 1942 (as it was phased out by the WWII war effort.) Since this is the 75th Anniversary of the CCC establishment there are a number of websites with CCC history.

The CCC planted trees, built parks, roads and bridges, etc. Many of the state parks in the US are as a result of the CCC. The pictures above are from Big Sur California, one of the places my Father worked. They built a stone retaining wall along a road up the side of a mountain. My Father loved this outdoor work in the beautiful scenery being a young man just off the farm. The problem was the young men from big cities did not like this work and caused trouble. The National Guard had to come in to break up a protest and fight among these men at the camp. As a result they were moved back to a camp in the eastern US. My Father was disappointed because he enjoyed working in California.

I do not know how long my Father stayed in the CCC. Afterward he worked at a wide variety of different jobs during the depression years before WWII. If one place laid off workers, early the next morning, as soon as the newspaper came out with job listings, he was on the bus immediately to go to apply for any type of work available. As a result he was never unemployed in these depression years.

I have started a blog label Family History and have some plans for further posts in this series.

Pictures of My Father

This summer when Darlene was here we were going through old pictures of our mother and father. Mary scanned some of the pictures and linked to them on her blog. I stitched together three of the pictures of my father as shown here.

These pictures would have been taken when my father was in his twenties. He came to Canada at age 30 and had already lost his hair by that time. In the right hand picture he was starting to look more how I knew him. One of my father's sayings was "I used to have wavy hair but it waved goodbye"

Father's Day

Today is Father's Day and I am remembering my Father who passed away in 2003 at the age of 85. I have many great memories of my Father. He was as unique as unique can be.

My Mom always liked the pictures of my Dad in uniforms. The pictures here show him in the US Army in about 1939 and as a milkman in the 1960s. My Dad was a milk delivery man when I was a child. He was the last one to use a horse and wagon for milk delivery until they switched to using trucks. The picture was taken in July 1963 on the last day that the horse was used for milk delivery.

My Father worked very hard long hours with the milk delivery getting up before 5 AM and not getting home until after 6 PM. When I was under 2 years old I was very sick with polio. My Mom told me how he would be up in the night holding me because I was so ill. My Mom was concerned because he had to go to work in the morning but he said "Who wants to sleep when you have a little boy?" All my life I had no question my Father loved me as this exemplified.

He took delight in trying to make people laugh to cheer them up. He had a very strong faith in God and a passion for sharing it with others. I was blessed to have him as my Father.

Memorable Train Trip

When I was four years old our family travelled by train to New York state to visit my Dad's family. Even though I was that young I have vivid memories of that trip.

On the train I remember being in an upper sleeper bunk with my Dad. My sister, age 1, was with my Mom. While my Dad left me to go find more pillows I saw a button on the wall. Being a very inquisitive little boy, I pushed the button to see what would happen. And suddenly to my surprise a large black man in a porter's uniform appeared and asked what I wanted. My Dad was not far behind to see what was wrong. Fortunately I was not in too much trouble. I never have been able to resist trying things out to see how they work.

When we arrived I can still remember my Dad being so excited to see his family, since he had not seen them for about 10 years. He kept asking how soon they were bringing his Mother, and was so happy when she finally came.

The pictures shown here were taken by my Dad's brother Elias. My little Grandma is on the left. As a comparison my Mom (at the right holding my sister) was about 5'6" and looks tall compared to the others. My Grandma may have been small, but she had worked very hard, having 10 children, growing enough food to feed the family, as well as working in the field. She would have been about 78 in this picture, and lived to 88.

In the family picture I am sitting in front of my aunts and uncles, with some of my cousins beside me. My uncle took quite a few pictures of us including my "cowboy" pose. In the other pictures I look very serious and distinguished in my blazer and neck tie.

This was a very exciting and memorable trip, travelling across the continent by train, being able to meet my Grandma, and sensing my Dad's excitement at being there.