Some Golden Memories

Some Golden Memories

By Elvin Meyers (for 2000 Golden Memories)

Some of my earliest memories are of a farm near, Millet, Alberta and fortunately for me, there was a one-room school house on the same property. I think it was called Coal Lake. Not that I remember anything remotely resembling a lake anywhere nearby. There was a barn out back. It was used to house and feed the horses ridden by some of the pupils who lived great distances from the school. It wasn’t the first school I attended but, interestingly enough, it was the same one my Dad and his sisters and brothers traveled over 3 miles to attend. For me there had been another in Edmonton the year before, but we moved part way through, so I started all over again that fall, which would have been September 1945. I was actually born in Edmonton, on the last day of 1937, to Bill and Betty Meyers, along with a twin sister. Hence the given names Elvin and Elaine.

The farm had a name, too. It was Maple Grove. We just rented the place while my Dad spent the summer and fall working for the surrounding farmers. But he spent most of his working life in sawmills. That’s how we came to Parson in 1946. Thomas Alton & Sons needed a sawyer, and Dad had just completed his first authentic sawing job in White Court, Alberta. My recollections of Parson are pretty skimpy. We lived there about two years in a company house right beside the main road. I recall the school burned down and I spent third grade in the Community Hall under the tutelage of one Mr. Palmer. Jean Alton paid me 25 cents to mow the lawn behind the store. We owned two dogs. The first was a Doberman called Laddie who had to be put down because it bit Les Alton. Then we got a little black and white Spitz called Jingle. He was put down, too, but that came later, when we moved from Donald to Golden. Bu then we had a second. She was blond and we called her Toy. It was a sad day for all three of us when my Dad did the deed, but they couldn’t be kept locked up all the time. Granny Powell came and lived with us for a while in Parson, but she had always lived on the prairie, so the mountains seemed to frighten her. I think she really believed they were going to fall on her.

In the summer of 1948 Dad got a better job offer from Selkirk Spruce Mills, so we moved to Donald. He spent three days in the bunkhouse before we moved. I remember because he told us someone had stolen his shaving lotion and probably drank it. Again, we lived in a company house. It was located away from the other camp buildings, across the railroad near the river. The Barr family lived next door. The third house was built a year or so later but it burned down. I’m not sure exactly when, but I do know it was cold and the snow was deep. I stepped outside the back door to go to the outhouse and saw flames coming out the kitchen window. The fire got so hot men shoveled snow on the side of our place to keep it from going up, too. The name of the family living there was Haines. Apparently, Mr. Haines was working on a gas lamp that got away on him.

Selkirk Spruce Mills was operated by an American from Spokane named Brick Chapman. He had a son my age. Is given name was Arno but I always knew him as Chappy. Another couple of friends I spent a lot of time with during the years I lived in Donald was Bill Tsuchiya and Bob Barr. Over a decade later Bob was to be the best man at my wedding, but no before we’d traveled a few roads together. First, on our bicycles, and then in those great cars he always drove. The first was a black 1952 Oldsmobile Rocket 88 in which four young men could easily have lost their lived when it rolled on its top late one Saturday night. But that was south of Golden and long after Bob and I, and whoever wanted to join us, had some wonderful times in Donald; skiing, fishing, sleigh-riding, and just exploring. We visited the old cemetery and the old town site. We swam in the Waitabit River and must surely have risked hypothermia. We fished the Beaver Dam and watched a moose eating lily pads. We skied own the riverbank over a small jump we’d et up and I sprained an ankle that bothers me to this day. Gordie Barr stuffed half the kids in camp into his old 19367 Chev and drove up to Reeve’s farm for Halloween treats. I can still see Mr. Warkenstine, a teacher we had one year, sitting on the end of our bobsled with a cigar clenched between his teeth. On kid had to stand by to dig the others out when we jumped off the planer mill roof into the snow. For a time, Charlie Collins, who lived in Parson, showed full-length movies every week in the maintenance shop in Donald. He charged a small fee, of course. Then there was the Revelstoke ski jump. We went on the train to watch world class jumpers truly fly.

School was part of the grand adventure, too. How could it have been anything less? It wasn’t until I completed grade 9 that I saw the inside of more than a one room with fewer than 6 or 7 grades being taught by a single teacher. I recall the names of most of my teachers, too. I’d have to say the one I liked the most was Mr. Clark. I had him first in tenth grade, in Golden. The start of the school year in 1951 ushered in many changes to my life. I was starting high school, and it was the first year of many that I had to live away from home to continue my education. Would you believe Mrs. Henderson tool me in? As if she didn’t have enough of her own to look after, being a widow and all. You could never meet a kinder, more tolerant lady. The next year I lived with the Rankin family directly across the street from Lady Grey School.  The local music teacher, Miss Adolph, who was later to become the wife of Mr. Gilmour, our school principal, had an apartment in the same house. I actually took four piano lessons. So it was that for two years, from September to June, I lived in Golden during the week and in Donald on the weekend. Since we did not own a car, finding rides back and forth was often something of a challenge. Many of my Friday night were spent hanging around outside the Big Bend Hotel until the bar closed so I could hitch a ride with whomever. Only once do I recall ending up in the ditch. Luckily, no one was hurt.

That brings me to another mishap that was much more serious. About a month after I started high school in Golden, I was called out of class and told that my Father had been involved in a serious industrial accident. I was taken to the hospital where I had the opportunity to talk to him while he lay on a gurney waiting to be shipped off to Vancouver. The next time I would see him would be the following spring getting off the train in Donald. He was walking with a pronounced limp in a brand-new prosthesis that replaced the leg he lost in the accident. Within one week of his return, we became a single parent family. My mother moved to Hartney, Manitoba, where she has lived for over 45 years with a gentleman whom I have come to respect and admire. The three of us managed surprisingly well after she left, with me commuting and Elaine and mu Dad sharing the housekeeping duties. Finally, in the summer of 1953, we rented a two-room place in Golden. It was located directly behind the Royalite Service Station and it was little more than a shack.

We lived there over the winter and I recall a couple of incidents that left a lasting impression. Old Helen, as she was called, the town’s alleged former madam, passed right in front of our door on her way to and from shopping. Early one evening just after dark, my Dad answered a knock and there stood this garish-looking old lady wearing high-heeled hoes and too much makeup with her wrinkled hands covered with blood. He had cut herself on some of the broken glass when she slipped on the ice and fell down breaking the bottle she was carrying. The second had something to do with the bottle, too. One bitterly cold night, an alcoholic, a local man Dad had worked with, came to visit him. He looked weak and emaciated but he didn’t appear to be drunk. He probably just wanted to get warm. The tow of them sat and talked for a long time. About what, I don’t remember. Then without any warning, the man got down on all fours and crawled behind the oil space heater. When my Dad asked him what he was going he said he was going to lay down and die. About a mother later he did lay down and die, on the warm concrete floor of the CPR roundhouse, probably from malnutrition and exposure.

For a boy who was raised in the boondocks, small town Golden was an interesting, even exciting, place. For the first time, I was exposed to organized sports and I tried them all.  A talented athlete I was not but I had fun. I enjoyed my time in the classroom, too. In fact, my three years of high school passed all too quickly, at least in retrospect, and before I knew it I was boarding a train to Vancouver to begin a new phase of my life. This is not to say that I did no have three more fun-filled summers and one more fancy-free winter working and playing in Golden, but those are memories I shall leave to be recounted anther time.