The photo shows the old Salem Methodist Church in Evansville, Indiana.   It was built in 1846.  I am sure some of those people are my ancestors.  The photo was taken in the 1920’s.

        My family was very church-centric.  It was the organization that provided most of our social activities.  We were members of Salem Methodist Church.  I was always thankful that the church was not a “fire and brimstone” type church, but instead our domination of Methodists a taught a very liberal type of Christianity, things like; “Be kind to everyone,” “Do good works,” and “Help those that are not a fortunate as you.”  I took those moral values with me for the rest of my life, even though I lost all religious dogma that was taught.

        During the first years that I can remember, the church building was an old brick, traditional-looking country church, whose sides where lined with vertical, arching stain-glass windows and its roof featured a steeple pointing toward heaven.  

        It was fairly small with an interior featuring rows of hard wooden pews, separated by an aisle that ran down the center of the church.  There was a pulpit for the minister on one side of the alter, and an organ off to the other side.   Just behind the pulpit,  I remember a wooden sign, where each Sunday the number of attendees from the previous Sunday was posted.

        Attached and behind the 100 year old church building was an addition that consisted of a basement with a darkish hallway that led to the handful of rooms that were used for Sunday School.  We kids always attended Sunday School where we were taught Bible Stories, and life lessons. 

        One memory I have of a Sunday School Class happened when I was in the forth grade.  Dennis, one of my friends, came in with his face all swollen and pink.  I asked him what had happened and he explained that someone had told him that if you ate a poison ivy leaf, it would prevent you from ever suffering the terrible itching of the plant for the rest of his life.

        He tried the “Cure” and his face was the result.

        On the main floor above the Sunday School rooms was a large open “social hall” with a stage at the end, and one the side was a kitchen.  The hall was where big gatherings would be held.

        It was in the social hall, where the “Family Night Suppers” (potluck dinners) and weekday kindergarten classes took place.  We always looked forward to those Family Night dinners, because of the delicious variety, and sometimes “exotic” types of food, that we never got at home.  It was at the family night dinners that I first got my first taste of shrimp and also pecan pie.  The varied dishes of food that people brought were laid out on the tables that ran down the center of the hall, with the dining tables along each side.

        The Family Night Suppers also gave us kids a chance to chase each other around through the hall, weaving through the tables, up the stairs, across the stage, and down the kindergarten “slide” that had been pushed to the side.

        Each Sunday, once our Sunday School lessons had ended, we had to go to the sanctuary where we had to sit quietly and resist squirming on the hard oak pews, while we endured the regular church service.  My mom and uncle were in the church choir, whose songs and hymns did animate the service a bit.

        The minister knew all of us kids were bored out of our skulls, so after the hymns, the announcements, and musical presentation by the choir, we kids were invited to walk up to the front of the church and stand at the alter, while the minister gave us the “Children’s Sermon,” a short talk with a moral.  Then we walked back to join our families on the hard pews.

        With the circulation of our legs somewhat restored from the walk, it was time to numb our brains through the adult sermon.   After the singing of the last hymn ended, we were free to go outside and again talk to our friends.

        Periodically, there was an escape from the church service provided for us kids.  A church group of elderly women that belonged to the WCTU (Women’s Christian Temperance Union) once a month, put on a program for us kids.  Not only did their programs allow us kids to escape from the boring Sunday sermons, but also enticed us with Kool-Aid and cookies, so we were always happy to attend.

        Once there, our little minds were pummeled with anti-alcohol, anti-tobacco, and sometimes, anti-drug propaganda and endless examples of people who destroyed their lives and the lives of their families through addictive drink.  The propaganda they espoused certainly scared the bejesus out of my little brain, and made me a teetotaler for the rest of my life.  

View my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

Our Dangerous Playground; My Grandparents' Farm

      The out buildings at my grandparent’s farm also provided a wide a varied playground for our adventurous play.  We built “forts” in the barn by moving bales of straw or the stacks of bushel baskets around, we walked across the high, hand-hewn, beams from one section of the barn to the other with our arms spread out on each side for balance.

    We climbed around on the “mountain” made of ears of “horse corn” in the corn crib.  We made “highways” and dug holes in the dirt for our trucks in the empty “beds” of the greenhouse.

    While my grandfather’s farm was the most exciting place for us to play, it was unfortunately, sometimes dangerous.  One day Dan and I decided to make an “elevator” on our favorite climbing tree; a Maple in front of my grandparent’s house.  We had had found a small square piece of wood that we could use for the floor of our elevator, we had scrounged a rope from the greenhouse shed, which we attached to our floor, then swung the rest of the rope over a limb.  

    It all seemed good, until we tried it out, then when one of us stood on the floor, and tried to pull down on the rope dangling from the limb, thinking that would lift our elevator, we discovered that the muscles on our small arms were useless in our attempt to lift us or our elevator off of the ground.

    We came up with a brilliant solution however;  if we could add a heavy weight to the free end of the rope as a counterbalance, that would probably help us pull ourselves upward.  We knew of the perfect heavy counterbalance.  It was a solid iron ball with a very short chain attached that had been used to hobble horses, preventing them from wandering away.  The iron ball was a bit larger than a softball, and very weighty.

    After a search in the well house, where old rarely used items were kept, we found ball and struggled to carry it over to the Maple tree.  We tied it so it dangled from the end of the rope and then I took my place on the floor of the elevator, reached high on the rope and began to pull.  Unfortunately, the elevator still didn’t work.  More unfortunately, my pulling on the rope caused the heavy iron ball to swing, smashing into my face.

      It not only busted my lip, but more seriously, broke a big section off of my permanent front tooth.   (My other front tooth had already been similarly chipped when playing “Blind Man’s Bluff.”  I was blindfolded, seeking my playmates when my mouth ran into the trunk of the family’s parked car.)

    One September, on the afternoon of the first day of school beginning the fourth grade, which was actually only a half day of school, Neal, my neighborhood friend and I had assumed the dramatic roles of pirates and where chasing each other through the various levels of the barn.  In my attempt to escape, I jumped onto the wooden ladder that led to the upper level of the barn where the bushel baskets were stacked.  

    In my rush to quickly scramble up the ladder, about halfway up, my hand missed grabbing the side of the ladder, and down I tumbled to the floor.  As I fell, I stretched out my left hand to break the fall, however it was not my fall that was broken when I slammed into the floor, it was my left forearm.  I had broken one bone and fractured the other.

      While these injuries slowed me down for a while, they didn’t dampen my enthusiasm for hard and energetic play at the farm.  

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

Those Memorable Sunday Dinners At My Grandparent's House

      This is the Thanksgiving long weekend in Canada.  Not only am I thankful for the delicious meals I am getting now, but also all of the mouthwatering fare I have enjoyed throughout my life.  Below is an example of Sunday dinners  I got as a child at my Grandparent’s house.  They were gastronomic treats featuring many of the fresh homegrown foods that they produced on their farm. 

    My young eyes couldn’t help but dart around all of the various dishes of food, arranged on the large round oak table that Grandma Schmidt had laid out for us.  I was hungry and eager to begin the meal, so I waited impatiently for Uncle Bill to take his place around at the table with the rest of us, so Grandma could give a nod to Grandpa indicating it was time for him to say the prayer.

    As he began his monotone presentation, I jeopardized my place in heaven by opening my eyes during the prayer, furtively glancing up from  my bowed head, to look at the patterned china plate, piled high with pieces of fried chicken.  Its smell had set me salivating, from the time I had slid into my chair at the table.

    Once Grandpa got done with the same prayer he said at every meal, the adults at the table began to pick up the steaming plates and bowls of food to circulate them around the perimeter of the table.  

    “Do you want some mashed potatoes, David?” 

    “Yes, please.”  

    Grandma Schmidt ran a tight ship, so we kids had to be quick with our “Please” and “Thank you’s” when we were in her presence.

    “What piece of chicken do you want?” asked my mother.  

    “Could I have a drumstick?” knowing full well that those special parts were always saved for us kids.  

    “Thank you.” I repeated again, as the crispy brown skinned chicken leg was placed on my plate besides the mound of fluffy white mashed potatoes.”

    “Gravy?”

    “Yes, please.”  

    I took my spoon and made a quick concave indentation into my mashed potatoes; a pond to hold the thick white “milk” gravy, with a few flakes of black pepper floating on its surface.  I loved milk gravy, and it could always be depended upon whenever Grandma fried up one of the unfortunate members of her chicken flock.

    “How about some corn, David?”  

    “Please.”  I loved corn too.  Months earlier it would have been served as corn on the cob, but this corn had been cut from the cob, frozen, and now fried in butter and salt.  I scooped up as much as I could get with the large spoon and piled it on my plate next to the overflowing milk gravy that coated my mashed potatoes.

    Next to come around were the the butter beans, a type of lima bean, which my grandparents always grew on their garden.  The broad flat pale green-colored beans swam in a white creamy sauce.  I noticed that my plate was quickly running out of useable space. 

    “How about some “Tommys?” (My uncle’s slang for tomatoes)  

    In the plate were several layers of large, fresh, juicy red tomatoes, thickly sliced and glistening, showing off their small yellowish oval seeds.  They were some of the Burpee Big Boy variety that I helped pick in Grandpa’s field.  Grandpa Schmidt made his living growing tomatoes and lettuce in his large commercial greenhouses, but this being later in the summer, the “hothouse” tomatoes were finished, and I worked picking these field tomatoes in the hot August sun as my summer job.

    The tomatoes filled the small space remaining on my plate.  I glanced around to make sure everyone’s plate was full, then realizing that this was the case, I assumed had permission to finally began forking up the delicious home-grown bounty from my grandparents farm that lay before me.

    When I needed to quench my thirst from all the solid food I was shoveling into my mouth, I reached for the tall glass of milk that sat besides my plate.  It was unpasteurized milk from Lilly, my Grandpa’s milk cow. 

    “Ugh,” I thought as I took the first gulp, “warm milk.” 

    The milk had been poured from Grandma’s blue crockery pitcher into glasses for us kids some time earlier when the table was set, so it was now room temperature, and to make things worse, during that time, a quarter inch of yellowish cream had now risen to the top.  I was not a big fan of either warm milk or cream, and so to make it palatable, I took my spoon and stirred up the milk so that the cream disappear from my view, before I drank it.  

    Thirst quenched, I picked up my fork and continued to enlarge the empty spots on my plate.

    At Grandma’s, it was understood that all the food one had put onto their plates had to be eaten.  When everyone’s plate was clean, Grandma would acknowledge the fact and exclaimed that clean plates meant “a sunny day tomorrow”.  

        The photo above was taken long before I was born, but it does show how my grandparent’s house looked.

View my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

My Early Memories Of My Grandfather's Farm

      Ours was a close-knit extended sort of family, as one of my grandparents owned a farm and greenhouse just one house away, and my other grandparents, a math professor and his wife, lived a mile down the road in the opposite direction.  My aunt, uncle, and two cousins lived next door.  It was a very stable and idyllic situation to grow up in.

    It was the Schmidt side of the family that owned the farm, and thus provided us with fresh vegetable produce, eggs, and milk and whose farm provided a diverse and favorite playground for us kids.   Their farm was a working farm with both crops in the fields and greenhouses, and livestock like cows, pigs, a mule, and chickens in the pens and pastures.  There were always a lot of interesting activities for us kids to see and participate in.  

    The menagerie of farm animals were a wonderful diversion by themselves.  We kids would be given exciting chores like feeding the chickens; which was fun, until one of the roosters started attacking my sister, whenever she went into the chicken yard.  

    Lily, the cow, provided the farm with milk (unpasteurized) for my grandparents and some of her bounty was always shared with our family.  As a youngster it was often my job to walk up to the farm and carry the glass quart or gallon jars of the milk, with the yellow cream floating on the top, back to our house before supper.   Even now, I still have a scar on the base of my right ring finger from a glass cut I received when I tripped on the path, falling, breaking the jar, and cutting the finger on a shard of glass, while carrying one of those quart milk bottles home.   

    As a young child I was never keen about drinking milk and I especially hated having to drink glasses of warm milk from the farm with its quarter inch layer of cream floating on the top.  When I complained about the cream, Mom would always just stir my glass of milk with a spoon so that the cream disappeared, eliminating the argument I made about drinking it.

    After eating meals at my grandparents, one of us kids were often given the task of carrying the slops (left over garbage) out to the pigpen, where we would dump the chunky, repulsive looking liquid mixture into the feeding trough, and then watch with fascination as the grunting porkers made pigs of themselves, slurping it down.

View my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

Nick's Aurora Photos

     Like many people in North America, last night the Robson Valley was witness to an Aurora.  I knew there was a big possibility of auroras happening last night, but I was in the living room watching TV when I got a text from Ingrid, telling me one was going on.  Ingrid and I often discuss auroras while driving home from out jam.

    Once alerted, I jumped into action.  I grabbed my camera, a flashlight, put on a jacket, and headed out to the pasture to see what was happening in the sky.  We have so many trees around our place and are tucked in beside the mountain, that we never get to see a whole lot of sky.  I could make out a pinkish glow and some faint streaks.

    I texted Nick Ennis, my neighbor to tell him about the aurora, but he was way ahead of me and texted back a really spectacular shot of one over his house (photo above.)

    Inspired by Nick’s photo, I fumbled and groped in the darkness with my camcorder and phone, and tried to take shots, but what I could see of the sky, was nothing very spectacular, and the photos I took where basically just black voids.  It was a complete wipeout, but at least Nick got some spectacular shots.

   

 View my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

Autumn; While It Lasts

     Yesterday, I showed you some Autumn shots around Horseshoe Lake.  Today, I have some that I took around our house.  The trees are quickly loosing their leaves, so I thought I had better take some photos, while the trees are still yellow.

View my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

Fall Colors At Horseshoe Lake

     It’s been a while since we have done a walk on Horseshoe Lake Road, and even though there was a drizzle coming down, the yellow colors of the trees more than made up for the inconvenience.  Beside the autumn colors, there were flocks of geese honking as they flew from one place to another, and also the strange gobbling of sandhill cranes could be heard.  

    I was happy we made the effort to do the walk. 

V

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Remembering My Grandfather's Farm Machinery

             I grew up during the 1950’s in rural Southern Indiana.  My grandparent’s farm was just a house away, so I spent a lot of my youth on their farm, which became one of my favorite playgrounds.   Here are some memories from my early days on the farm.

    The farm machinery always held a of lot of fascination for us boys.  My cousin Dan and I were especially mesmerized by the big antiquated Farmall tractor that was only taken out to do the heavy work in the fields.  We watched with big eyes as my grandfather or uncle struggle to turn the iron crank in front of the tractor, in an attempt to start the iron monster’s finicky engine.

            When the old tractor was not being used and just sat in the garage, it still filled our imagination with wonder.  We would climb up onto it and took turns sitting high up on its big metal seat, pretending to turn the steering wheel as we vocalized engine noises.

    Perhaps our favorite piece of farm equipment was the mysterious tomato planter that was pulled by the tractor.  It had two places for the workers to sit, low to the ground, on each side of the thing, with their legs stretched out in front of them, and their backs against a big metal tank of water. 

    As the planter was pulled across the field, small blades located between the sitting men, lowered into the soil and opened a shallow trench in the ground, and the two men, with “flats” of young tomato plants on their laps, would take turns sticking the roots of the young plants into the trench.   As the planter moved, a bit of water was dribbled onto the roots of the plant and then another set blades behind them, closed in the soil around the plant’s roots.  It seemed a wonder of modern technology to us country kids.

    The other piece of equipment that was fun to watch was the manure spreader.  It was basically a long box on wheels with a big metal cylindrical “distributor” on the back.  Manure was piled in the box, and as the spreader was pulled through the field, chains at the bottom of the box, moved the manure toward the back to the distributor, and as the distributer spun, pieces of manure would be flung out into the air before falling onto the field.  Of course the smell of the operation was also intriguing to our young noses.

            The photo shows my cousin Dan in 2011, fulfilling his life-long dream;  becoming the proud owner of the old Farmall tractor that was such a fascination to us as kids.

View my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

Remember Video Cassettes?

     We have always loved movies, and back in the early 1980’s we were starving to see some.  I always liked to read movie reviews and I anxiously awaited the opportunity to watch the ones with good reviews, but alas, at that time, tiny and isolated McBride had no movie theater. 

         In 1983, we were one of the first families in McBride to buy a VCR, but at the time, there was no place in the village to rent a movie video.  In our desperation to watch movies, we would rent them in Prince George when we went up there to shop, and then we had to return them to the store by shipping  them on the Greyhound bus.

        Renting and showing movie videos became an important part of our social life.  We always had friends over to watch movies.  Sometimes they would rent the videos, and come over to watch them on our VCR.   One friend of ours still jokes about all the people watching movies at our house be we just had a small portable color Sony Trinitron to watch them on.   Everyone was so eager to watch films, that the size of the screen didn’t matter.

        Eventually, Steve’s Men’s Wear, a local store started to rent a few movie videos.  At the time, the market for them was low, because very few people had VCR’s, in McBride.   As families bought them, Steve’s Men’s Wear began to developed a good business renting them.   Then what always happens in a tiny community where all the stores struggle to make a living, all the other stores in the village began to rent movie videos.

        In 1992, we were renting and watching movie videos once or twice a week.  One Saturday, my wife figured it was time to clean out the inside of our car, which had become an embarrassment. 

            When she did, she made an interesting discovery.  Under one of the front seats she found the VCR movie video of “Memphis Belle,” which was three months or so overdue. 

            On Monday, during my lunch hour at work, I dropped off the Memphis Belle video at the Bigway Grocery.   When I got home from work I got a call from Bigway, who informed me that the Memphis Belle video had not come from their store and should have been returned to the Country King Store, so I had to drive back into town and correct the mistake.

           Returning a rented video to the wrong store was one problem that was created when so many stores started renting them, the other problem that was created was with such a saturated video rental business, soon none of the stores were making much of a living off of doing it. 

                       The photo below is an early one of our living room shortly after we had bought our house, but it does show our small TV that all of our friends would gather around to watch a movie video 

Encounters While Herding the Goats

         Back in the 1980’s and 90’s, I had a herd of Angora goats.  The fences around my pasture were not in very good shape, so I couldn’t just put the goats in there and walk away, so every day, I would herd the goats down from the barnyard, and into the pasture.  I would hang around with them for 45 minutes or and hour, while they grazed.  It was very relaxing and a good way to unwind after work.  The photo above shows my father, who had come for a visit, herding the goats back to the barnyard.

            One day in the first week of May, after I got home from work, I herded the goats out to the pasture.  As they were grazing, and I was standing around watching, I saw a deer walk out of the neighbor’s woods.  It was very curious about the goats, but then it turned and walked back into the woods.  I was getting bored at standing there watching the goats, so I lay down in the grass to rest.

            As I lay there daydreaming away, after a while I noticed that instead of eating, all of the goats were just standing there, with their eyes on me, at least I thought their eyes were on me.  When I looked in the opposite direction, I saw that the deer had again walked out of the woods, curious about the goats, and was standing there, just 20 feet away from me.

    Exactly a week later after work, I again walked the goats down to the pasture to herd them.  When we got down there, I noticed that there was black bear eating dandelions beside the pasture.  I was initially concerned when I saw it, but when the bear saw me and the goats, it quickly got up ran into the shelter of the woods.

View my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

1992 Diary Entries: A Busy Week of Forest Fires

         Usually when our Forestry District had forest fires, I was called in to work in the warehouse (photo above), issuing fire fighting equipment.  

    Here are my diary entries from the first week of August, 1992, when we had a fire at Cushing Creek (up the Morkill River drainage), and another up the Raush that “blew up”.  In my diary I wrote: 

August 4:

    They are spending an unbelievable amount of money fighting them.  I worked with John (in the warehouse) until midnight, then came dragging home.

August 5:

          I had to be back in the office by 6:00, I again spent the whole day working in the warehouse.  They flew 30 lunches out to the fire up the Raush by helicopter (Pretty expensive sandwiches, probably the most expensive meal these firefighters will ever eat).  Two Native crews arrived at the office to fight the fires, but we didn’t have any means to get them to the fires, so they just had to sit around all day.  I got home at 10:30. 

August 6:

    Today went to work at 7:00 and spent the day in the warehouse.  At noon I was sent out to deliver the lunches to the “helicopter on the pad up the Raush”, and ended up going to three different helipads before I found the right one.  In our warehouse compound we now have 238 barrels of Turbo B (jet fuel used by helicopters).  Tonight it finally rained.

August 7:

    Rained off and on for most of the day, which helped cooled down the fires.  I went to the office at 8:00 (my regular time) but had to work until 5:00 in the warehouse.

August 8 (Saturday):

    Into work at 7:00, shipped out items to the Rock Fire, out the Raush.  I also sent out 24 bales of hay out to the Cush Fire (they must be using packhorses to carry equipment to the difficult to access fire).  

August 11:

    I have earned 24 days off with all of the fire overtime I have earned this year.  That is, if I take it all in “time” instead of “money”.

View my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

Autumn Drive: McBride to Prince George

     Yesterday, after a couple of weeks of putting it off, I made the two and a half hour drive to Prince George to restock our supplies.    The drive can be fairly monotonous because there isn’t a whole lot to see except trees along the hilly, curvy highway.  Spotting wildlife is always a possibility, but yesterday morning, I saw nothing but a small herd of deer, just outside of McBride.

    It was foggy for the first half of the trip, and that added mood to the beautiful yellow colored leaves of the cottonwood trees that were in their prime.   I find making the drive this time of year is always frustrating, because I saw so many really beautiful potential photos, but it was usually too dangerous to park along the side of Highway 16.  I did manage find pullouts and was able to take these two shots.

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

What's This Hole in the Compost Pile?

    Sorry for the rather confusing photo, but see the large dark area in the lower half of the picture?  I noticed it when I was emptying our vegetable scraps onto the compost pile.  That dark area is a hole about a foot (30cm) deep.  Obviously something had been digging in our compost pile.  I knew immediately who the culprit was:  a bear.

    This time of year the bears are on a feeding frenzy.  They have to really load up on food to get them through their months of hibernation during the winter.  I guess the bear found some appetizing things deep in the compost that helped satisfy its needs.

    Compost piles should be periodically turned over, so that all the bits get composted.  It is something I never do, but should.   Pete, our local gardening guru once told me that he always buries his fresh garbage under the surface of the compost pile.  Then when the bears come around, they do the turning-over of the compost for him.  

    It seems all of the animals like our compost pile.  I had to put a wire fence around it to keep Ginger, our neighbor’s dog, out of the pile.  (Obviously, the fence didn’t slow down the bear at all.)  Every day in the winter when I throw our vegetable scraps on the pile, they are always gone by the following morning; eaten by the deer.  

    The compost pile does build up during the summer, when the deer find better things to eat.  Only the odd raven and a lot of insects visit it, but as you can see, the pile does start to become an attraction, once autumn arrives.  

    I don’t mind the wildlife dining on the compost, even though authorities tell you not to feed them.  I don’t feed them, they feed themselves overnight.   

View my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca