The first year that registers in my mind is 1963 because that was when I was in Grade 1. I must have printed 1963 hundreds of times at the top each page of my workbooks at school. It was my first year at Rutherglen Central School. My best friend Lorna was one of our closest neighbours and she lived about a mile down the Trunk Road. Things were measured in feet, inches, yards and miles back then.
In 1963, downtown Rutherglen had a Lucky Dollar general store with a post office in the back. There was McNeily’s Dance Hall, a train station, Graham’s Store, two churches and one small graveyard filled with more graves than stones. The Lucky Dollar was across a busy highway from the school so only the kids of Grade 8 were allowed to go over during lunch hour. Sometime good fortune would find a penny or a nickel in my pocket, which I would entrust to one of these older kids with instructions to bring me back a bag of candy which always would include jaw breakers and black balls. It only took two seconds of sucking a black ball to make a toothy smile look toothless.
The following is a combination of several memories which I’ve put together in one story.
In October of 1964 I turned seven. The days were getting shorter and the evenings were chilly. Our school bus driver, Hector was a red-headed jolly fellow who celebrated every holiday and special day by doling out bags of treats to all his passengers as they got off the bus. Halloween was on Saturday this year so Mrs. Chenier the principle allowed the students to celebrate by wearing their costumes to school for the annual costume party on Friday. So it was in those costumes that my big brother Wayne, as a cowboy and me as an Indian Squaw, disembarked the school bus each with a little brown bag of Candy Kisses, lollipops, gum balls and Lik-a-maids.
The mail box was turned perpendicular to the road meaning there was mail. Since I couldn’t reach far enough inside the box it was Wayne’s job to retrieve its contents. Once he’d emptied the box he turned it parallel to the road meaning it was empty. The whole mailbox pivoting was a brilliant way of being able to tell from the house, which was ¼ of a mile from the mailbox whether there was mail or not.
Buster was already running from the house to The Gate to greet us. It never crossed my mind to question why there wasn’t a gate at The Gate. If there was a gate there in the past, it was nowhere to be seen. My attention being wholly on Buster, I hadn’t noticed that that Wayne had stopped dead in his tracks.
“The cows are out!” he said in a spooky surreal tone. His eyes were darting back and forth, searching for something. “Don’t move.” Something about his tone made me hold my breath and I didn’t dare move. Wayne’s memory was flashing back to when he was four, standing in the front yard, gently touching Larry’s nose.
”Nice Bully Bully,” he had said unable to break eye contact with the unpredictable angry bull. Larry was big and mean and somehow had gotten out of the barnyard that day. Mom came out of the house looking for Wayne only to find him face to face with Larry.
“Nice Bully Bully,” Wayne was saying, his little hand shaking, reaching up in an attempt to pacify Larry. Mom grabbed the broom and ran towards the standoff, shouting “Git! Go on!” She scooped Wayne up in her arms and began whacking Larry who was stepping backwards to avoid the broom. Dad had warned the kids often to stay away from the bull.
“The cows won’t hurt you,” I said, puzzled that my big brave smart brother would be afraid of a cow!
“The bull will!”
Now I was frozen to my spot. My heart began to beat double time. Dad’s warnings to stay away from the bull came echoing in my mind. We never went into the barnyard if the bull was near. Wayne’s left hand was absent-mindedly figuring the silver pistol in his holster.
“What’ll we do?” I whimpered standing as close to Wayne as I could. He was quiet, thinking, weighing the options. “Wayne!” I cried louder. “What’ll we do?”
“Shhhh!” he shushed angrily. “We can’t go home,” he spoke softly after a moment as if to himself.
“Whaddiya mean we can’t go home,” I cried harder, tears running down the colourful strips on my Indian Squaw face.
“The cows are between us and the house. The bull will charge us if we walk straight to the house.”
“I wanna go home,” I wailed.
“Stop crying,” he said angrily. “We have to go around and try and sneak to the house from the other side,” he reasoned. “Come on.”
“Where are we going,” I sniffed, wiping my face with the back of my hand. I now looked like I fallen into a wet paint box.
“We have to go through the bush.”
“But that’s where the wolves are,” I wailed again.
“Stop being such a baby.” Wayne was already back on the Trunk Road heading toward the far eastern edge of the property. I ran to keep up. Buster stood at The Gate, confused at the unexpected turn in the regular routine but then ran on ahead of Wayne excited at the prospect of a new adventure.
Mom was in the kitchen getting a start of supper. She knew the time we normally got home from school and that time had come and gone. She had been glancing out the dining room window which gave her a clear view of The Gate. But the bus had come and gone leaving us there in between her glances. Also, the herd was meandering and munching on the grass around the west side of the house outside of her line of site.
By the time Wayne and I arrived at the edge of the property and started to make our circle through the woods, it was well past our normal time of arrival. We walked along an old abandoned road that used to exist on the very eastern border of the 100 acres that my Dad owned.
I found out later that Mom was frantic. Dusk was settling in, and there were no signs of her two youngest children. Wendy and Wayne had always come straight to the house after getting off the bus. She put on her coat and boots and went outside to start a search. She was expecting Dad home at any minute from his own bus route.
Mom walked out of the porch door and around to the side of the house and realized immediately that things were not as they should be. Seeing the herd of cows were wandering all over the yard, she made two very quick conclusions: The kids had indeed gotten off the bus and were somewhere close because Buster was nowhere to be seen and must be with them; and the kids were hiding from the bull that was obviously loose. She knew her brave little boy had a horrible fear ever since the Larry The Bull episode.
“Wayndy!” Mom shouted which is what she called us when she was under stress and needed to get our immediate attention. “Wayne! Wendy!” she called again, correcting herself. She looked down to The Gate to see a long orange school bus pulling up the long driveway. With a huge relief, she watched Dad drive up to the house as the cows slowly parted to make way.
“How did the cows get out?” Dads said as he stepped down from the bus.
“I don’t know, but I haven’t seen the kids since they got off the bus. I called Hector and he dropped them off at The Gate an hour ago. Wayne must be hiding somewhere with Wendy and the dog. I’ve been calling and calling. Wayne’s afraid of the bull. It’s getting dark …” Dad could tell that Mom was anxious because she always talked very fast and without breaks when she was in that state of mind.
“OK. I’ll get the herd back into the barnyard. The kids will likely be home by the time I’m done,” Dad said calmly. “Don’t worry.”
Wayne and I had made our way past The Dump where all our trash went, past The Whispering Pines that my grandfather had planted 80 years ago. Wayne was cautious, stopping, looking, straining to see the bull somewhere. I was frightened and cold. What a site we must have looked! Creeping behind bushes with one feather sticking up from my handband, multicolour paint smeared over my cheeks. And Wayne with his cowboy hat, silver pistols and fringed vest.
“Wayne! Wendy!” I heard Mom calling.
“MOMMY!” I shouted back and began running towards the house.
“Where’s the bull?” shouted Wayne, running behind me.
“I’ve been worried sick! Dad’s put all the cows and the bull back behind the fence. ”
I ran into Ma’s waiting arms hugging her close. “Oh Mom. I was so scared. We had to walk through the bush.”
“Everything is fine now,” Mom reassured us as she waved us into the house. “Get upstairs and wash up. Put your costumes on the sewing machine. Looks like I have some mending to do.”