The way I remember my Grandpa Friesen is that he was a short man, who usually had his mouth open and was in the midst of a story. Sometimes he’d say something that would trigger another story in his mind, and he’d be off on a tangent to tell that story first. Sort of in parentheses.
Funny thing was, he’d forget what his first story was about, and find another story detour to take. Even as a young girl I found that amusing.
Dad, who is a grandpa and a great-grandpa already, is a lot like his dad in that regard. I know his stories quite well, and can correct him if he goes astray, so he doesn’t launch off into storyteller mode much when it’s just the two of us, but as soon as he has an audience of just one new person, off he goes! Say a word, mention a person he remembers, and you might as well find a chair; this is going to take a while!
I recall my Grandpa Friesen from when I was about 7 until about 14 or 15. At the beginning he and Grandma were still on the original homestead he got as a young unmarried man in 1905, (the year Saskatchewan became a province of Canada). His dad bought homesteads in an area called Beaver Flat near the South Saskatchewan river, for himself, and his son Cornelius, and his son Heinrich, who became my grandfather. The brothers John and Nick got theirs later. Our family made visits back to that homestead when I was a young girl. I do have some memories of it.
However, in those early years, my grandparents sold their homestead, and went to retire in Clearbrook, B.C. Lotusland, as we sometimes call that lower mainland, where so many of our pioneers go to retire. From there Grandpa used to fly in to visit us about once or twice a year. He always came bearing gifts for us kids, but what I remember most is those long-winded stories of his. Mostly of his pioneering days.
I admired too, how he would go on bus tours to see things like Marine Land, or the space needle in Seattle, and his child-like wonder at these marvels of the modern world made me think travel was such exotic stuff, that I MUST travel too, when I grew up.
By now you must be grinning to yourself, and saying, - just like Dad, “The apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree!” Meaning of course, that I am just like where and who I came from.
In my book, “Grandpa’s Stories,” written to honour my dad and the roots and relatives from his side of my heritage, and to record those stories for his kids and grandchildren, I have included two written letters or essays that my Grandpa Friesen had sent into to a German newspaper. These are translations, but I think they give away some of his voice. I’ll quote just a few short ones to give you a taste.
From Grandpa’s childhood, about his grandma;
“Grandma baked her bread in an outdoor oven made of stone and mud brick. She heated it with straw. One summer day she had the dough in a large wooden bowl on a table outside, while the oven was heating. A mare that was grazing on the yard found this bowl full of dough and ate it. Grandma was so upset. All her bread was gone! We expected the mare to get sick, but she didn’t. She was tough and lived a long time after that. When we all moved to Saskatchewan the old mare came too. John and I worked with her and often remembered the day she ate grandma’s dough.”
About his own grandpa, Cornelius H. Friesen;
“One day our grandpa came from Winnipeg and even before he stepped from the sleigh he said, “Annie, the end of the world is near.” She asked what had happened. He said he had seen two men ride on two wheels, one behind the other, and they did not fall on their side; was not this a miracle and a sign of the end times? What would our grandparents say if they could look on this world today?”
Then, after finally being on their new homesteads;
“On May 4th, 1909, a prairie fire broke loose. It came our way with a strong wind and swept through the district. Many farmers lost their buildings. We were lucky not to lose ours. Our neighbour, Payne, had made a small fire in the fall and so we did not have so much dry grass to feed the fire and our place was safe. We had leased a school section for pasture and just finished fencing. All the fence posts burned. At one place a child was burned to death, and at another place a couple were so badly burned they were in hospital quite a while. They finally healed up all right. Their name was Kline. The government helped all the people with feed and clothes.
“That same year, just five days later, we had an earthquake. It was 10 o’clock in the evening and everything shook. Dishes rattled and things fell from the table and window sills, but there was no damage done. Dad had gone to bed already, but he got up and we went to brother Cornelius’ place. We were scared; mother wept. She thought the end of the world had come. When we arrived at my brother’s place (only a quarter of a mile), there was a Henry Wiebe from Waldeck. He laughed at us. Why were we excited about an earthquake? He was sitting at the table reading robber stories. Henry Wiebe had rented Payne’s land. They had lived in a tent and lost everything in a fire, so now he was boarding at my brother’s place.
“In 1909 we had a bumper crop. We did not have all our land ploughed. I worked on John Zacharias’ threshing machine that year. Sometimes we threshed in the field from stooks, and other times from stacks. At one time we had eight yoke of oxen to haul bundles on that outfit.”
Can you see why Dad and I tend to tell stories? To use one of Dad’s expressions, “The apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree.”
