posted by SK as a comment to "Harold Warp's Pioneer Village"

Listening to Dave Stamey singing about cowboys a little while ago, and looking at this story about “soddies” got me thinking about family. My grandfather, a Scot, was for a time a rancher and a cowboy in Saskatchewan just after the turn of the last century.

I am in the process of cleaning up, sorting, eliminating and distributing the contents of what was my parents home for fifty years. Their small midwestern farm became mine a couple of years ago because no one else wanted it, or the hassle of all that’s required following the departure of old people from this world. It has been quite the project, mostly because of the thousands of books to go through. My father and mother were voracious readers.

My father collected a few things. First and foremost books, but he also liked fountain pens, letter openers, pocket watches and interesting coins. I found confederate bank notes tucked inside a book about the Civil War and old Canadian banknotes in another book. Every box and book has had to be opened. In one of my father’s medical books I found his first letter of recommendation for a job dated 1954. That was just before he left the UK, and socialised medicine, for a job as an outport doctor in Newfoundland where he had his practice on a hospital boat.

Going through drawers and boxes full of old photos, I found pictures of my cowboy grandpa. Photos I had never seen before. His winter wedding in Calgary in the early 1920s. My grandmother in her wedding dress, wrapped in buffalo robes or bear hides, in a sleigh pulled by two horses, surrounded by snow. Pictures of my cowboy grandpa in his chaps, a cowboy hat and big fur lined jacket, standing beside his horse. Those western Canadian winters were not for the faint of heart. My grandparents were tough. Just like those Nebraska homesteaders and Harold Warp, although Harold in front of the automobile in 1924 makes him and Nebraska look more prosperous. We are so spoiled today in comparison in terms of creature comforts. Maybe less so when it comes to personal freedoms.

I also found a large colored poster with my grandfather’s photo from when he signed up to “The European War, for King and Empire”, to join the 1st Canadian Contingent, British Expeditionary Force, Divisional Artillery, First Artillery Brigade. He enlisted at Netherhill, Saskatchewan in August 1914. He was nineteen years old and, at six feet six inches, very tall for his generation. He never spoke about ww1 and everyone knew it was because it was too awful.

He taught my father cowboy songs, and while ww2 was raging my grandmother taught him the then popular “Don’t Fence Me In”. My father taught the cowboy songs to me and my brothers. We know the words to many. My dad also learned to love Newfoundland fishing songs when he was on his boat…”I’se the Bye that Builds the Boat” and many others. We can all sing those too by heart.

A cowboy singer called Sagebrush Sam (real name Omar Blondahl) who was born in Wynyard, Saskatchewan to Icelandic parents stopped in Newfoundland one day in 1955 on his way to Iceland to see his father. He heard the Newfoundland folk and fishing songs. He thought they were beautiful and went on to become much more famous singing those than cowboy songs as Sagebrush Sam. I’ve put a link at the bottom to one called “The Little Blue Hen”.

As I’ve gone through this family history, stored in boxes and books, I’ve reflected on the fact that being born late mid 20th century, I am in personal touch with lives that reach back to remote times and places in the 19th century where everyday life was incredibly hard, into the war torn early 20th century, and then from the comfortable part of the 20th century well into the 21st where, with AI, our future as humans with humanoids may be very different. Seems remarkable really.

Also remarkable that my grandfathers on both sides survived active duty in two world wars but my brothers and I, by luck of birthdates and birthplaces, have never been personally threatened by war. We all learned how to handle machines and boats, fishing rods, guns and horses. We all love open spaces and own land. We all grow things and can defend ourselves. It must be something in our DNA because we’ve all taken very different paths in life. I like to think it is a strong cowboy strand.

Looking at old letters and photos, clothes and shoes, jewelry and little, personal, things that had been treasured and kept, reinforces the notion that every person is actually a whole world unto themselves and that everyone’s life, no matter how ordinary it may seem, is interesting and important. When any person dies a whole world disappears with them. When there is no one left who remembers us, and we are only names in a graveyard, there is still the DNA that carries us all forward into the future.

I’m hoping for future cowboys when I’m gone.

Continue reading →