Reaching back in time

I was in Saskatoon for a couple days this past week. Rose had laser surgery done on her eyes and is now seeing without glasses, and I was the parental support.  Anyway, while I was there, I asked my mother about her grandparents.  I have often mused that memories seem to stop at about four generations - or at about my great-grandparents.  On any side of the family that I care to track back, the memories tend to stop about there.

In any case, my parents, Harold and Mary Ruth (Lidbury) Orr - who have eight children, 22 grandchildren, and 19 great-grandchildren at this point in time - which makes for a real crowd when we get together.  Because this is the family I grew up in, I can tell lots of stories about all of the members.  For most of their life, they have lived in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

Then, my mother's parents, Edward James (Jim) and Pearl Etta (Head) Lidbury - who had three children.  I can also tell lots of stories about this family - both personal stories, and stories that have been related to me, or that have been written down and I have read.  For most of their life, they lived in southern Saskatchewan, at Harptree, then at Stony Beach, then at Moose Jaw and finally in Saskatoon; but my grandmother is buried in Denison, Texas, while my grandfather is buried in Saskatoon.

Then, my mother's mother's parents, Benton McMillan Head and Mary Florence (or May)(Osgatharp) Head - who had 12 children (my grandmother was the oldest).  I remember visiting my great aunts in Texas many times, and I can tell a few stories about them, and I have heard a few stories about my great grandparents.  Although they were born in Clay County, Tennessee, they moved by covered wagon to Texas - first to west Texas, then because of drought conditions, to east Texas, and lived just south of the Oklahoma border.  They were third cousins - related on the Plumlee side, and Benton was enough taller than May that if he stretched out his arm from his shoulder, she could stand right underneath it.  They were farmers.

But generally, that's where the memories stop.  However, I asked my mother some questions, and then did some searching on the internet, and I have a little bit more than just names for my mother's mother's mother's parents, Erasmus Gaw Osgatharp and Rachel (or Rachael) Presovia (Plumlee) Osgatharp.  I found two photos, and a bit of a history.  He was a logger, as was his father before him.  They lived all of their lives in Clay County, Tennessee, and they had 11 children.  They were big families back then!

It's so interesting to find a photo of my ancestors, who lived over 100 years ago, who were alive during the American Civil war!

Grandmother Lidbury

I've been remembering my Grandmother Lidbury lately; I think it's because when I look in the mirror, I may not see her face, but I've definitely inherited her body.  Grandma was stocky; barrel-shaped - so am I.  When I work out at the gym and I see all of those ectomorphs around me, I just tell myself, "I have my Grandmother's build."  I think all of us sisters do.

Grandma liked to do handwork.  She tatted, and crocheted, and knitted, and made hairpin lace, and...  During the last part of her life when she had difficulty walking, her hands were always busy.  She taught me to tat, although I don't know if I remember how now.  She tried to teach me how to crochet - I remember making a chain that stretched from one end of the house in Moose Jaw to the other.  Every furniture surface in Grandma's house was covered with doilies that she had made; most of them were crocheted in the pineapple pattern.  It was my job to go next door to their house once a week (on Saturdays) and to dust everything.  Grandma would hide pennies under the doilies, and you couldn't see them unless you picked up the doilies and dusted it properly.  I always understood the parable of the lost coin, because if I finished dusting and had only 24 pennies, when a roll of pennies contained 25, I would start over again, looking for the missing one.

Grandma loved to have visitors; she was very hospitable.  Because I was fortunate having my grandparents live next door to me when I was growing up, there were many times I would be over there and someone would stop by.  Grandma would introduce me, and if I was lucky, I would be invited to stay for lunch.  Although she was born in Tennessee and lived in Texas before she was married and all of her siblings and family lived a long ways away from where she lived in Canada, she stayed in touch with them all through letters.  She wrote regularly, and would keep in touch with everyone.  She tried to visit as often as possible too.  She was the oldest of a large family and she was the one who kept everyone connected.

Grandma had a strong sense of humour.  She liked to tell us funny stories, and when she got to laughing, it was really contagious.  When she laughed, she would be helpless with laughter.  When we heard the sound of her laughing uncontrollably, we knew she was in trouble, but you couldn't help laughing with her.  I remember one time when our family and the Boatwrights were driving together up to Yellowknife to visit David and Shirley and family up there.  (I actually wasn't on the trip, but this has become a family story to be shared many times.)  The Boatwrights had a pickup with a camper on the back, and the kids would go back and forth between the cab and the camper through the sliding window in the back of the cab.  Grandma had to be boosted up into the back of the camper up the steps though, because she had difficulty walking and the step up was so high.  So she decided that if the kids could go through the sliding window, she could too.  She got about half-way and got stuck.  We knew she was in trouble when we heard her laughing.  We all laughed so much, but it took a bit of effort to get her unstuck.

Another time she was in the bathtub and couldn't get out.  Grandpa heard her laughing and asked what the problem was.  She explained that she couldn't get out of the tub.  (After this incident, we installed grab bars in the tub.)  He wanted to pick the lock and come in to help her, but she wouldn't let him see her without any clothes on.  He had to phone next door to have mom come to rescue her.

Grandma died in 1983.  She was down visiting family in Texas and was buried down in Allen, Texas.  Grandpa was never the same after she died.  He had lost the light of his life.

Remembering Grandma Orr

I was out in my garden yesterday in between the rain falls, and it reminded me of my Grandma Orr.  She loved to garden and loved plants.  When I was in university I would take the bus down to Wawota in the fall and help her bring her gardens in.  She had three gardens; a large one taking over the double lot in their back yard in town; and then two farm gardens - one at the Husband's and one at the Weatherall's.  There was a fair bit of work involved in doing that much gardening, but Grandma considered it to be one way that she could provide for those in need without much cost.  She had so much produce that she rented locker space at the butcher's in town.  I remember one year that had been a good year for cucumbers.  We did over 40 quarts of dill pickles as well as I don't know how many quarts of bread-and-butter pickles (and as Grandpa couldn't eat them, they were solely to be given away).  In addition, anyone who came to the door for any reason whatsoever was given a bag of cucumbers, and I was sent home with three or four bags of them on the bus.

Grandma also had lots of plants in the house.  When she was away for awhile, she gave me careful instructions on how to water all of them (this one only gets one tablespoon every day; don't water this one until the soil is dry - about every third day, etc.).  She kept rain water and snow water for her house plants, and it generally took one to two ice cream pails to water everything.  She kept a special plant "hospital" in the basement for plants that were sickly or had bugs that she didn't want to infect the rest of the house.

I lived with Grandma for six months when I got my first teaching position.  It was the year after Grandpa, Aunt Rose and Grandma Husband all died and she was living alone. I got a teaching position in the next town over.  It was good for both of us.  I was blessed with the benefit of her years and years of teaching experience and this was the first year she was alone. I think I got the better part of the deal, but we both enjoyed each other.  I brought a quilt with me that needed quilting and we set it up on a frame in the basement and would visit as we quilted it.  I got to know Grandma a lot better when I was living with her, and to appreciate her wisdom and experience.

Grandma had a good sense of humour.  She liked to tell stories of how she got the best of Grandpa (who also enjoyed a good joke); such as the story of the chick starter muffins.  She also enjoyed a good joke on herself.

It's hard for me to believe that Grandma had been unwell most of her life.  The Grandma I knew was always slightly hyperactive; seldom sat down - and although she would set a plate for herself at the table for meals; generally wouldn't sit and eat with us - she was too busy bustling.  However, when her children were young, she had been an invalid.  She had an undiagnosed thyroid condition and was usually too exhausted to do much.  In addition, she had hepatitis as a teen and had difficulty eating foods with much fat, as her liver couldn't handle it.  By the time I knew Grandma, her thyroid condition was treated with medication and she seldom slowed down.

Grandma was a person of action.  Other people would talk about something that needed to be done; Grandma would go and do it.  The year I lived with her, she was excitedly making plans to go to New Guinea.  She explained that she had always been tied to home.  In the last few years it was an old folk's home, with Grandpa an invalid; Aunt Verna Husband, who was very frail and couldn't be left alone; and Aunt Rose, who needed care for even the most basic things.  However, now that they were no longer with her, she could go on to new adventures.  She queried me, "do you think I could help the work over there?"

Unfortunately, my children didn't get to know Grandma.  By the time they were old enough to visit her, she was in a nursing home and had a stroke and couldn't talk.  I am hopeful that my memories will help her seem more real to them.

Sisters, Sisters

Ruth and I have been cooking together for about four years now.  Just in the last month I also started working with/for her, two days a week.  It's a good thing we're good friends.  It reminds me of that short song from White Christmas.  See it here.

We were sitting side by side at the reception desk Friday; Ruth was dictating to me and I was typing.  We were working together trying to get some correspondence done, when one of Ruth's tenants came in.  She commented, "Boy, I wish my sister and I could get along like that."

I really am fortunate though.  We do enjoy each other's company a lot.  Yesterday made up our week's menu, went grocery shopping and then made three salads together: Morocccan chickpea barley, Broccoli with Grapes, and Cauliflower Apple.  We also made a beef stew (which we ate for lunch, but there's enough left for another day) and borscht.  This morning she came over and we whipped up three different types of perogy casseroles (spinach and feta perogies with a cream sauce; regular potato cheese perogies with a cream sauce, and plain old ordinary cheese perogies with butter).  This was the first time we tried doing perogies without the cream sauce, with just butter, and they didn't stick at all!  That was in the my three-pot slow cooker.  In one of my larger slow cookers we had the borscht, and in the other large slow cooker we had cabbage rolls.  Then we also threw together three pans of pear upside down cake.  Got everything started and dashed off to church (5 minutes late).   We have enough leftover perogies for at least one more meal and a fair amount of borscht but all the cabbage rolls went.  There's also lots of salad left.  I've done up the dishes three times since yesterday morning, but still have pots and pans to do up along with another load in the dishwasher tomorrow morning.

I'm very thankful for my new dishwasher too.  It means that I don't have to wash my dishes before putting them into the dishwasher.  (This is a very good idea).  It also holds more and is much, much quieter.

It has not been a quiet relaxing weekend.  After cooking with Ruth all morning, I went into the office with her in the afternoon and worked with one of her other employees at organizing her files, from 1 to 5 pm.  When I got back home I was so tired I was in bed before 9 pm.  This afternoon we babysat Emmet and Jane while their parents had a date.  Then I had a short nap, followed by sewing.  I had a grad dress that I finished hemming, and a top and shorts that I promised to shorten for someone else.  I also whipped up a pair of shorts for Jane (and Emmet) because Rachel had sent her kids without the diaper bag and we needed a change of clothes for Jane.

It is now evening.  All the sewing is done.  I'm sitting where I cannot see the dirty dishes in the kitchen - they'll wait for tomorrow.  I've done a bit of planning for this summer's VBS, but need to talk it over with someone else before I send it off.  It's been a good day.

Saying Goodbye

Abram Dietrich Thiessen

December 5, 1925 - May 29, 2013

My father-in-law died the end of May and we buried him on Tuesday.  He was a quiet man, never boisterous, but always he quietly loved those around him.  He was always very generous, with his time and money.

I have so many memories of Dad.  I recall one of the very few times he came up to Yellowknife to visit us.  He was there for only a short time before he became very ill, his kidneys shut down for awhile, and he ended up in the hospital in ICU.  When they discharged him from the hospital, he insisted on driving back home again, the very next day.

When my children were very small, Rose was three and Bram was about three months old, I drove south with the children by myself.  It was a long, long trip to Eyebrow; about 28-30 hours driving.  For the last hour and a half of the trip, Rose had found a box of cereal and was throwing it by the handful throughout the car.  By that point I didn't care; she wasn't crying and it was keeping her entertained.  When I arrived in Eyebrow, I handed the kids off to their grandparents and went to lie down and sleep.  While I was sleeping, Dad took the vacuum cleaner and vacuumed out the car.  He saw that it needed doing and so he did it.  That was the way Dad was; he continually showed his love for us by noticing what needed to be done, and doing it.

Whenever we went out to eat at a restaurant with Dad, we had to make arrangements to pay the bill when we made the reservations, otherwise he would be sure to grab the cheque and insist on paying.

Dad had lived all of his life in Eyebrow; first on the farm and then in town.  He had served on the municipal council for years and later as the reeve.  He knew everyone, and the state of their crops.  He loved to go visit with everyone at the coffee shop.

I was sorry that I wasn't able to visit with Dad before he died.  We had gone to Moose Jaw several times to visit with Mom but she was in the nursing home and our visits hadn't coincided with Dad's visits.  However it was good to visit with all of the family at the funeral.  All of the children and grandchildren were there.  I hadn't seen the great grandchildren before (there are now six of them); it was also good to visit with Aunt Edna, Mark and Florence.  It was so good that they were able to come up from Texas.

Although Dad is no longer with us, his legacy lives on in his five sons, nine grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.  He lives on in the love he showed us all, quietly, without many words.

Grandpa Lidbury

Remembrance Day has always been inextricably tied to memories of my Grandpa Lidbury for me.  He served in the British Army in World War I, was taken prisoner and spent much of the war in a prison of war camp.  Remembrance Day was the day before his birthday; and it was also Grandma's birthday.  Grandpa never spoke much about the war when we were children; he felt, very strongly, that children shouldn't know much about war.  He told us his prisoner number was 22, and a few small things like that.   He would tell of his friends who helped save his life.  There was a fellow prisoner from Belgium that he especially felt thankful for. When he felt that we were misbehaving he'd tell us one of the songs they sang in the army, "We know our manners, we spend our tanners, we are the Somerset boys."  He'd always explain that a tanner was a sixpence. However, as he aged and developed dementia, grandpa spent most of his last years reliving his time in prison camp.  (Grandpa is on the far right)

However, Grandpa was so much more than just an elderly man reliving his time in prison camp.  He grew up in England and didn't emigrate to Canada until 1922, well after the war was over.  He said that he'd been bossed around enough during the war and wanted to work where he could be his own boss.  He came to the  Bengough area (he had a sister who lived near there) and worked as a hired man for several years.  He became a Christian because the family where he worked read the Bible every morning at the breakfast table and were careful to read passages that awakened in him the need to know more.  He was baptized by my Grandfather Orr, in the winter, in a dugout.  They had cut a hole through the ice, and Granddad Orr had gone down with him and started to preach and apparently Grandpa Lidbury had turned to him and said, "Wilfred, just do it."

My two grandfathers were friends, and worked on threshing crews together.  They memorized scripture while working on the crews; driving the racks of sheaves to the threshing machine, waiting in line, etc.  Grandpa Lidbury was always very proud of the scripture that he had memorized.  He said that when he became a Christian all he knew was the names of the books "Matthew, Mark, Luke and John", but there really weren't many passages in the New Testament that if you quoted a verse or two he couldn't complete the quotation.  Grandpa was a faithful Christian his entire life.

He didn't marry until he was in his 30's - and Grandma had grown up in Tennessee and had been living in Texas when they married.  It could have been a real recipe for disaster - two very, very different cultures, and they were married just in time for the start of the great depression.  For much of their early married life, Grandpa's mother lived with them, and, to put it kindly, she was a difficult woman to live with.  However, they loved each other dearly.  Grandpa would stay home from farming on Mondays because it was wash day and he felt that it was too much work for his wife to do on her own.  It involved hauling the water and heating it, as well as using the wash board, etc.  When Grandma died, it was like Grandpa had lost the light in his life, and he was truly inconsolable until he had a vision of her comforting him.  He told of that vision repeatedly after that.

Grandpa and Grandma farmed at Harptree and later at Stony Beach.  When they retired, they moved first to Moose Jaw and then later to Saskatoon.  I don't remember them living at Stony Beach but I do recall riding on the back of the grain truck with my siblings and cousins when Grandpa took one of the last loads to the elevator.  He told the elevator agent, "Just weigh it now, and then we'll lift the kids down."  I didn't know at the time why everyone thought that was so funny.

My grandpa lived his last years with my parents until his death.  I stayed with him for part of the last year that he lived alone before he moved in with them.  He loved the grandchildren in his later years and always seemed a little more coherent when they were around. He died nearly 19 years ago now, but writing these memories bring him back so clearly to my mind.

Granddad Orr

My dad's dad was an amazing man.  He had a very gentle spirit.  He had come to Canada as a small child from England and settled near Oungre, right by the US border.  His parents homesteaded and his mother ran a store while his father was a carpenter.  In fact, my grandfather came from a long line of carpenters.  When he was in his early teens, H.A. Rogers came by and held a gospel meeting and he was baptized, as were his parents.  Brother Rogers operated a market garden and he worked for him for a time, and was mentored by him.  He travelled with him for a time, and then would preach and lead singing. He loved singing and could sing through the hymn book. (Grandpa's sister, Nellie, married H.A. Rogers' son, Alonzo.)

Grandpa worked as a carpenter, as his father had, and supported himself but also travelled throughout southern Saskatchewan, serving the church.  He married my grandmother on July 14, 1930. My dad was born in Minton in 1931, but they also lived in Horse Creek, Radville, Perryville area, Moose Jaw, Saskatoon, Biggar, Wawota and Vancouver.  I'm sure I missed some communities.  He helped organize the first Bible schools held in rural Saskatchewan - the first one was held in Minton and also served on the first board of directors for Radville Christian College.  He built most of the homes that they lived in; my cousin and his family still live in the home he built in Saskatoon.

All of this was while he was still a young man.  When I knew my grandfather he was much older.  He suffered at least two strokes and a heart attack, and eventually died from a reoccurence of the cancer that he had some years earlier. He was always very quiet, and had a dry sense of humour.  He would say something that was really quite funny, but if you didn't catch it, he'd never let on.  He was really, really good at crokinole - he had practiced for hours after his strokes so that he could get his fine motor control back.  He also was ambidextrous.  He likely started out being left-handed but had that whipped out of him at school when he was forced to switch to his right hand.  However I do know that he would hammer with one hand and if it got tired or if it was more convenient, he'd switch to the other hand without even really noticing.

He was a bit of a picky eater.  He didn't eat any sort of poultry.  I think that was as a result of being a travelling preacher during the depression, when you could always kill a chicken to feed a guest.  As well, having esophageal cancer meant that he had difficulty swallowing and for many years lived off the really healthy milkshakes that Grandma made for him.  However, he also had a nervous stomach, and would be sick to his stomach before every time he preached.  It's really amazing then to think that he preached all the time from his early teens to his death; many times preaching 3 or 4 times on a Sunday. He was also very shy - it was very difficult for him to preach; but he really felt that he was called to do so.  For many years he also preached on the radio - he converted many people not only through the gospel meetings that he held but also through his radio preaching.

Grandpa really knew his Bible. I remember one time at Heritage Camp when we were all memorizing James 1.  It was my job to copy out the chapter so that it could be posted on a tree, so that as we were doing our chores or whatever, we could learn the next verse.  I copied it out and took it to Grandpa to show him.  He didn't have a Bible in hand, but he read down it, and pointed out that I had missed a verse - and then quoted the missing verse to me! Grandpa and Grandma read the Bible together at the breakfast table every morning, and he spent many hours in the word - reading it, and studying it.

Grandpa loved and was loved by many, many people.  When I first started teaching, I met many older people who told me how they had been converted by my grandfather and felt that they owed a great deal to him.  He was really good at maturing people in Christ.  He had a great deal of wisdom.  Although he was limited by his poor health for much of his later years, he didn't let it slow him down.

Aunt Rose

Although she was not a blood relation, Aunt Rose was definitely family.  She started boarding with my Granddad and Grandmother Orr when they lived in Moose Jaw, when Aunt Verna was in her early teens and the rest of the family was in their later teens or early 20's.  My Grandmother told me many years later, that it wasn't a convenient time to take a boarder, particularly a boarder who was crippled by arthritis, but she couldn't say no.  She quickly became part of the family, and when the Orrs moved to Saskatoon and Biggar and Wawota - Aunt Rose moved with them.  In fact, by the time they moved to Biggar - they designed the house with her suite set up for her disabilities.  They used essentially the same house plan when they moved to Wawota.

I really don't remember her walking, aside from a step here or there.  I was young enough that in my memories she was in a wheel chair.  However, she did hold a job in Moose Jaw and in Saskatoon, and wasn't restricted to the wheel chair until much later.  When they lived in Biggar, I remember she had a pet turtle, and if we were really good, she'd let us feed it tiny pieces of liver.

One clear memory I have from Biggar was one time when I was left with her (I think I wasn't feeling very well) and everyone else was out.  I wanted to bake a cake - and she said ok, but I had to go next door and borrow some eggs. I was shy, but she made it my responsibility.  After all, if I wanted to cook, I was responsible for borrowing the ingredients.  Cake to Aunt Rose, meant Angel Food - made from scratch.  We mixed the whole thing up, and I recall climbing up on a stool to peer in the oven to see it bake - and jumping off the stool - and the cake fell.  Aunt Rose was more than a little disgusted with me.

Most of my memories are from when they lived in Wawota though.  Aunt Rose was in and out of the hospital in Saskatoon because of recurring problems with ulcers in her legs that wouldn't heal, and in addition my parents served as respite care for my grandparents and she'd stay with us for the month of August most years.  I was Aunt Rose's personal care attendant.  I would help her dress, count out her pills, do her hair, dress her sores, bathe her feet and put ointment on them, etc.  She paid me the princely sum of $5 a week to do this - which was quite a bit of money, as far as I was concerned.  I was in my early teens.  More than that though, we were friends.  I'd push her the three blocks down to the corner store and we'd take turns treating each other to fresh fruit.  I'd tease her and she'd tease me back.  She was kind of ageless to me - although she was a contemporary of my grandparents, I never realized that she had an age - she just was.  I planned that when I grew up, I'd need to have a house with a bedroom on the main floor to provide a home for Aunt Rose because my grandparents couldn't look after her forever.  (I now live in a house with all the bedrooms on the main floor, Aunt Rose).

She was incredibly patient.  She spent hours and hours reading stories to my younger brothers and sister - mostly Dick and Jane books.  We had a set of old readers that had been discarded from a school and Grandma had given to us.  The younger ones loved those stories - especially the ones with food in them - and would get Aunt Rose to read to them for hours and hours at a time.  That's one of my strongest memories - she was restricted to bed rest, in the hopes that the ulcers on her feet and legs would heal up, so she'd have a child or two on each side of her on the bed and she'd be reading to them.

She was tremendously crippled by arthritis, and must have been in constant pain, but I never recall her ever complaining.  She could only stand to move from the bed to her wheel chair or from the wheel chair to the toilet; her hands were so crippled that in order to sign a cheque we had to tape her fingers together and tape the pen to it.  Her feet were tremendously clubbed, and we had to be very careful to put ointment between the toes and keep them scrupulously clean or they'd get infected.  Most of the time she had open ulcers on her feet and legs.  However, she never talked about her disabilities - only about her abilities.  I remember one time she came back from the hospital and showed off her stick, that the occupational therapy department had made for her at her request.  It was about 2 feet long, had a hook at one end, and a really strong magnet at the other.  She used it to open drawers, grab clothing off hangars, etc.  She was quite pleased with it and showed off how if she dropped an article of clothing on the floor, for example, she could retrieve it herself with her stick, instead of asking for help.

She was also incredibly generous.  In addition to giving her time, she also donated regularly to a number of different causes.   She lived on a small fixed income, but she regularly helped to support a children's home in the southern states somewhere, for example. I only knew because I would write out the cheques for her and then tape her fingers together so that she could sign them.  She was quite stern with me that I couldn't tell anyone - that how she chose to give her money was no one else's concern.  She hated having her picture taken and it was quite difficult to find her in any pictures.  The photo above was the only one I could find - and I cropped her out of a group photo.

She hated garlic - and could detect it in very small quantities.  She was of German Mennonite background and could speak high and low German as well as English.  She taught me to count to 10 in German.  She had a difficult childhood and developed arthritis in her early 20's - but she never spoke much about herself.  She was far more interested in you.

She loved us - and we loved her.  Towards the end of her life, when she was in the hospital in Wawota, she shared a room with a senile elderly woman who wailed and cried all day long in a loud voice, "Lord Jesus, come and take me.  I don't want to be here!  Please, take me home!"  It must have been very hard to have such a room mate, but she didn't complain.  I recall one time, Sengpeth and Gina had come up to visit with me (they were preschoolers) and Aunt Rose asked if they would like a candy.  Yes, they would, and she pulled open her drawer to take some out, only to discover the candy box was empty! "Oh, that's ok," she said, "we'll borrow some candies from Granny, she'll never know."  Right at that time, Granny spoke up and said, "Be sure your sins will find you out!" and we all laughed and laughed.

I named my daughter in part after Aunt Rose.  She was an important part of my life and she taught me so much.