Partial Book Draft

  

Daddy's Hands

While some things in my childhood certainly weren't all they could be, I also had the best Dad imaginable.

Dad had me pretty late in life. He was 53 when I was born. Mom was 42. Dad was in the middle in his family. Mom was the youngest in hers. The very odd situation that arose from that was that all my first cousins were old enough to be my Aunts and Uncles. My second cousins were my age.

John Wesley Bowes was born April 22, 1913 in Deacon/Traemore Ontario. The family moved to Antrim when he was 2 years old. At 16 he rented his first farm. He bought our farm on the Queens Line near Foresters Falls in 1939 when he would have been 26 years old.

In 1941 his barn was struck by lightning and burnt to the ground. He was knocked out for a moment in the house by the strike that came through the wires from the barn to what he was handling in the house at the time. Likely the radio or a toaster or tea kettle, but I don't remember if he told me.

A new barn was built as soon as possible. It was very large and fully modern with high bank concrete walls. Also, he bought his first tractor: a brand new 1941 Cockshutt 60 Row Crop. He went with Henry Dittburner, the Cockshutt dealer in Foresters Falls, to the Smiths Falls factory to pick it up. Henry had a tow bar to tow it home with his car. They soon found out that the narrow front end of the 6o was extremely unforgiving to the car on a tow bar as it jerked on the bumper with every imperfection on the road. They switched to a rope with Dad riding the 60. After a very hairy ride, they made it home. Dad said the transmission was so hot you could fry bacon on it. Dad used to take the 60 back to his parent's farm in Kinburn behind the location of the old Antrim Truck Stop in the Fall to help them get their plowing done. Early 4 speed model 60's like Dad's had no road gear. The Owner's Manual listed its top speed as 6.44 miles per hour. Dad's was a little bit faster than that because it had the rare optional 38 inch rear wheels and tires, but it was still very slow. Driving the 40 miles from the one farm to the other would have still taken nearly 6 hours. By the time he got there, they had to drive him back home to do his chores. That little tractor was only 18 horsepower and a wispy 1999 pounds according to the Owner's Manual. He bought a new Cockshutt 2 furrow plow with 12 inch bottoms to go with it.

It is too difficult to put all of the following in chronological order due to the complexity and the dynamic, fast paced unfolding of it, but I will do the best I can. I will try to point out timelines if they blur, proceed, pursue, or supersede one another. The following is the work of a big, powerful, determined, resourceful, seemingly boundless energy man in his prime of youth, health and strength, who really could get things done.

One thing Dad did in his new barn was install one of the first DeLaval vacuum line milking systems in the area. It was quite an expense, and his own Dad was dead set against it, but he changed his mind after he saw the ease and speed with which my Dad got his milking done.

Dad was extremely resourceful. He accomplished things with so little that I can hardly even imagine it. One major thing he did have going for him at that time was the tight knitted-ness of the farming community. Neighbours worked together and helped each other in those days. You could get a lot more done for a lot less with the help of your friends. I guess there was a pretty good grapevine in those days in the General Stores, the equipment dealers, the barber shops, the railway stations, and the hockey rinks, and Dad must have availed himself of them to get things done. Dad loved to play hockey. I'll try to get to that later.

When Dad wanted to build his granary, he somehow found out about one someone wanted torn down elsewhere. He dismantled it and moved it to the farm in large pieces. He had an erection day bee, and neighbours showed up from all around to help. Dad had already poured the piers for the granary to stand on; elevated it was less likely to have vermin intrusion. They set the floor, likely in four big pieces, on the piers, then erected and secured the walls, and finally it was time to set the roof in place. It, again, was in pieces, and he had sourced long timbers or poles to go from the ground to the top plate of the wall to slide them up on. He likely used those same members to get the roof pieces down when he disassembled them. Several men were each to use a pole to shove a section of the roof up into place. They were all ready to go, with men standing on the wall plate ready to receive and secure it. One of the neighbours present as ground crew was rather well known for just never stopping talking. He liked to talk more than work. I can't remember anyone's names in this story, and I wouldn't share them if I did out of respect, but we'll call him, 'Bud'.

In typical fashion, Bud was standing there, happily talking away about some story completely unrelated to the job at hand, his pole standing up beside him as a prop. In full form, yabbering away, one of the other neighbours known to have quite the humourously honed tongue, interrupted him by saying, "BUD: At least put your pole up against the roof, to make it LOOK like you're pushing." Apparently that slowed things down even more as the whole crew basically fell apart in uproarious laughter. They had to try to stop laughing, catch their breath, recompose themselves, and get back to the job.

Bud was likely reminded about that moment for the rest of his life.

You would never know that big granary wasn't entirely built on site to look at it, the job was done so well. I didn't know myself until I was in my late teens or early twenties and Dad told me. I never saw a seam.

The next, and crowning piece to the puzzle was a silo. A master at sourcing something useful that someone else no longer had use for, Dad bought a still excellent condition used wood silo somewhere between Beachburg and Westmeath. It was amazingly taken down in one single piece; carefully tipped and lowered from a standing position to a horizontal one on a large trailer and towed by a highway tractor. This was around 1946 or 1947.

As the tractor trailer with the completely intact silo slowly made its way down Main Street Beachburg an elderly lady saw it go by in front of her home. It would for sure have been a pretty imposing sight to see go by, filling the picture window for a fair period of time as it carefully crawled by along the street with vehicles parked on both sides. Apparently that lady thought it was VERY imposing because she put her hands to her face and exclaimed, "OHH, IT'S THE BOMB, THE BOMB!"

You have to take into consideration the timing of that scene. A world-changing event was still very, very fresh on everyone's mind. However, with the 1.9 BILLION dollar budget of the Manhattan Project - which would be about 34 billion dollars today, adjusted to inflation - it would be reasonable to assume they would have turned their final product out of something other than wood planks and cedar shingles. And I'm not sure why they'd have it in Beachburg.

As a side note, I forget for certain, but I believe had that lady lived long enough, she would have become Dad's Great Mother-in-Law or my Great Grandmother on the Prescott side.

There is a black and white 8 x 11 picture here somewhere of the farm back around 1950-1954 at harvest time. It is an aerial view of the barn and silo and granary and the lower part of the farm, taken at the perfect angle and absolutely the most perfect time. Behind the barn it shows the 44 belted up to Dad's new George White Nº 6 threshing mill, and the 60 hooked to two loaded wagons of stooks, ready to be threshed, and the conjoining tracks in the grain field behind the barn from drawing them in. If it had been in colour it would have been positively gorgeous with the red and yellow tractors, the golden grain field and loaded wagons, the galvanized roof of the barn, and the still green grass surrounding it all. That was approaching the pinnacle of Dad's farming career. A nearly new barn, new, top quality equipment all around, and a bountiful harvest, all in one PERFECTLY timed photo. I don't know what happened to it. I haven't seen it for years but I so, so wish I could find it. It was always precious to me.

If God would grant us that in Heaven, there's a lot of riches other people would desire that I would gladly give up to be a new part of that scene right there.

In 1950, Dad made his biggest equipment purchase: a brand new Massey-Harris 44 Standard tractor with full crown fenders complete with a new Super Six loader, a new Massey-Harris 3 furrow plow, a new Massey-Harris 8 foot set of discs, and a new Massey-Harris one way disc plow. I may have forgotten something somewhere. A fully mounted post hole digger may have been of that package or came later. The 44, besides being over twice the weight and approaching 3 times the horsepower of the 60, boasted something that made helping out on the Bowes home farm in Kinburn a lot easier: a road gear. It was nearly twice as fast on the road as the 60. And he had a much bigger plow to boot. He would load the plow on a hay wagon and could drive down after milking, have lunch, and get in a few hours of plowing before they had to drive him back for his evening milking. The new tractor shed that went with his new barn had two bays; a tractor like the 44 was intended to fill that second bay long before it ever actually arrived.

Henry Dittburner had a tractor demonstration day at Dad's farm, showing off the new Cockshutt 40 with a 5 tine chisel plow. Dad tried it but just wasn't convinced. What held him back was, he had already seen new Cockshutt 40's in the repair shop at Dittburner's for loose rear wheel hubs. One day, he happened to be in the shop when the mechanics were working on a Massey-Harris 30, replacing a rear wheel seal. They were having a heck of a time getting the hub off to replace the seal. The one mechanic said to Dad, "We can't keep the wheels on the Cockshutt's, and we can't get them off the Massey-Harris's!" That was it right there. Dad was sold. He went to O'Neil's, the Massey-Harris dealership in Renfrew, and the rest was history. He still stuck with Dittburner's for their New Holland and other Cockshutt products and parts and supplies and repairs, and bought 2 brand new hay balers from them. The first new baler was a New Holland 66 equipped with its own Wisconsin engine for the Cockshutt 60, then a much more modern new Super Hayliner 69 PTO driven baler for the 44. Other than New Holland balers, his farm was pretty equally split between Cockshutt and Massey-Harris equipment. In those days, if John Bowes walked into their dealership, the proprietor sat up quick.

1955 brought an even larger purchase: another farm. Dad bought 'the Wasmond place' on the Blind Line up the hill at the back of his home farm. It became our 'Back Place'. It added another full 100 acres to his operation. The 44 may have seemed like overkill for a 100 acre farm at the time he bought it, but now it had its boots full. Dad thought things through.

When someone had a tough threshing that their Cockshutt 30 or Massey-Harris 30, or Farmall H or McCormick W4 couldn't handle, they called in Dad to bring the 44 to the job. Once the belt was thrown on the big 44, it would wring out the mill with all available hands pitching and get the job done.

When Haley Industries was being built, because Dad had one of the only front end loaders in the area, he was contracted to move tons upon tons of sand and gravel to help with construction. He likely paid a good portion of the price of his new tractor and loader and equipment with that contract. I wouldn't be surprised if there are pictures of him on the 44 on site somewhere during that project.

In 1962, Dad married Cassie Viola Vivian Prescott (Vivian) from Beachburg. She was the youngest of her family.

A new 2 story, 2 bath, 3 bedroom, T-shaped frame house with a hip roof was built directly across the driveway from the log house. The kitchen and living room were large and open. Across from the kitchen was a den. Both bathrooms faced Southeast and overlooked the driveway and down the road. The master bedroom faced Northwest and up the road. There was a full basement and a forced air oil furnace heating system.

On Dec 6, 1964, Dad and Mom welcomed their firstborn, Paula Elizabeth Marie Bowes (Polly) into the world.

Exactly one year, 4 months, and 26 days later, on May 2, 1966, yours truly, Daniel Stephen John Bowes entered the world.

And, well, everything pretty much went downhill from there.

Dad always said if he had a son he was going to name him Danny. I may have arrived a little late, and was delivered a little flawed, and grew up a tad shorter than anyone, including myself, expected, but here I am anyway. My first middle name, Stephen, came from Dad and Mom's brother-in-law, I think. My second middle name, John, I expect should be rather self explanatory by now.

Danny Bowes. Signature: Danny SJ Bowes. Even my driver's license is Danny. Dad wanted a Danny; he got a Danny. If I live to be 99, I'll still be Danny, not Dan and not Daniel because that's what Dad wanted.

In my childhood many new people mistook my Dad for being my Grandfather. My Grandfather on Dad's side was 98 when I was born. My Grandmother was 97. There's a picture of them in what would be now very antique wheelchairs, with blankets covering their laps, holding me as a baby. They were both gone by the time I was a year old. My Grandfather on my Mom's side died in 1945, 21 years before I was born. My Grandmother on her side died in 1959, 7 years before I was born. I never knew anything of the joy of grandparents because I never had any in memory. Virtual Centurions when you were born does not allow for lasting bonds and memories to be made.

Dad may have been older, but he was tall and fit and immensely powerful. At 65 years old he could stand beside a fencepost, put one hand on it, and just vault right over the fence. He could walk alongside a wagon and stab a bale of hay with a pitchfork and put it up on top of a 5 tier load. All day if necessary.

One day Jimmy Ferguson from down the road at Ferguson's General Store was with us after school while we were doing chores. We were in the barn, and Dad came in and said that a calf had got out of the barnyard into the hay field. Because I knew what I was doing and could be left to it, he took Jim with him to round it up. I went about my chores cleaning and feeding younger calves and pigs. A while later, Jim came back into the barn. His mouth was just hanging open. I asked him what the deal was. He said, "We got the calf in..."

"Yeah, so?"

"Your Dad just picked that calf up and set it over the fence!"

"Yeah, so?"

"So?! That calf weighs 325 pounds!"

I thought nothing of it. I'd seen him do all kinds of things like that all those first 11 or 12 years of my life. I thought any grown man could do that. I grew up to be strong and muscular when I was young and could easily pick up and carry a 150 pound tractor wheel weight in each hand from about 19 to into my mid-30's, but there's no possible way I could wrap my arms around and pick up a 325 pound squirming calf and set it over a fence. No way Jose.

I remember one time washing up with Dad after doing some hot summer afternoon chores. The farmer's wash: strip to the waist and use a face cloth and soap and water to get cleaned up. I was about 7. Dad said to me, "Look at your broad shoulders; you're going to be a big strong young man like your Daddy when you grow up." He said that with obvious pride in his voice. I did grow up strong, but I was shy of him by 5 or 6 inches and 40 - 45 pounds. At my peak I was a compact 190-195 pounds of solid muscle, but Dad would have been 230 or 235. I got my height from Mom's side, or maybe a couple on Dad's side. Or maybe from fetal alcohol syndrome. I don't know for sure, but I sure wished I was the man he was.

My male first cousins held Dad in very high esteem as he mentored several of them in their younger years. They knew what he was capable of. Even though they all had about 8 other uncles on my Dad's side, and other uncles on their dad's side, one of them proudly said one time, "I only have one uncle: Uncle John!" I was so proud of that, because I had him for a DAD. That cousin, Ronnie, could put 300 pounds over his head at 19 years old, but considered himself a weakling compared to Dad.

At 80 years old and past, Dad could still run all day chasing cattle. I don't mean shuffle quickly, I mean RUN in long strides. All day if need be. He was just naturally athletic and kept in shape by a lot of hard work and strenuous exercise.

We had a hired man one summer when I was about 7 or 8. He was a handsome, strapping young man of 19. I thought he was big and strong, but he couldn't crank our Massey-Harris 44 to start it. Dad had to do that for him. His name was Jimmy too. He lived in the outskirts of Beachburg. I really liked him and looked up to him. I followed him around a little too much for his liking at times and he told me so, but then felt bad for it and told me I was welcome to accompany him on his rounds and even bought me an ice cream at the Four Corners as an apology. That just made him cooler in my eyes. One time, when he wasn't able to perform something, he had to ask Dad to do it for him. I later asked him why he wasn't able to do it. He was perfectly fit and strong for his age. He said to me, "Danny, you don't understand; your Dad is a VERY strong man." By the time I was Jimmy's age when he was with us, being my father's son, I cranked that tractor with one hand.

One afternoon Dad came into the house holding his leg. He said the 44 kicked back and blew the crank out of his hand. The crank hit him inside his right thigh. He didn't normally stand that close, but somehow that time he did. He pulled down his pants and there was already a BIG, mean, ugly, blood-filled bruise spreading as we watched inside his thigh. It bent the crank. Massey-Harris cranks were about 1/2 or 5/8 inch cold rolled steel. It would have broken anyone else's leg, but it got bent hitting Dad's. Only his muscle mass and bone density saved him from a broken leg that day. And he was about 64 at the time. I would have been in a cast for 6-8 weeks if that happened to me when I was 30, much less in my 60's.

Unlike Dad, suddenly and unexpectedly for me, a fair bit of my musculature melted off of me in my early 40's. Then, I guess due to that, I blew out a major hernia in my early 50's. The convalescence from that took a bunch more. I don't know if I could lift one tractor wheel weight now without ending up in the hospital, much less two. I sure didn't see that coming when I was younger. Dad would have easily picked up 300 pounds well into his 70's. Maybe 80. He was a nearly boundless energy, powerhouse of a man.

We were poor farmers when I was young. Dad stopped milking cows when the Quota System came in, and with the cows went the steady paycheque they brought.  There was no more hayday for the Bowes farm without the milk cows. There was no more new equipment, new buildings, or new properties without that steady income to pay for them. Now it was a yearly cheque for the livestock in the Fall, and whatever construction work off the farm Dad got building or repairing barns, machine sheds, and corn cribs. That was tough sledding, and I think it took Dad some time to get used to it after 30 years of such a reliable income. If Dad made a big mistake in his life - besides having me - I think that was it. The free quota he was eligible for when the quota system came in would have been worth about four hundred thousand dollars when I was 20 years old, plus the regular income all along. I loved cows, and probably would have really liked the routine and sense of purpose of milking. A new tractor every now and then wouldn't have hurt my feelings any, either. 

Anyway, none of that happened, and Dad struck out down a much, much rougher and tougher road. I did the same myself later. He didn't like the government intervention when the Quota System came out, and I didn't like the government intervention when the Farm Start Program came out and wouldn't take part in it, either. Like dad, like son, I guess. I don't regret not taking part in the Farm Start Program, but I do kind of regret Dad not taking part in the Quota System. Funny how that works, eh? I think I really would have loved the prestige of new tractors and equipment and everything else that went with it. But keeping up with the Jones's is a hamster wheel you might not be able to get out of until you've lost pace and are caught and spinning around in it yourself getting all battered and bruised from the ride. Maybe Dad made the right decision after all.

So...

We remained relatively poor farmers all Dad's life, but we were really poor when I was a kid. We just plain had no spare money, but Dad did everything in his power to see to it that we had toys to play with. My first and only tricycle came from the Ross Township dump, and I'm not ashamed to say so and you'll soon see why. It was a dull red, with an oval silver medallion on the front post and silver hubcaps on the back wheels. It was thrown out because the needle bearings were gone in the wheels. I think the medallion on the front post actually said something like, 'Needle Bearing Equipped'. Dad took them all apart and made new needles for the bearings with hand tools in the machine shed. Painstakingly, one by one he made the new needles - maybe out of penny nails; I don't know - and greased them and put them in place and reassembled the wheels. He did that for all 3 of them. The bearings he made rolled perfectly and flawlessly for the entire time I rode that trike. And I rode it a lot between the house and the barn. And beyond. It was a great trike and it didn't squeak or squeal like others because of the care and effort Dad put into it. Who did something like that for their kids?

Dad made a ride on semi-trailer for me for in the house. From plywood and a sturdy dually toy dump truck rear axle, all salvaged from the dump, he built a solid ride on toy that easily endured the rigours of a little boy's play. He used a double furniture castor wheel for the front so it turned on a dime. Before he rebuilt that tricycle for me, he built that ride on trailer for me. It was strong enough for Polly and I both to ride on at the same time. I still have it in my basement. If I lose everything I have gained in this life, I will try to hang onto that. 

Dad taught Polly and I how to skate as little wee tykes by spreading big, thick sheets of cardboard he got somewhere on our big kitchen floor and having us learn on that. It worked really well, and we weren't heavy enough to cut through it on our skates. So we learned to skate in the heated comfort of our own home. He thought of everything, he did. He was just the best Dad a kid could ever have. 

There are countless wonderful memories with my Dad. I am going to try to stick mostly to ones when I was a kid; my developing years. 

Winter is always a challenge in farmland in Ontario. Anything that lightens the overall effect is a good thing. Hardy, outdoorsman Dad taught us winter pastimes like skating and sliding. He made big piles of snow in the back yard with the 44 and its loader for us to slide down, make snow castles on, or snow caves in. We also trudged behind him in the snow in the bush to cut our own Christmas tree each year. My all time favorite wintertime memory of him, though, is the time he took us for a winter cookout in the back of the farm. 

Dad was a master snow walker. Fit and strong, with legs as thick and powerful as his upper body, he took big strides and could tromp through deep snow in the open or in the bush for miles on end. As always, he relished a physical challenge, and he wanted to instill that in us. He stuffed his army surplus backpack full of all the things he thought we would need, and set out. Polly and I were little squirts, in that Lucy and Linus stage, so he walked slow, making good tracks for us to blunder through, from footprint to footprint. We slowly made our way out to the back of the farm, the fresh, cold air filling our lungs with the exertion of our progress. Finally reaching our destination near the back field, we set up camp. Well, Dad did, while we watched him do his thing. He shoveled out a firepit area, complete with snow benches on either side, and made a campfire. 

In those days, long before the commonplaceness of excavators making short work of the complete removal of trees, fence lines in farmland were populated by cedar stumps. They weren't at all suitable for making fence posts, much less lumber, and were even too gnarly for firewood. And, of course, when they first came out of the ground, they were too dirty for firewood, anyway. So, they got set along the fencerows, to hopefully rot away over the course of maybe a hundred years. Or two hundred. They just didn't rot. There's a reason for that. Sitting in the fencerows, with the rain relentlessly washing them off over the course of the years, made them clean. What made them IDEAL for campfires, though, was their extremely high fatwood content. Fatwood is the settling of sap in an evergreen tree such as pine or cedar. It forms terpene; the base of turpentine. That terpene naturally preserves the wood. There is a rich, orange hue to the wood when it is cross sectioned. And an odour of turpentine if you sniff it after cutting. It is extremely flammable, easy to light, burns hot, and gives off a rich, heavy, wonderful odour while burning. A couple of cedar stumps was always the preferred way of starting a fire to burn brush. It burned long and hot enough to get greener wood going, and could be lit on fire even when wet. 

So, Dad tromped over to the fenceline, and selected a couple of choice chunks of cedar stump, and started our campfire. He showed us how to feather wood with a hunting knife to get it to start with only a match. We warmed ourselves by the wonderful, cozy fire, and had hot dogs and hot chocolate out of his hunting thermos. The rich, delicious aroma of the burning cedar stumps filled the air around us as the smoke ascended in swirls from the eddies of the rising heat. The flames snapped and crackled wonderfully, and occasionally we would even see licks of little green flames as the terpene in the wood gassed off. We dried our mitts on sticks over the fire, drank the last of our refreshments, and then it was time to head back as the sun was soon going to set, the air was getting colder, and the wolves came out of the bush after dark. I don't remember the whole long trudge back, and I think it's because I got too tired trying to get my short little legs over the bridge from one of Dad's big tracks to the next. My money would be on him carrying me the last half of the way while I dozed in the crook of his arm draped over his shoulder from all the excitement of our adventure and the exertion and all the fresh, clean, cold country winter air. That was about 53 years ago, and I can still put myself at that fire on the snow bench Dad made with him sitting on the other side of the fire to watch us and coach us, without even closing my eyes to imagine it. 

Don't ever negate your time, no matter how ordinary, with your young children as wasted. You never know what simple activity may brand itself INDELIBLY on their little psyches and be effortless for them to recall with you in the middle of it when you yourself are long gone. That is how that mid-winter campfire day is for me. I can even smell and feel the texture of Dad's army backpack as I remember our cookout and trek, making it most likely that I was sleeping, exhausted, on the way back over his big, powerful  shoulder. Maybe Polly was dozing on the other one, if she couldn't make it either. 

Fast forwarding from there 30 years, he made the best Grandfather, too. He lavished the same love on Kelsey as he did on Polly and I. She was his Crowning Achievement in life; a GRANDCHILD!, and he loved her and doted on her with an intensity that belied his advancing age. His face just lit up to even talk about her. After so many years, Dad once again had a 'Little Pet'. He delighted as much as she did in her squeals of delight at a new toy or a new sight. He lived a whole new toddlerhood and its accompanying Voyage of Discovery, through her. It was amazing to watch. Enthralling. The exact same, all-encompassing, unconditional, never-ending love that warmed my sister and I to the core of our souls made Kelsey feel like a little Princess whenever she was around her beloved "Gampa!" "GAMPA, GAMPA, GAMPA!" was her exclamation each time she first saw him. There was an older man, but the same loving heart, soft voice, and kind eyes. In the picture of them together, his pride and delight in her is evident for any and all to see. She was the apple of his eye for sure. He was 88 years old at the time, still driving tractors, farming, doing chores, and loving life, especially his precious little Kelsey. 

Dad just loved putting Kelsey to bed or being there when she was put to bed. She wasn't a difficult baby or toddler by any stretch of the concept, but she didn't like going to bed. She wanted to be up with us. We'd get her changed and powdered and in her little jammies, and then it was beddybye time. When we'd put her down in her crib, she'd bounce right back up, and put her arms up over her head to be picked up, and exclaim, "UPFF, UPFF, UPFF!" That just melted Dad's heart. There would be a few cycles of that until drowsiness took over and staying down in the soft, clean blankets seemed more appealing than the effort of standing up. The innocent, carefree abandon of the slumber of an infant or toddler would take over and, arms back over her head in complete and total, wet noodle relaxation, she would be off to explore and dance and cavort in a Little Girlie Wonderland where everything was princesses and flowers and rainbows and all the animals were small and soft and furry and round... 

After getting her settled, and going back downstairs, Dad would chuckle, and say, "UPFF, UPFF, UPFF!" And then chuckle some more. He just lived for that.

I had to go there. I just had to. Sharing my Dad with my Daughter was the most rewarding thing I could ever imagine in my life. She needed to know that kind of uncompromised, unconditional, unlimited Love. That's what formed me into who I am, and I wanted it for her, too. But that's jumping the gun. I need more time with my Dad when we were both so much younger. While Innocence is the most precious state we have, Time is the most precious commodity we have. Back to my own childhood we go:

One bright, warm September day when I came home from school, Dad said he had something I "might want to see". He took me to where I played with my farm and construction toys in the shade of the farm's old chicken coop. My eyes shot open wide when I saw, standing standing there proudly and stately, the big, new, hip-roofed scale model barn he had built for me that day! It was made to perfect scale for my toys! It was just beautiful. It had a real tin roof and opening doors. None of the other boys I went to school with had that. They may have had more and fancier toys, but none of them had a handmade, scale model BARN to go with them. He wasn't done. No sir. Dad was never done. Then he built a scale model machine shed to go with that. I had a Farmstead like nobody else. Let me tell you, not having money can have its advantages. 

No: Being rich in the Dad the Good Lord provided for me is where all my advantage in life came from. He created rich, full, abundant, cherished memories for me in spite of the poverty around us at the time. Money is no substitute or even competition for Love and don't you ever forget that critical fact.

Life sure left its marks on my Dad. Dad had a good friend and neighbour, Bill Oates, that would hardly have hurt a fly, but he sure hurt Dad - twice. Once Dad was holding a big spike for him to drive. He missed the spike and hit Dad's index finger so hard he burst it open like a boiled sausage. Apparently neither learning from their mistake, Dad held a stake for a concrete form for him with his boot... and he missed again - with a sledge this time - and blew Dad's right big toe open to match his right index finger. There wasn't a third time for some reason. Dad never held it against him, though. He wouldn't have said a bad word about Bill at gunpoint. But you can bet your boots it sucked each time. Every time Dad's meaty right index finger came into view, the squiggly pink line scar down the middle of it was evident. He never seemed to have any trouble using it though. He had to point it at me a fair bit over the years.

Dad contracted Bill to combine our grain each year with his immaculately kept New Holland 975 combine. Knowing how much I loved equipment, Bill invited me to ride with him in the cab. Each year when he would show up, as he would be combining the second or third hopper load, and we came up by him with the 60 and the gravity box, he'd throw open the door and wave for me to join him. I was always helping Dad get everything set up at the elevator for the first and maybe second hopper load. We usually had to dig a shallow hole for the elevator and then use some 2 inch lumber for the front wheel of the wagon to get the gravity box chute over the elevator hopper. It was a bit fiddly, but we'd get it. The 60 was able to turn on a dime, so it could draw the wagon in over the elevator after the front wheel passed it. Dad and Bill must have had a signal as to when I was no longer needed, because then came the combine door being thrown open and that welcome arm beckoning me to join him. Riding in the combine with Bill was one of the high points for the year for me. He good naturedly answered all my eager questions about operation as we went around the field. I spent quite a few hours over the years with him in that quiet, comfortable cab. I really should have been helping Dad. When the hopper would be full and Dad had the shuttle run routine down, they might stop for a few minutes and talk. "Ya, good looking crop this year, John". Bill was a compact man with a kind face and a constant twinkle in his eye. His well kept dairy farm was a few down the other side of the road from us. He walked with a hard working man's stooped, quick gait. He had an exclamation that seemed to be all his own: "By gorrr!" Some people referred to him as 'By Gor Bill'. I never really cared for it because, even though it wasn't meant in offense - because there just wasn't anything offensive about him - there was just so much more to Bill than that. Him and Dad had such a good working relationship.

One time a local loudmouth alcoholic bully found out that his favorite target was at Bill's place during milking. He drove there, walked right into the barn uninvited, and punched the older man and knocked him down right in front of Bill. Everyone has a limit, even soft spoken, kind hearted Bill. He grabbed a pitchfork with both hands and pointed it at him and told him if he made one more move he'd run him through and to get out of his barn right now and never come back. When I heard that story - and I'm sure every word of it is true - my admiration for him hit a new level and remained there.

One Spring Dad got behind in cropping, so he called on Bill to help him catch up. Bill came with his big Case 830 Western Diesel and 12 foot disc after milking. I could see him back there, after dark, the eagle eyes of the 830's headlights sweeping over the field as he turned a ridge. The lights no longer worked on our 44, so Dad was limited to only daylight hours of operation. Whenever Bill had a construction project, he always called on Dad because Dad was such a good carpenter. They remained friends with a mutual respect for each other until Dad's passing. And Bill always spoke well of him thereafter. Bill was a genuine Country Gentleman and I deeply lamented his passing when it came too, as all of ours will.

Getting back to life leaving its mark on Dad, when he was younger, he was chopping frozen silage off of the walls of the silo with a broadaxe. Working up quite a sweat, he drove the axe into the wall and sat down with his feet out the silo door to cool off. The axe fell out of the silage and imbedded itself deep into his right shoulder parallel to his shoulder blade. It left a recessed scar about one inch wide and 3½ inches long in the shape of the heel of the axe as it dropped onto him. I can't even imagine how much that had to hurt. He wore that and the two scars Bill inadvertently helped him to, and others, for the rest of his life.

During the construction of Ken Eckford's barn, he had the most gruesome accident of our time together. The crew was putting the tin on the roof on the West side of the barn. Dad worked with Henry Tabbert when Henry had a barn or machine shed or corn crib to put up. Dad had come down the ladder off of the roof to fetch something. He was going back up when someone at the peak lost their grip on a sheet of steel. I heard my Uncle Charlie yell from above, "WUP WUP WUP!!!" That was always his alarm sound. There were other mixed yells of "HEADS UP!!!" and "WATCH OUT!!!" As Dad was going up the ladder, the wayward sheet was coming for him. Too late to jump, he flattened himself against the ladder and swung his head and upper body to the left side beyond the ladder and the oncoming sheet to protect his neck. That probably saved his life. The edge of the steel with its weight and momentum hitting him in the throat area would have caused impossible to survive wounds. Because he was still hanging on to the ladder and the sheet came right down it, it went under the skin of the back of his right arm below the wrist. It sliced a thick layer of skin and flesh off of his arm to the elbow and flipped it back onto his shoulder like a banana peel as it shot past him. I was on the ground nearby and saw that happen with my own eyes. He dropped off the ladder to the ground and flopped the big reddish sheet of hide back onto his arm and held it there. A man with less muscle on his arm would have been shaved right to the bone.

My heart was in my throat. Men poured off of the roof like water and gathered around him. I was scared stiff. They took him to the farmhouse with three or four around him, supporting him, I guess because they were afraid he might go into shock. Then most of them came back out, looking pretty grim at what they had seen. I think Henry and Uncle Charlie stayed in with him. They wouldn't let me in the house. They told me he would be alright, but I thought, "How could he POSSIBLY be alright?" I knew what I saw from less than 15 feet away.

This time Dad was hurt bad and I didn't see how he could be okay.

I paced around frantically wondering what was happening in there. I thought sure there'd be the sound of an ambulance siren in the distance, but it never came. What about blood loss? How could they stop the bleeding of such a massive wound? I had seen Dad get hurt before, but never anything like that. In under an hour, he came back out, back to the barn, with a huge bandage with blood seeping through it wrapped around his arm from his hand to his elbow. He was obviously in pain but he patted me on the shoulder and looked me in the eye and smiled and said something like, "I'll be alright, Little Man. Don't you worry." And then he climbed the ladder and went back to work! Yes. I am dead serious.

Dad was for sure one unbelievably tough hunk of rawhide. If that doesn't tell you so I don't know what will. That would have been the end of the workweek for almost anyone else even if it was Monday or Tuesday. I can't picture doing anything with all that wounded flesh on the back of his arm, even tightly bandaged up, but he did. Dad would have been about 64 years old at the time, because I'm pretty sure I was 11. They must have done an absolutely exceptionally good job of cleaning both sides of his wound because I don't remember any scarring at all even though the area was so frighteningly large.

Dad handmade my first softball bat. He didn't have a lathe. There wasn't a power tool of any sort on the Bowes farm in those days. He made it with only a handsaw, a wood rasp and sandpaper. And a lot of love and elbow grease. I am ashamed to say this now, but in those days, I was embarrassed to show it to the other boys my age. They had bats like Coopers and Spaldings and, of course, the ubiquitous, classic Louisville Sluggers. I couldn't possibly have been more wrong. They ALL wanted to use it. NONE of them had a bat MADE for them by their DAD with his very own hands. The adage always was, "Don't hit the ball on the label or you could break the bat". With mine it was, "Danny's bat doesn't HAVE a label; you CAN'T break it!" And we never did. The bat Dad spent most of a day in the machine shed making for me with his own two loving hands blasted countless softballs to the outfield in the hands of every boy my age - and some of the girls - in Ross Mineview school for years. And it blew the cover off of more than one of them. Never underestimate the power of Love in action. 

There can be unmeasurable richness in poverty. I know, because I lived it. Love conquers all. 

When I say he was the best, I mean he was the Best. Take that to the bank. 

Poverty of living situation and poverty of spirit are two totally different things. We never suffered the second for a moment under Dad's care.

I think this is turning into a book. 

Two or three summers when I was little, Mom would take Polly and I to Sudbury with her for the summer. I positively HATED it. There's no other way to put it. I wanted to spend my summer vacation with Dad on the farm. I didn't want to be in a city. I wanted the smell of curing hay, the taste of fresh wild strawberries from the lane, and the feel of powdered Queens Line clay under my bare feet. I wanted DAD. 

Even though my favorite aunt, Aunt Pansy, lived in Sudbury, and we mostly stayed with her, I wanted to be home. Her husband, my Uncle Gordon Scott, was away for long periods of time in the mines up there. He was a good uncle with a great sense of humour and a heart for kids. He had four of his own; John (Sonny), Chris, Meryl, and Sharon, all old enough to be my uncle and aunts themselves. His grandchildren, scattered throughout the somewhat nearby Copper Cliff and Lively, were roughly Polly and my age. One of the worst bawling's out Mom ever got came from Uncle Gordon. He came home one evening from his long stint at the mine to find us there, and me, a fish out of water there at the best of times and he knew it, with no toys to play with to pass the long summer. He ordered Mom to sit down on the couch and he let her have it: "You dragged that little boy all the way up here with you for the entire summer and you didn't bring him any toys to play with?! First thing in the morning we're getting in the car and we're going to the mall and you're damn well going to buy that boy some toys!" He was really angry and he was yelling. It was his house and his rules and Mom had to sit there and listen. She was crying when he was done. I wasn't. I didn't want to be there in the first place. At 8 or 9 o'clock the next morning, sure enough, we were in his big Ford LTD heading to the mall. When we came back, I had 3 or 4 plastic toy trucks to play with in the sand behind Uncle Gordon and Aunt Pansy's house at the convergence of the railroad tracks going behind their house and almost in the shadow of the railway trestle going across them all high above. There were three ground level railroad tracks; two double and one single converging behind their house, and the huge, gently curving trestle crossing them all at approximately 90 degrees in an inverted Eiffel Tower shape. At least I saw lots of trains. I means LOTS of them. Locomotives that would be considered Classics today and would likely make a railfan drool. But the noise at night was just unbelievable. 

Whether I liked it or not, I was in Sudbury when the tornado went through on August 20, 1970. I was 4 years old at the time. They didn't call it a tornado then and there. 'Tornado' was Southern talk. They called it a cyclone. It missed Aunt Pansy and Uncle Gordon's house by 2 or 3 miles as it went northeast through Lively to Copper Cliff, and then turned south to Lockerby, skirting the edge of Sudbury. There were many stories associated with it at the time, but the one I remember was that the tornado exchanged coffee tables from two houses on opposite sides of a street through their living room windows. From this very distant time of over half a century (yikes!) later, I tend to think it was only folklore... but I do have a very foggy recollection of a newspaper article that might have been about it. 

I can't even remember one time coming home to Dad from Sudbury. The only plausible explanation I have for that is getting back to Dad must have been such an overjoying experience that it overwhelmed my little mind to the point that it had the same effect as being frightened so bad by something that you can't remember the experience. I wish I could but I can't. All I can remember is the one time we went up on the old Beachburg Road to Pembroke, and when we came back it was all redone. I believe another time we went up through Pembroke on Old Highway 17 and on the way back the Highway 17 Bypass was put in and we came back on it. I could be wrong about that. As Tim Tabbert used to say, "I was wrong once before". 

Once I was a little older, wild horses couldn't drag me away from Dad and the farm any time of year, much less during my precious school summer vacation. Time away from Dad when I was little was an eternity. That's why I remember it so well. 

Dad always called my sister, Polly (Paula), "Little Pet", and he called me, "Little Man". They were terms of being cherished, and of endearment, and also of encouragement. Sometimes they were used for gentle admonition; "Now, now, Little Man, you mustn't do that..." I never wanted to do anything that disappointed Dad. I wanted him to be Proud of me, not disappointed in me, so I strived to keep the words, "Now now, Little Man...", or, later, "Now, Danny..." from exiting his lips. 

When I hurt myself, Dad's huge, work-hardened and roughened hands, with fingers almost the size of country fair carrots, picked me up and held me with an impossible softness but for the love they were managed with. Those same hands would easily break into pieces any fool who tried to hurt his children, but they were like kid gloves when he picked us up and held us. They were like sandpaper when he worked, but somehow they were like padded velvet when he handled us. You don't ever forget a thing like that. Ever.

One time Dad hit me. Hard. I mean REALLY hard. It was Christmastime. I was four and a half years old. There used to be these old hard candies called humbugs. They looked like a cross between an old sofa pillow and an old suitcase. They were brown, tan, and beige striped, and very smooth and shiny. I had one in my mouth and I either tripped or hiccuped, or took a gasp of air or something. I don't know what, but I inhaled that candy right down my throat and started to choke. There was no coughing it up. The harder I tried to breathe the deeper it seemed to settle. It was lodged and it would have almost for sure been fatal. Nobody else noticed. My knees were buckling and my legs turning to water. My back was to Dad and it was loud and busy so no one heard me choking. Dad saw me turning blue and holding my throat and in one motion he snatched me up by the back of the shirt, dropped into his rocking chair in the den with me draped over his lap, and his massive right hand came down like a clap of THUNDER over my back. The humbug shot out of my mouth and hit the back door 10 feet away 2 feet off the ground. I took a few massive, ragged draughts of air, and started to cry. Dad quickly stood me back up and held me by the shoulders and intently watched me breathe. My back hurt so bad. My windpipe hurt too. Daddy hit me. HARD. Now I was all out bawling from the pain and the shock while still trying to catch my breath. Seeing me breathing again, and my distress over, he picked me up and hugged me close and rocked me as he soothed me; "There, there, Little Man... Daddy didn't want to hit you like that but you were choking. Daddy would never hit you like that but you could have choked to death if I didn't. I'm so sorry for hitting you like that but I had to... " I saw the pain in his eyes from hitting me so hard and heard the earnestness in his voice and understood as he consoled me. It still hurt, but I understood clearly: My Daddy saved me.

There was Love in that thunderous wallop. Make no mistake about it. It compressed what air was left trapped in my little lungs and blew the obstruction out. 

In fairly short order I was really not too much the worse for wear. Yes, a deep ache in my back and a pretty sore throat, but Dad never had to dread Christmas because that was the day he lost his only son.

I have no question in my mind I would have choked to death that day. None whatsoever. Dad's instant, decisive action saved my little life. Mind you this was WELL before anyone ever even heard of the Heimlich Maneuver. I don't know how Dad knew exactly what to do, but he did and I never forgot it. Until I learned about the Heimlich Maneuver, I always kept that in mind in case I encountered a choking child. That may not be the best medical advice these days but I have no doubt in my mind I wouldn't be here without it.

I don't think I've had a humbug since. They didn't taste all that great anyway.

After supper, and when the biggest part of the newscast was over on the TV, before the prime time shows started or he went back out to work in good weather, would be wrestling time. Dad would be sitting in his armchair, and I would launch my little self onto him. He would spiral me around, turn me upside down, spin me around, and drop me and catch me, as I tried my best to get a grip on him. 

Dad would turn me upside down and all around and chuckle with distinct enjoyment as I tried my best to get a hold on his big neck or arms. Or anything for that matter. I saw that living room from every angle imaginable in those bouts. Dad deftly spun me around like a pinwheel as I grabbed for whatever I could as I flew by. He never lost control of me; he just deftly handled me with the finesse and effortlessness of an Italian baker tossing and spinning pizza dough, while he grinned and chuckled in amusement at my feeble but sometimes rather clever - even if I do say so myself - efforts against him. I'd go from being cartwheeled in his huge hands, to being somersaulted, and then back to being cartwheeled again. He never once dropped me. Really, how could he have when just one of his absolutely massive, meaty hands with fingers like large carrots was almost the size of my entire upper torso? And I never really caught him. When I started wrestling in high school, the lads I wrestled couldn't believe how I could get a hold on them no matter the position. Well, anything they could manage was positively slow motion compared to being used to being spun like a turbo as I had been for years. And compared to Dad's overflowing raw power, they were like Kleenex.

Now, everyone has their limits, and Dad did too, so after energetically tossing 75 pounds of boundless enthusiasm and pretty strong kid around for 15 or 20 minutes on a just filled stomach after a hard day's work, he'd finally say, "Ok, that's enough, Little Man. Daddy's getting tired." And he was. It's not like he couldn't go on, but he wanted to concentrate on the news, too. There was a world out there that impacted us, whether I understood it or not. I'd reluctantly stagger away from his chair as the fluid in my ears stabilized and I regained my equilibrium and found something to do on my own.

Believe you me when I tell you those were special times. I'd do practically ANYTHING to return to that. No matter how bad my school day might have been, it was completely forgotten as the room whirled around and I saw Dad's chuckling face go rapidly by in a blur from all points of the compass. No rich kid ever had times like that with their dad, I can tell you that. I had better times in that worn old armchair in our very basic Queens Line farmhouse living room after supper than any rich kid ever had on a yacht in the Caribbean. And no matter what anyone to this day has over me, they don't have that. Wonderful memories are richer than gold, sweeter than sugar, and longer lasting than stone.

Not many young boys had the Dad I did, and I feel sorry for them, and therefore all the more blessed for what God had bestowed upon me. He was a Man's Man, and a Dad's Dad, and he taught me almost everything worthwhile I know and instilled every good ethic I ever display in me.

You haven't lived if you didn't have a Dad powerful enough and willing to spin you like The Wheel of Fortune or The Price is Right almost every evening.

Television was a big thing when I was a kid. When Dad was a kid the family gathered around the radio and listened to programming. By the time I came around, they gathered around the TV for the same thing. An avid outdoorsman and hunter, Dad really enjoyed The Red Fisher Show and all the adventures at Scuttlebut Lodge. He liked detective shows like Cannon, Columbo, or Quincy. And he just loved the Dukes of Hazzard when it came out and was a devotee right through its run. He also loved old time wrestling, and would sit on the edge of his seat with his 'Dukes' clenched when the Good Guy started getting the upper hand on classic Heels like Killer Kowalski, Tarzan 'The Boot' Tyler, or Mad Dog Vachon. He would have made a pretty good physical wrestler with his athleticism and power, but I just can't picture my soft-spoken Christian Dad yelling into a microphone week after week that he was going to tear someone's limbs off. 

If you know me, you know I love cats and I always have. I got my love of cats from Dad. He always had cats around him. Always. Sleeping on him, walking with him, riding on his shoulder, going around and around his stool as he milked a cow, or sunning themselves in a barn window where he was always within their cherished sight. He never saw a cat he didn't like. Or a dog. He was an animal lover through and through. His cows, his calves, his pigs, his chickens, his ducks, his geese, his dogs and his cats, all were important to him. Each and every one. He hated shipping time for the beef cattle as much as he hated butcher time for the chickens. Even given a wide open 100 acres for pasture, his steers were so tame they'd walk to meet him as he went to check on them. More than once I saw his eyes well up as he spent the last visits with them, knowing their fate after they got on that truck. He never saw what happened to them but he knew it and he hated it. He valued ALL life. He was a Good Steward. 

When Dad was younger, there was a very bad drought. He had two teams of horses and no money. Almost nobody had any money, and the worst part was nobody at all had any extra hay. Dad only had enough hay for one team of horses for the winter. One team could survive. Two teams would slowly all starve to death. He could not allow that to happen. He dug a hole by hand, big enough and deep enough for two draft horses in the back field, as far away from the house and barn as possible. I guess that was so he wouldn't have to see their grave all the time. He walked the team he had to sacrifice up to the field and the hole, and shot them into it and buried them there. You don't know hard times until you have to do something like that. I can not even begin to imagine the crushing, crippling pain it caused an animal lover like Dad. He loved his teams and was proud of them, but there was no option whatsoever available to him at the time. Nobody else could take them because they were all in the same boat. He couldn't give them away much less sell them to save their lives so he did what he just had to do. What he did was merciful to them over all FOUR of them starving trying to save two. Choosing which ones to cull must have been gut wrenching, but actually shooting perfectly healthy horses that gave their all for him every day would have been absolutely devastating. The dead end helplessness and the pain, even 70 years later, when he related that story, made my soul shrivel up like a prune. I pray nobody reading this ever has to go through anything like that. The scars would simply never heal, even if you lived to be 1oo years old. And, for him, they never did.

I guess, partially stemming from that experience, Dad was an awesome provider, storing as much of anything ahead as he possibly could. At the poorest times in my childhood, there was still a huge freezer full of our own beef, pork, and chicken. Sometimes a few ducks and geese, too. There were large bins in the basement heaping full of our own potatoes, carrots, parsnips, turnips, and beets. There was always fresh milk from our own cow. There were preserves of apple sauce, chokecherries, strawberries and raspberries, all our own, too. We only bought bread and butter, sugar and other staples (there was a 5 gallon pail each of brown sugar and flour standing behind the fridge), condiments, some cookies and some canned goods. Everything else we ate was our own production. The granary was full of grain. Maybe the silo full of corn. And, whether we needed it or not, every last bale of hay that could be made was made and stored to the rafters in the lofts of the barn, horse stable, and machine shed. We had no horses in my lifetime, but no cow or calf or bull or steer or heifer was going to face what his prized team of horses did when he was younger. Or Dad himself again. He knew hardship like few living today could ever understand and he did everything in his power to never face that again, or, especially, put his family through it. 

One of the things that was so amazing with Dad was his wealth of wisdom. He could always impart something to me. If I didn't listen to him and take his advice I usually lived to regret it. He could give Christian wisdom on a moral issue and he provided practical wisdom on a physical issue. I can't recall any circumstance where he really didn't have an answer or know what to do. 

I learned a lot of physics from Dad. He showed me how, if a floorboard was too wide to set into place, tip the next one up against it into a peak or an upside down vee, and then stomp on them. That would wedge them down into position. I learned how to tighten a chain without a load binder by just leaving the chain slack, sliding a branch or a stick or a pipe into a loose loop in the chain, and winding the stick around. That was called a swifter by the old hands of the log drive, for instance. He taught me the mechanical advantage of levers and fulcrums and winches. In day to day work, he taught me far more in practical applications than any of the forgettable fluff I was ever shown in science class in school. The floorboards referred to above were an example of a lever, and the swifter was an example of winching. I learned how to jack up buildings, and how to attach feet to anchor posts and set them in rock for fences that remained tight season after season. Further to that I learned techniques for tightening fence wire and keeping it taut after the tension was released on the fence stretchers. The importance of level and squareness were other things I came to understand through Dad's patient tutelage. A nail of normal length, driven from one board into another can work loose over time. A nail that is an inch or so longer than needed can be clinched over on the back side of the work (if it is available) and can't work loose. A practical application of that is in barn and shed doors which are subject to all kinds of stresses. 

On the subject of fencing, fence work was something I somewhat dreaded. It wasn't that I didn't actually like the work. No, I enjoyed the satisfaction of the finished product of a straight, tight new fence. It was repairing existing fences that I didn't care for as much. The toll it always took on Dad's hands was that bothered me. No matter what, when we were fencing, there would be blood dripping off of Dad's fingers from barbed wire lacerating them. He always got cut. Always. Usually several rips in his hands. He just worked through it without hardly ever showing a thing. I really wonder how much blood ran out of his hands over the years from fencing. I think it was because his hands were so dry and leathery from work of all kinds that when the barbed wire found a crevice it just opened it up. He never wore gloves while fencing because he found them a nuisance. Really, except for really cold weather, I don't think I ever saw him wear gloves. I never wore them either for work, either, and I guess for the same reason. I had the calloused hands of a grown man before I was a teenager. We always made our bales tight and when I tried gloves I couldn't get my fingers under the strings without wiggling them and sliding them sideways. That was just an irritation, so I didn't use them for that, and if I didn't need them for that I didn't need them for anything. I was my Dad's son through and through that way. 

While barbed wire may have seemed to be his nemesis all through our working years together, it became his sword and his shield one cold winter's day when I was about 9. One of those old time, cold, bright winter afternoons, Dad didn't come in from chores when he should have. Mom, for reasons I won't get into, wouldn't let me go to check on him. Darkness came and he still wasn't in. Finally, far beyond the time he should have, he came in. 

There was a very good reason for his absence. He had shut himself in the granary from a wolf attack. 

While he was going back and forth between the granary and the back door of the barn, a huge grey wolf had been stalking him. We never had something like that happen before so he wasn't on the lookout for it. When he came out of the granary to go back in the barn, the wolf made its appearance and cut him off. He had already shut and latched the double doors on the granary, and the wolf was between him and the barn doors, intent on taking him on. 

There was no getting past the wolf to the barn without a potentially deadly encounter, and there was no turning his back on the wolf to unlatch and open the granary doors to take shelter in there. The wolf was going to attack; there was just no question. Given its obvious demeanour, it was inevitable. But, laying nearby was Dad's former Achilles Heel: two rolls of rusty barbed wire. Carefully judging his distance and the wolf's stance, Dad slowly bent down and grabbed a roll of barbed wire in each hand. He squeezed them tight in each hand, sinking the barbs into his hands for sure grip, and banged them together, ready for the fight. When the wolf came for him, he was prepared, and beat it off with what must have been a tremendous blow or blows of those rolls of barbed wire given his power and the adrenaline that must have been flowing through his veins. The wolf backed off but did not turn and flee. It just allotted some distance, but kept its front legs apart, its head low and swaying, and kept up a menacing growling and a cold, unblinking stare. That distance gave Dad time to back up to the granary and pin one roll behind him and the one door and unlatch and open the other door from behind with one hand. The wolf was in it at that point to the death. Even after being struck with an 8 or 10 pound roll of barbed wire by a man like Dad he didn't run off. Dad had to wait and watch through cracks in the door for the wolf to finally give up and head back to the bush for easier prey. There was no way for Dad to warn anyone off or call for help in those days. If I had come looking for Dad, the wolf would have surely set on me, and Dad would have sprung out of the granary loaded for bear and the fight of his life. I know he would have given up his life for mine as sure as the sun came up yesterday and for that reason I thank God Mom didn't let me go looking for him. 

Fortunately, the wolf finally lost patience and walked off. Had it been accompanied by others, they all might have stayed and tried to chew their way in after Dad and then it most likely would have been all over. 

Dad would have went from the granary to the door of the barn, and that would have bought him 150 feet closer to the house, because there was the dairy barn, then what we called the barn floor, then the horse stable, and finally the machine shed, all under one roof. Then about 300 feet to the house and he was home free. 

Queens Line farms like ours were prized because they were nearly completely flat and wide open, unobstructed crop land. It was three quarters of a mile to the bush from the barn. To cross all that open ground with no cover whatsoever that wolf meant business. Maybe he was after a cat or a calf and then saw Dad and set his sights on him instead. We'll never know for sure.

Thankfully, we never had another wolf so bold, but I think Dad kept a gun over the door of the back of the barn after that. It was a deadly situation in so many possible ways. I have no problem with wolf culling programs near civilization. None whatsoever. If that one had his way, I would have had to grow up without my Dad.

This is about a neighbour girl. I will not mention her name for her privacy. She was 7 or 8 years old at the time. Dad very, VERY likely saved her life during the event I am going to recount. She had an extremely close call.

Dad was coming home on our Massey-Harris 44 from Dittburner's repair shop in Foresters Falls. A neighbour girl up the road from us was riding her bicycle towards our place, likely heading to Ferguson's General Store. A white van had pulled up beside her and the driver was trying to coax her into it. She wheeled into the driveway of the unoccupied farm next to ours and rode out towards the barn. That was the best thing she could have done. Dad being close enough, pulled in behind her on the 44 and blocked the driveway. He jumped off the tractor and ran out to the van which prudently took off at a high rate of speed. There was no way to catch the van on a tractor, and Dad was more interested in making sure the wee girl was safe so he went back to her. He told her to get back on her bike and pedal for her home. He backed out and followed her there on the tractor to make sure the creep in the van didn't return and try again.

If my big, powerhouse of a Dad had gotten his hands on that piece of trash, he would have dented that van with his head from one end to the other for trying to abduct a child. That degenerate would have had to drive himself to the hospital with whichever arm and leg Dad HADN'T broken.

Anyone that knew Dad knew that fool skirted around the Grim Reaper that day.

A child's life and innocence is the most precious thing there is in this world and must be protected at any and all cost.

I am proud of my Dad for a lot of things, and hold him in a very high esteem, but nothing in my mind surpasses the way he would defend anyone else's child with the exact same ferocity as his own without a moment's hesitation.

Dad was firm, but fair. I didn't understand it, but he was well aware of his power and he kept it well throttled when disciplining us. When Jimmy and I were about 12, Polly was smoking in the chicken coop. As she was always trying to get me in trouble, I thought I finally had her in a good one. I went to the house and told Dad. Yes: I know... And I'm ashamed of that now, too, but sibling rivalry is a hard force to resist, if I am to have any excuse in the matter. I gave in to the temptation and I flat out ratted. It was an act rotten to the core but I can't take it back now. Just learn from my mistake and don't repeat it, ok?  

Dad started out of the house for the chicken coop. I figured she'd hear him coming on the gravel driveway and put out the cigarette. Wanting to put fuel on the fire, bouncing along sideways anxiously beside him like Chester the yappy terrier with Spike the bulldog, I exclaimed, "Smell her breath!" 

In mid stride, Dad's massive hand on his outstretched arm came past my head with a whoosh like a 747, and his longest finger just grazed my ear with a 'tick!' I stopped in my tracks, THOROUGHLY chastened. Dad, fit, athletic, and always fully aware of his physicality, would neither miss nor overreach and I knew it. He did exactly what he intended to do and the message was very, VERY clear. Resoundingly so. Crystal, I tell ya. I had grossly overstepped and he told me so with nary a syllable. 

The big grizzly bear had just cuffed his over-eager, numbskull little cub back into full submission. 

I was standing stock still, and, let's say, more than just a little bit jarred by the event and glad to still be one hundred percent intact. 12 years old or not, only some sphincter response of my bladder from staring Death in the face fear or a fervent physical effort kept me from peeing myself on the spot. Or doing anything else.

Jimmy was standing back a couple of paces, absolutely frozen stiff, shell-shocked, staring at me, his eyes wide as saucers: "He could have taken your HEAD off!" 

No sh*t, Sherlock. You saw that too eh? He could have walked on ahead (ahem) to the chicken coop without breaking stride with my decapitated sphere in his hand while my limp, lifeless body lay in the dirt right where it was just relieved of the most useless part of it. 

At this juncture let me make this perfectly clear: Dad didn't physically punish me. He never had to. He wasn't that way. He was a BEAR of a man for sure, but a teddy bear to his children. Or any children. And I, even though you may or may not believe it, was a good kid and pretty well behaved. By the time referenced here I was old enough to be warned of his ability: Don't become a young man around a man's man if you don't want to be treated like a man. That was a Coming of Age moment, still as clear as a bell to me after all these years. In Dad's seemingly boundless wisdom, there was even a compliment built in there. Not that I desired to be complimented in that fashion more than once. No sirree Bob. 

Most of the time after that, as I grew to become a sometimes brash, often overly-confident young man, I could easily be brought back into a chastened, repentant manner simply by the words, "Now, Danny..." The desire to never disappoint Dad never left me. How could it? How could I ever want to pay back all Dad ever did for me with disappointment? That's rocks for riches. 

In the summer, Dad played ball with me. He caught, while I pitched, or he pitched while I batted. In the winter, he played hockey with me. He tended goal while I took shots. He played frisbee with me, he played lawn darts, he played crokinole, backgammon, or any board game. He pointed out the constellations and how the sun rises in the East and sets in the West and how to determine direction from that. A born Outdoorsman, he showed me how earthworms made tunnels, and caterpillars spun their cocoons. He knew all the species of grasses and weeds and trees. I never got to go hunting with Dad and I lament that. He loved his time in the bush and was equally at home there as he was on open farmland. He read voraciously. We had every Reader's Digest issue for at least 30 years and a library's worth of Reader's Digest Condensed Books. He bought any book on any subject we wanted out of the Reader's Digest catalog, and we probably easily had a hundred or more of those. He bought two sets of Encyclopedias for us so that we had information at our fingertips for school, and knowledge in general for our betterment. His Bible was worn and tattered from being read cover to cover who knows how many times, and being referenced again and again for the value it contained for good living, pleasing to God. I hardly read anything now, and I feel guilty about that because of the wealth of knowledge Dad spent so much hard-earned money on for my sister and I to educate ourselves.

Many evenings, at night before bed, Dad would play Solitaire. I can still hear him drawing cards. He would pull three cards, tap them together on edge to line them up, then thunk them face up on the nightstand to see whether he could play the third one or not. 'shick, shick, schick, tap, THUNK'. I wonder if the events of the day or the news was going through his head as he played, or if he was able to clear himself of all thought for his night's sleep. He was so simple at face value, and yet so complex overall. 

Recognizing my love of music and audio equipment, and after a false start with a Sears system that malfunctioned very quickly and was returned except for the optional turntable, Dad let me choose the stereo system I wanted component by component. Even so, I still had no idea how tuned in Dad was to me and my passion. When I was 14 he would have been 67, so there was a very large generation gap at play.  One day when I was looking at a LAB-395 turntable (on sale) at Radio Shack, he said, "That's a lot better than the one you have, isn't it?". He was referring to the original Sears/BSR unit. When I replied it was, he just turned to the cool, tweed jacketed dude that managed the store and said, "We'll take one of those". Just like that. That was Dad, the Man of Immediate Decision Making and Action.

I was young, but I was also practical enough to know we were 'poor', and that I already HAD a turntable, albeit it what it was. So, sadly and reluctantly, but irresistibly behooved by my Dad's ingrained sense of responsibility, I told him we couldn't afford it. Not something like that. Dad replied, "I'll tell you what we can and can't afford", as he paid for it cash on the spot. 

I was dumbfounded; the turntable of my dreams... I just sat in a silent stupour on the way home.

Cory's reaction was, "WHAT?! HUH?!", when I called him over and he saw that gleaming beauty sitting there. That turntable, with its Shure cartridge, brought out things we'd never heard in our albums before. It was the crowning piece of that system.

In the slow revelation of maturity, I realize now that was Dad's reward to me for hard obedient work on the farm. His valued, cherished, sincere and heartfelt, lasting reward to me is sitting in the place of honour in my basement rec room in tangible form to this day. And chances are, in all the quiet, fathomless depths of his common sense and earthy country wisdom, he knew it would be, too.

When Jimmy rode away on his 1975 Merc 340 S/R snowmobile after school one bright winter day, and Dad saw me, I guess, whimsically watching him disappear down the ditch, he came up beside me and quietly asked, "Would you like a snowmobile?" That was out of left field. 

I responded, "Of course, Dad. Who wouldn't?" I didn't think it was even possible for us, and I said so. 

Dad replied, in that slow, wise, deeply understanding and compassionate way of his, "You do nothing but work. You do everything you're told and never ask for anything and you never complain. You just work. I want to buy you a snowmobile for your reward. We've got the money."

Just like that. Once again, while a ruminate sort on deeper things, Dad was a confident Man of Immediate Decision Making and Action as displayed when he blasted that humbug out of my windpipe all those years before. That seemed like a lifetime ago then. And yet it was only about 11 years. The memory of standing there with Dad watching Jimmy make his way down the ditch towards home at the Queens Line Rink is over 40 years ago and yet it almost seems like yesterday. I can still smell the cloud of snowmobile exhaust as Jim left that day. It's funny how you regard things. Perspective is everything. Certain factors like a scent memory can rocket you back through time in an instant. Even Jim is gone a couple of years now at the time of this writing. Too young, too young...

Anyway, Dad was doing a lot better by those days with beef stockers, and he NEVER was stingy with sharing what he had. If any of his brothers or sisters or nephews needed money, or anything he had, they came to him. God loves a cheerful giver, and that was Dad, and He always made sure Dad had what he was called upon to give. Dad even paid off a brand new compact tractor for one of his nephews. We didn't have a new tractor, but he saw to it that his nephew didn't lose his when he lost his job and couldn't find new work. I had an awesome Dad and they had an awesome Uncle John. He even said later, "Uncle John saved my tractor!" right in front of his family. His own dad and Mom didn't, with far more and steadier income, but his Uncle John did. That's the kind of step-up-to-the-plate man Dad was. When his nephews had something on their mind they couldn't tell their own Dad, they could confide in their Uncle John, and he would help them through it the best way he could. They had massive respect for, and thus, trust in, him, and his deep, wise understanding. I saw my second cousins -  and my grown first cousins - come to Dad when the chips were down for them. They knew their Uncle John would never let them down. And he never did. He always came through.

Back to that winter, I couldn't believe Dad's offer. And I thought he meant some old clunker. Oh no. Nothing like that. Not for his son. The next Saturday morning found us at the tracks on Main Street in Renfrew looking at a brand spanking new 1980 Ski-Doo Citation sitting in the display window for $1879.00, plus tax. $2029.32 out the door.

As much as I would have liked it, I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I just couldn't. It just didn't feel right. We never had a new car. We never had a new truck. We never had a new tractor. I hadn't seen as much as a new hay rake or wagon come on the farm since I was born. Everything was always used. So why should I have a new snowmobile? It just didn't feel right. 

I asked Dad if he would be willing to let me choose a used snowmobile instead. I actually found myself in the absurd position of pleading with him to let me settle for a used one. He was standing there with the cash in his pocket for a brand new sled, ready to take it home, but he agreed. We ended up at Dale Black's Polaris dealership in Foresters Falls, I think Wednesday after school, where we bought a beautiful 1977 John Deere Cyclone 340 for only $800.00. It was far more my style, too. It just looked like my sled. It was wide and low and stylish and every inch of it was carefully finished into a smooth, organic design. I helped Dad save over a thousand dollars on his commitment to me, and I got an absolute beauty of a sled in the bargain. It was a total win-win situation. It started so easy after warming up. If I shut it down at the rink, when I came back out, just a 3-4 inch tug on the D handle was enough to start it again. All the lettering and striping was reflective, which made it look so sharp at night under lights. I thought it was a rock star of a snowmobile. Oh, man, I loved that sled, as temperamental as it turned out to be (no fault of Dale's) and had it for many years. Cory and I spent so much time on it, relishing every moment. Every time I looked at that sleek beauty, I was immediately reminded, once again - as if I really needed it - what an awesome Dad I had. 

It didn't matter what I pursued, Dad was behind me all the way. I'm a doggone stubborn Scottish sort, so it was hard - if not impossible - to push me into anything, but if I tried it, Dad was all the way into it for me. My Number One Fan and cheerleader. I so, so fondly remember him at the Beachburg Fair, when I was in the tractor pull, jumping along sideways up the white line of the track as I made my pull on our Massey-Harris 44 Special Row Crop. I could even hear him over the tractor at wide open throttle: "Go Danny, go Danny, go Danny, go!" How can you lose at the game of Life with someone like that in your dugout? Not even the dugout; literally right there on the field with you. Always. Through thick and thin.

In those days, your typical small farm loader tractor didn't have a cab. Ours didn't. It was a 1970 International Harvester 434 Gas with an IH 1501 loader. Front end loaders of the time were a little different than they are now. Now, cab or not, the loader's hydraulic valve bank is isolated away from the operator for safety and a cable operated joystick is all the interface for loader he has. Then the loader controls were mounted right on the valve bank, as were the hydraulic flex hoses. That put those hoses and the hydraulic fluid running through them under pressure right close to you. Small farms like ours had a loader tractor for stooks of hay or straw bales, round bales, or loading manure. Ours performed all of those tasks. Like in the South where farms had rotary hoes for cultivating corn as fast as the tractor could go, in the North, we loaded stooks as fast as we could. The older farm gents weren't used to operating a tractor so fast, so the dealer would say, "Put yer young lad on it; he'll ring 'er out fer ya!" It was generally the oldest, most experienced boy on the farm did the stook loading. As I was the only boy on the farm, that job fell to me. On smooth ground I could hit a well built stook in 7th gear (out of 8) and smoothly swoop it up to the top of the load. It worked better in 6th as I had more RPM to recover from slowing down to hit the stook and not blow the bales apart, but I could do it in 7th if the ground was hard and flat because you needed engine speed for hydraulic response to get the loader up to height by the time you got back to the wagon so you didn't have to wait for the loader to raise. Those IH B Series ('B' for British) tractors had a really fast high range reverse so drop the stook while shifting to reverse and roll back across the field at 10 or 11 MPH to past the next stook, nail it, and repeat. It went almost as fast in reverse as our 44 went in road gear. If the stooks were close enough I backed to them. If they were further off I backed away from the wagon, turned around, and romped it out to the next stook in 6th or 7th. There should have been stook loading competitions at the Fair. I couldn't have won, because others would have had hotter loader tractors like Cockshutt 1265's and White 1370's with their fantastic hydraulic cycle times, but I sure wouldn't have embarrassed myself either. It always annoyed me that our loader tractor didn't have a foot throttle as that would have freed my hands up at the wagon for faster cycle times. In the open like that, and with light loads and distance between picking them up and lots of breeze, the hydraulic fluid didn't get really hot. 

Where the hydraulic fluid did get hot was loading manure. The loads were heavier and the cycle times much closer together generating heat, and no breeze on the hoses or tractor body for cooling. One fall afternoon Dad was loading manure in the back of the barnyard. I always liked loader work of any sort and normally took over when I got home from school. I think I was finishing getting changed and ready to go out when a brown, sopping, oily apparition the same size and shape as my Dad lurched in the back door. While loading manure - ours laden with straw bedding which really bound it together and made it harder to lift bucketloads out of - a loader boom flex hose at the valve bank ruptured. With the engine at a fair speed for hydraulic pressure and response, when that hose blew in close proximity to Dad, he was instantly showered from his head to his waist and the top of his thighs in hot hydraulic fluid. Every inch of him that was exposed to that hose was completely drenched in hydraulic oil, or HyTran fluid, as we called it. Luckily it was a fairly cool fall day and he had on a seed cap and a jacket which kept the hot oil directly touching his skin to a minimum. His face and hands were pretty red once we got him cleaned up, but fortunately not scalded from the hot hydraulic fluid. It was quite a job to get him cleaned up and presentable again. By the time he got to the house the oil had seeped through the fibers of most of his clothing and even ran down into his rubber boots. His clothes were just saturated in it. He was likely carrying a couple of quarts of oil on him. What a drippy, gooey mess. If you know what an exploding hydraulic hose under load and pressure is like, you know. If you don't and you're a nice person, I hope you don't find out like Dad did.

Our barnyard for feeding our beef stockers was a little on the small side, but it was very well protected for them by wind walls sheeted with roofing tin. There was a large wooden feed bunk in the center of it for feeding square bales when the winter weather was nasty. We fed round bales in steel feeders in the open any time the weather was suitable, but we always made several hundred square bales for when that Arctic Queens Line West wind blew or there was a big snow storm. There was an open pole barn on the SouthEast side of the yard that they could huddle in when it was really cold or snowing or raining. To clean out the yard, there were two removable 12 foot wind wall panels facing the road. We would lift them out with the loader, clean out around both sides of the feed bunk, then pull it out of the yard. It was built on heavy skids for the task. Once it was pulled out, then there was room to clean out most of the pole barn with the loader. 

The wood framed sheet steel panels were held in place by bolts. There was a tall fence post between them, and then a fence post on the West side, and the corner post of the pole barn on the East side. The bolts that held the panels were driven through them into holes in the fence posts and the corner post of the barn. The heavy poles and 4x4's framing the panels and the galvanized steel roofing itself made the panels too heavy and dangerous to handle by hand, so we lifted them out with the loader. We would take some weight off of them with the loader and then use a big wrecking bar to pry the carriage bolts out that pinned them in place and carry them away. 

The fall of the year I was 17, after school, Dad and I were removing the panels to clean out the yard. The manure was extra deep in the yard that year, signifying a mean winter beforehand. The manure was up to and over the bottom horizontal poles of the panels, so we were having a little more difficulty than usual getting them out. With a chain in place over the wind wall to the loader outside the yard lifting to take the weight off, we set about prying out the bolts holding in the first panel. When a bolt was extracted so far, the wrecking bar ran out of travel and we had to put a claw hammer or a piece of 2x4 under it for extra purchase. Dad was pulling on the wrecking bar and I was holding whatever it was under it for purchase. I guess the wrecking bar slipped. I don't know. I kind of wasn't there during that particular juncture in history and moment in time. There was just a great big 'DING!' in my suddenly blackened world that seemed to go on for a long time. It was sort of like that 'Right Answer!' sound on Family Feud except mine was a lot less like a hammer hitting a bell and a lot more like a wrecking bar hitting a skull for some reason.

When I came to, I was staggering back and forth in a semicircle in the deep manure on Dad's outstretched arm holding on to my right wrist. And hand. Dad didn't need a softball glove. His hands were already almost the size of ball gloves. Anyway, I guess I was running into the wall face first and then going backwards until I hit it again on the other side with my back and then going forwards again. Kind of like one of those shoot the duck games at the fair. Complete with the 'DING!' sound. Just my 'DING!' sound was a lot louder and lasted a lot longer. The only thing I really knew was my head hurt like heck and it didn't before that. 

Dad had been knocked out more than once in his life and now it was my turn. I guess it's part of a Scottish farmboy's rite of passage into manhood, because Dad didn't seem to be too particularly worried or shaken by the event, and even appeared to possibly have the sunrise of a bemused grin on his face. Not that he was a sadistic sort by any means. He was probably simply proud of the fact that his smart,  strapping, handsome (I just had to put that in there) son had just taken a nearly three foot forged steel wrecking bar to the head by a big, powerful man, and was yet among the living and might have even been able to mumble something. Something incomprehensible, probably, but it still counted. I was even still standing up. I suppose I would have stumbled into a total faceplant in the shtick if he hadn't courteously grabbed my wrist as I tromped off by into oblivion, but I was indeed still standing. That counted for something too. 

A few minutes shaking the cobwebs out of my head and getting my eyes uncrossed and I was back to work, pretty near as good as new, but for a raging headache. Us Scotties are TOUGH ess oh bees, and don't you forget it. I'm not sure whether my test scores at school suffered after that or not. I got by, I guess. I can still sorta schpell werds and stuph, so I gess I'm nun tu werse fore ware. 

 I just never forgot that loud, ringing 'DING!' in a completely black and featureless cosmos. 

One summer afternoon we were baling hay for my Uncle Dalton. We had loaded 2 or 3 wagons and there was a storm coming in. Uncle Dalton and my first cousin Barry, and I were unloading the wagons in the barnyard before the storm hit. Dad was still out in the field with our International 434 and New Holland 78 baler, cleaning up corners. He always carried a pitchfork on the tractor during haying to clean up corners and misses. He swept every field perfectly clean. He took pride in his work and never forgot what it was like to not have enough. 

While we were tending to a flat tire on the last wagon before we moved it up to the elevator and unloaded there was simultaneously an almost blinding flash from beyond the barn, and an almighty, deafening crack of thunder as a bolt of lightning hit somewhere nearby. We hurried up our tire change to get ahead of the rain. There wasn't any yet, but it sure was coming. About 5 minutes later, Dad drove into the yard and got off the tractor. He didn't seem right at all. His face was as white as a sheet and he seemed unsteady on his feet. He said to us, "Did you hear a loud crack of thunder a few minutes ago?" We replied we did. Even his voice was shaky. He went to the back of the tractor and pulled the pitchfork out of the drawbar. I hadn't noticed it up until now. The wooden handle looked like an umbrella without the cover, or a starburst firework. The grain of the handle was all separated and every fiber bundle was turned down radially in a bow. That clap of thunder we heard was when the bolt of lightning hit the handle of the pitchfork right behind his left ear. He was knocked unconscious for a few moments by the strike. No wonder he was pale and shaky on his feet. I can't imagine the power of that noise at the source. He was all but directly struck by a massive bolt of lightning just a few minutes before. There was no apparent harm to him or the tractor or the baler, just the completely bizarre, exploded view look of that pitchfork handle. And his jarred, white as a sheet countenance. 

We had seen large trees struck by lightning and it blowing 40 pound, 16 foot slabs of wood off of them on the line fence 75 feet into the field, so it was fortunate that bolt hit the fork and not Dad himself. 

I very nearly lost my Dad that day. It was an extremely close call. I was 19 or 20 at the time so he would have been 72 or 73.

Farming is full of dangers; moving parts of machinery, tractor rollovers, electricity, panicking or purposeful large animals, silo gas, manure pits, working at heights, bridging in grain bins... and being caught outdoors in severe weather.

We kept that freakish pitchfork for about 7 or 8 years in our workshop as a reminder of the closest call imaginable. It just disappeared without a trace after that and we had no idea what became of it. Not even to this day. We must have shown it to someone who thought it would make a great display piece and they then took it for themselves without permission. I wish I still had it now.

Dad and Uncle Dalton got along so well. Uncle Dalton was one big, strong man, too. Married to my Dad's sister, Aunt Margaret, he was by far my favorite Uncle. Like some of my cousins choosing Dad as their runaway favorite Uncle, I chose Uncle Dalton. Dad and Mom had huge respect for Uncle Dalton. Mom called him "A Genuine Country Gentleman". And he certainly was. His relaxed demeanor, kind face, and easy laugh and smile made him so wonderful to be around. There was almost always a twinkle in his eye. The way he and Dad got along you'd think they were brothers and not brothers-in-law. 

Dad and Uncle Dalton shared a lot of things over the years, but one thing was not pleasant. Not pleasant at all.

Hardships that hued the final forms of kid-gloved men like my Dad and Uncle Dalton could deeply wound their souls, but ultimately couldn't break their spirits. The God-given warmth and softness of their Christian hearts triumphed over the cold, hard world around them.

Shortly after Dad and Mom were married, but before Polly and I were born, the phone rang at Uncle Dalton and Aunt Margaret's. Some very, VERY Bad News from the Bowes homestead in Kinburn. Uncle Dalton drove up to Dad and Mom's, and called Dad outside their log house to talk privately in the driveway. He delivered some extremely bad news. Dad went in and told Mom he had to go. Uncle Dalton and Dad drove solemnly down to my Grampa and Grandma Bowes's place.

Dad and Aunt Margaret's youngest brother, Uncle Borden Bowes, heir to the family farm, had been found hung in the woodshed. 

Because of that day, I never knew my Uncle Borden. When I would ask Uncle Dalton what happened, his always easy, relaxed face would tighten and darken and set. His bright blue eyes would narrow as uncharacteristic, unresolved anger flashed across them. He wouldn't tell me what he knew, no matter how I prodded him. It was a deep, DEEP, dark Family Secret. Aunt Fern, who lived just across the railroad tracks behind Millar's Store, would only say, "There'll be a RECKONING one day, boy..." in a very hurt-filled, scornful, Judicious voice. 

Dad told me later in life what it was when I was old enough to understand and bear the emotional and psychological burden it levied. It was absolutely terrible beyond words. Uncle Dalton wisely avoided my questioning and left it to Dad to tell me when he knew I was ready. Well, as I could be.

At the same time, Grampa and Grandma Bowes were robbed of their youngest born, Dad and Aunt Margaret and Aunt Fern suffered the sudden and unexpected loss of their baby brother who wouldn't hurt a fly, and Mom and Uncle Dalton lost a beloved Brother-in-Law. That dark, awful, sinister day. 

Uncle Borden didn't do it. 

Evil can live very close to home. Don't ever forget that. Learn from this: The sins of Jealousy, Envy, Covetousness, and Greed come with no tethers; they know no bounds. They are feral, rabid, cancerous, and contagious. Broker them no space whatsoever in your heart, because they will only fester and multiply, and bring rot and ruin and hurt that can last generations. 

I wish and pray nothing of the sort to ever darken your door. 

There are better things to relate. Much better things.

My first car was a 1982 Pontiac J2000 Hatchback. Dad co-signed the loan for me to buy it. I made sure he never had to pay a red cent for it. I paid it off early, and got another loan for something else, paid that off early, and did the same thing over and over until I worked myself up to buying a brand new round baler, brand new 22 foot Vee rake, brand new hay tedder, a new set of bridge harrows, and a Cockshutt 1550 and 1850 all in the same year. Forty thousand dollars worth in almost one shot, which was an absolutely enormous fee for me at the time, but I had hopes and dreams and they were the doors to them. I was jealously accused one time that I only had the things I had "because your Dad has a farm!" Oh, that struck closer to home than he ever could imagine. 

Matthew 12:3 O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.

Jealousy is wickedness, contaminating the heart. Nothing good ever comes out of it. Nothing. Flee from it before it consumes you and causes you grief and trouble untold.

What nonsense. No, Dad was only a co-signer on one $2800.00 loan. Every loan after that was on my own merit, no co-signer, and the farm had no bearing on it whatsoever. Get up, go to work, earn, don't blow it partying and carousing, and pay back, day after day, pay it off early, and repeat, and you'll slowly get there. Dad was proud of me for doing it. 

I had wanted a Cockshutt 1550 or 1555 since I was a kid. I mean since I was like 8 years old. When I became an adult, as many tractors as I bought and sold, a 1550 or 1555 continually escaped my best efforts. I either had the money and one wasn't available, or I did have the money and none were available. When I finally captured one for myself I sure had a high appreciation for it. 

I remember hooking up my new Gehl 1475 Silage Special round baler to my pride and joy 1850 one day. I was in the cab setting up its electronic controller. Dad came around to the back of the cab and said to me through the open back window, "I'm glad you finally got the tractors you always wanted." That might sound like a simple statement but it was really big to me. Those cab tractors made my dealing with my hay fever so, so much easier, and they allowed us to do things we never could before, like our own round baling.

Dad went antique tractor hauling with me all the time as I bought and sold them. We'd have supper on the road on the way back. Possibly lunch on the road on the way there. Maybe, if it was a REAL good day, breakfast, lunch, AND supper on the road. Every run was a mini adventure and we enjoyed them all. Sometimes getting a dead old tractor out of a confined barnyard presented a logistical and physical challenge, and, in that, we both shone. We relished a challenge and almost lamented an easy retrieval. Dad was a master with tackle, and he passed that on to me. People watched in amazement as we snatched a dead tractor out of a barn collapsing on it, around a corner, and up a hill where we couldn't get the truck and trailer in. They didn't know how we would get it out of there. Then it was back on the road and enjoy whatever came with it. There was a wonderful feeling of freedom in all those variable and dynamic sorties. 

He also loved to go with me on my rural paper route and do the passenger side papers. Whatever it was I was doing, he was always one hundred percent supportive and involved if he could be.

During my time as a paper carrier, I tried different accountants. There was a company that said they specialized in farm accounts. I won't mention their operating name because they are somehow still in business and I expect they are of the litigious tendency. I thought they'd be a good match for Dad and I. 

They weren't. 

The guy they sent out to our farm looked like he had never stepped out of a building that wasn't made of glass and steel. Very shiny steel. And marble floors. Baby blue three piece suit, not a hair out of place, not a speck anywhere, a handshake like a falling kleenex, and, an aversion to dogs.

Missy, our registered Bichon Frise social butterfly, greeted everyone with her heart-stealing, little circus performers act of standing on her hind legs, and waving her front paws together in a begging fashion. It always won everyone over. Not him. She was confused and tried harder. Each time she approached him, he recoiled in an equal proportion. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction? Anyway, Dad saw that and had a bemused expression on his face. Not one to bother much with anything less than what he considered a man, he went out to find something to do while the ... er... bookkeeper dealt with my account. 

While Dad was out around the barnyard, Venture, our German Shepherd, brought him a dead rat, proudly showing that he was indeed On The Job: "RRRUFF!" Now you need to understand this: Dad was a practical joker, full stop. Don't hand Dad a dead rat in the barnyard while there's a certified sissy in the house, or there's apt to be mischief. 

Dad trotted back to the house, no doubt a twinkle in his eye and a smirk on his face, the rat hanging from his hand by the tail. He laid it right on the back door step where Cinderfella was sure to see it when he came back out. 

The computation of my financials took a while to work out. Rather than idling around, and growing bored with the wait, Dad ended up wandering off to find something else to do. That was soon to become one of his greatest regrets in life and he lamented it often.

When we were done with tallying up my account, Snow White gave me another handshake like the ether, and I saw him to the door. I was raised and grew up to respect a look in the eye and a firm handshake at the completion of business, and I've always HATED a limp wristed one, and his was just the most unmanly one ever. Opening the door and stepping out onto the concrete stoop, he saw the dead rat laid out there where Dad had plopped it and propped it. He let out a swear word a Christian man can not repeat and jumped into my arms like a bride to be carried across the threshold. 

I knew nothing about what Dad had prepared for him, but I suddenly found myself with a roughly 200 pound sissy in my arms, hanging on to me for dear life. A compact powerhouse version of my Dad, 200 pounds certainly wasn't much to me in those days, but when they were all attached to someone of the supposedly male persuasion, they weren't one bit welcome in my arms. I had put up with his snooty, sterile, pantywaist, feminine ways enough already, but THIS was too friggin' much. I looked him in the eye with unveiled disgust and dropped him like a stone. Stand on yer own two feet, ya big wussy! 

Good grief... Grow a pair, wouldja? 

Dad unfortunately missed it all. Time and time again he asked me to relate the episode to him. Each time was as good to him as the one before and that was why he wanted to hear it again. He could picture it all because he set it up that way, but he still wanted to hear my rendition of it. He'd slap his leg and rock and laugh until sometimes the tears ran down his face. If it had been on video he would have worn out the rewind button.

We all have regrets in life, and some of them are of a pretty serious nature, but Dad's biggest was missing the springing of a trap he set WITH a rat, not for one. 

Barn cats are very smart, incredibly adaptable creatures. They can be trained to be very useful. Being natural mimickers; 'copycats', all you need to do is train the smartest ones and they will train the rest simply by them following suit. 

You have no idea how many mice live in your granary if it's built from wood instead of steel. Not even a clue. When I was in my teens, Dad and I trained our cats to help reduce the rodent population in the granary. All we did was just lay a couple of bin boards on top of the grain in each bin. Mice love cover, and feel safe under it, even in otherwise open spaces, so they would congregate under those boards. 

At night in the fall, after supper and after dark, we each took one of the smartest cats in one hand, and a flashlight in the other into the granary. Pointing the flashlight at the boards, we would set the cat down beside the boards, and then flip the boards over. Almost without fail, there would be two or three mice under each board when we flipped them. The cats would then instinctively pounce on them. We'd train our flashlights on the scurrying mice, making it easy for the cats to see them. A few evenings of that, and they had it down pat, and they would be anxiously following the beam of our flashlights as soon as we went in. The other cats, sensing the anticipation of the smartest ones, would soon follow. In under two week's time, they all followed us to the granary, followed the beams of our flashlights, and when we'd flip the boards, there'd be a flurry of furry felines snatching up scrambling mice everywhere. The faster mice would take off and get away, but they had a hard time out-running our flashlights. The cats - all of them now - would follow the beams of our flashlights even outside around the foundation of the granary, and very few mice got away. Sometimes Dad would go out the door one way with his flashlight on a mouse and I would go out the other. Without fail, there'd be a cat following our beams, knowing there was a pot of gold at the base of that beam for them. It was great sport for us, too! Once you flipped that first board it was ON! You had to be fast, because the mice sure were. Sometimes a mouse would run up the wall. Caught in our flashlight beam like a WWII searchlight, a cat would leap off the floor or surface of the grain and nab it there and drop back down to eat it. A couple of the sharper cats would catch a mouse in their mouth and then catch another one with their front paws. 

The first cats eating their spoils, we'd train our lights on a couple more boards and flip them and the next cats would seize their fair share. Very seldom did any cat ever go without. The faster ones would gobble their first mouse down and be back on the bit for another one, sometimes within a minute. It was great, fast-paced action, and quickly became the high point of our fall and winter evenings. Dad, being a hunter, got a mini hunt out of it every night. I got great sport out of it too. Maybe even more than him. It wasn't at all unnecessarily cruel, because these were BARN cats; they didn't play with their mice like house cats do, they ATE them, and fast. We didn't do it in the late spring and through the summer because we had chicks and then meat chickens in the insulated bin and didn't want to have any commotion around them. 

Sometimes we had to shovel up some grain in the alleyway because the cats so vigourously dug or scrambled after a mouse that they sent grain flying out of the bin over the standing bin boards into the alleyway.

It didn't seem to matter how many our eager crew caught, there'd still be more the next night. When we'd retire to the house, we'd go back over the course of the hunt in retrospect, and the highlights of it, such as a cat running straight up the tin wall outside after a mouse, or one catching a mouse in its mouth, and then pinning one under each front paw, or how far one leaped to get its prey, or a cat practically running underneath the grain like a cartoon gopher. We'd laugh at the wilder exploits of an over-eager participant. 

The best diet for a cat is a mouse, because that's the way God created them. They are just total natural born predators, with stalking, ambush, and killing as first nature. And great eyesight and LIGHTNING fast reflexes. Exploit those traits in your barn cats and you have a 100 percent natural, organic, rodent control program at your disposal. No poison, no traps, and practically no expense. And your cats will LOVE it! 

We just had a blast doing that, and it was great exercise too. I can still remember those frosty evening hunts with Dad and the Bowes Farm cats like it was only yesterday.

Well... As much as I would love for this to go on forever, it simply and sadly can not in this life.

Time took its toll on Dad as it does on all of us, and it first really presented itself not in a physical decline, but a mental one. Dad developed dementia, mostly appearing as a sudden, precipitous reduction of memory of even the most apparent things like Mom being gone for years. Even his own parents. I learned how to gently prod his logic to not present a new shock to him over and over; "Dad, you're in your mid-nineties; where do you THINK your parents are...?" 

He would consider it and respond, "Oh. I guess they can't really be alive after all this time, can they?" And he smiled at what he saw was the humour in his question. Instead of blurting out that they were dead and gone 40 years ago out of the alarm of him asking such an illogical question, I taught myself to engage and exercise what he still had left. It was much less stressful on him (both of us, really, because no family member goes through dementia or Alzheimer's alone) and served to preserve the faculties he still had at hand.

My wonderful Dad's wonderful sense of humour remained right until the end. On his 97th Birthday, he had to ask what his age actually was, because he had lost track. I told him, "You're 97 years old today, Dad". 

He thought about it for a moment, and, with that ever-present twinkle in his eye, replied, "97, eh? Soon I'll be an old man!" 

Yeah, that was Dad. 

On the 1st of April, 2011, in his room in Caressant Care, my wonderful Dad breathed his last after supper. He had a nap after supper and didn't wake up again. Not here, anyway. 2 Corinthians 5:8 encourages us immensely in the knowledge that, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. That's where he opened his wonderful, ever-loving, bright blue eyes again, restored to everlasting youth and health, in the eternal presence of his Lord and Saviour. He was just two weeks shy of his 98th birthday.

That was the all-time, without question, worst ever day of my life. I was always so afraid of losing my Dad because of his age. I used to be terrified any time I was away from home and saw a hearse because I was afraid it was coming for Dad. Hearses always terrified me for that reason. The only time they didn't was when Dad was with me. They filled me with fear and dread and I hated them because one day one of them would come and take my Dad away from me and he would never come back.

When the Home called me and told me he had passed, I was doing pretty well, all things considered. That call was inevitably going to come and I had braced myself and braced myself for it for years and tried to practice my reaction. Here it was at last. We are going through that much dreaded and unexplored time and territory. I quickly drove to Cobden. Of all the times for it, there was a R.I.D.E. program on Highway 17 at Main Street. They filtered the vehicles ahead of me through. The officer finally came to my truck and started asking me questions. I wasn't interested at all; "Hurry up, hurry up... "

"What's the big rush, fella?" His suspicious behaviour radar was starting to blip.

"I just found out my Dad died at Caressant Care." 

"OH! I'm so sorry! I didn't... " But I was already driving away. Nobody else or anything they had to say mattered. 

When I got to the Home, Dad looked just as it was. He went to sleep and stayed asleep. He was at peace. Pastor Lloyd came, and said a prayer with me, and... that was it. My precious, priceless, wonderful Dad was no longer with me and I was Alone. I just lost my Dad, my Pal, my Buddy, my Best Friend, my Adventure Partner, my Mentor, my Confidant, my First and Last Resort, and my Number One Fan all in one shot.

Stupefied, I numbly walked out of the Home, and there, sitting across the entranceway, was the hearse to take my Dad away. That hearse I had dreaded all these years was now sitting right in front of me, looming big and black and so, so final. There it was. No question about it this time. The specter that always haunted me was now real and right in front of me. The immense reality of the situation came crashing down on me like a falling skyscraper. A fully grown, 45 year old man at the time, I howled an anguished "DAADDY!!!" and collapsed on the concrete. I had to be helped up and driven home. 

I am not ashamed of that; rather I am PROUD and grateful that I had such an awesome Dad that his loss could affect me in such a devastating way. 

If only I hadn't seen that cursed hearse. Not that day. There would be no escaping it later, but not that day. It brought all my fears of years and years to bear against me in an instant and at a time I did not want to face them all. 

I don't really remember much of anything after that. The whole Funeral thing went by like a bad dream in thick cobwebs, muted light and colours and sounds, and thick mud that never sticks to you but slows you down nevertheless. People so often say the Funeral of a loved one was like a fog to them. It was even more than that for me. My every sense was crippled from the moment it all descended upon me outside the door of Caressant Care. All I really remember was my buddy Dave Martin saying to me, "I'll be there with you, even if I have to hold you up the entire time". And he was. He stood right there with me the whole time. 

When someone came to the funeral home that I was having some awkwardness with, he saw them coming and gave my shoulder a reassuring shake and quietly said some of the wisest words I'd heard outside of Dad's: "Put your sword down, Buddy, but keep your shield up..."  I have passed that on to other people at difficult times in their lives and it has helped each one of them deal civilly with what they were going through. They were very wise words indeed. Sage advice for those who will take note of it.

The following Sunday in church whenever I stood up, I did it with an ease I didn't understand for the heaviness I felt. Whenever I stood, it was with a lightness I never felt before. It felt like my feet weren't even touching the floor. I could seem to see over the heads of people I shouldn't have been able to and never could before. There is only one answer to that: my Guardian Angel or Angels were holding me up. This is not hyperbole or embellishment in the slightest form of it. It was EXACTLY what I experienced through the whole service. The Lord was seeing me through the hardest period in my life for my faith in Him and His Word.

My Dad didn't leave this world without handing the Torch to me. He held my hands in those big, still powerful mitts of his one day in Caressant Care, and said, "Son, I am Proud of you. You don't smoke, drink, or do drugs, lie, cheat or steal. You make me PROUD to be your father." He made sure to tell me that before he passed on to his reward. He instilled a love of the Lord in me, and all the richness that that entails. He made SURE I knew I am a sinner and needed Salvation. What more could I have ever asked? And what more could I ever do but heed what he said? My proudest day with him was to go there and tell him I was Baptized in the Name of Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit in Stones Lake (his niece Shirley's lake) that afternoon. He could rest easy then.

Even though he is now long gone, and a Grand Canyon of loss yawns massively agape in his absence, I can still hear his soft, loving voice saying, "Now, now, Little Man..." as his big hands gently directed me in the way I should go. His memory rings clear and true, branded forever with love on my mind and heart.

If you are a young man reading this, this is a Manual on Fatherhood. Read it again. This is about how to be a real MAN. Make it YOU. I promise you... I GUARANTEE you: You will NEVER fail if you take to heart and follow what you've read here. You likely won't have the physicality of Dad in his prime, but there is no reason why you can't develop his Depth of Character and his same effect on your children if you put earnest and sincere work into it, and that is what this is all about.

Something I have said repeatedly since my own slow dawning of wisdom is, "The greatest respect you can pay anyone is to remember what they taught you." So, if you want to respect me, don't forget what I have taught you from what my wonderful Dad had taught me.

All I can ever hope for children today, is that they have a Dad or a father figure of even the wispiest shadow of one like mine and that's part of the reason why I wrote this. The main reason is to Honour him the best way I know how. 

Thanks from the bottom of my heart, Dad. See you soon.