CHAPTER TWO

FATHER REMEMBERS

It seems appropriate, at this stage, to record some family events which took place before I was born, and which were told to us by my father, Watson Park. These stories are memorable sagas, carried over from my boyhood days. No attempt will be made to record them in chronological order nor to relate them to each other,

My father was born in a shanty in one of the backward townships in Ontario, Canada. He didn't remember much about the shanty, but he was told that it served for a home for about seven years, while a house was being built to replace the one which was burned down.

My father was the youngest of the family of eight. Two circumstances stood out in his early childhood. One was when they carried his six-year old sister Auzuba away in a white casket, bearing waving plumes of white ostrich feathers. She had died of diptheria. The other event happened when he was three years old. One morning at mealtime he found himself looking at two rounded objects, each covered by a dreadful black ring, where his breakfast had always come from. With a sinking heart he turned away forever and thereafter he had to get his milk from a cup. Years afterward he learned that he had been nursed unduly long to minimize the chance of another pregnancy. He was then told that the black rings had been ink applied by his mother.

One evening my father went with his parents, Philip Bender Park and Margaret Park, to call on one of the neighbors, who had a reputation for being dirty. When they arrived they found the untidy woman of the house, lying in bed with the one-time white sheet pulled up, so that her bare feet were sticking out in the warm air. Between her toes were dried remnants of cow manure and mud from the barnyard. The wall beside the bed was covered with stains of tobacco juice, because the old lady liked to chew it in bed. She jumped out of bed, happy as a lark. She was so glad to see her friends that she sat down, in her night gown at the old organ, and played and sang for an hour. She could really sing and play too, although she couldn't read a note of music.

Boyhood days, for father, centered around the farm, the school and the church. The old frame schoolhouse was not too tightly constructed, and the Schoolmaster's eyesight was not good either. So sometimes a boy got away with the use of a knot hole, instead of going outside to the special building set aside for toilet purposes.

Father attended public school with his brother William, who was one year older. Father and his brother William tried the entrance examinations together, along with twenty-four others in the township. The two of them came out the best in the group, with my father getting the highest marks.

My father had a remarkable memory. When he wrote the examination in history, he wrote down word for word what the condensed history book contained, and the examiner certified that it wasn't copied from the book, because he stood over him and watched him do it, much to his own amazement.

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My father's brother William went on to high school and became a public school teacher, and earned a salary of $350.00 a year, on which he lived and raised a family.

My father did not get any advanced education except a little high school work taken in Public School.

Father remembered another occasion when he demonstrated his remarkable memory. In Sunday School the pupils were engaged in a competition to see who could learn and recite the greatest number of bible verses. This competition father easily won, by reciting from memory the whole of the gospel of St. John.

When father was a baby, he had a couple of bad experiences, which of course he didn't remember, but he recalled having been told about them. His parents told him that, when he was a baby, he occasionally had fits, and got blue in the face. One day when he had one of these spells, his sister Mary picked him up from his crib and ran outside with him. In passing through the door she struck his head on the side of the door and nearly killed him. On another occasion my father was rescued from the white-faced mare which had found him out of doors lying in his crib. She had picked him up in her teeth, with a grip on the clothing in the middle of the stomach, and was swinging him back and forth.

One day father recalled that a stranger came to see my grandfather. He found my father and his brother William, as boys, standing together. He said, "Where is your father?" Father's brother Will promptly said, "He is in the backhouse." How well I remember that ancient building. Even in my day it was quite stable with accommodations for four people at once. At the sides between the upright studs were pockets for old newspapers, because toilet paper was unheard of when I was a child. There was a special compartment close to the end hole, which my grandfather always used. This compartment my grandfather used as a spittoon while he sat on the toilet chewing tobacco. I remember this compartment had a layer of dark-brown coating on it one half inch thick.

In my father's family the boys had to help do the farm work early in life. One day father and one of his brothers were driving a pair of yoked steers which were pulling a stoneboat, on which they were riding. It was early spring, with some snow still on the ground, in patches. They were unable to control the steers and they ran the stoneboat under a large stump, which was propped up by a rail. The stone- boat, with my father still on it, came up short against the rail. Fortunately the rail held in the frozen ground or the stump would have fallen and crushed him.

One time grandfather sent one of the boys to the cider mill with a load of apples. The boy drove along the strange road until he approached a jog in the road. He could see the fence across the road, in front of him, so without going farther he turned around and came back home and announced that he could not go any farther, because he came to the end of the road. Grandfather was so angry that he turned the team around and whipped the horses to a run as he tore off for the cider mill himself.

One day two of my father's brothers, when they were still boys, drove a team of horses with a wagonload of grain to the gristmill. When they reached the millpond they realized that the horses were thirsty, so they drove them to the edge of the millpond to drink. The heavy load, on the downgrade, kept pushing the horses deeper

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into the water. Soon the horses were struggling in deep water with the heavy wagon pulling them under. The boys scrambled to shore but the horses were drowned in the millpond.

Grandfather and grandmother were faithful supporters of the little Methodist Church which was located on the corner of grandfather's farm. Grandfather for many years was class-leader in that church. Father said the congregation could not afford a janitor, so his mother cleaned the church for nothing. Many a time he said he had seen her on her hands and knees scrubbing the tobacco-juice stains off the old wooden floor. The church building was eventually moved to a new location. One of the neighbors was so angry about it that she wouldn't attend that church again.

There was one old white-haired man who was called Daddy White. He used to attend the Methodist Church and when he felt blessed by the service, he would come out of the church saying, "I'm in the ark! I'm in the ark!" One day one of the old jokesters of the day put his hand on my father's head, when he was a child, and said, "Here's old Daddy White." Father remembered that he was so alarmed he hurried home to look in the mirror to see if his hair had really turned white, like the old man's.

My father recalled that, like all boys, his eyes were bigger than his stomach. One day, when he was visiting a neighbor's for dinner, he filled his plate full of potatoes, and kept his eye on another huge one in the serving dish. He thought to himself, I'll have that one next. Without realizing it, soon he reached over and speared the big potato on his fork. When he held the prize in the air, to his horror, he looked down at his plate and found it was already so full he had no place to put it.

When father was a boy, there was a quaint character called Jim Dad Moore, who was always hard up and seldom went into the village, unless he walked. He would never come out and say "yes" when asked if he wanted something. He always answered, "I don't care if I do." One day my father was driving a team on a wagon, and overtook Jim Dad Moore walking along. Father said to him, "Do you want a ride?" Jim Dad Moore answered, "I don't care if I do." Father stepped up the horses and said, "Well if you don't care I don't either" and left the old man plodding along. After another half-mile farther father stopped the team and asked again, "Do you want a ride?" He got the same reply, "I don't care if I do." So my father said, "I don't care either" and away he went again, without giving him a ride.

Old Jim Dad Moore was a lonely man who lived alone and cooked for himself. One day, when he was having dinner with father's brother John and his wife, they offered him the supply of soup for the four of them, for him to have first helping. Jim Dad set the dish down in front of him and ate it all.

One hot day in school, my father remembered the time when one of his school mates was punished by having his hands tied together under his bent knees, and told to sit on a bench in the corner while the class continued in session. After a while the boy went to sleep in this precarious position, and fell forward and struck his head on the floor and yelled to high heaven in the middle of the class.

One time my father said he and his brother were riding with the Francis boys to church at Cultus, in their democrat wagon. There was only one seat at the time so the Park boys had to stand up and hang onto the back of the seat in front of them. For sport they made the horses run, while the boys in unison threw their weight

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alternately from one side to the other. This caused the democrat to sway violently so that, at that speed, they threw the sand first to one side and then to the other all the way to the fences.

One day my father said he was riding home on the back of a placid and uncomplaining cow. As he passed through the village of Fair Ground and was riding by his brother John's house, his nephew, Stanley, slyly said to his dog, "Sic him Caesar." The dog slipped up behind the cow and nipped her on a leg. The cow made a sudden leap forward and my father toppled off backwards onto the ground, much to the amusement of Stanley. Fortunately my father was not hurt but he was indeed surprised and embarrassed.

On another occasion my father was riding home over the same route on the bare-back of a horse. It was twilight, after a heavy rain, and the creek close to home was in flood but not running over the plank bridge. The bridge was reasonably wide but there was no railing or barrier of any kind on either side of the bridge. During the storm the wind had blown a piece of white paper onto the bridge, where it was stuck on the wet planks on the east side of the bridge. The horse, wild-eyed at sight of the paper, began to move sideways away from it, at the same time keeping an eye on it. When my father saw what was going to happen, he slid off the horse just as the horse fell sideways off the west end of the bridge into five feet of water. The horse fell on its side and became completely submerged. The horse scrambled out without help and walked on home, very much humbled and embarrassed.

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