Earliest Memories....Em.

(Preface from Jeff, Mother suggested i might mention this post would be of particular interest to Millie and Barb. Barb Maclandish, as you may remember, is where the 'God is Love' tapestry went to, last month. Millie is her mom, and daughter of Mary Morrison, the lady who made the tapestry. So there, it's mentioned. HI BARB!!)

Have you ever tried to figure out the very earliest memory from when you were a small person? The earliest I can go is when I was three years old and my brother Jack would be not quite two, he’s 14 months younger than me. My parents would leave us playing happily while they went out for a few minutes to do the milking in the barn, hoping we would stay out of mischief for that long. Well, one day, the “playing happily” went to a new dimension, Marion came up with an inventive way of piling things upon things in order to reach the candy box, which was kept in a squarish tin box HIGH up in the cupboard out of the reach of small children. And yes, said naughty child managed to get the box down, with the assistance of her baby brother.as accessory in the crime. And get the box open, which was another victory in the case. But unfortunately the criminals were caught red-handed, with my parents coming in the door with the milk buckets, just at the crucial moment, when darling little Marion was SHARING with her brother, “One-a Ma-wie, one-a Jack”. I don ‘t remember the punishment, there probably was one, knowing my father, but then again, he always had admiration for children with inventiveness, so maybe it was just a good tongue-lashing.

In this post, I’m going to include some early pics (very few in number, actually), which will show some of the record-making events from my early days. The earliest picture ever taken of me was with my cousin Millie holding me on her lap on some ancient doorstep. I’m about 4 months old, Millie about 10 years, as she was born in August 1914, and I was born in November 1924. Millie was a significant part of my life when I was small, as she lived either with us, or nearby for some years. My aunties and uncles, and all my cousins, were an important part of my early existence, as were my granny and grampa Wilson, (my mother’s parents). I don’t remember much about Grampa Morrison, he died in 1927, he appears to me as a shadowy face, with a hand in his pocket for the “sweeties” he carried there for tiny grandchildren. He dropped dead on the sidewalk in front of Eaton’s store in downtown Edmonton. Granny Morrison I never knew, she died in 1921 before I was even born, in fact before her youngest son Alex was even in the dating mode.

I remember very well Jack and I sitting on the placid cow, Bessie, to get our pictures taken, we were about 3 and 2, somebody placed us there as Bessie sat cheerfully chewing her cud, and managed to get the photo op before the tragic moment when Bessie decided she’d had enough, and without ceremony, got to her feet, dumping us both off on the ground. Right over her head! (Cows get up hind feet first, unlike horses, which get up front feet first….just a bit of old farm wisdom here!)
My next memories I guess were of New Zealand, where we went when I was turning four and Jack coming three. I remember the flying fishes and watching them from the deck of the ships we travelled on, the Aorangi and the Niagara, they would fly so high, they sometimes landed right on the deck. I remember all of us climbing up the very steep hill (called One Tree Hill) in the centre of Auckland, where we stayed for the 2 or 3 months in New Zealand. Jack and I were fascinated by the piles of oak acorns under that tree, we filled our pockets with them. I remember how tough the soles of our bare feet became, covered with little brown freckles, even though it was winter time back home in Canada, it was middle of the summer there, and all kids went barefoot. Millie and Auntie Mary went with us, Millie (14), refused to go to school there….she wasn’t going to wear no stupid uniform! That incredible girl got away with it, too!

I remember going up- island to the mudpools at Rotarua, where the ground trembled beneath our feet, and the mudpots bubbled and plopped and you had to stick to the pathways or get seriously burned. The New Zealand enterprise fizzled out after a couple of months of my dad and uncle Hughie trying to find decent working conditions, so we turned around and came back home to the BIG DEPRESSION, and eventually back to the farm in Alberta where our family could at least raise enough food to keep ourselves alive. And so, goodbye to the Roaring Twenties and on to the Dirty Thirties…...
Have fun with the old pics, all taken from my big book No. 2! Still a few more old stories left, I’ll get to them eventually, family.

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