My brother Sandy tells stories...

A few years back, my brother Alexander Baillie Morrison, known as Sandy by his immediate family (parents and siblings), decided to write a history of his early days on the farm. This story was for the benefit of his children and grandchildren, who had heard some of his stories about the good old days, and wanted more, more! Well, I was fortunate, as his older sister, to wheedle a copy of it out of him, and there it lies in my bookcase resplendent in its youthful vigor and innocence, largely unread more than once or twice. But this afternoon, having exhausted the local paper and the Church News, I found myself with nothing to read....and somehow my hands grabbed hold of Sandy's story, and I have spent the rest of my free time since 3 o'clock this afternoon, laughing fit to kill myself. What splendid writing, so funny, his depiction of the colorful life we led on the farm is largely tongue-in-cheek humour, it brings to mind many more of the happenings from the Morrison kids' childhood days than I've been remembering and writing about on BLOG over the last 9 months or so. I feel like sharing one story that is famous in our family, the tale of Lind's dogs. This story has been told. embellished upon, over and over and over, whenever my siblings and I got together for any purpose....now sadly reduced to just four of us, since Jack's demise this summer. And still this story will live on. Here's Sandy's version.... ( so the truth has now been told!). I quote from his memoirs:

"One of our neighbors in the Bowtell district was an Englishman named George Lind. He was a "remittance man", one of the thousands of the English well-to-do who got into some sort of trouble at home (usually over debts or a woman), and were sent by their families out to "the colonies" with a monthly "remittance" of funds to keep them financially solvent, out of sight and hopefully out of further trouble. Lind married an uppity Englishwoman (known as "Lady Lind" by my disapproving family), had a number of children, and didn't ever accomplish very much, though he was a man of some culture and good manners. He raised huge Newfoundland dogs, the scourge of the neighborhood for miles around. They chased cattle, ate poisoned gophers with impunity, stole Jack's coat from the fencepost where he'd hung it, knocked Bob off his bike, and generally terrorized anyone foolish enough to come into the Lind's yard, or even walk by on the road. Appeals to lock up the dogs fell on deaf ears.

"That sets the stage for the recounting of one of the deepest, darkest, and most closely-held Morrison family secrets. Since it is now half a century old, I can probably tell it with impunity. One Sunday morning in the late forties, Lind's dogs were heard frantically barking about 2-3 miles south of our house. Father and Jack jumped in the truck and went to investigate. (I was not at home that day; I was working at the University Farm at Edmonton during the summer recess from University). Jack found the two dogs had treed a porcupine and were barking furiously, trying to get the "porky" to come down and be eaten by them. One of the dogs had a faceful of porcupine quills. Jack promptly shot him, an act of mercy, since porcupine quills , if not quickly and painfully removed with a pair of pliers, almost always killed the poor creature in which they were embedded, but only after long suffering.

"The other dog took off, running towards its home, several miles to the north. My brother Bob, then a teenager, was trailing the two men on foot. He saw the dog emerge out of the woods, and begin to cross over a slough by the railroad tracks. Bob quickly hunkered down in the grass, took careful aim with his .22 and shot the dog through the head, killing it instantly. I came home the next day, and helped move the two corpses to a final resting place in the middle of a dense brush about fifteen miles from home. I'm sure the bones are still there to this day. Not a word was ever said to the Linds or anyone else. The absence of the dogs was widely noted, of course, and rumours abounded about their fate. Everyone agreed that whoever had done whatever had been done to the dogs deserved a medal. The dogs were a serious menace to both man and beast, were running loose totally out of control, and deserved killing. Ironically, suspicion fell on another neighbor, who we knew was totally innocent, but we were all sworn to secrecy and could say nothing.

"Linds may not have suspected we had had a hand in the demise of their dogs, but a few months later somebody tried to poison our beloved dog, Walter, with poisoned meat. He was dreadfully sick, but recovered. There were dark intimations of who might have done the deed, but of course, no proof, and the affair died there." End of quote.

Well, that's the story as recounted by Sandy, one of many tales that are simply hilarious. Sandy, if you are reading, PLEASE PLEASE give me permission to retype some of your Tales From the Morrison Woods for our family BLOG! I know my kids and grandkids would enjoy them so much, as I'm sure your family already has. Enjoy, everybody!