Category: Stories

We drink a toast to you on your birthday, Auntie Ivy! May you have a great many, many more to come.

Your birthday makes me, (Pat), think that time passes very, very fast. I have such vivid memories of the sixties, visiting the farm during the summers:

• The pea picking, and of course, the shelling contests.
• The raspberry picking, of coming back with half full pails, with full stomachs, but still looking forward to raspberry desserts with cream and of course the jam, (desserts for sure because we all knew how Uncle Ken loved desserts).
• Granny Phelps’s stories, Gaelic singing, the trash can story re: money (an Edmonton story), teasing a Scotch person about payday concerning an after school job, (see Auntie Ivy for details). 
• The adventure of helping Uncle Ken haul bales from the “flats,” riding the hay rack on top with a full load … the wild scramble, as Auntie Ivy tells the story, of seeing the cousin’s bodies, arms, legs and bales going in all directions when losing the load going up the river hill, to Uncle Ken’s chagrin.
• Fishing for goldeye on the North Saskatchewan, walking out on the inside of the dam a long,  long, scary ways out on the river, and seeing the never-used locks, which Granny Phelps had seen as new and fantastic in 1913 on her landing by riverboat.
• The thrill of driving cars full of cousins on Aunt Ivy’s lap to Uncle John’s store for pops, orange crush, seeing the log buildings, and visiting Granny and Grandpa MacDonald. Chopping wood from the wood pile while there, seeing their underground scary dirt cellar — always with an eye out for the ferocious turkeys and roosters patrolling.
• The fun at the ol’ pig barn riding bronc-busting hogs, trying not to let “Joe Dent” send us flying. Or was it Josephine?
– The trips to the fairs with the thrill of cousin Lynne “up-chucking” on the “tilt-a -whirl” in mid-“whorl” with LYNNE being in the middle of at least five to six cousins hanging on for dear life.
• What fun we had with your truly great gift of storytelling Aunt Ivy, as well as Uncle Ken’s one-liners thrown in. And Uncle Charlie’s storytellings and navy songs, with something to do with Hitler’s missing body parts. This would make us laugh until we were crying, our stomachs hurting and making us feel like we were so very, very special. 
• Christmas concerts of play acting, and singing songs (usually by  the girls), about individuals in the families … like “Six Days on the Road” relating to their Uncle Chuck’s work. Although Kenny John’s tribute to Granny Phelps’ birthday party at P.A. many years later was so very, very good. Kenny gave us fair warning as a group before he started singing that he hoped his singing would not turn our stomachs after eating the supper served at the birthday banquet. Well my stomach did a flip-flop of joy to hear Granny Phelps’ all time favourite song in Gaelic sung so well — what great memories were revived.

The above is just a small glimpse of the wonderful past I hold in my memory, when I think of Uncle Ken, and you — Aunt Ivy — on your birthday.  Thanks … love you.