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Memories - cont’d. Arthur “Zip” Cox loading sheaves at Tankerton farm. the only one in the district. Not having an electric starter, it was necessary to hand crank it fast enough to get the magnets to generate enough electricity to fire the plugs. Miss Lynn always stopped at our place, on her way to town, and had tea and chat with Mother. In variably she couldn’t start her car, when it was time to leave; so the flag went up the pole for Dad to come and swing the crank; of course he was usually on the other side of the farm. It was a long walk and his humour was questionable at the end of the day but Mother’s humour was usually enough to cheer him up. Before we left the farm, the telephones came in. The kind you cranked; ours was one long, two shorts. Everyone had their own bell ring. If you wanted anyone outside your area, you rang the central operator and she would connect you through. She was always a wonderful help and a good source of information. Our newspaper was the Family Herald, and the main catalogues were Eatons and Simpsons. Dad and Mother bought a good many things through those catalogues - 25 lb. boxes of dried apples, prunes, etc. and Dad couldn’t do without his 25 lb. box of salted herring. This was his Sunday treat. He had a wire grill, with a buffalo bone fire in the kitchen stove. The fat would drip down and flare up from the buffalo bone fire. The old buffalo bones made a nice low glowing fire but very hot. There were millions of buffalo bones on the prairie and each fall we gathered up a wagon load. When the sloughs dried up in the summer there were many buffalo heads, some with horns still attached. Later, buyers came in and they quickly disappeared, as the farmers gathered them up and took them to town to sell. The banks of the Buffalo Coulee contained many buffalo wallows. Scotstoun school was used for many purposes, a hospital during the flu epidemic, Church and Sunday school, funeral parlor, weddings and community centre. When there was a “shindig”, nearly everyone had something that was appreciated, by others. There were box lunches, a favourite with the young people. Square dances, singing and recitations. Many a time I have listened to “Sweet Adelaine”, “It’s a long way to Tipperary”, Shooting of Dan McGrew”, and the “Face on the Bar Cont’d. next column Memories - cont’d. Room Floor”, etc. The evening usually went on until it was time to go home and milk the cows. On each trip to Mannville all available eggs were gathered and traded at the store for five cents per dozen. Many were weeks old. Mother would churn up a few pounds of butter and in each one pound patty was a well mashed potato and when the vegetable dye was added you couldn’t tell the difference. Dad used to tell some stories about green English- man who bought some C.P.R. land near us. Apparently he bought a milk cow. The first time when he went to milk her, he sat on the wrong side. Bossy took this for a while, then lifted her leg and knocked pail, milk and Englishman flying. We used to catch gophers, cut off their tails and Dad would pay me one cent each. He said he could take them to the Post Office and the Federal Government paid him one cent each. Then the Government found out the Indians were catching them, cutting off their tails and letting them go, so they stopped buying gopher tails. The gophers were a nuisance; it was not the amount of grain they ate, but they established colonies in the fields and the badgers found it easy to dig them out in loose soil, and in so doing broke down a lot of standing grain. When the grain was being cut with the binder, there was the danger of a horse stepping in the hole or the “Bull” wheel on the binder dropping in and becoming stuck. Hail storms and early frosts took their toll, and many farmers including my dad, lost his years’ work in a few minutes. I don’t remember any crop insurance in those days. Dad later sold his farm in 1919 to Bernie Blacksland, a returned soldier and we moved to Edmonton. The old farm house on the homestead - June 1955 Page 7