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I have many. I'll try to tell this one.


My father had a summer job as a school boy, helping a neighbor farmer grade a gravel road.

One of his jobs was water the horses. Scotthorn had rented a small pastor from Richardson for a place for the horses to roll of the harness feel, and rest overnight. The horses did not need to graze the pasture, they were fed grain, and hay.

My father was to fill the stock tank with the hand pump. The first night Richardson walks down to the well, and tells my father to not fill the tank full, as his sheep in that pasture had been living on morning dew.

So my father was getting two different orders. I asked what he did? He said, "Richardson could not fire me, but Scotthorn could, I filled it up".




Last edited by wabigoon; 07/15/20.

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As a pre-teen, Dad helped an older neighbor do his chores after school-this would have been about 1930..

Mr. Slocum had a pond built with a stand pipe and a water line that supplied gravity fed water to hydrants in the barn lots. That was a major upgrade from the hand pump in the well and the Rube Goldberg pipe affair to fill the stock tanks. Turn on the water and go do other chores while gravity did the work!

Dad would go for chores and more than once found the hydrants running over the tanks and making a mudhole in the lots. After hand pumping water for a lifetime, Mr. Slocum would forget to go back and turn off the hydrants.

One day Dad found neatly painted sign boards nailed to all the gate posts:

"TURN OFF THE WATER!"


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One of my favorites stories Dad told was about the school bully getting his just treatment. Almost straight out of A Christmas Story..

Dad is 82 now and went to a one-room school house with about 15 other kids ranging from 1st through 8th grade.

When Dad was in third grade, one of the older boys at the school was a chronic bully. As scripted, the bully's mom also happened be the teacher, so the bully never got in trouble when he terrorized the little kids.

One day, Dad and his best friend Bob were playing at recess. Bob was a really small kid that wore glasses. Something very few kids wore back then. The bully started picking on Bob and roughing him up. In the process, Bob's glasses got broke. Bob started crying, not so much from the beating Dad said, but more from the fact glasses were expensive and hard to get and his parents were gong to be upset..

There was also another older kid, who Dad said was a complete loner. He sat in the school woodshed and whittled at recess everyday. Never played or had much to do with the other kids

When Bob started crying, the kid who whittled saw the entire glasses breaking thing go down from the woodshed and came running out and grabbed the bully and proceded to beat the living snot out of him. To the point the teacher could not even stop him from beating her son.

Dad said the bully was bleeding from one endd to the other. We loved that story as kids.

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My dad was born in 1917, one of ~12 siblings born in the same old farmhouse. The way my dad told it, long before his 'teens, he dreamed of shooting his father's 10-gauge shotgun, which was not allowed. Daily hearing all the wild ducks quacking at the pond just past the wood line behind the house, he just couldn't control himself anymore. So one very early morning he sneaked out of the house with the shotgun and hid in the bushes near the pond, waiting for the ducks to show up, but soon fell asleep.

The quacking woke him suddenly and, in his excitement, he brought the heavy gun up and fired too soon--both barrels! He said he did not get even one duck, but went home with a whole bushel of ducks' feet.


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Ducks feet. laugh


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There was a round barn that we would drive by on occasion. Each and every time that we did, Dad would say that a man once went crazy in that barn trying to find a corner to tschidt in.


Not a real member - just an ordinary guy who appreciates being able to hang around and say something once in awhile.

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My grandmother was a storyteller supreme. One of nine children, grew up on a farm, and became a farmers wife. She wrote some of those stories down for me, and I treasure them. My grandfather also could tell some pretty good ones, mostly hunting stories. He told me about how the neighbors old rooster come over to his place and would fight his roosters, and then come after him when he tried to run him off. One day he managed to corner the rooster in a chicken house. He took a corncob and rubbed the rooster's azz raw, then poured turpentine on it, and turned him loose. He said the rooster headed towards home, and couldn't decide whether to run or fly, but never came back.

He also told me a hunting tale, the one where he was out possum hunting, and would catch a possum every few minutes. He'd put the possum in a burlap bag he was carrying. After a while, he noticed that the bag wasn't getting any heavier. Turns out, the bag had a hole in it, and he was catching the same possum over and over. Of course, as a child, I believed it......lol.

My father told me this one........we had a "C" Allis Chalmers, and it was pretty slow. When traveling from one farm to the other by way of the highway, he was passed a few times by a Black man on a Farmall, and the guy would wave bye-bye at him. Daddy didn't like that. We had gotten a Case VAC-14, and it had a very fast road gear. My father had started out one day down the road, when he saw the Black man coming on his tractor. Daddy waited until the man came by, pulled out behind him, and then passed him, and waved bye-bye as he did. I used that tractor for a few years after I started farming, and always thought about that when I was driving it.

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I'd ride the back country roads with my grandfather often, in the county where our family homesteaded.

He was full of stories, and I love each one of them.

We would be going down a dirt county road and he would tell be of a guy that had a whiskey still down in that creek bottom... Or he had so and so had killed a big buck on that hill... Or the game warden was after them one night, and he and his brother hid in that thicket over there, and while laying up in that thicket, and old sow hog was in there too, popping her jaws and raising hell at them. grin

Too many stories to list.

What I'd give to just have him beside me in my pickup for one more day.


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FDR's New Deal. They are paying farmers to not raise hogs.
Of course you first you are raising a certain number, before they pay you to not raise them.

This cold December day with a raw south wind is the day the Government man comes to the farm to count the hogs.

The farmer, and his son have all the hogs in the old hoghouse.
They start pushing the hogs out the small south door while the government man hold the clipboard, and counts them.


Of course the farmer knew how many hogs he had, the count goes to that number, and the hoghouse is still full.

The hogs are booting it around the shed, and getting back in to avoid the cold wind. OK, the more the better, right?

At some time they had to empty the building out, so the farmer nudges his son, and the younger slips through the pigs, and slides an board over the hole, and the at last finish counting.

laugh


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No story,but true. My father came from Italy when he was five. He told me he started to work in the coal mines at 9 getting 3 cents a day.This would have been in the late teens of 1900 or early 1920's. His first job was picking up coal that fell off the pony pulled coal carts. He worked his way up to a young teamster driving the ponys, but was fired when a team got away from him and ran into vent fans and got killed. Jobs in coal mines were easy to come by for young boys so he went from mine to mine each time learning a bit more. Finally working his way up to a shooter with dynamite. After 3 cave ins, when he got dug out, he swore he would never go back into the mines again and forbid us boys from working when we got older. He was sure mad when I went to work for a company doing underground nuclear test. Dad died at 93 from black lung. Not heeding his advice, now I am fighting lung problems from breathing all that tunnel crud.

He told me at first after leaving home, he lived in company quarters and bought from the company store. They let them take a train to town on Sundays. They worked 6 days a week. When he got married they lived in a small shack and they had the legs of their bed set in cans with oil to keep the cock roaches off the bed at night. He would bring sacks of coal home from the mine to burn in the stove they had.

Last edited by saddlesore; 07/16/20.

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My father was born in 1914 and grew up on a farm. His folks died when he was one year old and his mothers folks adopted him. When he was about ten he got a colt. He trained it best he could and one thing he had it do was put its front feet over your shoulders and stand there. It was cute when he was a colt. When he was a year old his grandfather went out in the corral and clapped his hands. That was the signal to come over and rear up on his hind legs and put his front legs over your shoulders. Grandpa didn't know that and the result was unpleasant. For all three of them. Grandpa broke his arm. My father got beat. The horse got sold. I heard this story when I was still pretty young.

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My father spent WW11 in Nazi occupied Holland. Immigrated to this country with the family when he was sixteen. Then, without speaking enough English to argue about it, he was drafted for Korea. On the boat bound for Japan, he volunteered to work in the galley just for something to do. There he became friendly with the captain running the mess hall.

When he got incountry, he was put in a foxhole on the side of Old Baldy where he spent his time taking potshots at the Norks on the opposite hill and repelling the Chinese.

One day, they set up a mobile kitchen for the front line guys so they could have a hot meal. Dad was in line when he heard someone yell out "Is that you Dutch?"

He looked up to see that captain from the ship. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"Vell dis is vhere day put me"

"Well we'll see about that"

A week or so later Dad got his orders to transfer to the rear to work in the kitchens where he spent the rest of his time there.

The thing is, shortly after, the Chinese struck in full force and overran the area where he used to be. Wiping out most of his former unit.

He told me once that I probably owed my very existence to one certain captain from New York.


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My father when he was young played what he called Kittenball.

Likely the fourth of July, the ball players were late to the beer. Bar bottles in a tank of ice water.

You paid your money, the man reached in the tank, took off the cap, and handed you the beer. No cap, no label.

If you asked for Budweiser, you got it, no label, no cap. No idea what brand you got.


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Evnin campers, Dad had a lot of stories, worked in the logging industry, hunting story's. In the thirties he went to a logging camp so he wasn't eating the food at home, he went in with $5.00 and came out with $3.00 but they fed him through that winter. He made some money darning socks. Spent most of it in the company store. Said he lined his bed with cedar boughs to keep out the lice. Drove a team one winter that no one new their name, he named them & when the owner showed up in spring he'd named them right. I've got pics of him on top of a big big load of logs, they must have added to the reins cause normal reins aren't near long enough!!! His grand father worked for the camps also, just portaging. An uncle made his living playing pool, gambling, & loading dynamite. Dad went with him one night, for back up I think, went to the CPR section house, took their money, & some of CPR money from the safe. Dad said it was a fast walk home down them rails with several over the shoulder looks. Bet the section forman had some splaynin to do the next day. Wish he was hear to tell me all over again, he was my best friend & father too, we spent a lot of time in the bush together trapping & hunting. I sure miss him!!!! Bill out. 🐾👣🇨🇦

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My Father was not much of a story teller, pretty quiet actually. I only knew three grandparents and they barely spoke English.


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My Father's story.


My Father was about 31 years old, he had returned from service with the Canadian Army, and was doing odd jobs along with training to be a plumber/welder. There weren't many jobs he turned away. One job, in particular, he had, scared the living daylights out of me every time he spoke to someone about it, or when it would come to my mind.

In the area he lived in, there had been a bank robbery and in the process, a taxi driver he knew had been killed, and his body had been left by a streamside near a bridge.

The coroner came out from Montreal to investigate the murder and examine the body. Because the murder had occurred in the small town, the coroner decided only the big city police could handle the investigation, and considering Montreal was 62 miles away, the investigation would take many days, and he also decided that the body needed to remain where it was till the end of the investigation. Working with the local Mortician the coroner requested that the body be drained of the remaining blood and that it be pumped full of formaldehyde, and topped up daily if needed until the investigation was over. The Mortician was a close friend of my Father's family, and he asked if my Father would do the job if he showed him how to do it properly. My Father agreed for a sum that I can not remember all these years later. I remember my Father saying that he knew the cab driver and his family, and he felt that it would be wrong of him to turn down the Mortician as someone certainly had to do something to help the police, in order that the man's family could at least have some answers to so many questions. My Dad said that he did it as it was important to do, but I think his service in the army, the war, had made him a different kind of man. He was hard, but you could see soft in his eyes at times, he never cried over the big, yet he cried over the little things. Not crying as I would do, but tears, tightly bound within his eyes, yet the mist from his eyes seemed to cause a shiny wet spot just under his lashes each time.

The victim was Mr. Lucien Brunette, other generations of his family still live here, and his story is still told, and his memory still lives on. God Rest His Soul.

http://www.taxi-library.org/canada/brunette-l.htm


This is the story:


Huntingdon, Québec / December 11, 1949

At about 11:15 p.m. on the night of Sunday, December 11, 1949, 24-year-old Huntington taxi driver Lucien Brunette received a telephone call at home asking for a cab at a nearby cafe.

There he picked up two young men, both aged 18. The two had targeted Mr. Brunette for robbery because he had the reputation of carrying a lot of money. According to his wife Mr. Brunette had about $100 dollars on him when he left home.

One of the 18-year-olds lived with his parents on a farm near Huntington. The other, the ward of a Montréal orphanage, had been adopted by a Huntington family and worked as a hired hand at the same farm.

The son of the farm family had dreams of becoming a bank robber and he gradually persuaded his accomplice to join him. Ten days earlier they stole two .45 and .38 calibre revolvers from a neighbour who had recently purchased them in a Montréal tavern. Mr. Brunette was to be the first victim in their planned crime spree.

The two directed Mr. Brunette to drive to Franklin, about 15 miles from Huntington, where they tried to rob him. Police later theorized that Mr. Brunette recognized his passengers and refused to give up his money. The killers then attacked Mr. Brunette with a hammer, dragging him from the car and beating him to death. The autopsy revealed five skull fractures from savage blows that tore off the victim's scalp.

The killers then placed the dead man in the back seat of the taxi and drove several miles until they came to a bridge over a small stream. There they threw Mr. Brunette's body over the railing. Police later estimated that the time of death was between midnight and 1:30 a.m.

The killers hid the cab in an abandoned barn and returned to their own farm where they spent the night. After breakfast early Monday morning the father drove them into Huntington.

The killers hired a taxi to Montréal where they spent the rest of the morning. By noon they were back near Huntington at Ormiston. Here they interrupted taxi driver Bill Hooker at lunch and asked to be driven to Montréal again. Mr. Hooker said he'd be ready to go in ten minutes.

While Mr. Hooker finished eating the pair walked a few yards to the Ormiston branch of the Canadian Bank of Commerce and forced the three employees to hand over $1,300 at gunpoint. Hooker was waiting for them in his taxi when the killers jumped in brandishing their revolvers and ordered him to speed away.

Mr. Hooker was told to drive to Montréal but when he got to the city outskirts the pair changed their minds and ordered him to drive back to Huntington. Just outside of town at Anderson's Corners they left the taxi and disappeared into the bush. They paid Hooker $100 for a 60-mile trip that normally cost $12 and told him to keep his mouth shut. Hooker immediately notified the police.

Meanwhile, when Mr. Brunette failed to return home by 6 a.m. his wife called police who began an immediate search. Mr. Brunette's friends and family continued looking for him but the police search was temporarily abandoned when all available officers were assigned to hunt for the bank robbers.

The two investigations came together when Mr. Brunette's brother Léo discovered his bloodstained taxi in the barn where the killers had left it. [Next column]

Lucien Brunette. (Source: Toronto Globe & Mail, December 14, 1949, p. 12)

Police quickly focused their attention on the two missing farmhands and when they searched the farmhouse they found a bloodstained shirt.

Over 100 officers and civilian volunteers scoured the roads and bush around Huntington. Nobody anticipated that the fugitives would actually return to the farm, but the pair showed up there about 6 p.m. The son got into a violent argument with his mother and ordered her to leave the house with her other children. He soon thought better of this idea and he and his accomplice fled the farm to take refuge in a neighbour's barn.

By Tuesday afternoon the fugitives were desperately hungry. One of them approached the neighbour's hired man and offered him $10 for something to eat. The man called the police and the barn was quickly surrounded. Police and volunteers probed the hayloft with pitchforks and the fugitives were discovered when one of them was stabbed in the arm.

The killers confessed to murdering Mr. Brunette and led police to the bridge where the body still lay on the bank of the stream. Mr. Brunette's father was brought to the scene to identify him.

Both killers were convicted of murder and were sentenced to hang but their sentences were commuted to life in prison.

The 18-year-old orphan who had been adopted by the Huntington family was released on parole in 1987 at the age of 56. While at liberty he molested two teenage boys and was returned to prison. In November, 1993 he was again released but his parole was revoked six months later on the grounds that he posed an


* The things that Dads do, the things that shape them, the things that they swallow for the sake of the family, the things that hurt them yet they say nothing, all for the love of their families. Heroes.

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Interesting story, Lynn!


Molɔ̀ːn Labé Skýla!
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Thank you Lynn.


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times were tough during the depression and grandpa worked in the mines. but he also had a side gig.

one day during dinner dad was telling story of how he and another kid were hunting and they spotted a man walking across a field. so this fellow disappeared, just poof.

well 2 kids had to investigate that and what they found was a still. for a period of time they would steal the sugar out of the still and sell it.

well, dad turns to grandpa and says "i bet you did not know who was stealing your sugar"

grandpa spoke up right quick and very indignantly "oh," "yes i did"

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My dad told me a story of him out hunting with his old pump action .22lr, looking for rabbits. He had 3 shells left. A flock of geese flew over and he decided to try for a goose. and low and behold he knocked the lead goose right of the flock with a hit in the neck.
Said he was proud as punch to take that goose in and have his mom cook it up.


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