After we married and moved west, Cora and I moved onto our new farm in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, west of Claresholm, Alberta. Soon after we arrived, Cecil Menzies, one of our new neighbors, stopped his Hupmobile car at our farm gate. He walked up the lane to our house, introduced himself, and welcomed us to the area.
We found Cecil to be a very friendly and sincere man. He seemed to have all day to express himself and listen to our point of view. We always enjoyed visiting with Cecil, whether we were talking about farming, world politics or the weather (always a favourite subject for farmers). When we first met Cecil, he was married. He and his wife Dorothy had one child, a daughter named Margaret. A few years later, they had two visits by the stork, who added two sons to their family.
Cecil had immigrated to Canada from Ireland. At first, he worked as a ranch hand doing jobs like punching cattle on several of the foothill ranches west of Claresholm. Later he managed to acquire a farm of his own. He soon found that farming by himself was quite lonely, so he courted the schoolteacher at the local one room school. After finding just how compatible they were, they married and lived happily ever after.
From the stories he told me about his younger years, life in Ireland as Cecil grew up wasn’t a bed of roses. He told of working on a farm there. One of his jobs was to take a load of hay to the Saturday sale. The load was purchased by two buyers, each taking half. Cecil delivered one half of the hay to the first buyer, who lived nearby. The other half of the load had to be delivered across town. The hay was loaded on a two-wheeled cart, pulled by one horse. His delivery took him from the catholic to the protestant section of town. As he drove from the one area to the other, someone set the hay on fire. Cecil nearly lost the horse along with the cart and the hay! To make matters worse, the local tuffs beat him up for good measure.
Cecil did have some fun and excitement during his years in Ireland. He told us how he and his friends poached deer for food in a large forest near his town. They had to be clever to get it home, carefully avoiding the game keepers. Another story about venison happened in Alberta, a few miles south west of our farm. The location was further back in the foothills, on the Burton brothers' ranch. When Cecil was riding his saddle horse from one ranch to another, his trip took him past the ranch buildings. They invited him in for lunch (as all good westerners would do), and Cecil accepted. The boys asked what kind of meat he preferred, then listed what they had on hand: beef, venison, moose, elk, and bear meat. Cecil said he'd never had a chance to eat bear meat, so he chose bear. They took him down into their root cellar to cut off the steaks each man preferred. All the meat that had been mentioned, was hanging from the roof beam. There hung a side of beef, a deer’s carcass, a back quarter of a moose and next, what Cecil thought was the body of a man. They told him it wasn’t a man. It was a bear carcass. Cecil, who often said he could eat a meal off one side of his plate with a dead gopher on the other side, changed his mind about eating bear steaks!
Cecil farmed three-quarters of a section of land, just a mile north of our farm. He did a very good job growing wheat. He sold his crop in the fall, keeping coarse grains like oats and barley to feed his livestock. Cecil's cattle were always in very good condition. So were the team of
horses he used for the farm jobs that didn’t require his shiny green John Deere tractor.
Cora and I got to know Cecil’s wife, Dorothy quite well. We found her to be a very nice lady, with much the same qualities as her husband. We exchanged visits whenever possible and enjoyed their company. Dorothy kept very busy caring for her family, especially after the two boys arrived.
When I acquired a new saddle horse, it was a little on the wild side. I didn’t have a saddle of my own at the time, so Cecil loaned me his western saddle. This helped me ride more safely. In the year of 1948, I farmed with horses. He gave me the use of some horse-drawn equipment, along with a lot of good advice about farming with horses. At the time, I needed, and really appreciated his wisdom.
Cecil kept some chickens, turkeys and a few geese on his farm. One fall day, he purchased four new geese to enhance his flock. The Alberta Chinook winds were blowing very hard when he arrived home with the geese. He removed two burlap sacks from the trunk of his Hupmobile car, each containing two frustrated birds. Cecil opened the two bags, releasing the imprisoned birds to join the other farm geese. These domesticated birds are quite heavy and normally do not fly. Upset and disorientated, the new arrivals surprised Cesil by taking off into the strong winds. They disappeared from his sight into the dark evening sky.
Cecil searched a couple hours for his new birds. He could hear them calling to each other, but in the dark, they were impossible to locate. He returned home empty handed. The next morning, he was up before dawn to look for those fly-away geese. He hoped he might get to them before a hungry coyote and his friends got free goose dinners. It was too late. All the Cecil could find was a couple of areas covered with feathers and fluffy goose down. He returned home to have his breakfast with his wife Dorothy. He now knew how not to handle newly purchased geese.
Coyotes were rather numerous in our area and could be seen almost every day. One day, I was doing some tractor work on a neighbour’s place. This was a field separated by a common barbed wire fence from the farm of our neighbours, the Menzies. As I traveled around the field, I noticed a lone Coyote approaching the Menzie’s chicken house looking for his noon meal. All the birds were in the building, so the hungry hunter stood on his back feet, eyeing the chickens, with his front paws against the windows. It was as though he was selecting the plumpest bird for his lunch. This Coyote wasn’t as lucky that day as his friends were when the Cecil's new geese took off into the dark evening sky. But, who knows, maybe he was also in on those goose dinners.
On a cold winter day in January, Cecil and I joined our close friend, Morley MacKay. Morley and Lucy Mackay were the next neighbours up the road from Cecil. We three traveled up the canyon on the 44 ranch to look for a big black bear. I had been hunting for deer in December and I had stumbled onto a bear’s den. The owner was at home, so I tip-toed away. Now we three were making this trip in Cecil’s wagon, pulled by his team of horses. The team pulled us through ten-inch deep snow, on our quest to return with a beautiful bear skin rug. Old bruin was asleep when we located his den and no amount of hollering and whistling could awaken him. Cecil was the only one of us three that was brave enough to use a short tree branch to reach into the den and poke the bear to awaken him.
Well this big black bear came awake instantly and as he came out of his lair, he looked over his shoulder at us three mighty hunters and decided his best defense against my rifle, Morley’s shot gun and Cecil’s double-bladed axe, was to run. This he did, covering the short distance to the bushes in no time flat. He disappeared from our sight.
My rifle had a hi-powered scope on it and since I was so close to the bear, all I could see through the scope was black, so I didn't shoot. Morley didn’t fire his shot gun, as he said later it was only for shooting birds. Cecil commented as we were on our way home, “If I had known you two were so chicken, I would have split that bear’s head open with my axe, as he came out of the den.”
My thoughts on this adventure at that time are still much the same today. The hunt was a great success for all involved, including the bear. Anyway, it would have been impossible to make a rug for each of us from one bear, even if he did appear to be the biggest black bear in the world. We were lucky that Mr. Bear didn’t get three rugs from our hides, to cover the dirt floor in his den!
Cecil was a very saving, and meticulous fellow. He did everything very carefully, regardless of how much time it took, or the expense involved. I visited him one day when he was having the pipeline from his new drilled water well, connected to his house. This was a thick plastic water line that can be buried in a bed of sand at the bottom of the trench. The rest of the dirt is then pushed in to fill the hole. This is the normal and accepted way to run a water line. However, Cecil was worried that the weight of the dirt might flatten the pipe and restrict the flow of water. So, he purchased a larger steel pipe to encase the plastic piping. With this extra protection, I expect the water line is as good as new to this day.
With his new John Deer tractor, Cecil often used the second hole in the drawbar so as not to wear out the end hole that is normally used. This was just another way of protecting his investment. Cecil was very good at saving in every way, every day. Cecil never smoked cigarettes or a pipe and as far as I know he never did any drinking of alcoholic beverages. I can’t even remember hearing him swear, though he might have when he was alone. I remember a time he had a bad toothache that kept him awake all one night. The next night when the pain returned and persisted, Cecil went out to his tractor shed, sat down on the front tire, and with a pair of fencing pliers, pulled out his aching tooth. I know that would cause me to let loose a few cuss words!
When Cora and I decided to sell our farm in the foothills, Cecil found us a buyer. A few years later, he and Dorothy sold their farm and moved to Claresholm to retire. We were back to their area some years after, and called in to visit them. Cecil had been in the hospital having surgery for a hernia that had bothered him for many years. Being Cecil, he figured he couldn’t take the time off while farming. Both Cecil and Dorothy were in very good health when we visited. Cecil kept himself busy reading, and Dorothy told us he had read most of the books in the Claresholm public library.
Years later, we passed through Claresholm again, and we found that Cecil had gone to meet his maker. I hope he can find a few books up there that he hasn’t read, to keep himself entertained. Maybe Morley and I will meet him once again. If we are lucky, we three could attempt another bear hunt with the same good result that we had the first time.
Written by Samuel M Hauka and edited by Roger Hauka 2019-11-22
Wonderful stories. Keep them coming.