Roots - A Life in Review

By Cassie Merko

EBOOK. This is an autobiography written by a Manitoba farm girl who just simply wanted a better life. Her optimistic outlook on life and great sense of humor makes this book such a good read.

There is also a section of her beautiful poetry, which will pull on your emotions -- and your tear ducts. This eBook is a revision of the original book which was first published in March 2009.

A second volume to this series of Cassie's memoirs, called "Small Beginnings", is also currently available for those who would like to read more by this warm and funny lady! Both memoirs are available in print, with perfect bound paper spine as well as coiled spine.

This author has also published a whimsical children's book called Sally Snowflake's Christmas. This book is available with -- and without -- a coloring book section.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Oct 8, 2012
• ISBN: 9781300282617

Book preview

Roots - A Life in Review

Roots: A Life in Review

by Cassie Merko

Volume 1

Second Edition

ISBN  978-1-300-28261-7

Copyright © 2012 by Cassie Merko

All Rights Reserved.  No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any form without prior permission in writing from the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief excerpts.

Dedication:

I dedicate this book to my children, their children, and their children’s children to provide them with a window through which they can look into the lives of their ancestors.

About the Cover:

The cover was chosen to illustrate our humble beginnings. The top picture shows my brother and me in front of the house where we were born. The bottom picture is the house in Kulish where we grew up. This picture inspired the poem Faraway Roots, on page 264. A stranger in Toronto had picked that page out of the Ethelbert Homecoming book and used copies of it as placemats in his restaurant. We just happened to stop there for lunch and saw it.

Acknowledgement:

I want to gratefully acknowledge my editor, Marilyn Christian without whose inspiration and enthusiastic encouragement, none of my books would be online. Her acumen and experience; her enduring patience; her meticulous attention to detail; and her superior editing skills have been my doorway to the fulfillment of a lifelong dream.

Meet Our Farm Family

Our small family farm was located in central Manitoba, three miles from Ethelbert, forty miles northwest of Dauphin. Basically we specialized in grain farming on one section of land and ran a herd of about a hundred and twenty head of beef cattle, with a few milk cows.

To round out our family circle, there was my husband John, myself, and our three children. Jim (John Jr.) was our oldest and the two girls, Carol, three years younger than Jim, and Connie, just a year younger than Carol. Then there was Dido (grandpa) and Baba (grandma). They were John’s parents and they often helped on the farm. Baba was a constant babysitter when the kids were small as I was out working in the fields. Also, John had an Uncle Leon – Strayo we called him – whose very unique personality inadvertently brought much mirth to our family, especially to me, who often got paired off with him during harvest time.

In the following pages you will also meet my brother, John, nineteen months younger than I, who shared my early adventures. John and I grew up together as our other siblings were considerably older and were out, working in the city.

Besides the human members of our family, there were also the special animals that played an integral role in our farming operations. Among these were: the dogs, Bimbo, Rascal and Kennedy; the cats, Dolly, Mitzy, Tommy and Silver; Jacky, the jackrabbit; Little Mite, the saddle horse; Dukey and Pokey, the ponies; and the milk cows, Spotty, Suzy, and Faline. Also of note, were Rita, the savagely overprotective maternal cow; Jessie, the infamously mischievous calf that became a threat as a cow; Lucky the steer; and Tweety Pie the calf, who thought he was human and would gladly have followed us into the house had we allowed it.

Then there was Charlie, that notorious big white Charlais bull who was such a typical philandering male that he would jump any fence just to see a new face, yet he was a total wimp and bellowed like a baby when you gave him a needle to vaccinate him. He was unlike Joe, a much smaller Hereford bull, who was so docile, we could come up to him anywhere in the pasture, rub his rump, jab the vaccinating needle home and send him peacefully on his way. Each of these members of our family has a story to tell. In this book, you will meet them all.

Some of the stories and poems are about my own years growing up, first on my parents’ farm in Ukraina, then later in Kulish, northwest of Ethelbert. Most of the stories, however, deal with events that happened after I was married and are set at our farm in Loon Lake area where our kids grew up. However, after we moved to Dauphin, I had more leisure time on my hands, particularly when I started travelling. Hopefully, as you skim through these pages, you will empathize with our tragedies, cringe at my indiscretions, laugh at my absurdities and revel in my triumphs! Many of my idiosyncrasies came later in life, when I really should have known better but I became smarter after each mistake. Such is life!

Jim – Always the Big Brother

As my first-born, Jim was the trail blazer and teacher for most of my mothering techniques and precedents. Like most new mothers, I was nervous and insecure. I was petrified when my baby cried and worried when he was quiet. His being a colicky baby didn’t improve my confidence either. Nothing I did pacified him. I carried him around, he screamed or I laid him down, he screamed. He had pain and discomfort and I could not help him. Many times, I cried right along with him. When I asked the doctor about relief for my baby, he just said he’d outgrow it and not to worry.

Crying won’t hurt him, it’s like a type of exercise and it will make him grow up strong. Besides, he’ll grow out of it in two or three months. Don’t worry about it. he told me casually and with that I went home, and cried some more because I felt so helpless and inadequate. No gripe water those days. Not invented yet.

I didn’t have recourse to books or television programs that teach you basics about child rearing. You learned from your mother, your neighbour or a friend and that was it, but with no phones, limited mobility, and the reduced social contact of rural life in the cold of winter, even that resource was mediocre. So you did the best you knew how and hoped it was right. If that failed, you cried or learned from your mistakes and did better the next time around.

The doctor was right though. After three horrendous months during which Jim spent an average of three hours almost every evening, screaming at the top of his lungs, he had gained a good ten pounds of solid muscle. He was healthy. Actually, except for those colic attacks, he was a happy baby. He even slept through the night, not waking up for any of those middle of the night feedings that other mothers complained about. Naturally! After three hours of screaming and kicking, who wouldn’t? He was so tired; he wasn’t thinking of food; all he wanted was rest and sleep!

Then just when I thought all my troubles were over, Jim caught a cold. Not just a cold. It was bronchitis which had him wheezing so badly I was sure he would not be able to draw the next breath. We packed him up and drove to the hospital. The doctor checked him out and told me that he would keep him in the hospital for a couple of days. Convinced that he would be in better hands under medical care, we left him there. We went home and I spent a sleepless night, tossing and turning and worrying.

The next morning we drove back to town and went up to that hospital room where Jim was. There was a heavy plastic sheet over the crib and a vaporizer on the floor below, spouting steam into the plastic tent around my baby but no nurse in sight – not anybody for that matter. He was alone in the room, wheezing laboriously away – the way we had left him last night. I was horrified. He could have choked to death and nobody would even have known when!

I sought out the doctor immediately. His office was in the hospital. Ethelbert provided living quarters for him next door.

What are you doing for him? I demanded. He is no better than he was last night, and nobody is there to watch him.

The doctor looked at me with the understanding eyes of a parent who has been there. (He had a boy exactly Jim’s age). He could empathize with my concern. Only thing was, I was expecting an instant cure and he was not a man of miracles.

We’re vaporizing him, and we’re giving him antibiotics, he told me patiently. This bronchitis has to run its course.

Can’t I take him home and do that? I asked pleadingly. At least there, I can watch over him. Here, he has nobody around. What if he choked? He’s breathing so hard.

He’s not likely to choke, but if it would make you feel better, you can steam him at home. That will ease his breathing.

I wanted to try it. I was worried and uneasy but I was more afraid to leave him in that hospital room alone.

On the way home, we stopped at the store and picked up several bottles of Vick’s Vaporub. I knew I was stockpiling, but I wanted to make sure I didn’t run out. When we got home, we brought the crib into the living room near the big boxstove. We had no hydro and the only way I could get steam was from a boiling pot on a stove. I rubbed Jim’s chest with Vick’s and then put some of that smelly ointment into the potful of boiling water that I set on the boxstove. As the room filled with the medicated vapours of eucalyptus leaves, I pulled up a chair beside the crib and prayed.

I spent that night on a chair beside the crib, dozing in spurts, listening for any change of sound in his breathing. By morning, I was exhausted and desperate to get some relief for both him and me from somewhere – anywhere. I sent John to town to bring my mother to our place, then, leaving Mom with the baby, we went back to town where I went to a pay phone and called a doctor in Dauphin who had treated my mother when she was in the hospital.

Between sobs, I told him about my dilemma. He’s breathing so hard. I’m afraid he will choke and I don’t know how to help him.

He asked me several questions and then shocked me with a lulu.

Do you have any whiskey in the house?

I fairly gaped. I beg your pardon?

I asked if you have any whiskey in the house, he repeated, his voice steady, serious.

I – I – ah – I don’t know I stammered, totally baffled by the turn this conversation had just taken.

You go back home. Get a small teaspoon of whiskey, add an ounce or two of warm water to it and give it to the baby. Give him this same thing every three or four hours, and keep steaming and rubbing him with the Vicks.

John was astounded when I told him what the doctor had said. As it happened, we didn’t have a drop of whiskey in the house and there was no liquor store in Ethelbert, but we had a neighbour who never ran out of home-brewed whiskey. We went home; John dropped me off and drove straight to the neighbour’s farm.

Within an hour he was back and I did what the doctor had advised. Within two hours, we noticed a change in Jim’s breathing. It was less raspy, less rumbling. Mom and I sat beside his crib talking in low tones while Jim slept more peacefully than he had in three days. When he woke again, I gave him another dose and some milk. He drank that and soon was sleeping quite peacefully, his breath almost regular, just a slight rumble in his little chest.

In a couple of days, Jim was good as new but a few months later, it happened again. We didn’t even take him to the local doctor that time. We just used the whiskey remedy on him again and although it had to run its course, at least I didn’t have to worry about him choking to death. Every few months this would repeat itself. It seemed every time someone in the neighbourhood sneezed or coughed or picked up some virus, Jim always countered with his own special brand of flu – bronchitis. The doctor said that once a body gets a bad attack like that, it weakens their immune system and they become so much more susceptible to that strain.

He will eventually grow out of it but it may take him four or five years to regain his strength. Don’t worry, it’ll happen, he said.

Jim did grow out of it. By the age of six, his bronchial attacks were history, although I still cringed whenever someone spoke of some virus that had raised its alarming head anywhere. I couldn’t believe that those traumatic attacks were truly behind us.

Jim was a quiet baby and, as a small child, seldom got into any real mischief. One of his favourite pastimes was to sit on the floor in the middle of the living room, with an old catalogue. As he turned each page slowly and methodically, he would babble sounds like he was reading. On winter evenings, as I did my ironing or played with the baby or did whatever else I had to do, John would be sitting in the recliner with a book, reading aloud so that I got the story as well as he did. This was the scenario Jim was trying to recreate. He was reading a book for Mommy!

Jim did scare the living daylights out of me a few times though. With no electricity, we started the wood stove with kindling and often, I used a dash of coal oil to help the fire catch. The coal oil we kept in a bottle in the far corner underneath the stairs. One late afternoon, Jim found that bottle. It was empty, but, doing what any normal child would do with a bottle, Jim tipped it over and dredged the final remaining few drops.

A horrible choking gasp alerted me to what had happened. Dropping everything, I grabbed my baby, who was desperately trying to pull air into his lungs and was definitely not succeeding. I shook him. No help. I was alone at home. Terror stricken, I tore out of the house with Jim in my arms, racing wildly out to the field where John was tilling the summer fallow.

I don’t know if it was the bouncing I gave him as I raced over those rough furrows, or the sheer desperation of his lungs that finally made Jim start coughing and drawing rasping breaths of air, but by the time I reached John, on the other side of the creek, Jim’s gasping breath was just barely worse than mine after that frantic 10,000 yard dash. His breath smelled as foul as coal oil can smell for several hours after, but other than that, the crisis had passed.

Then there was another frightening episode that I am certain must have chomped at least ten years out of my life span. During the summer, John’s Dad, Dido often came out to the farm. He and Jim were great pals. Hand in hand, they walked around the yard or the fields, Dido talking, Jim listening; Bimbo patiently following behind them. Dido encouraged Jim to join him wherever he was and Jim always did so when he saw an opportunity.

One day, Dido had been tilling the summer fallow, and had just driven the big orange Co-op tractor up to the 300 gallon gas tank to fuel up. While Dido was busy with the hoses above the tractor, he failed to notice that Jim had approached from behind. I had just come out from the house and realized the danger and although I yelled as loud as I could, Dido had the tractor running and didn’t hear me. As he put the tractor in reverse, the draw bar slowly but forcefully pushed Jim down onto the ground. I felt like I was part of a slow motion movie as I raced towards that huge tractor whose front wheel now slowly rolled over my baby’s prostrate body, starting at the feet all the way up and over his head.

Dido had been looking backwards and hadn’t even realized what had happened until he saw me grab Jim’s limp form off the ground. I remember screaming and shaking Jim’s blue body, trying to make him breathe and then Dido was beside me telling me to stop. His face was ashen and his voice raspy as he told me that Jim might have broken bones and I should not shake him.

I have little recollection of how Jim finally started taking those gasps that were his way of breathing for the next few hours. We had to get Jim to a doctor, but John had taken the car to town so we had no way of getting there. Tractors were all we had and the big one was too clumsy. With Dido in the driver’s seat and me perched on the fender, my foot braced solidly against the drawbar, I held my precious, still rather limp and gasping two and a half year old baby in my arms, as we raced the little Ford tractor as fast as it would go down the gravel road towards town and, hopefully, help. I prayed desperately as I balanced us both precariously against the bumps. We were almost half way to town before we saw the first car. Not knowing who was in it and caring still less, Dido flagged them down. It was a bunch of men heading out to a monster Car Bingo that was to be held in Grandview some forty miles away. Dido did the talking. I couldn’t. I was too petrified that any moment Jim may stop breathing altogether.

Quickly the men made room for me in the back seat and silently we drove to Grandview where they deposited me and Jim at the doctor’s office. Telling me that they will pick me up after the Bingo, they left me there. The doctor took his time with Jim. Gently and carefully, he examined him for broken bones. He had no X-ray machine at his disposal – for that you had to go to Dauphin – so he had to go strictly by his own instincts but he finally told me that he was convinced that all Jim had was severe bruising. Because the tractor was in reverse, the front wheels merely followed with less weight to them than had it been pushing forward. This was what had been the saving grace in the near tragedy.

He is just a baby. His bones are soft – not brittle. He is fortunate. He is badly bruised, but he should be alright in a few days. Just keep him quiet.

Jim had some broken skin on the calf of his leg, his hip, his ribcage, on his cheek and above his eyebrow where the gravel had scraped his body. The doctor cleaned out the scrapes, put bandages on his hip and his face and assuring me that Jim would be alright, sent me to the waiting room to wait for my ride. I sat there, barely able to breathe myself from the trauma I had been through, but just grateful that it wasn’t any worse.

After a few days, Jim’s breathing became normal and his energy returned. Actually, it was the scrapes on his face that took longer to disappear. And the scars on my heart are still there!

Jim didn’t start actually talking till after he turned three. I was starting to worry about him being slow or something. We were visiting some friends one day and I happened to mention my uneasiness to my hostess. Anne was an experienced mother. She had nine children, her seventh, a boy, was just slightly older than Jim. He wasn’t talking either but she didn’t look worried at all.

Anne stood and watched Jim as he played with her kids. Then, satisfied with what she saw, she turned to me. With total confidence in her voice, she laughed at my concern. Don’t you worry, she told me ever so flippantly. One of these days that boy will start talking and you won’t be able to shut him up. You’ll wish he’d stop jabbering and give you peace. You’ll see.

I felt better. Gordie was almost three and a half and he didn’t talk yet but this mother, with all her experience, treated it like something totally normal. Surely, she should know. A few weeks after that, Jim just seemed to clue in to speech and, like Anne had told me, there was no stopping him. He rattled on from morning till night. Jim was not retarded as I had feared. I think that John and I just contributed to his appearing so. Between ourselves, we spoke English; to Jim we spoke Ukrainian! In our eagerness to teach him our native language, we must have just confused the poor kid enough to keep him from talking at all. When he figured it all out, he started talking! Another bridge crossed in my educational journey.

When the girls were born, Jim was always the doting big brother. He would sit beside the carriage for hours totally fascinated by the baby. As the baby’s sense of awareness grew, he learned that he could actually entertain them with sounds and funny faces and this made him enjoy them even more. I often capitalized on his devotion and utilized his entertainment skills as a sub-babysitter while I did various chores around the house or the yard.

Jim was four that spring when our youngest, Connie, was born. Carol was fourteen months old. Jim was like a mother hen, watching over his two little sisters. That spring and early summer, when I went to work in the garden, I usually left the baby in the carriage on the lawn. Carol toddled around in the grass and Jim kept a watchful eye over both of them while he played nearby. Suddenly I heard Connie’s piercing scream. I was at the carriage in an instant but Jim had already beaten me there.

Wosaw, (wasp) he told me angrily as he grabbed the stunned insect that had crawled out of the baby’s tiny fist, and quickly threw it out of the carriage. I didn’t even get a chance to stop him, he was so quick. He didn’t get bitten though; the hornet had already lost her stinger in Connie’s little thumb. I guess the hornet had unwittingly crawled into the baby’s hand and she closed her fist on it. Either as a result of the sting or maybe because she’d been squeezed, the wasp was slow enough for Jim to catch her. Jim knew wasps were dangerous, but he was protecting his little sister, even at a peril to himself. It took a few days for Connie’s sting to heal but the only probable permanent damage from the incident was that to this day, Connie has an unusual fear of all insects.

That following winter, John went to work up north to earn some extra cash which left me with all the barnyard chores to take care of as well as three small kids. We had the usual barn full of cattle, (probably about twelve head at that time) horses and pigs, plus a henhouse full of chickens. The livestock had to be fed, bedded, watered, the barn had to be cleaned and the cows had to be milked. All this to be done while