Plumbing the Memories

By Michael O'Neill

Join the Author as he leafs through an album of anecdotes from his life as a farm boy through to his life as a farmer/plumber. Sometimes hilarious, sometimes funny, sometimes heartwarming the pictures painted of childhood and siblings give the reader a personal look at growing up in a rural Ontario farm family. The same mix of humour and hard work permeate his adult life working as a plumber and around his own family farm. A book where each chapter is an emotional meal but after it is digested will leave you hungering for the next.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mike O'Neill
• Release date: Sep 11, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223174523

Michael O'Neill

Michael O'Neill lives on a farm in Sounthern Ontario with his wife and best friend Kerri. A father, farmer, plumber and, now, has turned to his passion as an avid writer. Watch for future works!

Book preview

Acknowledgements

Writing is my favourite part in the process of getting an idea from my head to in front of readers. It has its own special set of challenges, but not as many as the next steps. With that in mind, I’d like to thank the people in the support section of Draft 2 Digital, putting up with all the changes and edits and so on, thank you. To brother Mark for all his guidance and encouragement and the strength to tell me when something wasn’t good enough, that I could do better, and then offering praise when I did, thank you. I can’t say enough about the artistic talents of brother Matt, and his daughter-in-law Bonnie Jean. It just boggles the mind how you can take a request and turn it into a masterpiece. Thank you. To Kristen and Daryl, thank you for encouraging me to keep going when I didn’t think I could.

For a little better than fifty years, my wife Kerri has stood with me through the good times and bad. While she may not understand some of the things I go through getting thought into print, she has always been there, as sounding board, gentle critic and my own personal Spelchek. Thank you so very much, my love.

And to the readers who find my writing worth reading, Thank you!

HomeGrown

Grease Monkeys

Let me set the scene. Ann and I brought our children, Michael and Gail to the chicken farm when they were about three and a half and two years old. The previous owners, we’ll call John and Mary, had rented the place to us while we jumped through all the financial hoops required in order to buy it. They still had a shed full of machinery there, with odds and ends and most importantly, lubricants therein. The kids had a certain amount of freedom, but generally under the watchful eyes of parents.

They were dutifully playing outside while I was setting up the barn for chicks to arrive. They were in the yard in full view of Ann and then they weren’t. I became aware of the situation when Ann entered the barn asking rather emphatically for some help. Together we went to the house where John, Michael, and Gail were standing on the front porch. John was fine, but the children were covered in axle grease. From head to foot. They even had grease on their boots.

Now, that wasn’t as much of a concern for me as it was for Ann. You see, the clothes they had on protected them from the cool autumn wind. That is, beautiful, hand knit sweaters and denim pants and we’re not sure where their hats went, but red axle grease was smeared quite thoroughly through their hair. Right down to the roots.

I was raised on a farm and had had first-hand experience with getting dirty. Not this dirty, but I knew that enough soap and scrubbing gets grease off the hands and, with help, from other parts of the anatomy. I had no experience with grease in the hair. Ann, on the other hand, came from a small city and her family didn’t have a lot of time spent in mechanical pursuits. So this was pretty much a disaster.

We thanked John for bringing them to the house and went inside to see what could be done. Ann peeled Gail and left her clothes in a heap on some newspapers on the bathroom floor and ran water in the tub. I did my best to get Michael tub-ready and gently attempted to find out what happened. I also tried to keep from laughing.

Our children were always encouraged to follow their curiosity and, with the confidence of the very young, they changed their focus from toys in the sandbox to John and the shed when he showed up to get something from within. I don’t think he saw them follow him into that magical and mystical realm. He did see, however, that they had helped themselves to the newly opened pail of grease when he came out.

So there it was, a situation that could not have been thought up and put in a script. Two kids who knew their mother was getting more and more upset as she tried again and again to wash the grease from their hair, and a dad that really didn’t know how useful he was in the situation. Besides, the chicks were coming and I wasn’t quite ready. This was not comforting to Ann.

After what must have seemed a long time of frustrating, ineffectual labour, Ann had an idea. She called Danni, the hairdresser in town. She was told to bring the kids in right away and pick up a package of lard en route. Once the kids were in the car, I was free to go back to getting the cranky brooders to co-operate and bring the barn up to temperature.

So, while I was out of the picture, Ann took the kids into town. Danni was sympathetic but said Use grease to clean grease and set about working lard into two small scalps and washing it all out. She did this a couple of times and soon the fine strands of both children shone with a lustre not seen since. She told Ann that lard works well for getting grease out of sweaters too, and they still had about half a pound left.

Then Danni told Ann of a small, blonde child with curls to the middle of her back. Her mother brought her to see Danni because her brothers had put burrs in the little girl’s hair. Not just a couple, but handfuls. Danni tried and tried to get them out but had limited success. Then, as the mother cried silently, Danni had to cut those beautiful curls almost to the scalp. We never heard what happened to the boys.

By suppertime, the sweaters were washed and hung out, while the pants and socks were larded up and included with a dark load of farm clothes. Not much else to do but relegate the adventure into childhood lore to be brought out and dusted off every now and again while playing Do you remember?

Army Training

I grew up on a farm on the north tip of Middlesex County. This is only important in that it helped shape a certain physical adroitness and a mentality that liked to see the results of said physical activity. In other words, working for the sake of work did not appeal, but I took pride in a well-built hay mow or furrow ploughed straight. I did enjoy sports and liked competition, so playing for the sake of playing was okay. I did pretty well at hockey, football, baseball and especially wrestling if I do say so myself.

If I were to sit down and really figure out why I joined the army, I’d probably come up with an answer like It seemed like a good idea at the time. Things were tight financially back in the mid-sixties. That’s the nineteen sixties, by the way; Viet Nam, hippies, sit-ins, Woodstock and all those other words that describe a decade of change. I came to the conclusion that I didn’t fit with free love and long hair. I liked the work on the farm and almost anything mechanical. I was pretty good with my hands and okay in school but I really liked to eat and then wear off the calories doing something. As long as I could see results.

So the opportunity presented itself in the midst of a sales pitch for higher education. I knew that I needed to make a living. I knew that farming wasn’t lucrative, and I knew that if I got an education, and a good job, I could always return to the land later on. A recruiter-type guy pointed out that the government had a viable option: train as an officer in one of the branches of the armed forces and get a paycheck for going to school. One of the courses led to a degree in mechanical engineering. So I signed up.

I enrolled in Regular Officer Training Program, ROTP for short. I was in the army now, but I got to attend Queens University, not a military college. A Civi U as it was called. The first thing I had to learn was that the uniform types love acronyms. Some of them even made sense. So they gave me a monthly stipend that barely covered expenses if I lived off campus and showed up to class and weekend activities.

Things just seemed to happen and I went along for the ride. For example, a day or so before classes began, I stepped down off the train in Kingston; came out on the sidewalk; took out a map and began to study it. A woman walked up to me and said Are you lost? I said I know I’m in Kingston. It turned out that she was a lady who served up some pretty good eats. I ended up getting fed at her table for most meals over my tenure in that stony town. But it gets better: she introduced me to a family who had one more bedroom than daughters and made money renting it out to university students. Thus they became my extended family for the next four years.

So anyway, I was kitted out with all the military stuff I needed to learn how to dress, salute, polish boots, march and other things to look army. We had parades once a month but Engineering Students were often otherwise disposed.

I wasn’t six feet tall and never weighed over one hundred and forty-five pounds, but it never occurred to me to talk about my size. To quote a major league pitcher of recent vintage, Height don’t measure heart. I had absolutely no doubt that I could hold my own that first summer of field exercises. Along with a whole slew of other guys, I was sent to Base Borden for First Phase Officer Training.

Most of the field training in 1st Phase was short segments of a day or two and never far from field kitchens that served hot meals. We carried our tools, k, f & s (knife, fork and spoon, not anything that might refer to starting fires) and occasionally issued RP4’s. (Ration Pack 4. I assume there were RP’s 1, 2 &3, but I never saw them.) I don’t remember what was in them, but some were good, some were bad and no one starved. After twelve weeks of parades, route marches carrying full packs and rifles, and other strenuous activities, despite being well fed, everyone lost weight...except me. I gained ten pounds.

We did live firing on the ranges. Although I was of high moral caliber, shooting was not my strong point. I was more accurate with a baseball than a rifle, and worse with a pistol.

I was thought to be a good navigator though. We were dropped off near the west end of the training area one evening and each cadet was to take the lead and plot bearings to get everyone to the next check point on the map provided. No one led the group directly to the marker; the DS (directing staff) had to step in and get us back on track. What should have been finished before full dark stretched well past midnight. When my turn came we were soaking wet, in thick bush with heavy undergrowth and I couldn’t see beyond the compass. After a few tries at the lesson method, I put the compass in my pocket and headed in what I considered the right direction for the right distance. When I stopped the Captain asked if I knew where the marker was. I said It should be here. He turned on his flashlight and we were within ten feet of the marker. To this day I don’t know how I did it.

We were four to a room and every morning one of the platoon staff, a full time soldier, would inspect the room and occupants. If they found something not up to standard the culprit received a bad chit If enough bad chits were accumulated, the cadet could be released from service. Every morning the inspector would find something wrong with my bed space or me and I would get a warning or a bad chit. By the end of summer I had a pile of bad chits and had been warned on several occasions that I was in danger of release. Often my bed wasn’t right, maybe something was out of place, but my shoes were NEVER up to shine standard.

Meanwhile, the guy I looked at as we stood at attention during inspection was perfect; only good chits. His father was a Major and he grew up on spit and polish. His bed space, dress and deportment were examples to all, even the Military College Cadets. Then came the inspection on the final day of summer. The Sgt. checked every inch of me and my quarter of the room and concluded Finally. My opposite burst out laughing. Without so much as a glance at that corner of the room Sarge said Pyne, dirty bed space. It was the only bad chit of the summer. And on final parade the Sgt. told the Inspecting Officer that I had been working on my boots all summer and that was the best they could be. The truth was that I had stopped with the spit and had turned to a brush before arriving at Borden.

We were learning the basics of being a soldier and so did exercises to represent war. We were told that the enemy was out there and we were to advance to contact and engage the enemy. The DS would say something like machine gun, 300 yards, bush at 10 o’clock – engage. The cadet in charge was supposed to formulate a plan, pass it on to the troops under command, engage the enemy and take them out. This was affectionately known as playing silly bugger. As we moved about the battlefield each cadet would be put in charge and have a different scenario to deal with. I did not excel. I had a hard time seeing something that was a figment of the DS imagination.

Base Borden is one big sandbox. There were few trees and little vegetation, so digging trenches was easy. Camouflaging was a tad tougher. When in the field, we shared the training area with the Armoured Corp. They use tanks. When the Centurions moved, the ground shook, making sleeping nearly impossible if they were on night manoeuvres. Since attacks were always at first light, we had to be prepared. We were awake anyway, so we listened to the rumbling and gathered stuff to keep our positions from being detected. Some used a plant that grew profusely in the area to obscure every vision line they could think of. Too bad they didn’t know the saying leaves of three, let it be. At least while in hospital they got some sleep. 

Requiem for a Middleweight

So, the dryer died. It needed an elemental transplant and we couldn’t find a suitable donor. I know you think this isn’t that big of a deal, after all it was just a dryer, not something endearing like, say, a tractor. But it is a big deal. The dryer, a Kenmore, probably rolled off the line in the middle of the last century. I first became aware of it on the farm at RR#3 Lucan a while before Ann arrived. I really don’t remember how we ended up with it.