Paper Dolls

By Alice Miller

This is my story, my gift to the "MacDonald" grandchildren. Others may remember other things, in a different way.

The people and places are real.

Each contributed to the enriching experiences of life on a prairie farm.
 
 
 

"Mum, can Rene come to play today? Please!

"Och! You two are getting too old to play Paper Dolls. Besides you have chores to do".

"But Mum, I’ll hurry up and do my chores before she comes. It takes her a long time to walk two miles across the field... I can see when she is coming and I’ll be finished. You’ll see... Please!"

"Och! I suppose you won’t be happy until I say yes. Dad is going out to cultivate so I’ll have to milk the cows and look after my chickens, so you be sure to bring in the wood to keep the fire going in the cookstove, or I’ll never have the dinner ready when Dad gets in with the horses."

"When you see him coming, run to open the gate. The horses are thirsty and won’t wait around for you-and your dreamin’"

"Hurray! I’ll phone Rene now so she can pack her Dolls and be ready!"

Oh boy! I’d better make a list of all the things to do so I won’t forget nothing.

First, be sure to make the beds upstairs - sweep the floors - (I hope Dad emptied the ashes from the heater, I hate that job! Like emptying the slop pail - ugh). Wonder why we can’t have a chemica... that’s a funny name to call a toilet, it would be easier than carrying the pail to the biffy.

Maybe we’ll get rich and have a flush one like Ms. Brown... gives a bath first thing when she takes me to Weyburn for the week-end.

I don’t tell her that Mum scrubs me good in the tin tub with lots of hot water before she lets me go there. I don’t mind soaking in that nice bathroom... Makes me feel like a movie star. They are always bathing in bubbles! That’s s’posed to look glam’rous, that’s what Clare told me!

Anyway! Next on my list... wood in the wood box, good job it is chopped... bring some coal up from the coal bin, sure hope I don’t find any lizards in there!

I’ll have to do the dishes too... that darn cream separator with all those parts to wash. I can just hear Mum saying, "Be sure to scald them and cover with a clean tea towel, we don’t want any germs, do we?"

No, Mum and I’ll put the cream in a jar down the well to keep cool, help take out the skim milk to the pigs and chickens.

By the look of you, Pussycat, you’ve already had your milk, haven’t you?... Mum squirted your whiskers while she did the milking I can see that!... Where did you hide your babies?... up in the loft aren’t they? Don’t worry, I’ll find them sooner or later. I hope you got some black ones this time. I want to call them Amos and Andy!

I’m so excited! I better hurry so I can sort out all my Paper Dolls... and cut some new clothes for them out of the catalogue. Thank goodness Mum said I could before it goes to the two-holer! Boy! Those apple papers are sure softer than Eaton’s catalogues... but they don’t last long so I’d better cut out my new clothes right away.

Rene is going to be s’prised to see how many families I have now... up to page seventy-eight in my history book "The World Progress"... Wonder if I’ll get so many it will fill all three hundred pages?... That would take too long to get them all dressed up for Church, then change when they get home.

Someone is going to have to get married! I’ve found so many pretty bridesmaid and wedding dresses in Simpsons Catalogue.. .but have to find a man... only have a black man and I don’t know what kind of babies they would get if I put them in the same page!

Remember when Dad drove us to Regina in the Model T once, took a whole day to get there, then we stayed overnight at Milnes’ house... That must have been a special trip ’cause we had supper in a Cafe. The black family in the booth beside us must have been embarrassed at Nina. She was so little, reached up to put her hands on their table to stare. We never saw black people before... but they ate food and laughed just like we did!

We’ll have to pretend it’s winter time too, so I can show Rene how rich people dress up, in fur collars and stuff... course Rene’s dad goes to the Army and Navy in Regina after harvest to buy them new felt zippered boots and blanket cloth ski suits... We can’t afford those, we just keep handing down our six buckle overshoes and winter coats from someone.

I hate wearing that long underwear, you have to wrap it around your ankle so it don’t show under our long stockings... The first day we see a meadow lark, off it goes!... unless Mum catches us. "Just because that bird is singing ‘O Gee Willikers’ is no reason to leave off your underwear. You’ll only catch cold!"

We may not have ‘new store boughten stuff’ but we were never cold. Mum always put her irons on the red hot coals, then wrapped them in old rags so Dad can put them at our feet in the cutter before he tucks the fur hide robes around us.

Winter is fun! We sing Jingle Bells all the way to school while we bounce over the snow drifts. Queenie didn’t like it much when we come to a big bank and the Whipple tree hit her legs. She’d start to gallop then!... Dad quietened her down. Once we tipped and all landed in the snow. That wasn’t so funny!... Dad didn’t get upset, but he did once... and he SWORE... Didn’t know he could, he NEVER said bad words!

It was springtime when we saw cars going down the road, we knew it was passable to go to town. After being snowed in all winter, we were dying to get to Weyburn.

Dad said, "Maybe if I put the team on the Model T to pull it through the creek, we could get to the road"... Boy! We didn’t take long to get ready... We were going to forge the stream, just like the pioneers!

The water came up to the floorboards of the car, then we got STUCK in the middle of the creek. That was when Dad said the first (and the last) swear word I ever heard... can’t remember what they were. Mum said, "You better close your ears and pray or we will never get to town!"

Maybe that helped us get to the other side. Dad had to wade back with the team, then back over to the car on dry ground. We waited in Weyburn long enough for the lane to freeze so we got home safe.

Gee! I have to give this new doll a name. With her white hair she looks like my favorite lady, Anna. She is a real lady with her wavy white hair. Her eyes twinkle when she smiles. If I call her Anna, I must find a short round man for a husband just like the real Anna and Jim.

Sometimes at Christmas they invite our family to go across the fields to their farm. We have to leave early so Dad hurries to do the chores, Mum banks up the cookstove so it will stay lit until we get home... load the sleigh with blankets and fur robes... all bundled up with clothes we feel real Christmasy with the sleigh bells jingling on the horses harness!

We are already unbundled and smelling the plum pudding and turkey when Dad and Jim come from the barn where they had given our team a Christmas sheaf of oats.

Anna always had a three tiered Christmas cake, iced with shiny white icing, decorated with silver leaves and round silver candies... too pretty to cut, but she gave us extra candy roses too! Best of all, she let me open the cellar door to find the beautiful Chinese painted jar wrapped in cord sitting on the wooden rafter... it was full of scrumpt'ous candied ginger!

After supper we could play with lots of games she kept special for us!... the Bean Bag game, a Ring Board that you had to hook sealer rings on, and one we called ‘Getting the Marbles into the Mouse Hole’.

Anna and Jim had a real radio, one with the white dog listening to the horn on the lid. We had to use earphones to hear it. There were only two phones, so Jim would share his with one ear so I could hear Amos and Andy. That’s who I wanted to name the black cats after... they were so funny!

In the summertime Mum would let me stay with Anna and Jim for a week-end. They took me to church... I didn’t listen to the preacher much but loved to look at Jesus and the Lambs on the beautiful colored windows in the Presbyterian Church. I liked the singing tho’... "Jesus loves me this I know, for the bible tells me so"... my Mum reads the Bible to us kids when we’re all in bed, so I know lots of those stories.

It’s fun when Anna and Jim come to our house. Jim plays the accordion, Dad the bagpipes, with Mum trying to keep tune of the Jew’s harp. It kept hitting her teeth (store boughten) but she can play it good!... we have a happy time jigging to that music!

Here’s a cute baby... what page shall I put it in? Who needs a baby sister? Seems to me that babies cause problems... Mum told me I was a problem, that’s for sure!... and I wasn’t even borned yet!

Dr. Eaglesham had to come all the way from Weyburn while Dad took the horse and buggy to bring Mrs. Sandercock to our house. It was a muddy April, the buggy got stuck in the soggy field, so Dad had to get Mrs. Sandercock on the Clydesdale behind him to ride home... that must have looked funny! She was a big lady... and Dad a "brawny six foot Scotsman"... wish I could have seen them!

When my sister was born, Mom didn’t want us kids around that day either, so Dad took three of us in the Model T and drove to Mrs. Hille’s where we spent that day. She gave us old china and cracked dishes to play with in the trees. We don’t have any trees on our farm so we were happy to have lunch in our make believe house in the woods.

Time to go home too soon,... Dad told us we had a new baby sister. I didn’t want to look at her, she had such a red face, but Mrs. Robertson made me. She said my Mom would be upset if I didn’t welcome her.

I know what I’ll have to do!... "take the baby and put her to sleep"... "the baby is crying, pick up the wee thing and rock her in the rocking chair"... I’m never going to have any babies, I know that much!

Maybe Rene wants some of her Moms and Dads to have a new baby, so I’ll give it to her. I have so many outfits, some blue, some pink, so she can name it either a boy or girl.

I hope Rene’s mom didn’t find out how many dill pickles we ate out of the barrel last week-end. We pretended we had to go the toilet (they have a chemical one in the basement), along the way we couldn’t resist tasting a fat dill pickle and took another to eat under the feather quilts. Maybe dill pickles make you giggle!... cause we couldn’t stop!

We were still laughing at her brother. After supper a mouse ran across the kitchen floor. We squealed and Rene’s Mum chased it with a broom, but she chased it right up Gordon’s pant leg! He grabbed it and out dropped one dead mouse!... We were just glad someone caught it so we could get down from the chair!

Page 80 - that’s more dolls than Rene has.

This is Johnny - I put him on Page 80 "cause this chapter is about Scotland and Johnny is from Scotland. He was my Dad’s friend when they went to school in Golspie, worked together on Drumuie farm before they both came to Canada.

We sure liked to see his 1925 blue Ford Coupe coming in the lane. He always had a bag of candy in the back window for us kids. Dad and Johnny have to get their chanters out to play the old Scottish tunes. Sometimes we have a Ceilidh (I had to look that up in Mum’s Aberdeen Joke Book to see how to spell it.) It means to have a party!

I think Dad and Johnny had a "Ceilidh" all by themselves once. Mom took the younger kids to Weyburn to stay at Melville’s for a "holiday". She said I had to stay home to help Dad cook ‘cause "he’s useless in the kitchen!"

Johnny came over to help too. They decided to have "Mince and Taties" for supper. I helped mince the beef in Mum’s big meat grinder. They had to help turn it, it was too tough for me to grind. They laughed a lot so it seemed like a party. They didn’t have any of Mum’s dandelion wine from the well either!

We have lots of parties at our house. Mum is such a good cook, people love to come to our farm for Sunday suppers. Mum has to set the table twice ‘cause our kitchen table only has room for twelve. Dad made a long bench for the back of the table so we have to sit close together if company comes.

Dad asks us to say Grace - "God Bless our Food, for Christ Sake, Amen". He says a long one if our company are Scottish. It is Robbie Burn’s Grace.

"Some hae meat, and canna eat,
and some wad eat that want it.
But we hae meat and we can eat
Sae let the lord be Thankit"

...and when he says, "Get that ‘cluque’ off you" we sure know we better sit up straight at the table!

Mum’s flock of chickens would be two or three less to feed when company come for supper. She fries so many chickens it fills our big roaster, smothering them with thick cream gravy.

Her Angel Food cakes were so high! She wouldn’t tell anyone how many eggs she used or how she baked it in a big high pan with an empty glass cherry jar in the middle. Most Angel Food pans weren’t that high so that’s one more of her ‘trade secrets" - like "a pinch of this" or a "pinch of that". Only she knew how much a pinch was! Mum won lots of prizes every year for her cakes and baking at the Weyburn Fair!

She didn’t sleep much then, just baked real early. If she wasn't satisfied with her cakes, she made another. We thought they were all first prize ones!

Rene and I will have to dress up our families to go to the Fair... It’s so exciting!... first we have to get Mum’s baking to the Ex’bition Hall for judging before 10, then we can go around the Midway... "Look after the little ones and don’t get lost!"... how can we choose which ride or treat to spend our free school tickets on?

I like it best after dark with all the colored lights flashing, music everywhere... such a jumble of sounds with the Merry-Go-Round Horse going up and down, the Bumper Cars smashing and getting stuck together... I’ll be sick if I go on some of those rides!... maybe we can find our school friends (boys that is) and they will go on the Ferris Wheel. Maybe we’ll stop at the very top so he has to put an arm around you so we won’t fall off! Maybe!... that really makes the stars shine bright!

We don’t notice how tired and sticky... five cents buys such a lot of candy floss... or how dusty we are from the cattle and horses kicking up the dust.

Dad is always proud to watch the Clydesdales parade around the Race Track ‘cause he spent lots of time braiding the manes and tails for their owners. Just like he used to do in Scotland when he worked as a ploughman.

He told me he had to decorate the horses with ribbons braided in their tails and manes before he drove the "Toffs" (that is rich people) in a horse drawn hack. They were grouse shooting on the heather covered Moors in Scotland. No wonder he had so many funny stories to tell!

Sometimes at our farm he would let me ride around the field with him, standing on the back of the seed drill pulled by six horses... then he would tell me some things like that. Under the lid of the drill Dad had a record of all the dates when he started to seed and when he finished. He looked in the Farmer’s Almanac first to see if the moon was right to seed.

This is why he kept this little stub of pencil in his pipe pocket. He said, "they only break if it’s any longer when I lean over to fill the wheat".

This is sure a funny hat! I’ll pretend it is for the hired man and he is from Australia. We had a hired man once to help with the harvest. His hat was pinned up on one side. He talked funny! "Australian Drawl", Dad told Mum. When he smoked, he could roll a cigarette with one hand with Zig Zag papers and tobacco out of a tin.

My brother and me stole some of his papers one day and tried to smoke dried up sunflower leaves. I just got sick. Don’t know how anyone thinks smoking is so great!

Mum got some seeds from McKenzie Seed Catalogue, the picture showed a plant with green spiky leaves, growing to six or seven feet tall. This was a better wind shelter for her flowers than sunflowers, they were so thick and bushy. We took lots of pictures in front of our wind break before mum pulled them out in the fall to burn the stalks. Maybe I should have tried to smoke those leaves to see if they would make me ill. The seed catalogue said it was a good shelter on the prairies. It was called Hemp!

These bib overalls will be for our ‘farmer’. We must have farmers ‘cause Rene’s dad and my Dad both wear overalls and big boots when they look after the cattle and horses. I don’t like the smell of the barn tho’, specially the squealing pigs!

My brother kept a baby pig in our house once. Dad said, "he’s a runt and is going to die", but my brother kept it warm in the warming oven and fed it just like a baby. It sucked the milk out of the bottle with the baby’s nipple on it... and he lived.

I like the baby colts best. Sure funny, we always have baby colts after George Brown comes to visit us. He drove down our lane in a buggy and horse with a real big Clydesdale trotting along tied behind. When George and Dad would take that big horse to the barn, Mum warned us, "You kids stay away from the barn, they don’t need you around!" I never sneaked behind the barn but my brother said he did!

George timed his visit to near supper time then he knew Mum would feed him good. In the morning he would leave to visit other farms. Wonder if they got some new baby colts too!

Farmers like harvest time best! That’s if the crop is so good it takes all day to stook a field. Everyone has to help stooking if it looks like rain or snow is coming. It’s hard work but Mum likes to be in the field where Dad is cutting the wheat with the binder and horses. She lets me go to the house early so I can do the cooking. I like that better than stooking!

Threshing is a tense, happy time. Dad hopes the belt on the threshing machine won’t break, or the men picking up the sheaves will bring in their load by the time the other driver is finished feeding his sheaves into the separator. Dad says, "it is a waste of gas running an empty conveyor belt".

When Mum comes out with lunch for the men, Dad has to show her how much wheat is in the granary, chew some wheat to see if it is good, then they smile at each other before he has to get back to the tractor running the belt.

Harvest time was when Mum really cooked and baked. Up at four in the morning to make pancakes, bacon, eggs and toast for twelve hungry harvesters. She made fresh buns and cakes for morning lunch, then more with big pots of coffee to take to the field in the car for dinner. It was never ending baking and dish washing!

One time mum had to drive to town to buy some new dishes. She wasn’t too pleased with me that day! "Cause it was my fault... when I was drying the dishes and stacking them on the bread board on the table, it over balanced and down went the whole lot!... my sister was washing the dishes but I got heck!

One year when threshing was finished Dad took a load of wheat to the elevator in McTaggart to get money to pay the harvesters. That night we all sat around the kitchen table while he sorted it out for each man. He let us feel the hundred dollar bills and said, "You hold these in your hand, you won’t see that big bills again!"

He knew it was a lot of money ‘cause when he came to Canada he told us "he had a five pound note and a pair of tackety boots" to begin a new life in the "land of milk and honey".

I’ll have to put some rips and patches on some of these overalls, well pretend these families live in the "Dirty Thirties". They call it the dirty thirties ‘cause the dust blows every day, piling Russian Thistles in heaps on the barbed wire fences. The ditches look like sand dunes, all wavy and silty. We take our shoes and socks off on the way home from school so we can make new tracks in the ocean of blow dirt that fills the ditches.

Mum and Dad didn’t smile those days! They just looked at the sky growing dark with a swarm of grasshoppers flying in. They knew by night time all the green crops and garden would be gone. The dust sifted into every crack in the house, even the grasshoppers found their way in to eat our clothes!

We didn’t have any harvest that year - no happy times,... it made everyone sad!

Somebody in Ontario felt sorry for us not having crops or garden, so they sent boxcars loaded with food. The Station Agent phoned everyone to come to McTaggart Railway Station to unload the boxcar. When Dad got home, Mum wondered what on earth she was going to do with dried Cod fish that looked like dried paper, bags of white beans, Barrels of apples and big rounds of cheese.

Most people wasted it but Mum didn’t! She soaked the fish for two days to soften enough to cook in milk, then thicken the sauce. It tasted good when she doctored it up. She had to soak the beans longer to make Pork and Beans. We had lots of apple dumplings and cheese to put on her home-made bread.

Sometimes if the bread wasn’t ready to bake in time for supper, she would cut pieces off and deep fry it. She called that "baps"! When we got home from school that was our "lunch" or maybe she had a dish full of newly made doughnut holes rolled in sugar.

Once a carload of clothes came to McTaggart. The Ontario people thought that we were so poor we would "wear anything". Mum made me dresses out of flour sacks after she had dyed them nice colors, then she embroidered flowers and butterflies on the front and all around the hem. They were pretty!

My Dad would not accept ‘Relief’ from the Municipal Hall. He was too proud. He said, "I’ll sell every grain of wheat in the granary before I take a hand-out". As the drought and grasshoppers took our life away he did have to tho’. He worked on road repairs to repay the relief, he couldn’t think of "getting something without working for it!"

We’ll pretend our families have good crops this year, then everyone can be happy again. "As long as we have feed for the cattle and the animals, we can always have milk, eggs and meat", my Mum says... Dad takes two racks and a team of horses to Tatagua marsh to cut hay so he will have feed for his cows. He has to stay overnight in the hayrack for as long as it takes to mow, rake and load the two racks and drive home.

Mum sends lots of food with him but sometimes drives the Model T to the marsh to check. Once we had a flat tire on the way but Mum knew how to fix lots of things like that. She took off the tire and took the tube to the puddle in the ditch to see where the bubbles came up, this way she knew were the hole was. She got the tire patch kit to use the rough lid to scrub around the leak, put on the glue before she stuck a patch on. The hardest part was pumping air into the tire again with the hand pump. Dad had to buy some new tires when we had three blowouts and had to drive home on the rims!

Maybe Rene and I can take our families to Trossachs one day. We have a family picnic there every year when the "Holy Rollers" have their Church Camp meetings in the bush. We leave real early so we can have a whole day to visit with our friends. The Trossachs road is sandy clay so we don’t go if it rains, it gets too slippery and we would end up in the ditch!

I love to see the blue haze of the Mirage at the end of the road. The buildings on the horizon grow real tall and float in a sea of water, only to disappear when we get to the bush. We know it is the camp road when we come to the ranch with deer horns on top of the gate and wagon wheels at each side.

After Dad finds a shady spot under the trees to park the car we are off to find our friends to go Saskatoon berry picking, finding wild flowers, wade in the creek... that is until we get hungry! We knew Mum would have lots of fried chicken, potato salad, buns and cakes. Dad gave us each five cents to buy a bottle of Orange Crush at the food booth.

The Church was a big tent, planks set on boxes for seats, the floor covered with straw. There were lots of preachers, but Dad liked to sing the hymns best. We sure listened when they sang "We are gathered at the River" ‘cause we knew that the preacher would wade into the muddy water to dunk people in the pond. They called it "Baptism". Our minister just puts his fingers in the water from a wooden bowl then puts it on the baby’s forehead. You don’t need a bath after that!

On our way home from the bush we always stopped to see Sammy Bozzard to give him the left over picnic food. Dad would tell us kids to stay in the car while he went over the barbed wire fence to Sammy’s Sod House. It was really a bunk house that he had buried in the ground, covered the roof with sod, crude bunk house doors to shelter the opening from animals, people and the storms. We were scared of him but don’t know why! Mum said, "He is different, a hermit maybe, but he could write real good and talks like a scholar".

Dad knew him when he and Johnny worked for Jim Johnston in Yellow Grass. Sammy hired for harvest but "wanderlust by nature" he just disappeared. He wore a straw hat in winter, a winter hat in summer as he trudged down our lane sometimes leading his old white horse, with his old coon coat hanging from the harness.

One fall he asked Mum if he could leave a small wooden crate with her while he went on his travels. Mum put it in the cellar, waiting in vain for his return to claim it. We had all sorts of visions of what treasures it held! Spring arrived and still no Sammy... to satisfy our curiosity, Mum brought up the box to open it... Sammy’s treasures were a lot of withered, rotten apples!

Oh! There’s the phone, one long, two short,... that’s ours! It must be Rene’s Mum to tell me to watch for her. I know, I’ll meet her half way then we can talk about all the things we are going to take our people to.

"Mum, Rene’s coming!... and I got all my chores done, can I go to meet her?......