When my next news gets out Easter will have come and gone but the true meaning of Easter will stay with us. Lots of fond memories of family get togethers and visiting.
Easter egg hunts was always a big time for our kids. Easter bunnies were also a big thing. Then there was a church service at St. Luke’s church at the landing. Good Friday the church would be packed. Easter Sunday there would be another church service.
Easter Sunday would be a big family dinner for friends and family. Lots of good memories for me and I love to think back on those years.
On our growing up years on the prairie Easter would be a church service on Good Friday and church on Easter Sunday. This was a special time for us all.
No Easter bunnies or Easter egg hunts. Easter Sunday and Good Friday were school holidays which we as kids sure enjoyed. As farm kids we had cows to milk, calves to feed, horses and pigs to feed, sheep to herd. As I look back on those growing up years they were hard work but they were fun too. No one can take away those wonderful memories.
Horse and buggy days Dad used to call them. All though we missed the prairie moving to Francois Lake was the most wonderful thing that could happen to a family, it was such a different life for the Neave family. I used to say growing up twice and I would never change it even if I could.
Post office
As I look back of the old days of our post office at Francois Lake and how things have changed in my days. I spent as postmaster and my mother before me, they were good years, busy years but good years. Lots of things come to mind. The mail was so important for everyone. I well remember a box of smoked fish came in one mail day and it had gone bad. The smell stayed in the office for days.
We dug a hole and buried it. Spencer’s and Woodward’s were big stores in Vancouver and folks would get big boxes of groceries by mail. This used to upset Dad as we sold groceries too but no doubt they were cheaper than ours. Lots of car tires would also come through the mail. This is a story I like to remember so will pass it on.
Billy McKenna was postmaster and our boss for many years. A nice man and very helpful for all the local rural post offices. There were two express trains a day, one going east and one going west and on each train there would be a mail car and they would sell stamps and take letters.
They were a moving post office. Billy McKenna met every train and rain or shine would deliver all the mail to the Burns Lake post office to be sorted and bagged for all the rural and in town customers. It was one busy office. He never missed a train summer or winter. The streets were not plowed very well in those days and very often after a heavy snow he would take a large hand sleigh and take the mail to the post office. This would be unheard of in our modern days. On our old store building we had a platform for more room to unload the mail and also an entrance to the store.
The step and the platform needed a new one so I tore out the old step and platform and low and behold there was a first class locked mail bag, it had been there for 20 years who knows. Mom got the head office in Vancouver but they said do not open it so Mom stayed with her guns and I never got a chance to open it. I sure did want to see the contents of that old mail sack.
Logging
Some of the old-time loggers will no doubt remember this little story. In the early 40s there were still lots of sleigh hauling and skidding with horses. Big machinery was catching up though. Big work teams were at a premium so a carload from the east came into town. The sale was at the stockyards across the tracks. The teams were top of the line and sold for a good price. After the car was unloaded and the big teams matched up a little bay mare came out of the boxcar. She was about half the size of the big teams.
She was too small of a horse for logging. Anyway Charlie Beatty bought her. She was just too light for his logging so she sold her to Herb Eaton and she was too light for his work so I ended up with her. She was part standard bred and had a good action.
Her name was Dolly, she was a treasure. Anyone could ride her, catch her anytime and drive her. We kept her for about 12 years and then her teeth went and the last winter we fed her dairy ration. It was a sad day in the spring when I had to put her down but she had some wonderful years with our family. We never did know where this little mare came from in the first place.
Some guy said she may have been slipped into the car with the big horses as a joke, who knows but she turned out good for the Neave family.
Here is a little joke
It was a holiday weekend and this guy was roasting a chicken on his rotisserie and it was just a about done. So he was going to give it a crank to finish it off right.
The flames were licking around the bird making the chicken more tasty. Just then a drunk walked into this guys yard, he looked things over for a minute or so and said “Hey buddy, not only is your music box not making any music but your monkey is on fire.”
A Reader’s Digest joke
One day in a tavern a sailor and a pirate were comparing stories of their adventures. The pirate had a peg leg, one hook for a hand and an eye patch. The sailor asked about his peg leg. “I lost it in a shark attack,” the pirate said. “What happened to your hand?”
“That I lost in a sword fight,” the pirate answered. And when he was asked about his patch, he explained a seagull dropping fell into his eye.
Astonished, the sailor said, “You mean to say that you lost your eye because of a seagull?”
“Well,” the pirate replied, “it happened the first day I had the hook.”
Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it.
Remember God loves you and so do I.