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Short Story - Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve in Pemberton Meadows, 1934

In 1934, when I was a boy of five years, my mother and sister, 10, lived in a single room in Vancouver's West End area. Things were very rough for a fatherless family living in the city during the depression years, so that summer mother accepted a position as housekeeper for a farmer who was managing the small estate of an absentee Dutch Count, named Van Recteren. The estate was in Pemberton Meadows, a few miles north of Alta Lake, B.C., and the now famous area of Whistler.

Life in this beautiful valley was quite cut off from the rest of the world, except for a twice-weekly stop by the Pacific Great Eastern railway. There was no road to Pemberton at that time and we had no electricity or running water. Only three radios existed in the valley and they rarely worked because of the high mountains.

Cows, chickens, pigs, a horse and a prize bull were there with us and in the cold winter months they shared our survival experience. They were just as important to us as we were to them, and because of this closeness (and because we were kids) my sister and I had names for each one of our "critters".

For a young boy, familiar only with big city ways, each day was a new adventure, from morning until night.

December 24 th of that year is recalled herewith:

The winter of 1934 saw the heaviest single snowfall that anyone could remember. It measured six feet eight inches. Heavy rain soon compressed it down to four feet, but it froze so hard that it left a crust on top of the snow surface so hard and thick you could drive a horse over it. Mr. Dunn and the hired man, Luke, decided to take advantage of this situation to bolster up our dwindling firewood supply. They hitched our horse up to the freight bobsled. Luke backed me up in persuading my mother to let me go along, and after much further persuasion we managed to get the horse to walk across the frozen snow and take us to the forested area at the back of the estate, about one-eighth of a mile. I remember laughing most of the way because it seemed so funny to ride over top of the fences.

The men felled and bucked several smaller size trees into log lengths. By the time they were loaded onto the sled and cinched down, both men were puffing and warm. I was cold however, so they lit a large open bonfire with some of the branches to get me warmed up. The smell of the green fir smoke was new to me and unforgettable.

By this time our horse was stamping impatiently so we placed the feed bag over his head, ate our own lunch and then started for home. It was then I remembered that my mother had suggested we look for a nice Christmas tree, so in a little while we stopped while Luke cut down a perfectly shaped eight-foot tree top. For my benefit they wedged it upright among the logs below us.

As we made our way home, snow began to fall lightly. By the time we arrived, the tree looked so nice that my mother said it didn’t really need any further decorating at all. But we of course shook off the snow and took it inside. We all stood beside the kitchen stove and got warmed up with the help of a bowl of soup from the "magic pot" that was always simmering at the back of the stovetop during the winter months.

After the logs were unloaded and the horse was led back to the barn, it began to get dark. My sister and I knew that it was time to go to the barn. The coal oil barn lamps were lit and we all made our way to the barn to watch the men milk the eight cows. They were all lying down, nestled in a bed of straw to keep themselves warm. Their breath fogged up the lamp-lit air and the wind whistled through the cracks in the walls. And even though the snow had been mostly shovelled off the roof before the big rain and freeze, we worried a bit. It creaked now and then, enough to make the pigs, which had also been brought into the barn for winter, oink nervously. Even the chickens, which were caged up in another area, were heard to cluck occasionally. The two semi-wild cats that lived in the barn year round came out of their secret hiding place to get their daily ration of milk. Because he knew it always made us laugh, Luke would squirt milk directly into their open mouths and usually all over their faces, which they would then proceed to lick off; every drop. The smell of fresh milk was beautiful and unforgettable.

My sister went over to feed the chickens and it was then that I noticed that one of them was missing. She suddenly burst into tears and told me that yesterday she had ignored Luke’s warning to get back in the house and stayed to watch him chop off one of the rooster’s heads. We both vowed then and there that we would not eat any chicken on Christmas day, especially since it would be "Charlie"; but when it came right down to the moment we both changed our minds. Mother explained to us that it was simply the way things had to be done when you lived on a farm.

When the milking and feeding was done, and supper was finished, we all went out to the root house, which was a five foot deep, straw-lined trench topped by a shallow pointed roof. It was completely closed at one end and the other end had a small crawl-through door. Inside were row on row of wooden apple boxes, all straw-lined. These boxes were filled with our winter supply of carrots, beets, potatoes, russet (winter) apples, pears, turnips and (ugh) parsnips. A week’s supply was brought inside the house.

By now, mother had moved the large, round oak table to one side of the living room and set the tree up on the stand, ready for decorating.

There was a knock on the door and Eddie, the teenage son of our distant next door neighbour, had arrived in his father’s "cutter" to take my mother and us two kids for a ride over the snow. He often visited my mother, especially when he knew it was probably "baking day." A cutter is, or was, simply a "one-horse open sleigh," with a single, wide, high-backed and well padded seat. This sleigh, to my thinking, was a classic unit with fancy gold scrolls across the black wooden sides and back. His horse, a beautiful little mare named Merrylegs, had bells on her harness.

Off we went with Eddie for a ride across the fields with our collie dog, Judy, following behind us and obviously enjoying the fun. As our luck would have it, the clouds parted just long enough for us to enjoy what was left of a nearly fully moon. The fresh powder snow blew all around us and lit up in the moonlight as we flew along.

When we returned we all went inside and my mother loaded Eddie up with cookies and shortbread. We went outside again to say goodbye to Eddie and thanks to Merrylegs, giving her a shortbread cookie, which she seemed to thoroughly enjoy. Mother made hot cocoa for us all and she also brought down from the attic some wild hazelnuts, which had been drying there on screens for several weeks to mature, with the husks still on them.

After the tree was decorated, we carefully lit the candles on it and played some scratchy old carol records on our gramophone. Luke, who lived with us at that time, brought out his violin and played some old Dutch carols. My sister started to fit together pieces of a large jig saw puzzle that would last over the entire Christmas holiday.

By now I was too tired to hang up my stocking, and I fell asleep on my mother’s lap.

It had indeed, been a day to remember.

Ray Waddell has read the story of his Christmas Eve in Pemberton as a five year old to his children and his grandchildren. His short stories have been accepted by the Vancouver Sun and Province newspapers and read on Richardson’s Roundup on CBC Radio. He lives in Coquitlam.



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