Former Photo Guy: A Great Birthday!

I want to thank everyone for their kind birthday wishes yesterday. I got calls from both my brothers as well as Mom, Laurel, Kelly, Gus, Alex, and even Donna H. and Allan! Thank you so much. It’s great to know people are thinking about you.

I relayed most of this story to Doug and Ted, but thought others might appreciate it too. When Mom phoned, she told me that when I was born, Dad made quite the scene at our apartment in Washington D.C. You might remember that Dad was a D.C. cop back then. It seems that he was on duty that morning when around 9 a.m. mom felt the first signs that this might be my birth day. Mom said “I made the mistake of phoning your father too soon”. He and his police partner came screaming up the street in their cruiser with lights flashing and siren wailing. Running into the house, they found Mom calmly tidying up the kitchen a bit. “We've come to take you to the hospital” Dad yelled!

Mom thought that perhaps a phone call to her doctor was in order before rushing off. They found him at the lake. He asked if she was experiencing any labour pains yet. “Well, no, not really” said Mom. “Call me later, when your pains start” said her doctor. “You’ll know.” So, around 4 o’clock in the afternoon they made the trip to the hospital (complete with police escort) and I was born a few hours later.

Mom and I (a tired little guy!) in a late winter outing at the upscale Rockcliffe Park in Washington, D.C.

Dad holding me in our Washington D.C. apartment

With Dad, Uncle Mark and Aunt Claire at the reflecting pool in front of the Washington Monument in 1950

Now when Doug was born, circumstances were a bit different. As with all new parents, the thrill and excitement of one’s first child doesn’t always translate into equal enthusiasm for the second. We were living in Cloan at the time and the nearest hospital was in Wilkie. Being mid-December, and being 1951, travel was a problem in the winter as country roads would usually be blown in by snowstorms and pretty-much impassable by car. Snowploughs weren’t a common sight in the Cloan district. Somehow Dad got word to Grandpa Gendall who dutifully showed up with his team of horses and freight wagon. In those days, one replaced the wagon’s wheels with skis in the winter. Off went Mom and Dad with Grandpa Gendall standing in the front of the wagon holding the horses’ reins. A couple of Grandpa’s dogs, Laddie and Lassie followed.

Grandpa Gendall with his team of horses near Cloan

Well, fourteen miles and three hours later the little caravan arrived at the Wilkie Hospital. I’m told it was quite a sight with the horses, wagon, passengers and dogs in tow. After dropping Mom at the hospital, Dad and Grandpa immediately adjourned to the Wilkie Hotel for a few drinks before heading back to Cloan with the team. Mom followed a few days later with Doug, but was able to take the train. The twice weekly railroad ran between Wilkie and Cloan and carried passengers as well as freight.

We think this is a photograph of Doug with someone at Grandpa Gendall’s house.

Five years later, along came Ted.

I remember that day very well. I was 8 years old at the time and we were still living in our Cloan house. Mom was washing some clothes in the kitchen. I’m not sure where Dad was. He was no longer farming and was away somewhere I guess. I know that he once had a job with the Fuller Brush Company as a travelling salesman so perhaps he was out on calls. At any rate, Mom was using one of those corrugated metal washboard things that you use to wash clothes. It sits in a big tub of soapy water and you rub the wet clothes up and down on it to get the dirt out. Obviously, we weren’t too well off in those days. She would scrub an article of clothing and then squeeze the water out and plunk it down on the table beside her, making a big pile to later hang out on the line. There she was, in her dress and apron, her hair falling over her face as she leaned over this big tub of laundry, scrubbing the clothes on the washboard.

I was in the living room, looking after Doug. He was five at the time and still in diapers. You had to watch him closely because he liked to pull his diaper off and play with whatever he found in there. It got real messy sometimes. Anyway, I heard this big “thump” from the kitchen so went to look. There was Mom, still leaning over the laundry tub with both hands in the water. I thought she had dropped a big pair of jeans on the floor between her feet, but lo and behold, there was Ted! Mom looked down at the floor and said “Could you get that for me, Ray?”

So, I quickly ran over, picked up the newborn Theodore, swished him off in the rinse tub and wrapped him up in some dry clothes until Mom finished the wash and could attend to him. It wasn’t wise to leave Doug alone for too long, as I explained earlier.