The Rural Voice, 1987-08, Page 44CANADA FARM
LABOUR POOL
ATTENTION FARMERS
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DAILY ROUTINE of chores
or maybe you need extra
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881-3671
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OWEN SOUND
371-9522
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DURHAM ONT.
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BUYING & SELLING
SURPLUS BUILDING
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Good stock of standard sizes
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warehouse
Many items in
used building materials
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Warehouse and Sales Yard
Located 5 Km South of Durham
on Hwy. 6
42 THE RURAL VOICE
NOTEBOOK
THE OLDER FATHER
BY JEAN RYSSTAD
Jean Rysstad, a writer now living in
Prince Rupert, B.C., was born in Iuron
County (Kintail).
WHAT did I know then? What does
any child know at ten or twelve? I knew
from bits and pieces of conversations
between my parents, who never dwelt
on a problem, that my father was not
well. If it was talked about at all, his
heart condition was understated.
My parents had a general store in the
village of Kintail on Lake Huron.
Bluewater Highway #21. Our house
was next to the store, a passageway the
width of a strong, healthy man between
the two. It was a brick store, yellow, this
new business built from bricks of the inn
my grandparents had when travellers on
horse and buggy needed a stopping
point between towns.
I call myself young. Thirty-eight in
the fall. But I was the baby of our family
and, in some ways, I still feel the baby
trying to understand my part and place in
things. Listening and watching.
My father would be 86 if he were
alive. Born a year behind the year, he
said, when anyone asked his age. Forty-
eight when I was born. The early pic-
tures of him with my sisters and brother
show a stocky man, with straw-coloured
curly hair, a chest thrown for posterity,
for the photographers' pleasure, his own
pleasure evident. There is that strong
sense of a physical man, a strong phy-
sique. And the wit in the eyes and lips,
as if after the picture is taken he has
some comment to deliver, well-timed,
apt.
One sister, who is perhaps the most
like him, tells me he used to chase her
around the house when she sassed him.
He certainly never chased me. I had a
different father. The older father.
I did not see anything unusual in our
family situation. I thought I was lucky.
I would not have traded Kintail for
anywhere else that I knew or dreamed or
read of. I considered us rich. Rich with
interesting things to do as well as rich
with things I could have access to with-
out much effort. I was expected to work
in the store as soon as I could add up a
row of figures properly and write out a
bill. First name, date, items, cost and
total. The bill poked on a spike pounded
in a slab of wood upended.
After school, the first thing I did was
choose a treat. My "official" treat. I
would have several more plus a bottle of
pop later, when keeping store alone
while my parents ate supper. I would eat
and read in the post office part, spread-
ing the paper out on the tilt -top desk
where the stamps and money orders
were kept. I listened for cars at the gas
pumps. Neighbours got their own gas.
Strangers honked the horn.
I would fill up the pop case, going to
the basement for the stock. Wooden
crates of Kist, Vernor's, Root Beer.
Make the selection and carry the cases
up the back stairs. Arrange them in the
cooler, warm to the front of the display
case, cool to the back, easiest reached.
Dad's tires were all piled in sizes in
the basement of the store. Firestone,
650-15s, and bring my specs Jean, he'd
say when the phone rang and he needed
to use the fine print tire catalogue to
quote aprice. He sold new and fixed old.
There was a reservoir of rain water in the
basement and a bare light bulb dangling
above it. Sometimes, when I came home
from school, Dad would be in the base-
ment repairing a tire, holding a tube
under the water, under the light, watch-
ing for the leak, the bubbles. I would put
my finger on the spot while he got a rag,
dried the tube, cut a patch with the heavy
scissors, sandpapered the spot, brushed
rubber cement on it, pressed the patch
down with clamps on a 2 x 4 laid be-
tween sawhorses.
I would crawl into the stacks of tires
higher than myself, enjoy the rubber
smell, clean, black and smudgy. Things
I liked to do when he was there, but
never alone. The huge basement with
the black, spidery water tank and towers
of dark tires scared me when I was alone.
I needed him there.
Likewise, the barn. If I wanted to
spend time there, it was better that he
was near. There was a tombstone, a
pretty little one on the top floor of the
barn, which used to be the stable of the
inn. Bits of straw there after all the
years. Where, my father said, he sat on
rafters, the beams, and caught starlings,
twisted their heads off and put the heads