My dad, Ed Kerr was a PFRA community pasture manager. Mom was an ex-school teacher. She was from the era when once the teacher married she had to quit work.
My parents met when Dad would ride his horse over to the far side of the community pasture to check fences.
What he was really checking on was the pretty school teacher at Saline school.
Sparsely populated with a school district for every school, the Saskatchewan of my parents’ era and especially early into my youth holds memories near and dear to my heart.
I started my education in a one room school in Hatfield Saskatchewan, now a ghost-town, about 3/4 mile from home.
We kids grew up riding horses, baling hay and hoeing potatoes. Mom put in a massive garden every year. That garden and beef kept us fed all winter…and the hay we baled fed the cattle that provided the beef.
Hoeing rows and rows of potatoes wasn’t exactly one of the good memories.
The haying actually was kind of fun because I got to drive the tractor and baler. My brother Bill and Dad would stack the hay on the rack behind the baler. My sister was a bit younger so didn’t do as much haying as the two older kids. She got to hoe more potatoes.
I remember the homemade water jugs – My mom would create them from plastic jugs with material from old denim jeans wrapped around them for insulation. We would put the water jugs in the freezer overnight and the icy water would sustain us through a hot afternoon of haying. (My mom still puts a sock on a water bottle to keep it cold. No one will take her water bottle by accident!)
We used to get our mail by general delivery at Hatfield but sometime around when we kids were bussed into “town” for school (that happened in Grade 4 for me) we started receiving our mail at Box 6, Nokomis Saskatchewan, SOG 3RO.
My sister Ellen was back in Nokomis recently and sent the photo above. Box 6. “Anyone recognize this?” she asked.
Those were the best of times.