HORROR OF HORRORS

      Like most people in the world I have been anxiously awaiting my turn for a covid shot. It doesn't look like we will get shots here for a while as they have made no plans for administering the vaccine which they don't have. 

     Like most people (well maybe not most people) (well maybe just me) I thought that if you got the shot you were home free and would be immune from covid for maybe a year or longer. Not quite so fast Red.

     I was listening to a radio interview of the woman who is the Canadian rep for one of the drug companies. She said the vaccine is good for and guaranteed for three months. They have no idea how much immunity will be left after a year! That just astounds me. Is there going to be any value for such a short lived period of immunity.? By the time I'm vaccinated a large part of the population will need to be vaccinated again.

    Many people think they have won the lottery once they are vaccinated. Not so fast. You haven't got what you think you have.

    Have we been sold a bill of.... Have we been hiding so much that we have missed information. I will definitely get my shot but it's going to be a little disappointing.

COVID HITS CLOSE TO HOME

       For most of the past year I have looked at Covid statistics, noticed ups and downs and who was having the worst time with covid. We all know the line...people in long term care, people with underlying health conditions...

       It wasn't until October that we began having a huge increase in cases and deaths in this area.

       However, it took one special death to show how cruel covid can be.

       A woman who was a retired church secretary and her husband went to the church too help a new minister learn the ropes. Jim moved furniture and helped with clean up. 

       There were unknowns lurking. It was not known that the regular secretary had Covid. Jim's wife Linda picked up covid from the secretary and passed it on to her husband, Jim. Jim died in five days. 

       It really seems tragic that  man who was a volunteer should pay with his life . It's so simple for covid to pass from one person to another. 

       I now know people who have contracted Covid. You put  a name to a face. A 53 year old Downs Syndrome man has been in the hospital and has recovered. A former student has been in the hospital for two months on another issue and she caught covid in the hospital. 

      When covid gets close it's a very sobering issue issue.

       Be careful and be safe.

THE CHALLENGE OF THE MASK

        We are all supposed to be wearing the "mask" these days. I know that there are some who have a melt down over having to wear a mask but I'm not one of them. I think that all of us should do all we can to help control covid - 19. Recently a person I knew died from covid. That's too close to home.

     However, I've found wearing the mask to be a challenge and not at all pleasant. A simple thing like taking off the mask and putting it on is a problem ...a frustrating problem. I have used some very descriptive language when things don't go well. 

     I wear glasses and hearing aids. So some of you are already thinking ahead on this story. The glasses, mask and hearing aids get completely mixed up when I try to take off the mask. . I only want the mask to come off but the mask is one of the last things to come off. One dark morning I had  my groceries and was ready to go home. I took the mask off and I knew one of the hearing aids had come off. It was very dark in the car and I couldn't see anything. I went into the store to borrow a flashlight but no sympathy there. They just wanted to sell me a flashlight. Going back out I met a tradesman of some kind and I thought, "Those guys always have cool flashlights." Yes, he had a flashlight and would let me use it. I found the hearing aid immediately. 

      The next week I decided to leave the hearing aids at home. That didn't work very well. 

     Then one day I thought , if I grasp the mask band at the bottom by my ear lobe it might come up and not get tangled in everything. Yes, it was perfect!  The mask comes off and the other stuff stays there. 

     Now if I could think of some way to prevent my glasses from fogging up I' d be much happier again. 

WHAT WOULD GOTTLIEB THINK?

        Gottlieb brought his family here for some very solid reasons. He wanted to be able to practice the Lutheran faith. He wanted to maintain the German language. He was a pacifist and did not want to participate in war or armed forces. The family needed the opportunity to find more land so that they could farm.

       In the late 1980's Virginia found more than 900 of us. This included all the in laws. 

       Less than 50  of the family still live at Esk. 

This photo was taken in the late 1950's with some of my Grandpa's family including Grandpa. In the photo are three of Grandpa's sons and three of his daughters. There were many good family times , usually around a big turkey dinner.

      So now very few of us are members of the Lutheran church. Very few of us speak German. Many of his offspring have served in the armed forces. One of his grandsons was killed in the Second world war. My son was in the reserve forces. Very, very few of his family are famers. Two and a half of my brothers are farmers

     So what would Gottlieb think of this situation? I think he was forward enough thinking to see that with all the changes it was a good decision for the family. If one looks back at what happened where they were living you can see that they had a much better opportunity in Canada. Things were very unsafe in central Europe for many years .

    I have some errors that I have to correct. Some of you picked up the errors. My Dad was not in the nursing home for 18 years. He was in a nursing home for five years. He had very good quality of life until his mid eighties. 

    I've been most surprised at the reaction to this series of posts. I was surprised at how many were missing most of their family history. I was the nerdy little kid who sat around and listened to my Dad's stories and all the people who visited him. I've always been interested in Western Canadian history. I've always liked local history. My brothers went outside and played and had a good time which was a normal choice. 

    This is Dad's family in 1966...four sons.

EMIL

        I mentioned that Dad started spelling his name in a different way from the family spelling. I could never understand why he changed it except that as a kid he started spelling it differently and kept on. 

        However, when we were born he registered us as Kline. I'm not sure what was on the marriage certificate.

       Economic conditions improved after the war. He bought modern machinery with two other farmers. By 1948 he had his own machinery and was independent. In 1948 he built a house. What a treat to move out of the old house and into a spacious residence. However, my brother and I still slept in the same room and bed even though there was an empty bedroom. 

      Dad also bought a new car and truck and was able to pay for them so this shows you how good the economy was.

      Tragedy struck in 1953 when his eleven year old daughter Doreen died after a short illness. He never came to terms with her loss and missed her the rest of his life. 

      Those who've had families know that children soon grow up and leave the nest. I left in 1957.

      In the mid 1960's Dad wanted to travel and so applied for a passport. He filled all the forms out very carefully. A few weeks later he received a letter from the government saying, "Mr. Kline, we have never heard of you!" What a shock! So Dad had to do the usual thing about going through school and church records to prove who he was. Dad thought that Grandpa had forgotten to register him when he was born. I accidentally ran into some information that said that the records for Saskatchewan children born from 1910-12 were nowhere to be found. They have no idea what happened to the records. So Dad's birth registration was one of the ones lost. 

     In his mid 70's he began to think about his accidental name change. He worried about his estate. So in his seventies he finally legally changed the spelling of his name. 

      Tragedy struck again in 1971 when Mom died . Dad remarried in 1973 and he had another 30 years of happiness with our step mother. 

      Dad enjoyed 20 winters in Phoenix. When insurance became too costly he stayed the winters in Manitoba. 

     He had good quality of life until 85. At that time macular degeneration took away his eyesight. Shortly after that Parkinson's set in. In 1990 he went into a nursing home and died in 2008 at age 95. 

     Dad led a very active life in farming, community, church and retirement. Did I ever tell you that he liked fishing? He was absolutely nuts about fishing. I remember spending time ice fishing with him. We would be on the ice all day.

EMIL KLINE 2

     Dad worked around the Vernon, British Columbia area for about 5 years. In 1935 he was 22 years old. 

      For some reason he was not happy being a Lutheran. He was searching for something else and I don't think he knew what he was looking for. Somehow or other he found the Plymouth Brethern or they found him. He joined them and worshipped with them the remainder of his life.

     In 1935 he came back to his home in Esk, Saskatchewan. He bought a small farm. Where he got the money from to buy the farm I have no idea. His oldest sister came back with him and they farmed the summer of 1935. It may have been his sister's money that was used to buy  the farm. He went away in the winter to work at Portage la Prairie, Manitoba. 

     The young farmer

     He came back in the spring of 1936 to his farm. He had four horses but they were left out for the winter. In the spring he had to find his horses. Most farmers let their horses go for the winter and there would be huge horse herds in the area. 

     Love found my Dad in 1937. He married Mom in Feb. 1938. Many weddings were very small so they were married in her Mom's house.

     Wedding photo

     In February they went back to Dad's little house on the farm. They travelled by train and a friend met them and took them home. The next day Dad went over and started a fire in the house and they moved in with the few wedding presents they had. 

     The story was always the same. They had $60.00 and that had to last until September when they would have some grain to sell. So Dad promptly lost his wallet in the field with the $60.00 in it. They looked for hours. On the way back to the house Mom found the wallet. 

     From that time on they stayed on the farm.

     Another surprise happened in 1939 when I was born. 

     The war started and slowly Dad expanded with farming and the grain prices increased. 

      Another surprise happened in Oct. 1940 when my brother was born. My sister was born in 1942.

     They had a very small house and it was in very poor shape. Another boy was born in 1942.   

EMIL KLINE

       My Dad, Emil Kline, was born on the homestead in 1912. They'd been on the homestead for seven years but he often said he missed it. He wished he had been old enough to be a pioneer like his Dad or grandparents.

      However my Dad always said he had a good childhood. He had two older  brothers who worked on the farm so Dad had more time to play with younger siblings. He also helped his mother in the yard. He carried water by pail to her garden. He looked after chickens, weeded the garden and brought wood into the house.

      The one room country school was on their farm and only about 400 m from their house. Dad liked school and considered himself a good speller. For some years he was paid 15 cents a day to light the fire and have the school warm by the time kids got there. His sister was paid 10 cents a day to sweep the floor. 

    The economy was good in the 1920's and many of the pioneer's children pursued higher education and left the farm. Dad was in gr.10 in 1928-29. He boarded with a farm family who lived right beside the town. He did farm chores in exchange for his board and room. Apparently most of his gr 10 consisted of playing pool. As a result he did not do well in Gr. 10. We all know that the depression began in 1929 so that was the end of his education. 

     He worked on a farm for the summer and fall of 1929. He didn't want to go home and stay on the farm with his parents so he took a train to Grand Prairie Alberta and lived with an uncle and his cousins. His uncle had a small sawmill so they sawed lumber and brought in more trees to saw up. In the spring of 1930 Dad knew he had to move on as his uncle had enough kids to look after. . He asked his uncle for money and the uncle pointed to a pile of lumber and said that's your pay. The uncle couldn't sell lumber so how would a 17 year old kid sell lumber so Dad moved on. 

    Sometime during this time he decided to change the spelling of his name. More on the spelling later. 

    His next move was to the Okanagan in British Columbia. He had two sisters in the area and an uncle. He picked up work where ever he could. He worked on a dairy farm, picked apples, cut timber, and worked in a saw mill. When He didn't have work he had to be creative to find a place to live. For a while he lived in a wooden granary on someone's farm yard. 

     Dad said he was happy through this period of his life as he said none of them had money so they were all the same.