4 The Son of a Logger I was Soon to Be

 Starting in 1889 until it went out of business in 1959, the Union Steamship Company was the only means of travel up the BC coast other then by private ship. To get to Read Island and the logging camp where the new job was you had to take one of their steamers and that meant a day and a night on a real steamship, and you got to sleep in a real stateroom.  Dad left for Read Island immediately to see how things would work out.  The rest of the family including by now a little sister Dawna, who was eleven months younger then her big brother Bobby, stayed in a cabin at White Rock near Grandma Betts.

Because Dawna and I were only eleven months apart that really bothered my mother especially when my sister would tell everybody for one month each year, “Bobby and I are twins now, Bobby and I are twins.”  Mother always gritted her teeth and tried to make Dawna shut up but that was easier said then done.  My mom’s biggest fear was that not only did everyone now know she was having sex again, but that she was also totally lacking in self control.

After a year however it was more then my dad could take being away from Dorothy and the kids, so on his last trip to town he said, “Honey you and the kids are coming back with me,” and so the whole family set off on the next Union Steam Ship to sail under the Lions Gate Bridge.  It was kind of cool to sail under the bridge.  I can still remember looking up at the bridge and seeing all the cars traveling over it, every time we went to town during my growing up years on Read Island.

What also made it fun to travel on the steamship was that it stopped at all of the small settlements along the way.  The whistle would blow and it was a real steam whistle too. When it wailed away on arriving at each stop if you were any where on the ships deck your whole body would resonate with the sound, I swear I used to think that my fillings would come lose.  Without exaggeration I jumped so high the first time I heard it, if I hadn’t had a handrail to hang onto I would have ended up in the chuck (water).

We used to travel quite often to town at Christmas time and I will never forget all the loggers heading to town for the holidays.  After months in the bush with no women, the bright lights of Vancouver meant not only women but wine and song as well. Many were already well lit long before the bright lights of town were anywhere near.  I remember one time when a well-lit logger was passing money out to us little kids.  We thought it was OK, I can’t remember if my mom made us give it back, or not.  Most loggers ended up flat broke long before their break was up, but could hardly wait to repeat the experience on their next trip to town.

One of the Union Steamship's fleet of passenger and freight vessels
that served as a link between Read Island and Vancouver.

http://sunshinecoastmuseum.ca/exhibits/the-union-steamship-story

3 Tough Enough To Survive Tough Times Continued

During the “hungry 30’s,” as they were known, it took any means possible to just get by and the boarding house that Grandma Wimer ran was necessary just to survive.  Of the many characters that came to board at their home the scariest was that of a man who had a number of the family sit around the dinning room table with their hands on the table. With everyone following his commands the table rose off the floor.  At the time my mom did not realize the enormity of the situation.

My mother liked to tell me of her past history when her ancestors came across from the “Old County” that being Germany.  My mom’s story went something like this. It seems that two disinherited sons of a Duke’s or something, had come to seek their fortune in the new world.  One owned a factory and when the American Revolution began he converted it into making cannon balls for George Washington.  This I think gave my mother a sense of pride and maybe a little bigotry, just to think that she had blue blood somewhere in her veins.  I can still hear her reprimanding an acquaintance with these words; “I am Mrs. Betts to you, not Dorothy.”  To keep things in prospective it should be said that my great, great, (I’ve lost track of how many greats) grandmother on my mother’s, side smoked a corncob pipe.  It seems that once in the new world there was a rapid slide downward.  My mother used to tell me how she used to watch the frog legs jump all around in the fry pan when they were being fried up for supper. I think the reality of that and what it meant in terms of status completely escaped my mother.  In might be only fair to mention that this all was from her mother’s side of the family. I must admit it does make one feel kind of good to know that there is blue blood somewhere in your veins, on the other hand if we all checked back far enough we probably all have some.

Times have never been tougher then they were in the 30’s and to survive Gervase and Dorothy headed out west to see if there were any jobs for a poor uneducated prairie kid and his pregnant wife of just a few months.  They just managed to make it out to BC in an old Chevy and immediately started looking for work in the Fraser Valley.  Jobs in the late 30’s were about as limited as finding gold at the end of the rainbow.  My Dad did find work up at a place called Suicide Creek where they made cedar bolts and sent them down a flume where they were eventually sawn up into shingles.  Most jobs back then paid only $2 a day and in the government relief camps the wages were dropped to 20 cents a day plus meals, bed and work clothes.  Jobs were hard to keep but Dad eventually got another job in the valley working for a dairy farmer but having a job didn’t necessarily mean you got paid.

On or about now who should arrive but Robert Elwood Betts their firstborn and what a scrawny wrinkled red thing he appeared to be.  He was a fighter and even though he was born 6 weeks premature and they did not think he would make it, he survived in spite of sometimes drastic measures, red hair and all.

What I mean by drastic measure was that on one particularly day after having come down with pneumonia, for he was a sickly baby coming down with one chest congestion after another, they placed him in a galvanized washtub on a small stool to keep his little toes and bottom from the scalding water beneath, and commenced to steam him.  Can you imagine the squalling and the chaos that must have gone on?  In spite of the scars on the poor babies left arm and side from the scalding water he survived.  Who knows it might have been the only reason I’m still here.

Working for a dairy farmer who was a skinflint and even a little crooked meant dad did not always get paid, and it meant they had very little to eat. This brings a story to mind that my mother told me when I was quit small. My Dad after having not been paid for some time was unable to buy any food at all but somehow came upon a sack of carrots.  When all you have to eat is carrots you eat carrots.  In fact for weeks you eat carrots until you are sick of carrots.  That may sound unsettling but when you’re a mother and have a newborn baby just a few months old and are unable to nurse him because your milk has dried up and you can’t feed him anything but carrots it is more then unsettling, it borders on despair.  I was not doing very well and my Mom took me to the doctor and the diagnosis was rickets, a bone disease caused by a lack of calcium. When Minerva, Grandma Betts finally found out she just about had a fit and immediately went to the store and bought a bunch of groceries, especially milk for the baby.

With conditions as bad as they were and after talking things over with my mom and grandma, dad decided to take a job that he had heard about way up the coast working in a logging camp.  This was a completely new experience for a prairie boy and other then the few months he had worked at splitting shingle bolts his only experience in the bush.

2 Tough Enough To Survive Tough Times

Let’s get back to Fred as my mom’s father was called.  He could say nothing good about Canada as he had moved up from the states with his family into Canada during the height of the “Great Depression,” and now was moving back just before it ended, so as far as he was concerned Canada was the original black hole, and he could not get back to the US fast enough. I can still hear my dad and grandfather going at it on the state of world politics and why anyone would live in such a black hole as Canada when the US welcomed all. This of course was the cause of much despair for my mother.

I did not hold that against Grandpa Wimer, because I think he liked me as he always had me go out on the job and help him with the carrying of bricks and stuff, whenever we visited.  He was a hard working bricklayer and a stonemason by trade, getting up by at least 5 am each morning.  I think he just liked having me around because it sure wasn’t what I accomplished at the work-site.  I was way down on the list of grand children chronologically speaking that is but we always seemed to get along.

My mother had eleven other siblings, nine born before her, two having died of common childhood illnesses before she was even born, and as a grand finale her mother topped it of with twins.  With this many kids running around a boarding house and trying to make ends meet any way she could, Fran, to everyone but us grand kids who referred to her as Grandma Wimer, never really knew my mother or any of her kids very well.  Because of this my mother formed a close bond with some of her older sisters who actually did the raising of the younger ones. 

My mom’s next oldest sister Florence was her closest friend. She was also the favorite of all our aunts hands down. She always gave us presents every Christmas and never missed a birthday, and we always got a special gift every time she came to visit.  My most favorite jack knife came from her when I was 9 or 10.  I lost it working on my first car, a ’51 Ford Convertible, that I talked an acquaintance into selling to me for $145, as our honeymoon car, when I was 23. I think I laid it on bumper or something.  How I missed that knife. 

How I missed my Aunt. It was a sad day when she died of breast cancer at 45.  I missed her, I guess probably more than any of my aunts.  I know what you are thinking, no more presents.  Not true, I guess in all honesty as a kid it had something to do with how I felt about her. But she was neat!  I remember when her hair first started turning gray and she would pull each one out that she found.  She kept them until the ball got quite large.  I think she gave it to one of us kids.  She also liked to catch perch off the wharf with us kids, which was only a large log out in front of the houses, where the boats tied up.  I can still remember her holding our catch on a rope through their gills.  She taught nursing at the Portland Adventist Hospital and was given a Citizen of the Week Award which Teri my oldest daughter who is a nurse still has.

During the “hungry 30’s,” as they were known, it took any means possible to just get by and the boarding house that Grandma Wimer ran was necessary just to survive.  Of the many characters that came to board at their home the scariest was that of a man who had a number of the family sit around the dinning room table with their hands on the table. With everyone following his commands the table 

My favourite aunt, Aunt Florence,
with my sister Dawna

1 The Very Beginning

The beginning for me was in Alberta probably during the month of Nov 1937 shortly after my mother was expected to return to the US with her family.  That was the very beginning; I was born seven and a half months later in BC in a small town in the Fraser Valley called Chilliwack. 

In order to prevent herself from being carted off to the States with her family my mother and dad eloped. They had an accomplice, my father’s mother, so get married they did, as they were madly in love.  I assume madly for why would anyone elope if that were not so.

I surmise that Cliff, my Dad’s father didn’t have a hand in it, as he was a mild sort of a milk-toast kind of man who always was in the background and never said much.  I was never sure what he did for a living although I was always told that he had done truck farming, but I never saw him ever doing it or at least it was before my time.  Grandma was the one who supported the family by teaching grade school.  I suppose Grandpa was an all right kind of guy, but I never did connect very well with him even after staying with my grandparents through grades one and two. And especially after Grandpa accused me of something that I never did, I can’t even remember what it was but I knew I hadn’t done it and he didn’t believe me and there was a ruckus but I never got spanked for it. 

I lived with my grandparents my first year of school, until Christmas.  I came home at Christmas because I was home sick my mom said.  I never remembered being home sick but I guess I can’t blame my mom for using that as a good reason for getting me back home, ten months is a long time to be without your little boy.  And to put things in prospective I was the favorite.  My sister Dawna always made sure I knew that was so.

The next year when I was eight I again spent a year with my grandparents this time with my sister Dawna.  I will never forget the day when my sister lost her front teeth.  It happed this way.  Our job was to do the dishes after supper every evening.  As kids we would goof off, Dawna being the lippy one had just lipped off our Aunty Olive once to often.  Aunty Olive who was only sixteen at the time had just told Dawna to quit goofing off and get on with the dishes. Dawna of course lipped her off with “You can’t make me.” Aunty Olive then proceeded to back up her words and also take care of my sister’s sassy mouth by giving Dawna a good slap on the head.  Dawna ducked to avoid the slap, striking her teeth on the edge of the kitchen counter.  What a snapping sound, what a lot of bawling and what a ruckus ensued, it was incredible.  I sure felt sorry for my Aunt.  Maybe a little sorry for my sister as she was the one who lost her front teeth, she deserved the slap, but not the missing teeth.  Dawna wears a bridge to this day.

Even though my Grandmother was tough on me I always liked her.  During my grade two year I remember getting the strap three times for talking.  My dad said he got strapped just about every day when he was a kid, just so he wouldn’t be thought of as being a favorite.  I don’t think he had any resentment to grandma because he always talked about it with a sense of pride.  It wouldn’t do anybody any good especially the teacher’s son to be thought of as teacher’s pet or a momma’s boy.  So the tradition was carried on although I did not feel quite the same way about it as my dad did.