Short Weekends
Kevin, Scott, Matthew and Mason
My father owned a farm machinery dealership, Wolff and Son Implements Ltd., which meant that while the farmers were working and their machinery was breaking down we had to stay close to home. I don’t remember us taking a holiday longer than part of a long weekend. We would plan to get away Friday night but inevitably a farmer’s machine would break down and dad would have to supply parts or drive out to the field to fix the problem. Eventually we would get away late Saturday and drive to Kalispell. Failing that, we would drive over to St Mary, Montana for Sunday dinner at Blacks.
Just before one of these long weekend trips (probably in the early to mid-1950’s) I was playing on an old Massey 21 combine that had a chain lift table. I put my right thumb through one of the chain links of the table lift and pressed on the table lift toggle switch. The electric motor groaned and my attention was drawn to the table as it began to rise. My thumb was crushed when the link reached the sprocket. I had to press the toggle switch down so that I could extract my thumb. Of course, this resulted in another missed long weekend getaway.
It was probably the rusty combine in the background that broke my thumb. This photo was taken about a decade later, after the flood of 1964
One benefit of living in a predominantly LDS area was that the farmers didn’t work on Sunday so no machinery was breaking down. On Sunday dad would drop Mom, Judy and me off at the Social Centre for Sunday School in the morning while he attended the worship service at the United Church with his parents.
Sometimes when the summer weather was nice, after church, we would load the already prepared fried chicken, baked beans and potato salad in our 1955 Packard Clipper and head out to Waterton. Occasionally aunts and uncles would join us.
Isabel and Harvey Wolff, my parents, in front of the shop. In the background is the bowling alley, pool hall and the Spencer Hotel.
On the West side of Mountain View, Highway 5 turned from pavement to gravel and then back to a reddish coloured pavement at the park boundary.
We would enjoy a lovely picnic in one of the chalets on the shore of Upper Waterton Lake and sometimes we watched the baseball game that took place on a diamond in a large open field on the Northeast corner of Cameron Falls Dr. and Wildflower Ave. Cars would park around the perimeter of the field. Horns would honk when a player made a good hit and occasionally a foul ball would fly over the backstop and land on the roof of a car.
I particularly enjoyed the playground across the street which had an unusually tall slide.
On the way home, we would listen to Our Miss Brooks on the car radio.
On Sundays when nothing much was happening dad would say, “let’s go for a drive”. We would all climb into the car and just drive around town for about 15 minutes and visit. Judy and I would sometimes play a game where one of us would pick an object we were passing and say, “I spy with my little eye something that is green.” The colour would match the object and the other person would have to guess what object it was.
We purchased a black and white TV in 1955, personal computers and cell phone were science fiction and our telephone number was 69. To call my friends, the Smith twins, I would lift up the phone receiver and when the operator answered I would say 327. She would ring the Smith’s phone line.
I don’t recall any talk of keeping the Sabbath Day holy. We went to church, we shared time together, ate together and played together and there were no devices to get in our way.