A Conversation with High Prairian Helen Kearns
High Prairian: Helen, I know you had a very different childhood than many of us. Where did you grow up?
Helen: I grew up on the plains of Manitoba, Canada (just north of Minnesota/North Dakota). The times I’m remembering must have been in the mid-to-late 1940’s. We lived about a mile outside a tiny, tiny town called Norgate. All it had was a mercantile store, a one-room school, a post office and a church – a United Church, which was similar to Anglican. On Saturday nights we’d “go to town,” to the larger community of McCreary, eight miles away. McCreary had homes, at least a couple of stores, and much more activity. We’d shop for supplies, and do other things. My dad often brought back 5 pound cans of Sunny Jim strawberry jam, which we all loved. Funny what memories stick in your head like that.
HP: What was your home like?
Helen: My family lived in an old, old Sears house – it came in a kit. It was a great big house that my grandfather had built. It had seven bedrooms. We used an outhouse in summer. In winter we kept a bucket with a seat on it in the basement. (And yes, our t.p. was scrunched up catalog pages – they were free, after all.)
We didn’t have electricity then, but later my clever oldest brother rigged up electricity for us through batteries. Periodically he’d have to run some kind of a generator, to charge them up again.
HP: Who all was in your family?
Helen: My father and mother. My mother died of cancer when I was ten. I had a brother and sister who were much older and who left home before I was very old; so most of my childhood was spent with the three brothers close to my own age. There were two years between each of us four.
HP: How did your family make their living?
Helen: My father was a farmer. He grew grain, mostly. One year he even won a watch and a special medal for having the best quality grain. We also kept a few pigs, cattle, and chickens. We always killed a hog in fall or winter. We didn’t eat much beef because the cattle were worth more to sell. We drank skim milk and sold the cream to the creamery. In the summer we grew a garden and did a bunch of canning. Still, meals were pretty meager. The farm kept us going, but we didn’t have much.
HP: Tell me about going to school in winter.
Helen: I went to a one-room school, grades 1 through 8. We walked a mile to get there, sometimes in very cold weather. If the weather was especially wicked, we’d hitch the horse to the sleigh or, if the snow was too deep, to the toboggan. The horse got to wait in a shed at the school. The school room would be freezing. Usually the teacher arrived at the same time we did and turned on the furnace to heat the room. We wore our mittens for the first hour and did our reading lesson until it warmed up enough to take them off. A highlight of every year was the Christmas play the teacher had us put on at the church.
HP: Brrrr! Norgate sounds like a really cold place.
Helen: I was always cold in winter. The house wasn’t insulated. The only room that was reasonably warm was the kitchen, because of the cookstove. The frost on the inside of the windows got so thick we could draw pictures in it. We melted snow in a double boiler for washing, and we would scoop snow into cups and pour syrup and other things on it for a treat.
Our beds were icy. When we climbed under the blankets at night my mother would tell us, “Start your engines!” Then we’d scrub our feet and hands together and move our arms and legs. That was supposed to warm up the bed.
My brothers and I would go sledding if there was enough snow, or we’d ice skate and play hockey when our small pond froze over. We didn’t have the right clothes, really, but we did OK. I wore heavy, warm bloomers. Men wore those long johns with the back flap.
HP: How did your family celebrate Christmas at home?
Helen: I don’t remember very much about Christmases before my mother died. Afterward, it fell to me to make Christmas happen. It felt like such a huge undertaking, I remember feeling pretty stressed.
We had only deciduous trees, so we’d gather branches and tie them together for a Christmas tree. I remember we had glitter, and we made ornaments at school.
My dad would give $5 to each of us younger kids for buying Christmas gifts. Even though $5 went a lot farther in those days, it wasn’t much to spend. We’d order inexpensive things like socks or scarves out of the Sears or Eaton’s catalogs. We wrapped our gifts in newspaper or comics, and tied them with yarn.
HP: Thanks, Helen! I’m sure we’ve just scratched the surface of your experience growing up in Manitoba, but I’ve enjoyed this little peek into what your life was like.
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