I was born on June 23, 1910. It was so hot and dry that summer, Mother kept bathing me with cool water and I haven't warmed up since.
I moved to Morrin when I was two years old, they tell me. I don't remember much about it. We went as far as the Red Deer River by wagon where we changed to a sled to go the rest of the way. My parents and I lived in a shack for a time, while Dad built our house.
I went to school at Lloyd George, where I finally got a grade eight education at the age of eighteen years. One winter day after leaving school, I decidedto see what the north country, where my cousins lived, was like. To be exact 168 miles north. I walked all the way through the Imperial Lease and untravelled roads except for about 20 miles. I found out it was a long way but I still had the dime I started out with.
At the age of nineteen I decided to go farming on my own so my folks gave me the "Grandad Martin" place. I didn't make too much of a sucess of it, so when the first wide road on the No 9 highwaywas being built, I drove four horses and a fresno for about six weeks to pay Dad's and my taxes. Then a year later, I helped cut down the Red Deer River hill with a pick and shovel.
The winter of 1936, I decided to make my fortune selling fish. On December 1 with a team of horses, I started for Bashaw to meet my uncle Nate Trenholm. He was not there so I hitch-hiked to his home at Leedale, 25 miles west of Lacombe. After more than two weeks, bumming, lodging, and eating frozen bologna sandwhiches, in the middle of the muskeg, we finally arrived at Lac Labiche. We loaded up two tons of fish each and started home. One day it was so cold, the horses' noses kept icing up. We had to warm them with our hands so they could breathe. By April 1st I had my fish sold except for 400 pounds, which my mother canned. I was $90.00 richer.
The winter of 1937 I went to work for a farmer at Leo, Alberta bailing hay and doing chores for $5.00 a month. On the first of April he turned his cattle loose on a big hay field about seven miles square. The next morning there was such a blizzard you couldn't see anything. He lost 125 head of cattle in the storm and I lost my job.
In 1942 I went to Fort William to work in a airplane factory, at the big wage of .42 cents per hour. I stayed ther nearly four years, during which time I became a foreman at .90 cents per hour. the war ended and so did my job. Then I went to Toronto and worked for Campbell Soup for six months.
In the spring of 1946, my folks rented me their homestead, so I came back to farm. In 1947, at the age of 37, I decided it was time to get married. I married Grace Thompson, a girl from Saskatoon, that I had met in Fort William. We had a boy and a girl while we lived in Morrin, Dennis and Darlene. In the spring of 1951 we moved to Lenore Manitoba, where Raymond and Lorraind were born. After six years of mud, hail, aphids, and rust we quit farming. In Calgary the last two of our children were born, Brenda and Sherry-Lynn.
Nearly ninety years later, these plaques and tangles are still the major indisputable evidence of Alzheimers disease, and doctors are still trying to figure out how to make an early diagnosis in a patient. Forgetting an appointment, the title of a film or what one wants from the refrigerator is a common experience after the age of thirty, when some of the billions of brain cells we're born with begin to die. But that doesn't mean mental function is diminished.The index file doesn't age but the secretary is older and takes longer to put in new cards or bring you in the cards you want. In people with Alzheimers the index file seems to be splattered with ink,and the information that the secretary brings in has been tampered with. It can be hardest on the family who has to deal with the victim. After all they dont realize that they are calling you the wrong name or talking of something that happened thirty years ago as though it was yesterday; but you do. Caregivers of Alzheimers have to learn to just give love and support to their family member without trying to correct them. Always correcting them is denying that they have the disease and probably just confusing the victim.