yo...not been on for long time....format change freaked me out a bit,but good  now....when i was 15 i had a job mucking out the nieghbors barn...every wedensday after school and every saturday morning i would shovel out 10" to 12" of chit soaked straw out of this barn...into a wheelbarrow and onto a manure pile....when done i would knock on the door and odd buddy would give me $10 dollars....good deal...it took me 2-2.5 hours....skip to friday night...me and friend mark outside the liquor store trying to get someone to buy us a bottle...finally a guy says yes...we give him $10 (at the time you could buy silk tassle or black velvet for $6...we expected no change....guy comes out, hands us brown paper bag with bottle....i still remember opening bag and seeing price tag $3.65....rotgut!....off we went to the park and drank contents of bottle....have only vauge memory of that night...got home about 4:am...at 7:am grampa calls...time to go to work....i'm sick :(....concerned he comes up to my room....leans over the bed...looks at me and says "you're not sick...you're drunk!!! if you want to drink like a man you can work like a man...get out of bed and go to work!!!!"so i got on my bike and went to work....6 hours to do a 2 hr job...much vomiting....good lesson learned from grampa....knocked on the door...odd buddy gave me $10...

last war story...

why did grampa tell me his stories of the war? well, i think it was by default. men of his generation would not have spoke about the war to wives or daughters; with his friends that had been in the war a shared look was all that was needed; his friends that were not in the war could not have understood. if i had not been born i suspect that grampas' story of the war would have found its way to jim, his oldest grandson. he wanted it known to his people, but not for glory; that was not his way. grampa did not express emotion often; i only saw him do it twice; one time was when our nieghbors son jimmy drowned at bible camp; i found grampa crying on the back steps...he said "i will never again get that close to a child that is not my own". i think the war was an extemely emotional experiance for him; it may have defined his life. when i entered the workforce in the early 70s i worked with many ww2 veterans; they were the "old guys". almost to a man they were confident, patient and kind...they had nothing to prove and were likely just glad to be alive....; grampa kept his medals from the war in the "junk drawer" in our pantry...i took and played with them once and lost the claspe awarded for extended line service...he didn't seem bothered by it. he told me a few stories of his combat experiences and i have hesitated to enter them. grampa would never glorify war and niether would i...i'm just glad i'v never seen it! in italy with an infantry regiment getting choped to pieces accross a river the sappers had to get tanks accross for support...under an old bridge grampa made all the measurments for the support beams needed for the tanks to cross...he did this under morter and machinegun fire...he was "mentioned in dispaches" for this job...after a ferosious night attack grampa and his mates came out of thier slit trenches...his good friend, a seargent, lay dead; he and another sapper lifted the seargent by the arms and legs to carry him off the field, but he broke in half...grampa got a big piece of shrapnel from a morter up his nose....he said "a wee jewish doctor with little
hands stiched me up so good i had no scar"...his nose never looked the same tho...his ankle was broke...again from a morter...grampa was not fond of morters!

turnip

thought i had run out of stories...but not so. christmas brought to mind one more. at christmas of about 1917 when grampa was about 12 yrs old, he was told to harness the horse and hitch the cart , go down to the harbour, meet the boat , and fetch home his uncles that were on leave from the great war and coming home for christmas. this was great responsability and a proud errand for him...bringing the family warriors home for the christmas dinner!....on his way to the docks he past by the "poor homes" (irish catholics, i guess)...he saw a boy not much younger than him standing in a doorway eating a piece of raw turnip. grampa new that that piece of raw turnip was that boys christmas...no special dinner no preasants....just raw turnip!...the sight deflated the pride of his errand and his joy of that christmas...the rest of the story...when i was about 10 (1966) grampa was making christmas dinner...(gramma was sored up with ms and couldn't cook)...he was in the pantry and called me in; he gave me a slice of raw turnip...i ate it...it was sweet...he asked if i liked it...i said "ya it's good"....he then told me of his christmas errand and the boy with the piece of turnip...this world would be a kinder place if we all lived by grampas' example

cattleman

there are people that own cattle; then there are cattlemen. grampa was a cattleman. he learned about cattle and farming from his grandfather john orr as a kid in co. down. for me growing up on the farm i just took this for granted. as a young man i new alot about cows having followed grampa around for 20 years or so; but the lure of the road called me and i went trucking ; by the time i was 40 i wouldn't have known an udder from a brisket! not so with grampa; he left ireland at 17 for canada, worked in the logging camps, the mines, homesteaded in northern alberta (no cows)...then 1940-45 getting shot at in europe. grampa was 40 when he was dicharged from the army...glad to be alive no doubt; and with grama , auntie betty and aunty mona to come home to he was indeed a lucky man! in '43 grama had bought a farm near cloverdale for grampa when he came home. knowing the causualty rates of canadian soldiers in italy in '43, buying the farm must have taken a great deal of faith....grama rented the farm to chow wai (i have vague, pleasant memories of him) until grampa returned home. many years later grampa told me; "me nerves were shot when i came home but mama had me this nice farm and there was work to do." it may have saved him....who knows...after all those years and adventures grampa was a dairy farmer...skip to my memories 60s-80s....we wern't big farmers, we weren't rich farmers; we were good farmers...grampas' family, cows, pigs, sheep, goats, horses, dogs, cats,friends and nieghbors were always content, well fed and well cared for. in our area grampa was the go to guy if you had a sick or ailing cow. i remember many many phone calls at all hours where grampa would be called by a nieghbor to help with a cow in distress....ussually i got to go with him. most often this was for difficult births; grampa was nearly always successfull at saving both cow and calf. how he could be away from farming for so long and then do so well at it tells me that it was a gift he had. one of our new nieghbors had bought a farm near us but he and his family had not yet moved in ; he had cattle on the place and had a young south asian family there looking after them. these folks were recent imigrants and spoke almost no english; the lady would phone and say" dad...girl sick" or "dad...boy sick"; grampa and i would go down and doctor the sick cow or steer. needless to say grampa never took money for helping a nieghbor...the sense of community and the friendship we new there was worth far more...

vino

had no computer for a bit, but back at it.....to canadian soldiers in italy during ww2 vino was a big deal; i'm sure all who survived have vino stories to tell; if they took in a stray dog, it was likely named vino; vino is homemade wine; nearly all italians make it, so it was plentiful; it is strong, tastes good, but a bit on the rip-gut side. i had one expierience with it when i was 17; grampa and i helped an italian neighbor fight a peat fire all day; when the fire was out he produced a gallon of vino...i had more than my share, have no memory of the evening and was sick for the next 2 days. during a rest time grampas' unit was billitted in a town behind the lines; after months they were out of reach of shell fire; they needed to unwind so the search for vino began right away; much to thier delight, in the basement of a big house, they found a large wooden vat of vino; one of the men took out his .38, shot a hole near the top and worked his way down untill the vino started to flow; all avalible vessels were then filled; when they ran out: another bullet another hole...more vino. after drinking untold gallons a new shot was fired but the flow was just a trickle; one of the men climbed up to look in the vat ( they thought they may have reached the sludge at the bottom ); it was not sludge stopping the flow; it was a dead body. they got a rope on the body and hauled it out; it was a south african seargent; the lads figured he must have been leaning over the edge of the vat; maybe already having drunk a bit; when he fell in and drowned; the canucks wondered why he didn't just shoot holes in the side??? the ncos' body was returned to his unit; the south africans had been at rest there several weeks earlier; grampa said no one suffered any ill effects from the vino...

john gordon

john gordon was grampas' maternal grandfather; i was named after him. the gordons and the orrs both came to ireland from the argyle regeon of scotland. the orrs were farmers and the gordons were seafaring people.(there is much rumor of smuggling!) thier land in ireland was granted to them after they put thier ships into service with the english to fight the spanish. the story goes that during a great sea battle, as one of the gordon ships was sinking, a gordon clung to the mast top as she went down and shouted " horraw for ireland ". the family always thought they would have gotten more or better land if he had called horraw for england! when john gordon was 17 yrs old his father gave him a 70 ton smack for his start in life. (i used to know the name of this ship; grampa drew it for me once; i think it was the caterina?) jg made 7 trips accross the atlantic with this little ship; he ran whiskey to montreal and brought timber home to ireland. this made him enough money to build a big three masted sailing ship which he named "the phylis"(not sure on spelling). grampa drew me a picture of her; she was square rigged on two masts and schooner rigged on one. once a huge atlantic storm pushed the phylis so far off coarse the ended up off the coast of south america; jg brought a parrot home for his wife eliza; eliza lived to be 98, they took her bicycle away the year before she died. the parrot lived to be over 100yrs and could talk very well. john gordon sailed the phylis till he retired in his 70s,(not always the same ship, for as jack berry told me the wooden ships were likely replaced every 8 or 10 yrs, but, all named the phylis.)jg gave the phylis to his 1st mate on his retirment; the mate lost her in a wreck on his 1st voyage. john gordon taught grampa about boats, ships and the sea; he had a big influence on grampas' life...

john orr

john orr was grampas' paternal grand father. he ran the farm at annalong, (the orrs' were farming people), he was also a cattle dealer; buying cattle in ireland and shipping them over to england. when grampa left ireland at 17 to start a new life in canada his grampa john orr saw him off; he took a leather pouch out of his coat, reached in and pulled out a big handfull of gold coins which he gave to grampa to help him get started in canada; the coins were not counted. this is who taught grampa about farming; they were very close...