No Place Like Home
‘Despite the relentless march of time, some things never change, like the pull you feel to return home more and more as you age…’
Iwas born and raised in the tiny farming village of Kipling, Ont. Leaving home at an early age distorts childhood memories. It shrinks places you once thought huge, and diminishes folks you once thought tall. Homecoming is bittersweet—good to be back, but life has changed so much.
The willows don’t really shade like you remembered, the woodshed isn’t all that big, although it sure seemed like it when you were piling the wood slower than they were splitting and tossing it at you. The “lake frontage” is precious little more than a swampy, weed-choked shoreline of a swampy, weedchoked, muddy pond. You couldn’t swim in it unless you rowed out to the middle, and even then you
fretted about blood suckers and water snakes. At least I did some swimming in mud lake.
As kids, we chuckled at the odd tourist launching a classy motorboat on our “lake.” One crank of the motor, and he’d practically wind up on Louis Johnson’s veranda—boat, bait and all!
We all lived on farms around the “lake.” One trip out of the province was all it took for me to wonder how my Scandinavian grandfather survived on a rock pile that most western Canadian farmers would have blasted and bulldozed away. Yet, with a strong back, a hardworking mate, a team of horses and the most primitive tools and machinery, he managed to clear enough land to provide a good living for his family.
Our farm was mostly dense bush, swamp and stubby thickets, with the odd cleared pasture. Square fields on level land were rare. Dips, bogs, slopes and cut-off corners made tilling hazardous. Our area must have been where prehistoric glaciers dumped their debris. Only a few kilometers away, the valley opened out into acres and acres of level, fertile land, true foothills in nature, for the most part settled by the French in and around Verner, Ont.
I often listened to Grandpa’s stories about why Swedish immigrants settled such a harsh area of the country. He said the landscape reminded them so much of the homeland they had left behind forever: rocky and cold, but beautiful in fall and summer.
Landscaping consisted of a grove of birches and willows surrounding the main house, roses by the front step, honeysuckles by the mailbox, and a hodge-podge of perennials strewn about the rest of the yard. There was always a huge vegetable garden out back, and potato fields in a corner of one of the nearer pastures.
A lawn might appear when Grandpa scythed the first growth of clover for his milk cow. A patio? Sure, we had one of those. It was a flat rock by the clothesline hole, also good for hopscotch, skipping, sparking caps and racing frogs.
Time Changes All
The outbuildings around my home seemed imposing back then. Skyscrapers and office towers have forever altered that memory.
Our kitchen counter tops seemed so far up; all that climbing we did for one quick finger-swipe of fresh frosting! Our saggy sofas had a ten-kid capacity. Today’s streamlined beauties seat far fewer bodies less comfortably.
The creek that bisected our property was a swollen river to me. That myth was dispelled by my first glimpse of the St. Lawrence River. What I once envisioned as a raging torrent is nothing but a lazy trickle of hillside run-off today.
The roads have been straightened, and pavement now covers the once-winding, gravel trails. Long Hill was a frightful uphill stretch of lonely road. It’s less steep now, but I still roll up the windows when I go back home (childhood monsters and demons, you know)!
Despite the relentless march of time, some things never change, like the pull you feel to return home more and more as you age. No matter that your “lake” is just a mud hole, or the farmhouse is much too small, the water pressure is the pits, and a lone car passing has the curtains flapping for miles—it is home.