Far From the Rowan Tree Day 41

Many of the horses had been especially bred and trained in the Rocky Mountains to buck from the moment they were born

Since coming to Canada I hadn’t seen women thus dressed but had heard rumours of communities of folk living in the old way with names I hadn’t heard back home – Memonites, Hutterites, Dukabores – religious groups who lived away from other people in communities of their own.

They lived more or less by their own laws and customs and because they practised communal living, helping each other and being thrifty, were amassing land. Their communities were becoming larger and larger to the point where the Canadian government was getting worried about their potential strength.

On the crowded sidewalks today, however, most men and women of all ages and sizes wore tight fitting jeans, tartan shirts and Stetsons.

Some figures were just not suitable for tight-fitting jeans, especially among the women. It did not seem to matter how fat the lady might be, she looked quite unselfconscious dressed like this.

Laughter

It was the correct costume for the day. I began to feel out of place in my cool blue and white summer dress.

Shortly after the homesteaders had passed I heard faint echoes of a different sound. It came closer and closer until I recognised it as laughter.

It came sweeping up the street of this dusty western town in swirls and dancing gusts in much the same erratic way as the wind whirled through the barley back home. The boys heard it.

“Why are the people laughing?” Richard said, craning his neck through the crowd in an attempt to see further up the street.

“Perhaps it is because your dad and Adrian are coming.” I replied. “Now remember to clap.”

In the general excitement the boys seemed to have got over their adverse feelings about Daddy being a clown and waited eagerly for something they knew about and in a way was theirs.

The sound of laughter increased until suddenly it was among us, lifting and roaring, jumping from one to the other. Infectious laughter that promoted more laughter.

The clowns were funny, there was no doubt about that. They didn’t just march in the procession as so many other participants had done, they fooled and clowned all the way.

An inept and idiosyncratic “mother” and a difficult and mischievous “baby”, the spontaneous work of two born artistes who knew naturally and exactly what to do to make people laugh.

Phil had dropped into the role of fall guy, which suited his lesser but necessary talents. The little prairie town rocked with laughter.

The boys now were laughing also. People had handkerchiefs out and were drying their eyes long after the clowns had passed and the laughter trailed off into the prairie.

I listened to the comments and questions around me: “Never seen anything so funny!”, “Who are those guys?”, “How come we’ve not heard of them before?”

Unknown quantity

They were the unknown quantity – the complete surprise in a land that, as far as I could see, was a little lacking in fun and humour. Perhaps living in this land was too serious an occupation for jokes.

Later we learned from Adrian that the Jacobs had been delighted with the act and the response to it. They were pleased to have had a secret hand in it all and to be the only ones with the answer to the question: “Who are the clowns?”

The crowd was gathering all the time in this piece of prairie cordoned off for the event. It was a true family day out.

There were children everywhere. Some parents had brought their families of 10 or 12 kids and granny as well.

The latter also was dressed, more often than not, in a stetson and jeans, an astonishing sight to someone from Scotland in the 1950s.

Now that it was past midday it had become really hot and tartan shirts and fringed jackets were peeled of to reveal T-shirts with all sorts of western motifs on them.

This was the garb of the women as well as the men. Some of the ladies had shorts on. They had had them on under their jeans. They had come prepared for the heat.

Again, the size of the lady seemed of no consequence. Summer had come and after nine months of winter she was going to make the most of it.

The arena where the events were to be held had a high fence round it. There was another fence at some distance from the arena that surrounded all of us spectators.

High also but not so high that we could not see what lay beyond.

At one end lay the large grid of inconsequential shops and houses that was Sandyhills and at the other, the wide open prairie.

A light wind was blowing, making the bright sunlit air ever so slightly dusty and sending large light balls of tumbleweed scuttling across the prairie to be caught against the fence.

Every now and then a bluebird would come soaring in towards us from the sky. It was all very new to Ronald and me and all very exciting.

Viewing point

The events of the afternoon were about to begin. We moved closer into the ringside, pram and all. The boys got right up to the fence. Canadians were kind to children and saw that they got a good viewing point. The boys’ eyes became glued to what was happening in the ring.

The wild horse-riding event began the proceedings. Many of the horses taking part had been especially bred and trained in the Rocky Mountains to buck from the moment they were born.

It was pure lottery which horse the competitor got. He pulled a ticket with a number that told him which one he was allocated.

There was one horse in Alberta at that time, called Blue Mountain – the roughest toughest one of all. Every cowboy feared getting it.

The goal of the competition was for the cowboy to stay on the back of his bucking bronco as long as possible and for at least eight seconds.

“The longest eight seconds in the world” one cowboy told me.

“Once I pulled Blue Mountain – the meanest horse in all Canada. Just my luck. All I remember was catapulting out of the chute and then clutching a fistful of dust.” (More tomorrow.)