A Happy Childhood

This morning, on the way into town, I had to drive through a construction zone on the highway. They were resurfacing a portion of it I guess.

But as I slowed down and waved at the flag lady, or girl, the smell just captured me. My attention was drawn immediately to the smell. It was the smell of asphalt or tar we used to call it. Oil was certainly a big part of that smell.

When that smell hit me, a picture flashed through my mind of grandpa Thiessen. I know he used to work as a flagman on the highways, and I would sometimes go out with him on the work projects and you could smell that smell all day long.

The tar, the oil, the asphalt, and somehow in my mind it's been connected with him all these years.

But this morning was a real, powerful reminder. The image that came to me was of him. I remember smelling that in their yard as well because the Austin town streets were being recovered.

So even at their house, there's an echoing memory of tar and oil.

It's funny how that thought and that smell can be a comfort. How that terrible, nasty, gross smell can be the good thing, a blessing.

But as I thought about that, it led me to remember summers at their house. In southern Manitoba, in a small town, in a small house, on a nice green yard with lots of room to play and to laugh and to have fun. When we would go there for summers the times were special.

Sometimes we would bring a trailer and park it in their backyard and us kids would sleep in the trailer for night .

But summers in southern Manitoba are different.

The heat will get you.

The humidity is even worse.

It can be 30°+ Celsius, but when you add the humidity to it, it can become overbearing. Especially more as I aged.

But back then, when I was a kid, we just handled it. We sweat. A lot.

After hot and humid days of trying to find ways to stay cool while being very busy outside, there would come a bit of a gentle breeze.

The heat was always so overpowering and heavy and as evening would come, so would the thunderstorms. Thunder and lightning storms in Southern Manitoba are unlike other places I've ever lived.

They were stunning and dramatic, earthshakingly powerful.

The noise and the flashing lights was an amazing thing for a kid who wasn't necessarily afraid of them. But we still took wise precautions.

But after a hot humid day, the rains would pour and pour, and the lightning would flash, and thunder would roll again and again late into the night. You would go back to bed after that storm cleared and somehow fall back asleep, and soon another one would roll through.

Then, early in the morning the sun would rise and the birds would start singing. They were especially noticeable when I slept outside in the trailer.

When you left the trailer to go into the house to wash up, things felt so different. It’s those mornings I remember the most.

I remember that the air was sweet and cool.

The birds would sing happy as could be. And the whole day seemed blessed.

There was a sweet smell to the air. It was full of hope and potential. Another new day, what would happen that day?

We had made it through another storm. Everybody still alive, nothing damaged, and nobody hurt.

But I remember the breeze. The breeze would be cool because some of the moisture in the air. The humidity would be there, with none of the heaviness.


Yeah I remember the air being sweet, if that's a word I can use to describe it.

It was it was a thick, good wind because it brought moisture to the nose, to your skin, and that's always good. .


The memories continued to unfold as I remember Grandma.

In her house dress. Cooking or washing up, keeping the house going, talking and encouraging and checking on us or being out in her garden.

She was always out there early in the year, one of the first ones out on her block to be in the garden.

I remember that she seemed to love doing that, being outside, with her vegetables and her flowers, her onions, potatoes.

Yeah, she loved that.

She was a kind woman, but stern, firm, maybe firm is better.

She gave you a lot of room to be a kid.

She didn't have a great deal of high expectations.

Just behave reasonably and that was good enough.

She fed us well with fresh homemade bread. And boiled potatoes with gravy.

I remember Inside of the house was always so hot in summer. It was a small house so when three or four or eight people were in it, the temperatures would rise. So they would try to blow air through. Fans would be running all the time.

The fans and the open doors and the open windows would help that sweet air to blow into the house and help so much. I sometimes wonder how all those people made it without air conditioning in those days. How they could manage it, but they did.


Later in the morning, I would head outside to where my grandpa had a little wood shop, a workshop, built and attached to the back of the garage.

And you could go in the side door there, and they had a big counter with woodworking tools of all kinds. A lathe and saws and drills, and drill presses, and all kinds of wonderful tools to play with, and I would work and create for hours.

I would make little salt and pepper shakers on the wood lathe that I had learned how to make in school.

I would make airplanes, wooden airplanes, and grandpa would help me with that.

I remember he helped me with my first one. We made a an airplane with just two by four body and a wing that was made of, I don't know, a quarter inch plywood. Not a very big deal, maybe a foot by a foot, but a fun wonderful toy that you had built yourself, and then you would go play with it, and you would paint it, and you could put it on a weather vane if you wanted. But it was yours. You created it.

It was wonderful.

But that's how woodworking used to be. And that's how play used to be in those days. It was creative. It was fun.

I remember once, my cousin and I who lived out there, we took a 22 rifle and we laid it on a 2x 6 plank. Just three or four feet long, and we traced its outline on the wood, and then we cut it with a saw, and we cut out the shape of this gun, and we began to work it, to soften the edges, to sand it, to rasp it, to grind it into a pretty good looking toy gun that we could play with.

Those were fun happy moments. Terribly enjoyable memories for me today.

Yeah, playing, just playing.

I miss the days of playing.

I miss the wonders of the mornings and the sweet smell of the air in the mornings.

I miss the comfort and the peace and the safety in their place.

I'm glad for the memories. They are blessings to me and I want to create them for my grandkids too.

So we shall see.