By ERNIE NEUFELD
It has become a custom in this column to use one near Christmas to review the past in steps of 10 years - as it has affected personal, family and associated fortunes and (mis)adventures.
There is a tendency to view the scene around ourselves as unchanging, but leave for even a few weeks and one returns astounded at the changes - some minor but still obvious - effected during our absence. With every decade comprising about 3770 bedtimes and wakeups, much fundamental change is a given.
My first glance is at 1934, living in a Manitoba village then having a population of less than 1000, but which a few years ago was chartered as a city with over 10,000 residents, and believe it or not, with a few satellite communities. Times were tough for almost all folks, and noticeably so in the home of a widow with five kids. Most readers will identify with the fact that our home then had no radio, telephone, electricity, vehicle (not even a bike), daily newspaper, central heating, and naturally no television or e-mail. Indoor plumbing? Forget it!
We had a dog, a cat and a cow, and even occasional mice that eluded the cat and traps. I remember one running over my bed. I was into my second year of school, and still blissfully unaware of evil stirrings of a pending war destined to change our world forever.
By the close of 1944 that war had been a part of our lives for over five years, but with the United States now well immersed in the conflict, we dared hope the European war, at least, might be over by next year-end. Being of an age when military service looked like (and was advertised) as an adventure, I hoped it would last long enough for my participation. Easy to hope when one has never heard a bomb drop or had a family member killed in the 'big adventure'. It was a general assumption, however, that the Japanese would never surrender, and it might have been a long haul to achieve victory but the surprise U.S. development of two nuclear bombs gave history more than a gentle prod.
The next decade saw me leaving home for the idyllic east, with a brief stint in British Columbia, and almost a year of "tramp-printing" in 10 U.S. cities and nine states; followed by marriage, returning to Toronto, becoming a father, moving into a postwar suburb with rows and rows of bungalows identical except for the color of the bricks. I recall spending New Year's Eve of 1954 with neighbors in their semi-finished basement recreation room with shelves adorned with bottles of almost every known label. Turned out that except for a mickey shared by six of us, the bottles were filled with tea.
Weyburn was a well-established home for me and mine as 1964 drew to a close. That year I cooked my first and only Christmas dinner under the competent supervision (laced with luck) of neighbor Louise Murray, as our fifth and final bundle of joy was being delivered at Weyburn Union Hospital. The Review had been acquired during the decade, and the printing industry was in the throes of the first phase of a technological revolution. The Review became the first community newspaper in the province to be produced on an in-shop web press by the offset process.
By the time another decade had ended and we were in 1974, we had two graduations behind us and were looking forward to a spring wedding - mooted and actually coming to pass. Mentally I was preparing myself for the prospect of serving as president of the Canadian Community Newspapers Association. My home-town school class was laying plans for the 30th anniversary of graduation year.
Adult time seems to pass more rapidly but still I recall that by 1984 we were living in the present Scott Street home, the Review had moved a few years earlier to the blue steel building on East Avenue, in-house computers had arrived but were still a novelty, we already had two married kids and three grandchildren, all helping to account for a growing pile of gifts under the Christmas tree.
By 1994, all but one of five children had been married, with issue of eight to that point, but an important death had left me living alone in our house. Highlights of the decade had included a mid-Europe trip taking in the Oberammergau Passion Play, followed by an Alaskan cruise, as well as a few southern holidays abetted by management of the Review slipping over to another generation.
The purpose of these "decadent" leaps, I like to
believe, is not to regale you with tales of my own life, but to
encourage you to examine your own lives and similar clips, invoking
memories important to yourselves and your own lives and worlds.
Keep a written record, and hand them along to those following
you. They will appreciate it.
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