Fun Times With The Book of Lies

Sometimes, you are in exactly the right place at the right time.  And then there is the rest of life.  While bigger centers, like Moose Jaw (Moooose Jaw...which still doesn't make my Bermuda friends laugh as hard as at the city of Regina) formed in the 1880's, my hometown didn't come into existence until 1913.  These little small towns formed along and followed the new railway tracks at pretty regular intervals.  There are 3 tiny towns in a row where I grew up, each separated by about 7 miles of road, railway tracks, and fields.  In 1913, when farmers had to transport grain to the railway by horse and cart, and pick up supplies, this was a day trip.  And so it was necessary to set up all of these very close (but very far at the time) full service little towns.

These towns were filled with adventurers -- they were the first settlers in the area....homesteaders from east, from cities, and other countries.  They lived in sod shacks at first, endured a rugged and isolated life, and worked hard in a brutal climate.  These people were tough.  And although it really is a hundred years ago, my Grandma, who only passed away this January, was born in one of these prairie shacks with a dirt floor just 5 years after the railway came through and the town itself was born.  Of course there was no hospital...and even if there had been, that particular little shack was several miles south of the railway and in between two town sites, so it might have well been on the moon if you were in a hurry.  In my area, all of our grandparents rode horses, knew of people who froze to death, and attended one room school houses.  And it is all documented in the local history books.

When I was a teenager, all of the little towns in the area were celebrating 75th anniversaries of the towns.  In some ways this was good, because several towns would host "homecoming" celebrations, where all former residents were invited back.  There were parades, talent shows, dances, cabarets, and the streets were alive with people for a change.  Several nearby towns were all celebrating in the same summer.  It was virtually a hootenanny.  It was quite fun, for the most part.  The unfortunate part is that this all happened when I was in my very early and most awkward teenage years, and so I had to attend said hootenanny in "coke bottle bottom" nerdy glasses....and a plaid, floor length, period costume for one of the homesteader floats.  I think the cool older kids had a blast though.

In honour of all the homecomings, each area also invited all former residents to submit a family history.  Much to the horror of many of us teenagers, our parents just submitted whatever family photo was lying around all willy nilly, and we are all immortalized in these history books in whatever puffy sleeved puffy haired outfit and associated stage of awkwardness was going on at the time.  Each family recorded the members of their family and their achievements, the family history, and sometimes memorable stories.  In a larger city, personal histories are so easily lost.  But here it is all documented, all self recorded.

Every once in a through the years and during random discussions, someone would trot up the stairs and grab the history book.  What were the names of so and so's children?  Where were they from?  What year did the rink burn down?  The history book might just have the answer in black and white.  However, as I said the history was self recorded and mostly done by volunteer hours, so certain inaccuracies are present.  For example, one small town claims it was "once the world's largest grain market," as it have 7 grain elevators....or 8 if you believe the very next page.  One day in relation to some trivial conversation, my sister was declared wrong per the local history book.  Always one to be strong in her convictions, she declared the history book, "The Book of Lies."  It has been referred to fondly as such by our family for a decade or so now.

I had no interest in the books as a teenager, but I found myself cozied in with a trilogy of the book of lies the other day.  It all started with my Dad watching a WWII segment about Italy on TV.  I thought I remembered that my Great Uncle had been injured in Italy in the war, Dad thought it was in Sicily, and so I was not sure if I had the story straight, if he had made it to the Battle or Ortona or not.  I tried my failsafe -- I googled and Wikied the history of his unit, but digital records don't record a lot of the specifics that far back, least of all who was there.  So, I said "Hey, let's check the Book of Lies!"  Inside were the details I was looking for along with a few pictures.  He had indeed been at the Battle of Ortona, which was after Sicily.  I got to leafing through the pages, seeing pictures of the people I had only known as my friends' grey haired grandpa's -- here they were as fresh faced young men in military caps and uniforms.  Grandma as a newly wed, the great grandparents I never met but who look just like my brother, local newsclippings and stories of "the way it was."  I am old enough to appreciate and enjoy the books now, and gave them a rather thorough go over.  Enough so that the next evening when a neighbour popped in, we all found ourselves pouring over it, and I sat back and heard their tales -- the unwritten ones -- of all the shenanigans of the generation before, as they filled in the gaps about the people they knew and the adventures they had.  And so it is not really a book of lies.  It is a book of starting points, a brush stroke on the canvas of these communities.  A prairie pre-facebook if you will.  I think we all enjoyed remembering it a little how it was, a little how we wanted it to be, maybe just exactly as it was intended in the Book of Lies.