This holiday season I’m watching all the cheesy romantic Christmas movies, but I have to say they’ve got nothing on my Grandparents.

People often discuss their opinions regarding the question: what is a life well lived? I gotta say, reading my Grandpa describe his family life here, this to me seems like the best answer I’ve seen so far to that question. This, this is a life well lived. He accomplished a lot in his career as a rancher, but what he mentions here isn’t that at all. It’s only about his family and what he and my Grandma built there.

I’m shocked it’s taken me this long to find anything mentioned anywhere about Grandma’s teacup readings. She was so good at it, and did make up some pretty great stories on the spot about what she saw in the leaves.

One night on the dance floor in Cochrane, I was dancing with a girl whom I had known for a long time, Edna Brown. Something came over me at that time and as the saying goes I was never the same again. We were married two years later on the 11th of November, 1931. We took a short honeymoon to the coast. I had already built a cottage with a full basement consisting of 2 bedrooms and bath plus a kitchen and living room close by my Dad’s home. Mr Frank Fletcher from Cochrane helped to build it. We raised a family of three- Sheila, Marshall, and Margi, whom we are very proud of and they in turn all have families. They also had to ride to school just like I did which I think made them rather resourceful people as they had to look after their own welfare from the time they left home in the owning until they returned in the evening. No bus driver to do this.

Edna has been a very patient and loving wife and has stood by in several trials such as the time Margi got polio and we were almost beat for two years before there was any sure course to take. Margie was eleven years old at the time and through sheer determination she kept up with her studies and be a mobile person again.

Edna is called Grandma now, and is sure a big wheel in the Grandma world. I consider myself very fortunate to marry such a girl as she contributed so much to my happiness as well as success in my ranching career. We are living alone once more, a little lonely perhaps sometimes, but still have good health and many happy thoughts of bygone days. Our grandchildren do visit us quite often and this certainly does liven things up. Grandma is good at reading teacups and how she thinks of the big whoppers to tell is more than I can say.