I was done. I was certain I was done. As I’ve mentioned I don’t go looking for this stuff, it seems to find me. Today I was unpacking a couple of trunks that had moved back with us from Virginia. I honestly don’t remember even opening them in the almost 8 years since we’ve moved back – but today I decided to dump everything so I could use the storage space. Ohhhh the treasures I found. Included was a book “Grandmother Remembers” that apparently I gave Grandma, and is very similar to another book I gave her called “Grandma Remembers”. It seems I really, really wanted Grandma to write down history. This book is brand spanking new – although it certainly is over 30 years old, maybe older. But inside she left some handwritten stories. I’m sharing the first one today – it seems she was presenting this to a group of school kids. Unfortunately it’s not dated, but it was before her memory and eyesight began to go so I’m guessing it’s about 30ish years old – making her 70 year recollections more like 100 year old recollections of Cochrane back in her childhood.

Gosh, I can hear Grandma’s voice as she’s telling these stories – her tone – how it would rise and fall as she emphasized something or got excited. When I was a teen I worked for a summer at Mackay’s. Grandma’s memory and eyesight was still sound and often she’d walk into town to get a scoop of ice cream and have a visit. On other days, I’d grab my lunch and head to the lodge on my break to visit with her. She told me story after story – and unfortunately in my teenage arrogance I thought I’d remember it all forever. I didn’t. But I feel like some of these stories are being brought back to life as I’m discovering these treasures.

I had to break this one into two parts, I’ll post the second half tomorrow. Enjoy!!

Girls and Boys- your teacher Mrs. Davis has invited me to tell you what Cochrane was like 75 years ago. Thank you very much of asking me to do that. There is nothing older people like better than to talk about their childhood. And believe me Cochrane was a very exciting place to live in 70 years ago.

There were no cars then, but some would famous horses came from Cochrane. Also just about every home in town had a barn with a milk cow in it and a few chickens.

These lovely high hills were just made for exciting hikes in summer and sleigh rides in winter. Every home had it’s own pump for drinking water, and a woodpile where you chopped firewood to heart the homes. For the winter time we had our favourite hill to sleigh ride down. I suppose everyone thought they had the fastest sleigh. I thought mine was the best. I would start at the top of Cochrane Heights and it was such a well packed trail down, it was almost ice, sometimes, I would be on main street before the sleight stopped. Just too bad if there was a team of horses coming down the road at the time. The horses would be terrified and run out of my way.

The poor Indians would camp off where the houses now stand on Cochrane Heights, and in those days they were really poor, and their kids were afraid of us and we were a bit afraid of them too. They were quite wild in those days and poorly clothed and hungry. Sometimes we would take gifts of food up to them and they would snatch it from us and run into their tent without saying thank you. You could hear the poor little babies crying in the tents, likely cold and hungry.

Everyone went to Calgary or Banff on the train when they needed to buy things you couldn’t get in Cochrane. Cochrane had a nice train station then, with a big platform on it and lots of people went over to the station just to see who got on or off the train because the train always stopped here. before you got on the train, the conductor, the man who took your tickets, would ring a little bell and shout or sing out “all aboard, all aboard”. That meant we would scramble on and get a good seat by a window before the train started, because it started with a terrible sharp chug and clatter and whistle. On the 12th of July nearly all of the people of Cochrane would go to Banff for the day. That was really fun. A big band would meet us at the Banff station and we would march down into the town of Banff. The zoo wasn’t in Calgary in those days, it was in Banff and I remember hearing the coyotes howl and the lions roar in their cages and the sound would echo up the mountains with an eerie sound. Going up to Banff, us kids could play up and down the aisle of the train and usually saw lots of deer and moose near the train tracks.

In the summer time, just about every kid had a horse to ride and had horses to drive in buggies or carriages. There was two big livery barns in Cochrane where they kept lovely horses you could rent to drive or ride. The Cochrane Lakes 6 miles north of here were full of water in those days and in the spring and autumn day or night there would be huge big flocks of wild geese fly over Cochrane town quite low, honking all the way because they were tired and they would land on Cochrane Lakes for a rest. The wild geese fly south in the autumn and spend winter in a warmer country, then fly north in the spring – far, far up north where there is often wild country full of lakes to swim on and where they make their nests and raise their young geese. They made such a noise when flying over Cochrane and the sky would be almost black with them there were so many. And everyone who could shoot a gun would drive out to Cochrane Lakes and bring back dozens of big fat geese to eat.

I had an older sister and she had a horse of her own a few years before my parents thought I should have one. This pony was what they called an Indian Cayuse and when we bought it it was terribly thin and quiet but my Dad soon fed it well and it got fat and mean. I guess while my sister was at school I would get it by the fence and jump on it’s back and ride it around the yard. We had a big yard with a big long clothesline in the yard because there were not electric dryers in those days. After this horse got fat it got meaner and I think it just hated me. As soon as I got on it, it would run to the clothesline and the wire sometimes caught me around the neck – it hurt – it always pulled me off and made me cry but in a few days time I’d try it again. I think it was the only horse I ever really, really hated. We called him Spider.

There were so many bachelors (men who had no wives) living in Cochrane and around the country years ago so there was always a Chinese Laundry in Cochrane. The Chinese gentleman who washed the clothes wore a long black braid of hair hanging down his back. Some of the wild cowboys would ride into Cochrane on Saturday night and thought it was smart to cut off the laundry man’s braid which they called a pig tail. But the policeman fined them plenty of money for doing that and even locked them in jail for a day or two. In the early spring there was a very nice Chinese gentleman who drove out to Cochrane from Calgary. He had a small thin team of old horses pulling a sort of van or house on a wagon. And he would stop and unhitch his horses and feed them in the centre of town. Then he would get two huge straw baskets out of the back of the van and they were full to the top with fresh green onions, lettuce, radish, and other things he had town in his glass house in Calgary. He had a long pole shaped so that it fitted his shoulders with a heavy basket on each end and he would trot around the streets singing – I never knew what – but us kids ran home to tell our mothers and to get some money to buy fresh green vegetables. OH MY, did they ever taste good! You never saw things like that in the stores when I was a kid, no refrigerators in those days.