I remember some days really well. Other years are blank, void of any solid memories, and those memories I do have, I distrust. Like I only remember remembering, so the thrice transferred details may not stand up.
I remember remembering listening to Dads stories about his childhood in the Badlands.
He was the last born of 3 brothers and 2 sisters, and the first born in this country. I never fully understood the family history on his side, and its something he never talked much about. His father died when I was born, and his mother my oma she died that night I knew she died when I was 8 years old.
Theres a story there, one Ill never know. Something about the Russian revolution, the white army / red army and how his father was in the white army and was a part of a big Mennonite exodus. I know my grandfather changed the family name when they arrived here, and that my father , being born in Canada, was the only one of the family to regain the double n back into our last name. I know they were Russian, but spoke low german which was a strange thing for me, but Im afraid that story is lost.
There are only a couple of photos of my dads childhood, and I havent even seen any of them for over 20 years now, but I can picture them in my minds eye like some screen caps from episodes of the lil Rascals.
In one, there's my dad standing.
Standing in front of a wooden shack. Hes probably not any older than 5 or 6 and hes wearing a pair of dirty overalls, no shirt. Hes skinny. His older brothers and sisters are all standing behind him and none of them are smiling. I remember staring at that photo, trying to make it real for me but I never could. He was never a little kid covered in desert dust standing in front of a shack surrounded by cactus, sage and rattlesnakes.
I know he started smoking at 8, and I know that like his father and his brothers, he was destined to work in the coalmines. Hell, our family name means miner in german, and it was the coalmines and the Mennonites that led my grandfather to bring his family to Drumheller in the first place The Badlands.
Man I just love saying Badlands.
Baaaad Laaaands
I dont know about his school, other than it was a small shack a few miles from their property and hed ride a mule there and back. I also know he never continued going after grade 8.
I dont know what he did for fun, I know that he fell off a hoodoo when he was around 9 and broke his arm. The horse doctor tried to set it and botched the job, so he was left with an arm that looked like his forearm was connected to his upper arm through a flesh baseball, stitching and all. He could never fully straighten it after that.
Hed have been 19 in 1957, and I dont know if he drove around too fast in an old ford with his thick black hair slicked back into a ducktail with Brylle Cream and a switchblade comb tucked away in his back pocket, but I bet he did. I cant picture him with girls though, hed never talk to me much about that.
I rarely got any glimpses into where he came from. He never told many stories. I only remember a few main ones:
There was a guy that lived down the road from them that they called Hawkeye. He was native, from the blood tribe, and instead of guard dogs, he had guard geese. He had two big white geese that hed leave to roam free inside the fenced off confines of his property, and Nobody got past that gate if the geese didnt know them.
I found this story to be incredulous at first, I mean come on dad, geese? But when hed tell me again how aggressive and mean these geese were, I eventually developed a fear of geese. For good reason, I would eventually discover.
The other story I remember is about how him and his brothers would go out with Hawkeye in the spring time and watch the nests of the magpie.
Magpies build a strange nest. Theyre these huge things and fully covered. They are about 2 to 3 feet in diameter sometimes, and in the badlands, they were made of rather large sticks. A huge beaverdam egg in the treetop, with a small circular hole in one side as the door.
Hawkeye, my dad and his brothers would all go out and watch the nests. Quite often, the same magpies would use the same nest year after year, and sometimes theyd build anew. When the season came around to laying eggs, theyd watch the father magpie to see which nest he was flying to to discover which one was holding eggs this year.
I found this fascinating at first strictly due to the idea of a magpie egg. I had developed early on into a creepy little ornithologist, and by the age of 8, I had started to amass quite a collection of hollowed out wild birds eggs.
(Its kinda sick when I think of it now, how I would systematically locate my next specimen, find its nest, and using gloves climb up there and carefully take that one egg from the nest. If there was only a couple, Id leave them alone because I did care about the birds, but obviously I was missing out on some piece of the logic there. I would use the same gloves that I kept outside by the property so that they wouldnt smell like human I felt a little bit bad for taking that one egg, but Id have been devastated if the mother abandoned the rest of the eggs due to a strange scent. I would use a pin to poke through both ends, and then blow the contents out.
Then, Id label a new square with the genus species and regular name of the bird, and glue the new egg to the collection board.)
I didnt have a magpie egg.
They didnt want the egg though, the egg wasnt the point.
Theyd locate the active nest, and then just wait. Watch.
A day would come when theyd see both parent magpies returning to the nest with larger food, and thats when they knew that the chicks had been born, and were old enough to be fed.
He told me how as he grew up, they always had pet magpies, tame and talking, sitting on your shoulder. They would wait till that day they saw the parents with food, and one of them would shimmy up that tree, reach in through that hole, and steal a chick.
The idea of just an egg no longer compared.
By the mid 70s, he had purchased a plot of land back in the badlands. It was in the valley, just off the old train tracks near the river where the old train bridge still crossed. The tracks themselves were grown over with poplar shoots and sage grass, and the rails were thick with rust. It was only a mile from where the house once stood that he grew up in, but the highway went through what was that old property now. Nothing left to show of it.
We used to go camping almost every weekend that I can think of in the summer months, and for this my parents bought some bigass 30 trailer. (I always brought my thick, hot, heavy and smelly canvas pup tent, mind you. I didnt like sleeping inside the trailer unless it was pouring rain)
Eventually, we just pulled that trailer semi-permanently out to the property by the river and leveled it to stay there. Attached a deck, a barbeque, a fire pit, an awning etc. We would spend every weekend out there in that lush valley of that desert. My olfactory memory is of Off insect repellant, the hot creosote of the black railway ties baking in that hot sun, and the coconut smell of my sister roasting herself in Hawaiian Tropic dark tanning oil.
I, to this day, have no idea how we were able to convince my mom of this, maybe we didnt. Maybe dad took me out to that nest in secret, knowing that once he and I returned with our fuzzy loot, thered be no going back. I dont remember the preliminary conversation, but there we were on that cool spring morning: looking up through the brambles at that big stick orb. The active nest.
I really wanted him to climb up there, not me. I dont like heights, and I especially wasnt fond of sticking my bare arm into that black void inside that hold. There I was though, climbing the tree and dad looked so far down below me.
I was finally up there, level with this big nest and I was totally afraid that the parent magpies were going to return and swoop in to pluck my eyes out.
I think the chicks knew something unpleasant was going down. Absolute silence from within that twig ball. Not a shuffle, not a peep. I most likely shook the hell out of that tree on the way up.
Apprehension. I did not want to stick my hand in that hole. I looked back down at dad way down. He was looking up at me, smiling.
go ahead son he said, reassuring.
just reach in, youll feel them
This was old hat for him, and perhaps really important. I didnt want to look like a wuss in front of him, not like that day fishing when I couldnt bait my hook with that worm, not like the day I cried after shooting my first gopher with those exploding mushroom shells, not like the day I had to wring that doves neck.
He was smiling up at me still, maybe reliving, and I just thrust my arm through that hole into the dark.
They were in there alright. Warm and fuzzy, scrambling away from my grasp.
I dont even think I was groping at first though, I think I was just a blind boy living inside a magpie nest for a moment. The bottom of the bowl was so soft and warm, I dont know what it was lined with, but it felt luxurious. Loving parents.
There were probably 4 or 5 chicks in there from the feel of it, and they were most likely in a state of absolute terror. (no doubt, some big fleshy groping thing theyd never have imagined existed has invaded their crib.)
I just wanted to feel them, it. I suddenly did not want to remove one of these beautiful birds from the sanctuary they knew as home. I wanted to back out and let go of the whole idea, but not only did I know it was too late -- Id defiled their interior with my smell -- but dad was still down there, cheering my progress.
So I finally let my hand become a claw, feeling, grasping, gripping, and I found purchase. They were biting me, but I finally wrapped my fingers around the body of one of them. I started to try to pull it out towards the entrance, excited in one way to see a magpie chick, but also saddened and disgusted with myself for the lack of respect.
My heart was pounding in my throat, I could barely control the muscles in my arm over the shaking, my legs clamped in cramps onto the trunk of the tree, my left hand holding my body up by that one branch, but I finally removed my arm from inside the nest. In my fist was the most beautiful, fuzzy and small grey and white chick I had ever seen. Its beak was gaping, its little feet splaying its toes out in paralyzed stars from the bottom of my hand, and when it for the first time in its life saw the bright light of day, it bit me. It turned its head down towards the back of my hand near my thumb, and bit me.
It didnt really hurt, it was more of a light little pinch, but I freaked out and instantly ripped my hand away from the grip, letting go of the chick -- dropping it.
In slow motion horror, I watched as this poor chick ping ponged pin ball bounced down from branch to branch to the forest floor. She hit the leaves running and I was already half way through my own impersonation of her exit.
I dont remember getting hurt falling down out of that tree, most of my wounds came from the briars I scrambled through in pursuit of that fuzzy little victim. I finally caught up to her though. I was bleeding quite noticeably from all of my limbs, but I had her. Dad was so proud of me, and that made everything ok.
We placed her in the padded apple crate wed brought, and headed back up to the overgrown traintracks to balance our way back to the property. The magpie chick in the box was calling out to its mother.
oh my god! What have we done!? I was thinking. I wouldnt voice that to dad though.
Come to think of it now, looking back, Mom didnt know we were doing that. I know that from her reaction now that I remember: She was not at all happy to see dad return with his grinning, blood covered 11 year old son and mysterious wooden box.
He never lied to me though.
True to his word, as soon as I approached the chick with a small cube of raw steak, she opened her beak to the sky red and wide. I put the flesh in her mouth and she quickly swallowed it. Impatiently, she re-opened her mouth for more, which I gave her.
She immediately stopped calling for her mother then. She would stare at me instead, and everytime I came near, shed open her beak to me. I never let her down again. (until the very end)
I fed her every two hours and coddled over her like I really was her parent. Then, on Sunday, we packed up for the trip back to the city and she rode in the back seat on my lap inside that apple crate. Mom didnt say a word for the whole trip. I could tell that there would be some words to be had between the two of them when they were alone.
I built a big tree branch home thing in the garage back in Calgary, and she had free run in there.
Magpies have a long black tail, but the chicks dont. They cant really fly very well until this tail grows either. More like hop and glide. So I would go into the garage and spend hours with her, Id put her on my shoulder while I waxed my skis, fixed my bike, built another bird house for the robins, and shed mutter strange sounds into my ear, watching my every move with that fast, white eyelid blink. Mom and dads steak bill grew. That was one well fed bird.
Of course, she needed a name, so I went into one of my bird encyclopedias and was stricken with the strange circumstance of her genus_species.
genus = pica
species = pica
She became Pica.
Eventually, she started to fly in small bursts inside the garage, and shed actually fly to my shoulder when I walked in. She loved me, it was obvious.
She had weird quirks. Painted toenails, for example, were fun. I think being carrion eaters, they have a thing for red. My sister came into the garage one day in bare feet and I was amazed to see Pica launch off my shoulder and swoop down at her feet. It was the toenail polish she wanted, and she landed right on top of my sisters left foot, trying to stab her beak in downward thrusts at the shine
This brought about the best series of screeching beat box dancing Id ever witnessed. Pica was relentless in her pursuit of my sisters toes, and as Tracey ran screaming with knees to chest towards the exit, I fulfilled my little brother duties and blocked the door to get a few more priceless moments of entertainment.
Ah good times.
(try to avoid having an 11 year old little brother)
Eventually, Dads stories of magpies being able to talk sort of came true. Cousins of the Myna bird, magpies are masters of imitation. I only got Pica saying hello and even then it was a bit of a strain to hear it, but damn, she had the squeak of our gate down pat. Whining dog was her other specialty (and I think that was more due to her love of torturing our poodle with relentless stalking and pecking.)
Her flying abilities eventually outgrew the garage, and with much trepidation, I spray painted her feet fluorescent orange and took her out to the back yard. I was terrified that Id never see her again, and I was hoping that the paint would at least let me recognize her from a distance.
She seemed to know her home though, as shed always come back into the garage at night. Id come home from school, walk into the back yard and call out PICA! and shed fly in, landing on my shoulder, or sometimes just my outstretched hand, where Id place her on my shoulder to let her mutter her story of the day in my ear.
The Pica story goes on. Much happened between me and my pet magpie, but for now this memory is simply a symbolic link to something else thats been bothering me. It was me waking yesterday morning feeling the thrash of black feathers somewhere inside of me.
Do I really want to reach in through that black void and grasp for its source?
No. Not yet.
I remember remembering listening to Dads stories about his childhood in the Badlands.
He was the last born of 3 brothers and 2 sisters, and the first born in this country. I never fully understood the family history on his side, and its something he never talked much about. His father died when I was born, and his mother my oma she died that night I knew she died when I was 8 years old.
Theres a story there, one Ill never know. Something about the Russian revolution, the white army / red army and how his father was in the white army and was a part of a big Mennonite exodus. I know my grandfather changed the family name when they arrived here, and that my father , being born in Canada, was the only one of the family to regain the double n back into our last name. I know they were Russian, but spoke low german which was a strange thing for me, but Im afraid that story is lost.
There are only a couple of photos of my dads childhood, and I havent even seen any of them for over 20 years now, but I can picture them in my minds eye like some screen caps from episodes of the lil Rascals.
In one, there's my dad standing.
Standing in front of a wooden shack. Hes probably not any older than 5 or 6 and hes wearing a pair of dirty overalls, no shirt. Hes skinny. His older brothers and sisters are all standing behind him and none of them are smiling. I remember staring at that photo, trying to make it real for me but I never could. He was never a little kid covered in desert dust standing in front of a shack surrounded by cactus, sage and rattlesnakes.
I know he started smoking at 8, and I know that like his father and his brothers, he was destined to work in the coalmines. Hell, our family name means miner in german, and it was the coalmines and the Mennonites that led my grandfather to bring his family to Drumheller in the first place The Badlands.
Man I just love saying Badlands.
Baaaad Laaaands
I dont know about his school, other than it was a small shack a few miles from their property and hed ride a mule there and back. I also know he never continued going after grade 8.
I dont know what he did for fun, I know that he fell off a hoodoo when he was around 9 and broke his arm. The horse doctor tried to set it and botched the job, so he was left with an arm that looked like his forearm was connected to his upper arm through a flesh baseball, stitching and all. He could never fully straighten it after that.
Hed have been 19 in 1957, and I dont know if he drove around too fast in an old ford with his thick black hair slicked back into a ducktail with Brylle Cream and a switchblade comb tucked away in his back pocket, but I bet he did. I cant picture him with girls though, hed never talk to me much about that.
I rarely got any glimpses into where he came from. He never told many stories. I only remember a few main ones:
There was a guy that lived down the road from them that they called Hawkeye. He was native, from the blood tribe, and instead of guard dogs, he had guard geese. He had two big white geese that hed leave to roam free inside the fenced off confines of his property, and Nobody got past that gate if the geese didnt know them.
I found this story to be incredulous at first, I mean come on dad, geese? But when hed tell me again how aggressive and mean these geese were, I eventually developed a fear of geese. For good reason, I would eventually discover.
The other story I remember is about how him and his brothers would go out with Hawkeye in the spring time and watch the nests of the magpie.
Magpies build a strange nest. Theyre these huge things and fully covered. They are about 2 to 3 feet in diameter sometimes, and in the badlands, they were made of rather large sticks. A huge beaverdam egg in the treetop, with a small circular hole in one side as the door.
Hawkeye, my dad and his brothers would all go out and watch the nests. Quite often, the same magpies would use the same nest year after year, and sometimes theyd build anew. When the season came around to laying eggs, theyd watch the father magpie to see which nest he was flying to to discover which one was holding eggs this year.
I found this fascinating at first strictly due to the idea of a magpie egg. I had developed early on into a creepy little ornithologist, and by the age of 8, I had started to amass quite a collection of hollowed out wild birds eggs.
(Its kinda sick when I think of it now, how I would systematically locate my next specimen, find its nest, and using gloves climb up there and carefully take that one egg from the nest. If there was only a couple, Id leave them alone because I did care about the birds, but obviously I was missing out on some piece of the logic there. I would use the same gloves that I kept outside by the property so that they wouldnt smell like human I felt a little bit bad for taking that one egg, but Id have been devastated if the mother abandoned the rest of the eggs due to a strange scent. I would use a pin to poke through both ends, and then blow the contents out.
Then, Id label a new square with the genus species and regular name of the bird, and glue the new egg to the collection board.)
I didnt have a magpie egg.
They didnt want the egg though, the egg wasnt the point.
Theyd locate the active nest, and then just wait. Watch.
A day would come when theyd see both parent magpies returning to the nest with larger food, and thats when they knew that the chicks had been born, and were old enough to be fed.
He told me how as he grew up, they always had pet magpies, tame and talking, sitting on your shoulder. They would wait till that day they saw the parents with food, and one of them would shimmy up that tree, reach in through that hole, and steal a chick.
The idea of just an egg no longer compared.
By the mid 70s, he had purchased a plot of land back in the badlands. It was in the valley, just off the old train tracks near the river where the old train bridge still crossed. The tracks themselves were grown over with poplar shoots and sage grass, and the rails were thick with rust. It was only a mile from where the house once stood that he grew up in, but the highway went through what was that old property now. Nothing left to show of it.
We used to go camping almost every weekend that I can think of in the summer months, and for this my parents bought some bigass 30 trailer. (I always brought my thick, hot, heavy and smelly canvas pup tent, mind you. I didnt like sleeping inside the trailer unless it was pouring rain)
Eventually, we just pulled that trailer semi-permanently out to the property by the river and leveled it to stay there. Attached a deck, a barbeque, a fire pit, an awning etc. We would spend every weekend out there in that lush valley of that desert. My olfactory memory is of Off insect repellant, the hot creosote of the black railway ties baking in that hot sun, and the coconut smell of my sister roasting herself in Hawaiian Tropic dark tanning oil.
I, to this day, have no idea how we were able to convince my mom of this, maybe we didnt. Maybe dad took me out to that nest in secret, knowing that once he and I returned with our fuzzy loot, thered be no going back. I dont remember the preliminary conversation, but there we were on that cool spring morning: looking up through the brambles at that big stick orb. The active nest.
I really wanted him to climb up there, not me. I dont like heights, and I especially wasnt fond of sticking my bare arm into that black void inside that hold. There I was though, climbing the tree and dad looked so far down below me.
I was finally up there, level with this big nest and I was totally afraid that the parent magpies were going to return and swoop in to pluck my eyes out.
I think the chicks knew something unpleasant was going down. Absolute silence from within that twig ball. Not a shuffle, not a peep. I most likely shook the hell out of that tree on the way up.
Apprehension. I did not want to stick my hand in that hole. I looked back down at dad way down. He was looking up at me, smiling.
go ahead son he said, reassuring.
just reach in, youll feel them
This was old hat for him, and perhaps really important. I didnt want to look like a wuss in front of him, not like that day fishing when I couldnt bait my hook with that worm, not like the day I cried after shooting my first gopher with those exploding mushroom shells, not like the day I had to wring that doves neck.
He was smiling up at me still, maybe reliving, and I just thrust my arm through that hole into the dark.
They were in there alright. Warm and fuzzy, scrambling away from my grasp.
I dont even think I was groping at first though, I think I was just a blind boy living inside a magpie nest for a moment. The bottom of the bowl was so soft and warm, I dont know what it was lined with, but it felt luxurious. Loving parents.
There were probably 4 or 5 chicks in there from the feel of it, and they were most likely in a state of absolute terror. (no doubt, some big fleshy groping thing theyd never have imagined existed has invaded their crib.)
I just wanted to feel them, it. I suddenly did not want to remove one of these beautiful birds from the sanctuary they knew as home. I wanted to back out and let go of the whole idea, but not only did I know it was too late -- Id defiled their interior with my smell -- but dad was still down there, cheering my progress.
So I finally let my hand become a claw, feeling, grasping, gripping, and I found purchase. They were biting me, but I finally wrapped my fingers around the body of one of them. I started to try to pull it out towards the entrance, excited in one way to see a magpie chick, but also saddened and disgusted with myself for the lack of respect.
My heart was pounding in my throat, I could barely control the muscles in my arm over the shaking, my legs clamped in cramps onto the trunk of the tree, my left hand holding my body up by that one branch, but I finally removed my arm from inside the nest. In my fist was the most beautiful, fuzzy and small grey and white chick I had ever seen. Its beak was gaping, its little feet splaying its toes out in paralyzed stars from the bottom of my hand, and when it for the first time in its life saw the bright light of day, it bit me. It turned its head down towards the back of my hand near my thumb, and bit me.
It didnt really hurt, it was more of a light little pinch, but I freaked out and instantly ripped my hand away from the grip, letting go of the chick -- dropping it.
In slow motion horror, I watched as this poor chick ping ponged pin ball bounced down from branch to branch to the forest floor. She hit the leaves running and I was already half way through my own impersonation of her exit.
I dont remember getting hurt falling down out of that tree, most of my wounds came from the briars I scrambled through in pursuit of that fuzzy little victim. I finally caught up to her though. I was bleeding quite noticeably from all of my limbs, but I had her. Dad was so proud of me, and that made everything ok.
We placed her in the padded apple crate wed brought, and headed back up to the overgrown traintracks to balance our way back to the property. The magpie chick in the box was calling out to its mother.
oh my god! What have we done!? I was thinking. I wouldnt voice that to dad though.
Come to think of it now, looking back, Mom didnt know we were doing that. I know that from her reaction now that I remember: She was not at all happy to see dad return with his grinning, blood covered 11 year old son and mysterious wooden box.
He never lied to me though.
True to his word, as soon as I approached the chick with a small cube of raw steak, she opened her beak to the sky red and wide. I put the flesh in her mouth and she quickly swallowed it. Impatiently, she re-opened her mouth for more, which I gave her.
She immediately stopped calling for her mother then. She would stare at me instead, and everytime I came near, shed open her beak to me. I never let her down again. (until the very end)
I fed her every two hours and coddled over her like I really was her parent. Then, on Sunday, we packed up for the trip back to the city and she rode in the back seat on my lap inside that apple crate. Mom didnt say a word for the whole trip. I could tell that there would be some words to be had between the two of them when they were alone.
I built a big tree branch home thing in the garage back in Calgary, and she had free run in there.
Magpies have a long black tail, but the chicks dont. They cant really fly very well until this tail grows either. More like hop and glide. So I would go into the garage and spend hours with her, Id put her on my shoulder while I waxed my skis, fixed my bike, built another bird house for the robins, and shed mutter strange sounds into my ear, watching my every move with that fast, white eyelid blink. Mom and dads steak bill grew. That was one well fed bird.
Of course, she needed a name, so I went into one of my bird encyclopedias and was stricken with the strange circumstance of her genus_species.
genus = pica
species = pica
She became Pica.
Eventually, she started to fly in small bursts inside the garage, and shed actually fly to my shoulder when I walked in. She loved me, it was obvious.
She had weird quirks. Painted toenails, for example, were fun. I think being carrion eaters, they have a thing for red. My sister came into the garage one day in bare feet and I was amazed to see Pica launch off my shoulder and swoop down at her feet. It was the toenail polish she wanted, and she landed right on top of my sisters left foot, trying to stab her beak in downward thrusts at the shine
This brought about the best series of screeching beat box dancing Id ever witnessed. Pica was relentless in her pursuit of my sisters toes, and as Tracey ran screaming with knees to chest towards the exit, I fulfilled my little brother duties and blocked the door to get a few more priceless moments of entertainment.
Ah good times.
(try to avoid having an 11 year old little brother)
Eventually, Dads stories of magpies being able to talk sort of came true. Cousins of the Myna bird, magpies are masters of imitation. I only got Pica saying hello and even then it was a bit of a strain to hear it, but damn, she had the squeak of our gate down pat. Whining dog was her other specialty (and I think that was more due to her love of torturing our poodle with relentless stalking and pecking.)
Her flying abilities eventually outgrew the garage, and with much trepidation, I spray painted her feet fluorescent orange and took her out to the back yard. I was terrified that Id never see her again, and I was hoping that the paint would at least let me recognize her from a distance.
She seemed to know her home though, as shed always come back into the garage at night. Id come home from school, walk into the back yard and call out PICA! and shed fly in, landing on my shoulder, or sometimes just my outstretched hand, where Id place her on my shoulder to let her mutter her story of the day in my ear.
The Pica story goes on. Much happened between me and my pet magpie, but for now this memory is simply a symbolic link to something else thats been bothering me. It was me waking yesterday morning feeling the thrash of black feathers somewhere inside of me.
Do I really want to reach in through that black void and grasp for its source?
No. Not yet.
VIEW 10 of 10 COMMENTS
The looser/loser thing makes me violent.
It's in the past. You have to let it go.