1. Driving Past the Old Farm
There it is. The familiar bluff of trees, the house without windows. The
barn blown over at a dangerous angle.
Here Grandma and Grandpa lived. Down the road an old schoolhouse hints of the
days when local school boards hired (and sometimes fired) the teacher, where dances and
showers were held, where the 4-H Club met. Days of the part-line telephones and street
dances on Saturday night.
Most people in Saskatchewan have an attachment to the land through a mother, father, aunt, grandpa. They love the land through W.O. Mitchell’s Who Has Seen the Wind, and Wallace Stegner’s Wolf Willow. There is the mystical pull of the land combined with the the practical, blistered, “how much is this crop worth” values.
But why did Grandma and Grandpa leave the land?
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