CHAPTER 13

A BIG FAREWELL

Then came the day when Hylda departed for Canada. it was morning just before we children all started for school, so it was all bustle. I for one didn’t realize how far Canada was, or what this farewell would mean to mother or Hylda. But in my childish ignorance, I had no deep feeling on the matter. But I was side-tracked as it happened because my boot lace had broken and I had got to find another or the equivalent which ended by being black tape, from the family work box.

I have wondered since if my sister Grace who was the next in age to Hylda was as attached to her as I was to Alice. If so, it must have left an empty heart for Grace. Hylda kissed us all good-bye. It was then I realized it must be a major farewell, and took Edna the baby , who we had got into our minds that we owned as well, and had got to love. I am not really sure if brother Len was home from the war, if so it must have been he that took Mother and babe with horse and cart to the nearest station. Sister Hylda was not to meet her husband, mother told us, Harold Thomas until she was on the boat that took them to Canada, into a new future and a new awakening. No doubt for young Hylda the mother at 18 years. The next day. The feeling in our home was flat. We could have all been in a pensive mood, and lost for worse. I well remember what was in my thoughts. “I felt I could never leave my Mother, and take any baby away, what ever the circumstances”. In my case, it was, “when you are a child you think as a child.”

LEAVING OUR BIRTHPLACE.

I have discovered since attempting to recall my childhood memories, that the first five years are the easiest, and after ten I must apologise for being very vague. But it was a wrench do doubt for us - all of us, when we had to leave our beloved birthplace. Although it was not very far off it was even harder to know we no longer had the right to wander all over those so familiar meadows, and our little woodland that we cherished. The biggest meadow of all we say before we actually moved out, churned up. By the new machine called the tractor. This was the meadow that in September we gathered mushrooms, large baskets of them, each day we had to get at it as soon as sunrise, or, the clever gypsies would steal them first! And there was no way of stopping them as they could sneak in at the far end without us seeing or hearing them. They too must have been hurt to come and find the mushroom meadow was destroyed as it certainly was, for September for us as well.

We had to have a sale, and sell all our belongings on the farm. Farm implements as well as the livestock. Rightly or wrongly Mother had decided she would keep one or two of her best milking cows, as some neighbour offered us the use of a cattle shed near to the house we were offered until we could get another farm. One was the only jersey cow we had, a favourite, called Kusha, but complications set in as well as I can recall, because the oldest brother was taken to hospital with quite a long illness. So George who had not left school, was alone to do the work. Until the Jersey cow was ill, then it was night and day, it was probably milk fever she got, as that was a common illness those days that was often proved fatal. We were really upset because Kusha was almost a pet. Mother did all she could do to help. Most likely stopped up at nights taking her turn, I do recall she was there when Kusha died. We were all in tears when Mother told us that Kusha opened her eyes and made a faint moo as if she was saying goodbye. George has had many farm animals since then in fact he still has some. But I have never heard that he had a cow die in all his years of farming since.