Not many of you readers within the realm of the Wellington Advertiser’s drop-off area will have had, as I, the opportunity of meeting Bart Russell. Bart, by admittance, is one or two years to my senior, and now, as I, for the last couple of years or so, has been sleeping single in a double bed.
But Bart is an interesting man to talk to, and the one thing we had in common was he cuts his grass with the same make and model of lawn mower as I park my butt on while cutting the grass at the Elora Centre for the Arts.
Meeting him came about while I was visiting my son and his family at their farm in the nearby rural route of Markdale. The phone had rung, and my son, looking at the clock on his workshop wall, stated, “Come with me; it’s a half hour before supper. I need to pick up some gas, and we’ll have time to drop around and see if we can fix Bart’s problem.”
The gas was picked up and we turned off the freshly tarred and gravelled side road into a thick tree-sided lane that seemed to end nowhere abruptly. But tucked to one side in the cathedral of trees nestled a cute little gable-roofed raised bungalow.
I was soon to learn, due to the slope of the land, that its full basement was walkout, ’neath a full-length raised deck overlooking a clear, spring-water-fed, man-made pond that boasted of being dug about 15 or 20 years previous. The water, though crystal clear, reflected the tree line and white clouds above on its surface, yet it had that deep green appearance indicative of depth a few feet out from the shoreline.
The lawn mower’s illness, soon discovered, was a missing small bent rod known in the trade as a belt tightener. My son promised a temporary fix if he had a pair of wire cutters and a bent coat hanger, which would do while he ordered the replacement part. During this conversation Bart reached for his can of pelleted fish food. The moment a small handful hit the surface of the water, trout instantly appeared.
They were big. They were beautiful. They were playfully darting wild and free, yet confident in the hand that feeds them. They were of both speckled and rainbow species, with few of them short of 18 inches.
When I asked, “Do you eat them?” He calmly murmured words to the effect that he didn’t have a fry pan big enough, but it is general knowledge, in that part of the country, that you don’t eat anything that you name. Though he didn’t admit it outright, they were obviously his pets.
Then he took us into his full-length walkout basement. Wow. Wow. I guess I forgot to tell you that Bart retired a few years back from the Freight Traffic Dept. of the Canadian Pacific Railway. And he wanted to show me what he referred to as his little collection of rail stuff. I knew right then and there we were about to be late for supper. Never before have I seen such a near vintage collection of old railway signal lanterns. All were of coal oil-fuelled pre-hydro age. And of many shapes and sizes. My first comment when I saw them was, “Bart, you must make sure these get to a museum. This collection is much too great to be kept hidden here in your basement. The general public needs to see such a good, and well preserved, collection.”
As Bart went affectionately from lantern to lantern, he carefully explained its use in the signal language of the railway man. For me, it brought back many memories, for I was born urban and raised rural route during the tangle of the Great Depression when hydro lines were still not available to side road properties on township roads, and even the county road residents boasted only a single bulb light dangling from a braided cord from the centre of living room ceilings.
At night for entertainment we would often sit along the high banks next to the tracks and count the lumbering railway cars that often numbered beyond the hundred in length, being pulled by a single steam-belching engine. And we would wave to the lantern-swinging signalmen as they passed. It was a way of life long gone and now forgotten. But fondly remembered by Bart Russell and me.
Take care, ‘cause we care.
Barrie@barriehopkins.ca
519-843-4544