Vanisle_BC
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"Uphill barefoot in the snow, in my father's pajamas."

It's a contest - grumbling about conditions you grew up with: Who had it worst?

I'll start the ball rolling with this photo of a 2-room house I lived in as a child, early in the war.

Edzell but'nben.jpg

The house must have looked slightly better in the 1940s. This picture was taken almost 70 years later. There's no chimney! There must have been some heat source - ? - but I don't remember it. Certainly there was no electricity anywhere in the village. Our radio ran on a glass-jar battery and it was my job every so often to lug it for charging to the little post office, where I guess they had a generator. Later we were able to move to the bigger 4-room house on the property which had a coal-fired stove for heat & cooking and, I think, coal-gas lighting in the two lower rooms. No running water. Unheated bedrooms upstairs. Fortunately, away from the city, we were no longer being bombed.

(I'm trying to make this sound bad but I know we had it very easy compared to what many people have gone through.)

ETA: My mother had what I think of as some social pretensions. Can you imagine how she must have felt living here? But she rolled up her sleeves and got on with it. That's what we all do.

PaulF
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OK, this is the two room shack for the 12 in our family. It did have a loft, though.

Image

Sorry, this is a spoof. It is actually the house where Butch Cassidy grew up. I did grow up in a family of 12 and things were cramped but we had all the utilities. We were lucky we all got along.
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Vanisle_BC
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Butch Cassidy had a chimney! Lucky devil. (Where there's smoke ....) A family of 12 - I can't imagine that, specially as there was only me. It was a long, long time before I found out what an unclothed female looks like. Something like that can make you painfully curious :).

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digitS'
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I have first memories ... I'll come back to those ;).

My research after I returned to college involved war refugees, VanIsle. You must have nearly had some experiences there. One person's first memories was being thrown in some bushes by her stepfather. The bushes were at a distance from their village, which was being bombed. When they returned to their home it had been completely flattened. She doesn't remember her father because he died before she was old enough to remember. Her stepfather died while she was young, also. Neither of these were combat deaths - life was just tough, even if they were refugees in their own country.

After this woman's mother died, she and 2 other children moved to their aunt and uncle's home. They had one child of their own. This was "after" the war. Then, her uncle died. As I say, times were tough. She escaped from this communist country and "officially" (UN designated) became a refugee. And those bombers who flew into her earliest childhood memories - those were American.

Me. My earliest home didn't have either a refrigerator or a television. Okay, there was no television station within about a hundred miles and lots of people had iceboxes with an iceman who delivered. We had to go to the ice company for ours.

Our home was "a tarpaper shack" - my parents called it a garage house. It had been hastily modified so that we could live there while my grandmother's home was built. Dad had a full-time job and Grandma was a 60-something widow. My grandparents had lived in Canada, just across the channel from VanIsle, near the Frazer River. Their children were all in the US.

It was a country home but my grandmother's farming days had ended. A neighbor used her field and there was a deer that lived on the near pasture. Of course, we called her Bambi. Not too far from town and on a paved road. Grandma was an avid gardener and my first memories involve her garden :).

Steve

Vanisle_BC
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@digitS' - Steve; I started a reply to your post but it turned into a long, self-indulgent reminiscence of my own war experience so I dumped it. In truth my wartime was mostly easy & pleasant. It let me spend my early childhood with my parents in a delightful rural place, far better for a young boy than our 'real' home in the city suburbs. There were initial episodes of bombing etc but those are only half remembered and they didn't last long. The hardships of rationing and austerity must have been major for my parents but to a child who's known nothing different, they didn't exist.

OK, it's turning into another self-indulgent monologue. I'll quit.

PS you lose 10 points for spelling Simon Fraser's name with a 'z'. I wonder, in his day, were Americans already deliberately distorting the language ? :-() Poke, poke.

PSPS This is the entrance to the village where I lived briefly in the little 2-room house. Pretty nice place! It will be instantly recogniszed by hundreds of US servicemen who manned a listening post there after the war, and thought they had landed in heaven.

Edzellarch_small.jpg

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digitS'
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Fraser - Smazer.

;) Could we pronounce that with an "s" sound? There are differences between British English and American English spelling by citizens (or is it citisens?) of both nations/commonwealths. I have thought to respond to your post on language use but realis(z)e that I have too many problems with recogniz(s)ing sounds because of long-term hearing loss.

One thing that I struggle just a bit with is hearing the t or its absence at the end of a word like worse, or is it worst? Not hearing it spoken takes away from competency in both speaking and written use. But Yes, it would be Good to check on the spelling of the Fras(I)er family Name ;).

"Well, I have to git to goin." And then Steve went, " gonna be goin for a bit, just gotta git."

Vanisle_BC
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@digitS', I'd forgotten you have a hearing deficit. My wife & I have begun to have similar issues. Apart from each of us believing the other is mumbling (in deliberate provocation?) I find that although vowel sounds are clear - we both have the same accent :) - the consonants tend to disappear. The resultant misunderstandings and inappropriate responses can be quite hilarious. But again, one can suspect deliberate, flippant misinterpretation. Hmm, have I been guilty of that myself? surely not!

We could have lots of fun with British/Canadian/American spelling & language but maybe it's wrong to take up forum space with it. I certainly intend it all in fun and don't want anyone taking offen(s)ce.

Safer subject - I'm going to pot up my tiny rhubarb seedlings today.

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digitS'
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VanIsle, I very much appreciate your Non-Gardening Related Hoo-ha and Foo. You are circumspect - I like using that word now and then - but you have more than generously opened the door for comments.

I was "gone" through the day but I had been trying to understand why I have felt that word is just overworked to the level of absurdity.

Watch the captioning on a cooking show. One of the reasons that I'm a gardener is that I recognize where food comes from and, I want to use food effectively. So, I watch cooking shows (from The French Chef on ;)). Anyway, "I'm going to," "we're going to," appears every 10 seconds!

After awhile, I have really reached the point where I would just love to ask, "you have been going, going, going - where have you gone? I still see you." Using "went" instead of "said" probably amounts to incorrect use of English.

By the Way, deliberately (perhaps grossly) misunderstanding what you have been told and expressing that misunderstanding is a great way to elicit a more complete response to a question. This hard of hearing guy learned that from professional linguists and their research techniques ;).

Keep up the good work VanIsle. Your insights and the insights that you elicit from others are greatly appreciated.

Steve :)



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