To keep to some kind of chronology, I ought to return to where we removed to the “Church House” owned by Grandfather Darko. It was from here that I first went to school at the age of five. I was marched into the Kindergarten room with Hiss Gouley as teacher. I remember it well, liked it and enjoyed the games with those of my age group. I had a fight with Freddie Fehlberg the first day, but he was too big for me, being two years older. But we were close pals and have remained so through the years. For the school concert at the end of the year my sister Annie made me a nice little drill suit with white coat and blue pants, for I had to perform by reciting “Little Orphan Annie”. The words still stick in my memory after seventy-five years. Our teachers were Mr. Hurst, Solomon, Southern, and William Bulgin Pitt, a descendant of the prime minister family of England of the same name. He drilled us on this to make sure that we would ever remember him and his pround lineage. I ought to mention that this Church House was the house which was made available to Ellen G. White when she and her son and associates visited Bismarck for a few days in 1895. The church had been built in 1889.
Our first saw mill was set up at Sorrell Creek, just over the bridge where there are 2 1/2 acres somewhat level but sloping down toward the creek. It was my father’s project and apparently prospered in the early years. Prior to this mill, most of the timber was cut with the pit saw, a hard hand-driven method. There were many of these saws lying in the loft of our blacksmith shop. It was at this mill site that my father built our first house. He cut our own timber at the mill and the house was modern for those days. It contained three bedrooms, a large dining room which included the kitchen, and a fine front room for living, and visitors of which there were many. We moved into this new house about 1908. This was a lift in living standards, for who doesn’t revel in a new house, especially when it can boast of a bull-nosed verandah roof, rare in those days in Bismarck.
Uncle Albert and Aunt Margaret arrived from America and father took him into partnership and let them have our new house. We moved to a house and farm some two and a half miles further on up the valley and about three and a half miles from the school. We turned off onto Valley Road, forking off the Cap Road, which was a foreboding way leading straight up into the mountains. Ours was more on the level and wound around the valley to a doubled gable house. This was built on the hillside, its verandah and steps some fifteen feet high in front. It was bought from George Dalk, and had an orchard, currants, gooseberries, and raspberries. This was quite a farm which we could not work effectually. We were still going to school and Father was more than occupied with the mill and bush hands providing logs. We now had to walk a good three miles to school, with no buses, no carts, no rides of any kind. It would take us an hour of brisk walking to make the distance, and it was usually not too brisk. Coming home we would play, dawdle, fight and fool along the way.
We used to take a short cut through the bush on an isolated track leading over Sorrell Creek. Here was a sizeable water hole, dammed up a little, holding back the mountain water. In the summer we boys would hurry from school through the little known bush track to this part of the creek. Of course the girls had to be given the slip; they went around the road. At the bank of the creek we would all strip off and plunge into the water. None could swim but that mattered nothing. It was reasonably shallow and we paddled and tried all we knew how to swim. The water from the mountains was mighty cold but we revelled in it. We turned blue and our teeth chattered and we grew goose pimples. It was the best fun of the day. There were no such things as bathing suits; they were unknown to us.
One day the girls, inquisitive about where we ran to off the road down the bush track, followed us. We were well in the water with our clothes on the bank when this group of girls broke through the bush. Were we embarrassed! Some jumped out of the water and hid behind bushes, others lay down flat in the clear cold water, teeth chattering, girls laughing and poking fun. That was a dark day which we kept to ourselves and rarely discussed.
Other diversions added interest to our long walk home. We would pick a large Stringybark tree on a road embankment or steep hillside. The bark had to be thick and strong. We would cut the bark about six inches wide and approximately head high, with our pocket knives. We all carried these. Then we would lift the bark and pull it out from the tree, stripping it all the way up to the first limb. This would be twenty or thirty feet or more. We would shape it at the bottom to make a handgrip; then from the top of the embankment, taking a run, we would swing out over the ravine and around to the other side of the tree. This was extremely risky, as at the farthest point out we would be about twenty feet from the ground, and if the bark should break we could have a serious accident. The number of swings before the bark fibers broke up top was unpredictable, but it was adventure and we loved it. Only once did it break on me. I was hurt, but not seriously.
The Smiths who kept the shop and post office (their descendants still do) had a recreation room detached from their house. Here they used to encourage the boys to put on boxing gloves and have a spar. After school we would run most of the mile to this fun room and put on the gloves and practice our boxing skill. That was stimulating sport until the other fellow put his weight behind the gloves and made your nose bleed. Then you would yell “O.K! Pull the gloves off!” and you would be into a ding-dong fight.
There were long post-and-rail fences and some paling fences lining the road, which were a tempting challenge to us boys. We practised walking along the top rail which would be an inch, or slightly more, wide. We developed good balance and did well at this. Then we took to the paling fences, with half-inch wide palings, six feet high. This we also tackled, daring each other, and we walked a creditable distance before we lost our balance and jumped or fell off. I still carry a mark on my forehead where I hit a stone in a fall. Another game was stone fights. Several would go up the road some hundred yards while a group would remain in present position. Then they would throw stones at each other, carefully aimed, the onus being on the aimee to dodge the stone, which he usually did, but this too was not without its hazards; I can vouch for this by a scar on the edge of my right eyebrow. Because of these diversions we often arrived home quite late, with little time left to do the farm chores around the house, for there was wood to cut, water to fetch and cows to milk.
