Memory Lane 8. Hinton

When we were kids, holidays usually involved getting in the car (or later, in the maxi-van that dad had converted into a camper. Woo-wee) and driving off somewhere. These drives were usually long and involved, and, if I don't miss my guess, they were well-planned, even though Skip and I never knew what the itinerary was. We just got in, drew the line down the middle of the back seat, and tried not to throw up.

I think it was the summer after 2nd grade, we drove through BC, and then up across Alberta, heading for the little hamlet of Pump Handle, near the Saskatchewan border. Mom and dad had friends (probably from their Northern BC Fishing Village early-married days) scattered across the country, and we were always welcome in their homes (as they were in ours), and this one family had a family farm that they'd gone back to. I remember the big kitchen garden, and the red barn (doesn't EVERYONE have a red barn?), and out through the fields of rape seed, there was this old giant house. Two stories. Partially crumbling, but so far from anywhere that there were no vandals to speed the process. They called it "The Spook House", and you better believe that was a fun place to visit. When I was younger, I had this stack of postcards from the early 1900s that I'd found in a room there. And dad found an old clock that had a bird's nest in the workings, and their friends had said "Take it! What are we going to do with it?" Dad took it home, and cleaned it up, and it's a beautiful mantle clock now. Doesn't exactly keep great time, but it's a piece of history.

I'm trying to find photos from The Spook House (I know they're out there), but today, you'll just have to deal with the Motel Photo. Here we are in Hinton, Alberta, at our cosy little motel room. We travelled in a '58 Chevy, the color of old pepto bismol. I don't think it had seat belts.

And here you also get another taste of my mother's Stretch-n-Sew prowess.

Golly, did I have ANYTHING that she didn't sew?