Enoch Salt

(some recollections compiled by his grandson)

Grandpa’s Stories

by: Lucas Pillman

edited by:  Janet Salt, Josie Pillman, Justo Pillman and Jessica  Pillman

Earliest Memory      

Grandpa’s earliest memory was when he was riding in a wagon and his sister was pulling it.  While he was riding,  his pants got stuck on a nail that was sticking through.  His sister, May,  pulled him out .  He was terrified.

                Another of his first memories was when his dad came in pushing a barrel of butter milk.  It was cold outside.  The butter milk sloshed out.  Grandpa and May sat on the bed to get out of the way.  The buttermilk then froze on the floor and his dad slipped on the frozen buttermilk and fell.

 Records  1921

                When Grandpa was about eleven years old, the phonograph records came out.  The first records by Thomas Edison were tubular.  Grandpa’s Dad got some at an auction,  but soon sold them to someone else because the record player didn’t work.  Then the flat ones came out they were a around half an inch thick by 10 inches across.  Every time you played them you had to get a new needle but you could by the needles 200 for 15 cents.

 School

                When Grandpa went to school, he had to walk two and a half miles.  Normally he walked with May.  May was good at literature and poor in math.  Grandpa did better in math.  In spelling, he was dictated one hundred words.  He only got 25 right.  They  also had spelling bees.  All grades were in the same school.  The school had two rooms, one up and one down.  They had two teachers, one for the up stairs and the other for the bottom level.  Each teacher had about forty students.  The teachers were all ladies.  One of them was a local girl.  Most of the principals were men.  Grandpa went through grade six.     

At school they often had snowball fights.  They would make snow forts and then would throw snowballs back and forth.  They often had bruised up faces after the fight was done.  

Airplane - childhood

                The first time Grandpa saw an airplane was at the fair.  He had to walk three miles to get there.  Once he got there, he stayed the whole day.  In order to see the airplanes, he would climb up on a roof.  There he could watch the airplanes do loops and tricks.

“Boots” and mittens - childhood

                When Grandpa was a boy he kept his feet warm by putting on one pair of moccasins, then a pair of socks and then another pair of moccasins.   One time he tried to make some lamb skin mittens.  They worked well but the only problem was that they wore out in just a few months.  He should have used the skin of the pig that his Dad had butchered and stuck on an outside wall of a shed.  That skin lasted three years.

 Lloydminster Fire - August 1929 - 19 yrs. old

                During the Lloydminster fire, Moxley’s Drug store was burning down.  Lids were pop-pop-popping off the various medicines and herbs.  There were all kinds of medicines stored in the basement.  Grandpa, going by, got a whiff of strange-smelling smoke and got a bronchial cold that lasted for five days.

 Close Calls - 1930 -20 yrs.

                One time when Grandpa was riding on a horse,  herding some cows during a thunderstorm, all of a sudden the horse bucked him off.  He amazingly rolled through a barbed wire fence.  The horse went on for a little bit and stopped to eat some grass.  Grandpa was not hurt except for a sprained leg and wrist, but he couldn’t lay there.  He had to get back on his horse and herd the cows that had run a quarter of a mile.  Another time he again sprained his wrist and leg.  This time he also was riding a horse and fell off.  This time, however, his leg got stuck in the stirrup and his hand was bruised and sprained because he was holding onto the reins.  Because of this, he was in bed for a week.

                Another time he was helping a Scotsman  grease a wheel on a planter pulled by a horse.  He was holding up about a hundred pounds when he felt a muscle go in his back.  The wife of the Scotsman was a nurse and she said that it would take a long time to heal. And it did.  It still hurts him (1997).

 Gold Chain - 1930 - 20 yrs. Old

                When Grandpa was about 20 years old he got a gold and silver watch chain.  He got it from a man who was a bachelor and didn’t have many friends.  Why he gave it to Grandpa was because Grandpa helped him home when the bachelor was drunk.  According to the man it is  one hundred and sixty-six years old (1997) 

Favorite Horse 1934 - 24 yrs. Old

                Grandpa’s favorite horse was a horse named Pal. Pal was born in 1934.  Why he was Grandpa’s favorite horse was because he was so gentle.  Pal was also very easy to train.  When Grandpa first put the saddle on Pal, Pal didn’t try to get it off.  Another thing about Pal was that he would stop at the gate when he had to go through until told he could go.  Pal wasn’t like the horse on a ranch that ran away the first time they put a saddle on him and then he wouldn’t come back for a week.

 Fishing

                Grandpa didn’t often go fishing but he did go once with Jack Smythe, a man he often bowled with.   Well any way they went fishing in a row boat and caught a few muskies and the best thing was eating them, YUM!

The Train -1942 - 32 yrs. old

                                The first train that came to Lloydminster was the CNR (Canadian Northern Railway). In 1942 it was cheaper by one dollar to buy a round trip ticket to Saskatoon than to buy two one trip tickets.

 Running in the Army - 1942 - 32yrs. old

                In the army, Grandpa had to run along with 300 other men.  He was 32 years old.  The race was four and one half miles long and the last mile and a half was up a hill.  Of the 300 men, only  twelve made it to the finish and he was the only one that didn’t have blisters.  (The boots that he wore had steel heals.)  Grandpa knew how to lace his boots from his experience with meat cutting.

Coldest Day - 1943

                It was in 1943 that was the coldest day in Grandpa’s memory.  The day he got back from the army,  it was zero °F with a strong wind. A few days later he went to Mr. Fred Watts to butcher a steer and it was thawing and raining.  The weather changed again and in a few days it was sixty below zero!

First Car- 1947- 37yrs. old

                Grandpa’s first car was a half ton Chevy.  It was started with a crank and would start at 45°F below zero.  He bought it for about $185.  The car lasted for fourteen years.  Then the transmission went.

 Biggest Snow Fall - 1948 - 38 yrs. old

                The biggest snow fall that Grandpa could remember was in 1948. That year,  over many snow falls they got about four feet of snow.  It was a cold winter, but thankfully the wind was not overly strong.  He also remembers the spring after that snowfall there were some huge puddles.

 Mosquitoes - 1950 - 40 yrs. Old

                One time when Grandpa was herding some cattle, the mosquitoes were really bad.  They went up a hill in order to get away from the mosquitoes.  When they got there, there was no grass for the horses, so they had to go down and get some grain. 

A Big Storm - 1955 - 45 yrs. Old

                Five years after he was married and Harry was three, on the twelfth of December it snowed ten inches.  Then the wind started to blow, and did it blow! It blew so hard that it made drifts eleven feet tall.  It covered his car and some big oil drums in the yard, but Harry had great fun sliding down the drifts.

Butchering

                Grandpa learned how to butcher from his father. His father was the best butcher in town.  His father once strung up a cow in twenty minuets.  The fastest Grandpa ever did it was in thirty minutes.

 Good Knives

                A good cutting knife in 1940 was called a “green river knife”, made in Calgary.  It cost 80 cents and was better than the $6.50  knife.  When the stainless steel knives first came out, they were twice as dull as the older iron ones.  However, the iron knives needed to be sharpened more often and they rusted.  With the sharper ones, Grandpa had to be careful when he got a new one that he didn’t cut his finger.

 Transporting Meat

                Johnny (his cousin and boss) got a bike for him to deliver meat.  He was supposed to supply a rain coat but he didn’t.  The bike was a CCM-single speed.  It probably cost about $30.  There was a speedometer on the bike.  With this bike, Grandpa delivered lots of meat.  Johnny bought the beef from the farmers.  The meat market phone number was 37.

                In the winter, Grandpa occasionally delivered meat by a dog sled. The dogs that pulled it were Mike, Rex, Pete, and Bruce.  Mike was the lead dog.  Rex was the second and so on. Grandpa trained them two at a time.  Mike was hard to train, but soon the work paid off.  He became very willing and smart.  Mike would know where to go.  (They had to go to the hospital every day to deliver meat.)  The dogs were fast and strong.  They could pull eight hundred pounds, and with only Grandpa they could go up to 35 miles an hour.

 Four Cylinder Acadian

                 One day Granny Wood won an Acadian at the Fair raffle.  Another day Uncle Kit was driving it and it stopped on a railroad track.  Grandpa had to replace the points.  (Four cylinders don’t often break down)

 Great Grandpa Harry Salt-Hunting

                Grandpa’s Dad (our great grandpa) was a super pigeon hunter.  He once was in a contest in shooting clay pigeons called skeets.  He won a prize.  The prize was a little Labrador puppy that grew into a big Labrador.  Normally this dog would have cost about $50.  He was named “Skeet” because of the clay pigeons that were shot to win him.  Even though he was supposed to be a good hunting dog, he ended up being too lazy to be of much good.

Match Factory- Great, Great Grandpa Seanor

                Great, Great Grandpa (Samuel Seanor) owned a match factory in England.  Match factories had a tendency to burn up.  The fire would often start when they were packaging the matches, but Great, Great, Grandpa did something that helped.  He put sawdust on the floor and wore thick boots so that he could stamp out the fires if they started.  Because he did this his match factory didn’t burn up.