The Labor Day weekend ended with a bang. A storm came up after supper Monday that left two tenths in the gauge in about fifteen minutes. There was some impressive thunder and lightning, and a gale-force wind from the north. We expected to see our boat’s tethers break, but they held. Some hail fell on Uskatik, but here there were only a few stones here. It rained again a bit later, and on Tuesday, it misted all morning, but total rainfall was only three tenths.

On Wednesday, there were thirteen geese and one swan on the beach. The geese were doing a lot of gabbling but don’t think the swan thought they were much of a threat. It took its time and finally sailed off to the west. On Saturday, there were fifteen geese, and no sign of the swan.

Did you know that geese can dive? I didn’t know it until this morning - six or eight geese were swimming in the swimming area (like good geese) and were flapping their wings and splashing like a bunch of kids. Then I saw several of them submerge for several seconds, and come up in a different place.

Some yahoo thought it would be fun to turn wheelies on the Park’s grass north of the Beach Café. He made quite a mess of some lovely lawn. Ignorance has no limits!

Bryan Grimson phoned on Monday to see if I could come down. It was quite a relief – Doreen cracked the whip all weekend and I was played out. We built planters, moved dirt, and transplanted a bunch of plants. A little quiet time on the combine is just what I needed!

We got all the canola done, and much of the barley. I came home Friday as they had all the help they needed, and shouldn’t have to go back before Monday.

Their tame geese have started flying again, so they couldn’t have been too badly injured when they hit the truck. One time they followed Joyce’s van about a mile. They seem to have abandoned the quad, and adopted Dan’s truck as their mother. They spend a lot of time sitting under it. That could be dangerous!

Peter Patrick asked me one time about railway Morse Code. I told him I would make a chart of the alphabet so he could put it up at the Kelvington Museum. I did, too, and just noticed it sitting on my desktop, now that the tourist season is over. Sorry about that, Peter! I will get it to you one way or another, and maybe next summer we can do a demo of the telegraph bit, if anyone is interested.

While with the railroad, I spent a bit of time in this general area – a month in Carrot River which was a three-man point. The agent was T. D. Steele, the Assistant Agent was Bert Wilson (who now lives in Tisdale), and I was the operator. From there, I went to Bjorkdale for two weeks, relieving Wilbur (Web) Wilson, Bert’s brother, then to Mistatim to relieve agent Tom Rice for two weeks. It seems to me it rained the whole time I was there; the highway was under construction and the only way in or out was by train or by horse. Following that, I spent two weeks in Peesane, but I don’t think there was a resident agent at the time.

Carrot River had a proper station, with quarters for the agent; the stations in the other three places looked like converted bunk cars. At Bjorkdale I had another similar building for quarters, and I think it sits in McHugh’s yard in Bjorkdale today. At Mistatim, I shared a bunkhouse with the section men, and at Peesane I had a cot in the freight shed portion of the station. Seems pretty primitive now, but at the time I was quite content.

Joan Eyolfson Cadham of Foam Lake has a problem with junk e-mail. Vern Randall introduced me to the sweetest little program - it’s called Mailwasher (your search engine will find it quickly) and takes very little time to download. Use it to open your e-mail and it will list everything before it gets into your Inbox. You then have the chance to process it if it’s something you want, delete it, or bounce it right back to the sender. My understanding is that the sender’s e-mail program thinks it is a non-valid address and deletes it from its database. I had recently changed my address so didn’t get a lot of spam, but in the first week it highlighted four or five suspected viruses (which it deleted without bouncing) and since then, a few dubious messages. Now I very rarely see anything I could call spam. It’s Freeware, but donations are gratefully accepted.