Wayne in BC
New member
Dec23 1964, a date which, according to My Sis, Bro Kenny, and my Dad was when they really started to plan my murder!
I was 19 years old, full of myself, and would not have been smart enough to be scared anyhow....
My Mother was the most "complete" woman, or actually "person" i have ever known. She was a Saskatchewan farm girl, one of 8 or 9 kids. She was in the Army during WW11 where she met my Dad, with me being the reason she was out a bit early
Mother was always the first to try something new or embark on a sometimes goofy adventure. From prowling abandoned farm or mining houses in search of old time articles to making a midnight dash off the road into a 100 acre cornfield and thinking she was bad for taking 6 cobs
.
She would smile when things were tough and we needed meat as she dropped me and the .22 off way out on the prairie with instructions to get a "kings goat" and we would get it after dark. The nearest house to us at that time in east central Alberta (uncles ranch) was 5-1/2 miles away, but you could see it!
When the deed was done she would can the meat as we had no deepfreeze and a rented locker in a town 20 miles away was no place to try and hide deermeat.
She was the one who suggested we get a boat and learn to water ski in the early 60's. It was her idea to get our first snowmobile in 1965 when they were so uncommon and new that some farmers would report us to the cops as a UFO!
It was she who saw to it that i was able to spend time in the wilderness and learn the craft of survival, which in those days was just everyday life.
Such a host of things that i am grateful for, i hasten to add that my Dad was a career military man and a super loving and kind father, but he was absent mostly, between the Korean war and his job of traveling from base to base training soldiers, he was away a whole lot while i was growing up so mother was both parents much of the time.
So it was Christmas 1964 and i was obsessing about what to get for the mother that i so hugely loved. I had saved some money so i was feeling flush that Christmas, i was confounded though because even with extra money i just could not bring myself to give the usual, to me, "trite" gifts. Then it hit me! Gee you dummy i thought, Mom has often said while seeing them on TV and at the Zoo, how she would love to have a Monkey for a pet, now Mom did not hardly ever covet anything, more usually she would do without to give to us!........i grabbed the yellow pages, phoned and found out that they had just gotten one in, having only recently been allowed to sell them. Now that bit about just having gotten one in was a lie i figured out later but i headed for the petshop, excited as heck and truly proud of myself.
I knew less than zero about Monkeys and the TV had always pictured them in those days as cute lovable little characters so the petshop owner had the perfect mark! Little did i know that there are Lot's of kinds of Monkeys but there are very few good Monkeys, specifically, nearly none of them of the breed i bought, besides it was all he had. The owner assured me that this Squirrel Monkey was perfect! Young, only a year old and did not bite much.....bite?!! said i........well, he said, they are good when they get to know you and he promptly opened the cage while proffering some grapes. The little character squalled and leaped onto his shoulder, where, while he devoured the grapes i was encouraged to pet him. Gingerly i put out a hand, stroking the smooth fur while the two faced little b#stard ignored me. Heartened by this i parted with 300 bucks, a fortune at the time as many of you will remember, then another 20 for a cage and we whisked him into the car after covering the cage with a blanket, it was 25 below outside and the guy cautioned me that Monkeys were tropical creatures and could get pneumonia darn quick!
With heater on full blast i headed home, roundly pleased with myself but a bit sad that the very special gift i had for Mom would not be under the tree and would be a couple days early, i had the only Monkey in hundreds of miles as the guy had just gotten permission to sell them in Alberta and i was taking no chance that someone else would buy it, kinda hard to hide a live Monkey
continued......
I was 19 years old, full of myself, and would not have been smart enough to be scared anyhow....
My Mother was the most "complete" woman, or actually "person" i have ever known. She was a Saskatchewan farm girl, one of 8 or 9 kids. She was in the Army during WW11 where she met my Dad, with me being the reason she was out a bit early
Mother was always the first to try something new or embark on a sometimes goofy adventure. From prowling abandoned farm or mining houses in search of old time articles to making a midnight dash off the road into a 100 acre cornfield and thinking she was bad for taking 6 cobs
.She would smile when things were tough and we needed meat as she dropped me and the .22 off way out on the prairie with instructions to get a "kings goat" and we would get it after dark. The nearest house to us at that time in east central Alberta (uncles ranch) was 5-1/2 miles away, but you could see it!
When the deed was done she would can the meat as we had no deepfreeze and a rented locker in a town 20 miles away was no place to try and hide deermeat.
She was the one who suggested we get a boat and learn to water ski in the early 60's. It was her idea to get our first snowmobile in 1965 when they were so uncommon and new that some farmers would report us to the cops as a UFO!
It was she who saw to it that i was able to spend time in the wilderness and learn the craft of survival, which in those days was just everyday life.
Such a host of things that i am grateful for, i hasten to add that my Dad was a career military man and a super loving and kind father, but he was absent mostly, between the Korean war and his job of traveling from base to base training soldiers, he was away a whole lot while i was growing up so mother was both parents much of the time.
So it was Christmas 1964 and i was obsessing about what to get for the mother that i so hugely loved. I had saved some money so i was feeling flush that Christmas, i was confounded though because even with extra money i just could not bring myself to give the usual, to me, "trite" gifts. Then it hit me! Gee you dummy i thought, Mom has often said while seeing them on TV and at the Zoo, how she would love to have a Monkey for a pet, now Mom did not hardly ever covet anything, more usually she would do without to give to us!........i grabbed the yellow pages, phoned and found out that they had just gotten one in, having only recently been allowed to sell them. Now that bit about just having gotten one in was a lie i figured out later but i headed for the petshop, excited as heck and truly proud of myself.
I knew less than zero about Monkeys and the TV had always pictured them in those days as cute lovable little characters so the petshop owner had the perfect mark! Little did i know that there are Lot's of kinds of Monkeys but there are very few good Monkeys, specifically, nearly none of them of the breed i bought, besides it was all he had. The owner assured me that this Squirrel Monkey was perfect! Young, only a year old and did not bite much.....bite?!! said i........well, he said, they are good when they get to know you and he promptly opened the cage while proffering some grapes. The little character squalled and leaped onto his shoulder, where, while he devoured the grapes i was encouraged to pet him. Gingerly i put out a hand, stroking the smooth fur while the two faced little b#stard ignored me. Heartened by this i parted with 300 bucks, a fortune at the time as many of you will remember, then another 20 for a cage and we whisked him into the car after covering the cage with a blanket, it was 25 below outside and the guy cautioned me that Monkeys were tropical creatures and could get pneumonia darn quick!
With heater on full blast i headed home, roundly pleased with myself but a bit sad that the very special gift i had for Mom would not be under the tree and would be a couple days early, i had the only Monkey in hundreds of miles as the guy had just gotten permission to sell them in Alberta and i was taking no chance that someone else would buy it, kinda hard to hide a live Monkey
continued......
.....
.......Well she just melted, squealing in surprise and happiness! But before i could ask for the grapes she was at the cage cooeing........and that dang little traitorous creature put his widdle hands through the bars and blinking his eyes, chortled lovingly at her!
