Ernest Elder remembers the Good Family Part 2
My memory of the Good family is a bit limited as I do not remember Uncle Elbridge at all and very little of Aunt Ethel Deakin.
Aunt Gertrude Raney visited us in Saskatchewan a few times but I really got to know her when I stayed with her a few days while I was in Ontario. She was a lot like my mother Gretta and by that I mean she liked to talk. When the Good women got together I do not know how they knew what was being said as they all seemed to talk at once.
My mother Gretta was a remarkable woman having raised three kids during the dirty thirties. Somehow she could make a great meal out ingredients like dried salted haddock fish that was shipped in from the Maritimes. Most people did not know how to prepare it but of course mother was a Bluenose. She was always busy in her vegetable garden but especially her flower garden.
Uncle Ira Good was an easy going, soft spoken man who loved his farm. His wife Mabel was a wonderful cook who was really offended if you did not take seconds, consequently you learned to not take to much the first time. Uncle Ira was our family barber and was for several families in the district. I visited there whenever possible as they had two sons Ed and George.
Uncle Cliff Good was a slower, more deliberate man. He and his wife Mildred lived at Creelman so we did not see as much of them. I will never forget their weddingfor the following reasons. Firstly my uncle Milburn Elder had a 1929 Pontiac car that he took my Elder grandparents. My parents Howard and Gretta,my Aunt Jane Elder and myself—wasn’t crowded was it? Just south of Regina we hit a slippery spot and we ended upside down in the ditch. After getting the car upright we continued to the wedding—-some all bruised up, some with cuts and me with a bump in the middle of my forehead. The wedding went fine but when they left for their honeymoon Uncle Cliff took a suitcase out to the car and set it on the sidewalk while he went bak to the house to get the second one. It being Oct.31 there were lots of trick or treaters out so when he returned to the car the first suitcase was gone.
later…
I forgot to mention Grandpa James and Grandma Agnes Good. I spent one winter with them while attending high school in Fillmore. I remember grandpa spending a lot of time in his big rocking chair smoking his pipe and either listening to the radio or reading the paper. It always amused me that he would buy a half pound box of tobacco and write the date on it and even if he ran out he never bought another box until the month was up. They were very easy going people so I enjoyed staying with them as I came and went as I pleased.
Ernest Elder
August 29 & 30, 2008
See also Part 1 of this remembrance