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Once a year I like to mark Christmas by setting aside construction and all its concerns for a week, and introducing readers to some of the other work I do.
Besides my construction writing, I write pieces about the history of the Canadian Prairies, and about technology and what it can mean for the people who use it. I also write about the tradition of oral folklore and storytelling that we’ve largely abandoned. To do that, I reconstruct what I call the Tales of Uncle Charlie.
Uncle Charlie, and his wife Aunt Norah, are largely fictional characters, although they are based upon an old couple I knew as a kid growing up in Alberta. They weren’t related to me in any way, although they were as close as favourite relatives.
They often told tall tales simply to while away a winter’s evening. But sometimes, they used tall tales to show how people persevered in the face of adversity.
You had to watch Charlie as he spoke.
If little crinkles appeared at the corners of his eyes, you knew he was "jest yarnin’."
Sometimes you’d see Norah’s body shake in silent mirth as she laughed to herself. That’s how you knew they were simply having fun.
Because Prairie weather was so central to people’s lives, it was often the subject of their yarns.
It got so hot in August one year that the hens laid hard-cooked eggs. It was so cold one January that words would freeze in mid-air.
Listeners had to gather them up and bring them indoors to thaw so they could hear what you’d just said.
Charlie and Norah had a lot of memories. They remembered the time a chinook wind moved their cabin half a mile overnight.
They recalled the days of the dust bowl, when wind blew so much topsoil away that the gopher holes were sticking a foot out of the ground. And they remembered cold.
Why, one winter, it got so cold the sunshine froze. I’ll let Uncle Charlie pick up the story:
"We’d had a big thaw that lasted for three or four days," he said.
"Then, all of a sudden-like, it turned cold — real cold.
"That cold come on so fast that the roofs was still drippin’ from the thaw, so purty soon they was plenty of icicles hangin’ from the eaves. The temperature dropped for three days an’ three nights. Ain’t seen nothin’ like it ever since.
"On that third night we noticed the icicles wuz givin’ off a kind of a warm yeller glow, and that give me a idear. I broke off a few pieces of icicle and popped them into a quart jar and sealed it up good an’ tight an’ took it inside.
"The day’s sunshine had soaked into the icicles, don’cha see, and simply froze there. So that jar lit up the kitchen right good, and it shone all night.
"By mornin’, the ice’d melted, of course, but the water left behind still had plenty of sunshine in it, so I took a few more jars out and filled ’em full of icicles.
"Well, those jars kept the house lit up for the rest of the winter, an’ we mighta bin usin’ them yet, but Norah got to worryin’ about whether it was right to keep sunshine bottled up like that.
"So one mornin’ in May, when it was all dull and cloudy-like, we took them jars up to the top of that big hill over yonder, and we opened them up, one by one. An’ every time we let a jar of sunshine out, the clouds thinned and parted a little bit.
"Finally, as we opened the last jar, the last of the cloud disappeared, and there we was, standin’ on toppa that hill, enjoyin’ a sunny spring day!"
At least, that’s the way Uncle Charlie told it.
Korky Koroluk is a regular freelance contributor to the Journal of Commerce. Send comments or questions to editor@journalofcommerce.com.
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