Staking A Claim

March 14, 2020

There are strange things done in the midnight sun by the men who moil for gold;
Robert W. Service

It was a mad rush. We had anticipated it all morning but now it was time. Oh, there was some pushing and shoving and more than a few arguments but within an hour, the boundaries had been marked and the claims were staked.

At this point the reader may be thinking that references were being made to a gold rush, perhaps in the Yukon or some other frontier…. But no, this was in the quest for a prize of much higher value...

Winter blizzards seemed to be much more common when I was a child. Perhaps it’s an artifact of my failing memory but it seemed that it was not unusual for school to be cancelled due to a driving snow storm. And on those days when the conditions were borderline, the buses would still run. Due to the fact that roads were not as well constructed back then, and perhaps the equipment used to clear the snow was not as effective as today, it seemed that school busses would get stuck with clock-like regularity. The stretch of road between Whitney’s and Sargeants was particularly troublesome. On more than one occasion, we passengers would be cheered as the bus slowed and eventually became stuck in the drifts. I remember one particularly eventful morning where the driver, attempting to break the bus free, tried rocking the bus forward and backward. This also had the unfortunate effect of rocking the contents of little stomachs back and forth. It wasn’t until some unfortunate rider at the back of the bus spewed the remains of her partially digested breakfast over the seats, and a few other riders, that the driver gave up in frustration.

Bus drivers, and the farmers who pulled them out of the snow, wouldn’t have found much joy in a prairie blizzard, but to us kids, they were delightful. Not only did they provide the potential for missing school but they provided hours of entertainment as we played in the snow that was left in their wake.

A particular storm comes to mind. I would have been in grade four or five. We arrived at school the next day after the storm, to find the playground to have been transformed into a magical landscape. The wind had swept all the snow into a long continuous drift in the lee of a fence on the north side of the playground.  The drift would have been several hundred feet long but best of all it was high and wide, perhaps measuring 20 feet wide by 6 feet high in places.

One can only imagine the pent up desire that we endured as we waited for recess to come that day. At the sound of the bell we burst out, eager to mine the pleasure in that drift. A sociologist would have had a field day observing the pecking order as the stakes were claimed. Of course the bigger, more ambitious kids would have got the best spots, where the snow was deepest and potential for fun the best. But within a few days, tunnels had been dug, forts built and battlements raised. And if someone dared trespass on another’s territory, real war would ensue. My friend, Kelly and I were able to declare possession of a good quality piece of the drift where we excavated a tunnel of magnificent design.

I don’t remember how that saga came to an end. I expect that the sun came out, the snow melted and we went on to other activities; most likely playing marbles.