By Mag Mawhinney
We were homesteaders in 1950.
Times were tough and we were barely scratching out a living in this rugged countryside between 100 Mile House and Forest Grove.
One stifling summer day, we heard a loud crash. It amazed us that an accident could happen on this lonely road because only a handful of vehicles travelled it each day.
We ran around the corner of the house in time to see a huge cloud of dust settling around a car, butted up to a fence post. Slowly, four people emerged and started to look at the front of the car.
Because mom and my oldest sister, Dode, were in a frazzled mess from the heat and busy with chores, they just went back to what they were doing. Us younger kids stood there, gawking, as the four, well-dressed strangers picked their way to our back door.
One of the men stood near the block of wood used as a back step, looked up at mom and explained, “A logging truck whipped up so much dust as it passed. I lost sight of the road and hit the fence.
“Nobody is hurt, just shaken up. The car is banged up a bit though. Could we please use your phone?”
Well, they paled even more when mom replied, “We don’t have a phone. The nearest one is at 100 Mile House, seven miles away.”
The two women glanced at each other, and then gave this “Dog Patch” place a disdainful look.
Both doors of the house, directly opposite each other, were wide open, allowing what little breeze there might be to waft through, cooling the sweltering heat inside. The wood stove was going because bread was baking.
With arms folded, mom stood on the stoop and had that “deer in the headlights” look. She was barefoot and wore an old dress with the sleeves torn off. Some threads were hanging down from the frayed edges.
Her hair, tied with a piece of ribbon, was pulled back, but straggling strands clung to the perspiration on her neck and face. Embarrassed by her appearance, she apologized and brought out four chairs.
“It’s cooler out here in the shade from the house,” she said.
Still gaping, the strangers sat down – city folk. The women, clad in dresses and high heels, looked like they were going to faint.
It’s no wonder, because Dode, resembling “Daisy Mae,” in rolled-up jeans and ragged blouse, was standing barefoot in the dirt, ironing clothes with the old, gas iron. Near her feet, were two humungous pigs, lying in a hole they had rooted out for themselves to escape from the heat.
The crock that we used as a refrigerator, just barely showed above the hole it was sitting in, right next to the pigs.
One of our dogs wandered over, wagged his dusty tail all over the men’s nice pants and rubbed his wet nose on every piece of bare skin he could find. Close by, a few chickens scratched in the dust.
We were grateful our people-hating turkey was down by the barn or our visitors would have played musical chairs, trying to escape his vicious beak.
Not knowing what else to do, mom told Dode to run to the creek – at least two city blocks away – and get the Watkins juice that was dangling there, keeping cool.
As the strangers sipped the semi-cool juice, everyone seemed ill at ease – these people because they were amid such boorish surroundings and mom because she knew what they were thinking.
We hadn’t always lived like this. They didn’t know we had just moved from the Coast seven months before and had experienced the amenities of city life, too.
After more small talk that trailed into nothingness, the strangers got up to leave. Making their way to the road, they kept looking over their shoulders as though expecting some barnyard critter to be chasing them.
We never did find out what happened to those poor people after that. But, I’ll bet we were the topic of conversation on the way back to the big city.
