This picture of Dad’s Uncle Harry Talon is actually a postcard. When I asked Dad how a picture from 1916 ended up on a postcard he said that “Uncle Harry did a lot of things. “He build a radio that was around home for a while. He ran a picture show in North Battleford so maybe he made the picture into a postcard himself”.

Harry Talon was Grandma Tatro’s half brother. Dad thinks he was born in 1900 so in this picture he was 16. He had been living with the Grandparents, the Barkers, in Minnesota but when he was about 14 he came to Saskatchewan to live with his Mother Suzie and Dave Strachan on the farm. He attended East Hill School briefly. He was never interested in the farm and left to go to Winnipeg when he was about 20.

Dad, of course, was named for Harry Talon but the first time he saw his Uncle was when he came to visit his sister and her family when Dad was, he thinks, old enough to drive. It was wintertime. “I remember my mitt caught on the accelerator lever of the old model T when we were on the way to the barn. I turned the steering wheel and the car suddenly accelerated and made a charge for the barn. Uncle Harry said “You were driving 90 miles an hour – 30 miles ahead, 30 miles up and 30 miles down, going over the bumps”. But they did get stopped before they hit the barn.

Grandma Tatro told Dad when he was a teenager that she had received a letter from Uncle Harry back when he was 4 or 5 Uncle Harry wrote asking if he, Dad, could come live and be raised by him and Aunt Isa in Winnipeg. Uncle Harry and Aunt Isa had no children of their own and the young Harry would have a better life in Winnipeg. Uncle Harry was doing quit well working for the Winnipeg street car system. But Grandma Tatro would never give up one of her children.

Another time Uncle Harry wrote to his sister’s family about what he had gotten at the Eaton’s – his wife, Aunt Isa. Dad did visit his Uncle Harry once in the 1960s while working at Lower Fort Garry. Uncle Harry said “Harry you have ruined Fort Garry, I used to be able to go there when it was in ruins and dream of all the things that could have happened there but probably never did. Now, nothing is left to the imagination because you have done such a good job of interpretation.”

At some point Uncle Harry had been given a promotion to supervisor on the street cars but quit and went back to driving so he could be with the public. It was what he enjoyed. Dad remembers Uncle Harry telling this joke.One time a women asked him “Mister if I step on that rail will I get a shock?” He answered “No Mam”. Then she asked “If I step on that rail and that other one there would I get a shock?” and he said “No, Mam, but in you step on that rail and that wire up there we will both get a shock.”

When river diversion in Winnepeg was done in the late 1960s to help prevent flooding Uncle Harry’s property was taken over by the government. He and Aunt Isa moved to Steinback were he became involved in the Old Timers Association.

The tractor in the picture was a Titon 8/16. It had 8 horse power when ploughing and 16 on the belt. (I don’t know what that means but it is what Dad said.) When Dad remembers it he was a little boy. The Titon sat in the calf pasture in the farmyard at The Grandparents house with other cast-off machinery. The big tank at the front in the picture was for water to cool the motor. It sat empty and rusted when he knew it. The wheels of the tractor were no longer attached, maybe being used for feeders. In the nearby bush woodpeckers (probably flickers) nested in an old dead tree. If seemed that every morning those woodpeckers would start drumming on that old water tank. “I am sure we could hear that from our house a half mile away on a clear morning in the spring” Dad says. The woodpeckers came back every year to nest in that old tree until finally all the branches rotted and fell off and still years later when the tree finally fell over.

I feel like I can remember those big metal wheels lying in the tall grass around Grandma’s house at the farm. Dad says there is a good chance that if one went and looked in the raven where old metal and machinery was dumped you might still find it. Just the bones of a tractor now. I wonder if there are woodpeckers around?