Hi everyone. Susan here. For anyone who doesn’t know I am Harry’s oldest daughter. I am the one building and doing the posts to this blog. Sometimes I write up the storis as Dad tells them, sometimes he writes them up and I do a little editing and sometimes I borrow from things he has written and printed up in various places. I am sure you have noticed a difference. For the next several posts I am going to tell the stories I have heard or read about Dad’s Dad, my Granddad, Henry Lynn Tatro. I never new my Granddad Tatro, he died when I was only one. I have seen a picture of him holding an about one year old me in front of the house at Fort Battleford. I remember that my Mom always referred to him as “Pop” and one day asked Dad why. Here is what he told me.
“We, the family, always called him Dad but just as often otheres called him Pop. I think it started one day while we and a bunch of neighbor kids were playing ball out in the field behind the barn. Dad was quite good at pitching. He had several different curve balls and so on. Wally Nelson was one of the group that were playing that day. The family all called him Dad but Wally didn’t know what to call him so when he caught the ball he called out “ Hey Pop” to alert him that the ball was coming. Wally was the first but all the neighbor kids liked it and started calling him Pop too. Dorothy and her family too called him “Pop” from the time our two families met when Bee and Art got together in about 1942., so years before we ever started seeing each other.“
“The Steel family were some who always called him “Pop” and were around our home often. Charlie was oldest, then Alice, Bill and Joe. Bill and Bud were always good friends and even years later exchanged the same thrifty Christmas card, showing a Scotchman in full dress, back and forth every year. Joe was a little younger than me but a good friend. It was Alice though that Dad liked. At one time she came regularly to our house to be tutored by Bee. Alice was bubbly and outgoing, a little flirty. One time she tried to get Dad to give her a cigarette, going so far as to attempt to kick the stove pipe that hung about 20 inched down from the ceiling, so about 6 feet from the floor. Alice was tall and slender but still could not make the kick. Dad did not give her the cigarette but a long lecture about not getting trapped, as he had by smoking, how bad it was for you and how costly. I was about 10 at the time; he may not have convinced Alice but he sure did me and I never smoked in my life.
Years later when I finally accepted a promotion and moved my family to Calgary to start my new position as Chief of National Historic Parks in Western Canada, I found that Charlie and Joe Steel had beat me there. Charlie had opened Steel’s Jewelers and Joe had later joined him. The store on 16th Avenue NW is no longer there but was a landmark for us for years.”