Bud’s Broken Elbow 1938?

Recently Dad and I made a visit to Battleford and stopped to see Auntie Jean. As it usually does when they get together, stories of their growing up on the farm near Brada came up.  Their memories of when Uncle Bud broke his elbow stayed with me:

In the photo from left to right are Jordy, a hired man, Dave Strachan forking grain into the thresher, 3 year old Jean, 5 year old Genevieve and Lynn “Pop” Tatro standing beside the horse.

As a kid they said, Bud was always getting into trouble and rising the ire of their parents, particularly Mother. He liked to tease the other kids and find all kinds of mischief. One of their favourite pass times back then with radio the only electronic form of entertainment, was playing in the straw piles and hay bales whether out in the field or in the loft of the barn. They would pile the bales up or build forts; climb them, crawl under them and jump off them. On the straw piles made during threshing, as in the 1928 photo below, they would climb the slopped side here on the right and jump or tumble off the steep side to a soft landing below. In the winter Dad said they would drag a sled to the top of the pile and slide down the long slope created by the thresher blowing straw over the pile.  One day, they were doing some sort of tumbling on and off the bales in the barn when Bud took a bad landing and broke his elbow.

Getting to town to a doctor at that time, the mid 40s, was not accomplished easily. First off you had to take the train the ? mile to North Battleford from near the Brada elevator and the train didn’t go by until the next day. Before the train was due to arrive Mother, Dad and Bud walked past the elevator and the section house to the shed where would-be passengers could wait for the train. As was required, when they heard the train coming they took a flag tied on a long stick, stepped out of the shack and waved it to signal the train to stop so they could board.

I found this picture in the Brada history book “Rural Roots”

The hospital was run by nuns who dressed in the traditional black habit. Bud’s comment when returning home was “That old crow said “that’s what you get for playing games on a Sunday””.  Afterwards Bud’s arm with the broken elbow was always shorter than the other. A silver lining as that could have been part of the reason he was deemed unfit for military service during WWII.

Susan Greier