Aunts, Uncles and Cousins by John Caverhill
to ours. At five years old, and the youngest of all the family cousins, I was considered too young to take part in most activities. As usual, I trailed along behind Old Maude and her riders, arriving eventually at the pond. The pond which sat in one corner of a cow pasture was at its usual midsummer low level with the water surrounded by a wide ring of mud flats. To get a drink, the cattle had to cross the flats to reach the water, and their hooves kept the mud, a heavy, sticky grey clay churned to the consistency of wet cement. Just as pigs are pigs, so cows are and their excretions both liquid and solid combined to give the mud a little extra “bouquet”.
There is an old adage, “Blood is thicker than water”. Meaning family ties are stronger than the stresses of daily life. A revised version expresses the opposite sentiment, “Blood is thicker than water – and relatives are always punching each other in the nose to prove it!”. Thankfully the original version applied to our relatives because family get-togethers were a large and enjoyable part of our life. Uncle Harold and Aunt Georgina (Georgie) and cousins Connor, Bruce and Barbara from Toronto visited us each summer. Uncle Harold was a pleasant, quiet-spoken man who took great interest in the farm where he grew up. Aunt Georgie was bubbly and loquacious. A city girl all her life, her ideal environment would have contained only those elements that could be cleaned, polished or pruned. We always enjoyed each other’s company but while Uncle Harold and my cousins ranged over the whole farm, Aunt Georgie stayed close to the house. The barns obviously hadn’t been dusted for years and the pigs behaved like – pigs! A few days’ visit to the farm was sufficient for her for the whole year. One particular event involving my brother Ron and cousin Bruce solidified Aunt Georgie’s opinion about the farm. At that time, we had horses; two, Pat and Nell made up our working team and our third horse was semi-retired, Old Maude as she was always called, was gentle and patient and we used to ride her bareback. It was a hot summer morning. Ron and Bruce decided to ride Old Maude back through our bush and out to a pond just outside the bush on our cousin Campbell’s farm next
The boys rode Old Maude across the flats to the water so she could have a drink. She finished her drink, and they were turning to head back to dry land when a bullfrog exploded from the
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