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The year was 1929, Les Bryan was 13 years old when he left Vancouver, British Columbia in April to help his oldest brother Roy on his farm outside of Sanctuary, Saskatchewan. Roy was 16 years older that Les and had a petite wife, Daisy. Unlike most farm families Roy and Daisy did not have children so Les would fill out the family a little until November. Roy’s farm was in a number of pieces but added up to about a section on which he grew mostly wheat. Roy farmed his land by machinery at a time when even his older half-brother Bill farmed his land outside of Summerberry with horses. Farm work has never been easy, long days of hard work that stretched from early spring to late fall with always an eye to the sky in hopes that the sun would shine when needed and rain would fall when needed but fearful of any turn until the grain was safely in the elevators and the hard earned cheque in hand. Until then, you did what you needed to do to face each day’s challenges in working the land, caring for and repairing the machinery and supplying the daily needs of body and mind. Les worked alongside his brother for six days each week but on Sundays he had some free time. What do you do with free time as a young man when the prairies stretched on for as far as you could see and the closest neighbour was seven miles away and there wasn’t any change in your pockets? Many farm children over the years had made pocket money by hunting gophers for the bounty of one cent per tail. This year the gophers were particularly prolific and to encourage their control the government upped the bounty to 3 cents a tail. All that Les had to do was devise a way to get the tails. |
Les and Daisy [note length of pants]. |
A broken hammer handle had been replaced with a length of water pipe. The new handle made the hammer too heavy but Les found the extra weight came in handy as a throwing device with a good heavy landing thud and after lots of practice charging after gophers and throwing the heavy handled hammer he could bag a tail about one out of every ten throws made. Soon he had saved enough money to buy traps and set about placing and baiting twenty-five traps. The gophers were indeed prolific and a Sunday of trap duty could yield a hundred tails and at three cents a tail he was able to bring in as much money as some men did in a week of work.
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During one of these Sunday trap line inspection trips Les surrendered to the warmth of the prairie sun and precious free time for day dreaming. In the middle of a field where no house could be seen he stretched out in the tall grass and soon fell asleep. It was a rattle, rattle, rattle that woke him. A rattlesnake. He lay there frozen. He had never seen a rattler before, nor heard one, but the rattle, rattle, rattle was unmistakable. He was rigid with fear but his brain searched for a way out of this dilemma. He decide that he would have to make a move, but when he did it would have to be the right move. Rattle, rattle, rattle. He would have to move quickly but more importantly he would have to move in the right direction. Les was deaf in his right ear so as he lay there on his back he tried to determine from which direction the rattle was coming from. Rattle, rattle, rattle. The decision was made and with a sudden bolt he sprang to his feet. The rattle stopped. He eyes darted over the silent grass looking for the rattler. Again he was frozen still. The silence was deafening. His eyes darted and strained to see. Rattle, rattle. His eyes darted to where his ear told him the sound was coming from, but no snake. Rattle, rattle. This time his eyes did see and it took a moment for Les to comprehend the truth. Not a rattler. A locust. The adrenalin that had had his body poised for flight subsided and his racing heartbeat slowed. He looked around grateful that there was no one in sight to witness his mistake which would be great fodder for teasing. Then he laughed, "all that sweat over a lousy grasshopper!" and went back to his trap lines.
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