Reflections from the Swamp
Dear Reader
I’m sure many of you can reminisce about a relative, friend, or mentor who was influential in your life. As I enter my autumn years, I’ve reflected on how these people have shaped my character, values, and way of life. We all grow best in a nurturing environment.
Even in my youth, I rarely pretended to be a know-it-all. Before YouTube helped solve mechanically complex issues, I would consult backyard mechanics, gardeners, and spiritual mentors before venturing into the unknown. I constantly desired to learn something new and expand my practical knowledge and abilities. I’m one of the few who find the statement “a jack of all trades and a master of none” to be a compliment.
In 1980, my young bride and I threw everything we could, including a couple of young boys and a dog, into an old van and headed to Vancouver Island for my first teaching job, in Duncan, BC. While driving through the prairies, we sensed a kinship with the immigrants and pioneers who dreamed of going west to find a better life and land than the one left behind. We were moving towards freedom from the expectations and influence of our families into a brave new world.
We decided to attend a church different from our Catholic and Christian Reformed backgrounds. We had always dreamed of buying a farm, so we rented a small farm on the banks of the Cowichan River, which included caring for cattle and sheep.
After some of the euphoria of our new lives began to wane, I started to miss my deep relationships with friends, family, and mentors. I missed my relationship with my father as I was used to sharing my ideas with him. We often respectfully disagreed; however, my father frequently presented options I hadn’t considered, including moving west for my first teaching job. He said, “Go out west, make all the mistakes beginning teachers make, and come back home when you are ready and know what you are doing.”
I met Chicken John at the barbecue before the first day of school. His real name was John Brouwer. He was on the board of the school and more interesting to me than the accountants, car dealers, parents, and ministers who were also on the board. He was unique for his age in the Dutch immigrant community because he was born in Alberta before the wave of immigration by the Dutch after WW2.
Chicken John and his wife Jenny started in BC as fishers in the salmon industry.
Chicken John was tall and lean and always wore farmer greens, keeping a clean set of greens for formal occasions such as board meetings. He was bald and wore wire-rimmed glasses. After 25 years as a fisherman, raising five boys about my age with Jenny, Chicken John built a chicken farm for meat birds. They invited us over on Sundays, and we became family.
John taught me how to pluck chickens, skin rabbits, and shoot rats. John had advice on caring for the sheep and cows on our farm and took me along to check on his bee hives housed in trailers to protect the bees from bears. He took me to a river where salmon were swimming upriver to the hatchery where they were born. With nets, we scooped up salmon and dumped them into the truck. Chicken John taught me how to make a fish smoker from an old metal fridge and to use apple wood chips to make the fire.
Rats had mysteriously got into his ratproof barns and hauled off with the tiny yellow chicks. A rare light snow covered the ground around the barns. One night, we sat in lawn chairs in the dark chicken barn with shotguns, listening for signs of the rats.
I was smoking Amphora red tobacco in my pipe while John had a can of roll-your-own. John could stick some roll-your-own on a cigarette paper, stick it in his mouth, roll his tongue and pop out an expertly rolled cigarette. I tried to learn this skill but ended up eating a lot of tobacco, which I had heard wasn’t good for you. We hoped the rats would enjoy the aroma more than our brides did.
Several rats made some squeaking noises not far from us, so we blasted off our shotguns, killing and maiming a few rats and several chicks.
When we flicked on the lights, a herd of rats ran towards the back of the barn and crawled up an electrical cable that exited the barn near the ceiling, with a hole big enough for the wire and a rat to crawl through. The wire went to a telephone pole outside of the barn. The rats crawled along the wire stretched between two poles, but we didn’t shoot in case we damaged the cable.
To prevent us from burning down the barn, Chicken John then set down a piece of plywood on the floor of the chicken barn, lit a blowtorch and proceeded to torch a maimed rat on the plywood. The scream from the rat still haunts my nightmares. The terrified rats near the barn ran off in all directions. The next day, we could see rat tracks leaving the base of the barn. I plugged the hole in the chicken barn with chickenwire, and the rats didn’t return.
Chicken John and Jenny became our surrogate parents. Most weeks, Jenny would give us a chicken with a broken wing or misshapen leg that couldn’t pass inspection. Although they were pretty different than our parents, we developed a relationship of mutual respect. John advised me to avoid certain board members and keep my socialistic thoughts to myself in the conservative community. I wish I had followed this advice more closely, but alas, God gave me the gift of the gab, and I felt obligated to use it.
I made more mistakes than most new teachers and returned to Carp after four years. I continued to make mistakes in my teaching career but learned a few lessons in BC. I know how to kill rats, raise chickens, cattle, sheep and pigs and stay silent unless asked to share an opinion.
Chicken John died about ten years ago. He is always with me when my bride and I butcher the chickens.
