" One farmer, who was tall and heavy set watched me for awhile. Unhappy with what he saw, he wanted to tutor me on how to do it better. I was instructed to watch him. He loaded the cart and proceeded done the ramp where he lost control, which is easily done. The front of the prongs on the bottom of the cart tilted too far forward and abruptly dug into the floor sending him literally “head over heals” over the cart and landing on his back on the shed floor. It was slap stick comedy and sweet justice at its best, however, there was no laughing or gloating. Without saying anything, he dusted himself off while I stacked the bags that were strewn on the floor, I then carried on. He watched one more run and then left."Elevators originally had hoists to dump wagons and later trucks. Trucks would drive onto the hoist with their front tires and the entire front of the truck was lifted.The grain then slid down the truck box and dumped into the pit through metal grates on the floor. Some of the older trucks had wooden boxes that were worn smooth from years of grain running down them.
I would climb into the box and shovel the grain from the corners out of the endgate. I always thought it would be fun to slide down the box after the grain was emptied. I only did this once. When I got my chance, I climbed to the top and slid down just as I imagined, however when I got to the bottom my rearend was full of splinters and slivers! I never let anyone know and removed the splinters myself over a period of days...........
A Personal Account of Event:
"I recall dinner table conversations about grain elevator companies making decisions to paint their elevators different colours, we could not believe that Pioneer was going to paint the elevator orange. And then we learned the roof would be yellow he thought it must have been a joke. He later was most proud of those colours and often talked about Pioneer orange with affection. Incidentally, I recall the intense rivalry between private ( Pioneer was a private corporation) and co-op run elevators and him saying something like " the wheat pool will probably be painted communist red" ( we were still in the cold war at that time and all co-ops were viewed with suspicion). This must have been in the early 1960's. To paint the elevators different colours must have been a huge corporate decision and gamble at the time; who and how was it decided to be orange/yellow? Even though the colours of elevators appear in books paintings etc. little is written about that amazing part of our Canadian history.""Bats were visitors to the elevator. Sometimes he would bring them home in a jar for us to see. While it is a nightmare or many people to have a bat entangled in their hair, it happened to him. One morning the act of sliding the main doors open dislodged a bat and he fell onto the Pioneer cap he was wearing. Since bats cannot fly from that position it scrambled around and got entangled briefly in his hair. He quickly swatted it off but it gave him a start."
I was working at the elevator cleaning the “fire guard” which was a 1 meter strip around the circumference of elevator. The “fire guard” needed to be tilled dirt with no grass or weeds. It was the last line of protection against fire. We paid closest attention to the state of the “fire guard’ when the fire inspector or big shots from head office were scheduled to visit. These visits were rare, dreaded and highly anticipated. In preparation for the arrival of the big shots I was doing a final walk around of the fire guard. The big shots car could be seen coming from a long distance due to the dust kick up on the gravel road. This day it was travelling faster than expected. The car sped to the converted outhouse and the big shot, with his fancy suit, bolted from the car and ran to the shed. It was obvious what was going on and we watched from a safe distance to see how the story would unfold. He was in the shed a long time and when the door opened, he calmly walked to his car, got in and drove off without acknowledging us. Upon investigation, we found a pile of soiled underwear in one corner of the shed. This was viewed this as an ultimate revenge of the working man against the big shot and we relished this story.
"He had removed the safe guard on the auger used for removing bulk fertilizer from a bin located in front of the elevator driveway. A farmer had pulled up to the auger to load his fertilizer spreader with the fertilizer from the bin. The exposed auger ends needed to be pushed into the bin as far as possible for the fertilizer to be picked up. He wanted to scoop the fertilizer out from under the auger to enable him to push it in further. He lifted the running auger and tried to scoop out a broader hole for the auger when he felt a sharp pain in his thumb. The farmer left with the loaded spreader and Wilf went into the office grasping his hand which was bleeding. It was only then that he noticed loose skin hung where his thumb had been. The auger had wrenched out his thumb, back to the third joint, but left the skin. I met up with him in the emergency room of the St. Michaels hospital, about 30 kilometres away, in Lethbridge. The Doctor asked me if I could get the thumb, as he thought it may be able to be reattached. My brother had joined us and we set off in hi 1972 Toyota truck to try and find the thumb; we thought it would be in the fertilizer spreader. We called the farm and his wife said he was in the field spreading the fertilizer. We told her we hoped to find the thumb but by now we thought it would probably be spread in the field. By the time we reached the farm, they had pulled the spreader into the Quonset and unhitched it from the tractor. As we stood and watched, the farmer tipped it over the spreader with the tractor. As the fertilizer spread onto the floor we were shocked to see the thumb, sticking straight up, slide down the mound, the thumb nail still in tact. It was a freakish sight. We all hesitated slightly as no one seemed eager to grab it. When we finally took it, we wrapped it in ice and drove to the hospital. He was already loaded in the helicopter and we gave the thumb to the attendant and they flew to Calgary where a team of Doctors was waiting to reattach the thumb. He always used humour to deal with situations and I recall him saying, through the door of the helicopter, “If it doesn’t work, you’ll have to come and get me because I won’t be able to hitch hike home”.
Doctors worked on it for several hours and then one decided it wasn’t going to happen and abruptly threw it into a tin canister by the gurney. They wanted to remove his big toe and attach it as a thumb but he was not even remotely interested in that option. In later months, Doctors attached a piece of bone from his thigh, so he would have a stub in place of the thumb. He suffered from phantom limb pain in that thumb through the years and the thumb, though gone, always felt cold. "
The story is told of an agent who found an injured owl on the elevator grounds. It appeared to be an injury to the wing as it could not fly. He decided to try to nurse it back to health. He let it loose on the second floor. The high roof and mouse supply made it an ideal rehabilitation site. Day after day he tended to the owl and it showed steady but slow improvement. Several months passed, and though attached to the owl, Wilf determined that the rehabilitation was complete it was time to set the owl free. He opened the window and went to the office to watch. The owl flew out, and landed on a telephone pole beside the office of the next elevator which was the United Grain Growers (UGG) elevator. Within minutes, and before he could fully relish his triumph, a gun shot rang out and echoed through the tall structures. The row of elevators providing interesting acoustics and echo’s with sounds. Sometimes it was hard to tell which way a train was coming from by the sound. The UGG agent, who took great pride in his hunting and shooting ability, and would shoot almost anything, shot the owl off the telephone post. Pictured is a seed cleaning plant similar to the one in this story.
