THE STRENGTH OF A VILLAGE

It took men with muscles and women with special strengths to cope with the daily operations of a village.

The present day homemakers must have difficulty imagining the labor required to keep a home in the early part of this century.It was considered a normal part of housekeeping for mother to be up early Monday morning, get the washing started, scrub several tubsful of clothes by hand, on a scrub board, with strong soap, hang the clothes out to dry, no matter the weather and also take care of all the other household chores, like getting meals, feeding the chickens and in some cases milking the cow. Yes, dear readers, village people of earlier decades did have chickens and a cow in the backyard shed. Mothers of the era never required a pill to help them sleep after one of her usual days keeping the family household operating.

Before the age of mechanical devices, hydraulic assisted equipment and the so called labour saving gear of the present generation people performed their daily tasks with manual equipment, long handles shovels, scoop shovels, hay forks, six tine forks, canthooks, crosscut saws, axes, pinch bars, block and tackle and a strong back and muscled arms and legs. These devices were the tools in common use during the days of early settlement and they also served the generation of the decades before W.W.II.

Test of strength were common amusement, especially among the youngmen of the village. A tug of war between the youth of the village and a team from some other community was considered good sport and every fall fair had feats of strength such as weight lifting, tug of war, greased pig wrestling and calf lifting. In some instances those individuals credited with being the strongmen of the community would practice lifting for most of the year before the fair along with their daily vocation that probably was work of a type of manual labour.

The many tales of the strength of villagers continued from generation to generation and those in each succeeding generation tried to outperform their predecessors. A picture hung in the barbershop of a number of village youth who pitted their strength against a team of horses. The horses outpulled the community strongmen and for many years after, it was debated, whether two more men might not have outpulled the horses.

Several of the oldtimers recall when teamsters would brag about the strength of their teams and frequently to prove a point one team would be challenged by another and each team would try and pull a loaded stoneboat with additional weight being added after each pull until one team was not able to move the weighted drag. In one such contest two teams drew to a tie and to settle the contest, the horses were hitched so they would pull against each other; there was no winner, the harness broke and each teamster claimed victory .The barbershop checker players contended if the horses had been a local team against a team from another village, the results might have been different.

The advent of the automobile gave the local strongmen a new challenge. They took turns lifting the front end of a model "T" clear of the ground, how high one man could lift the vehicle by the front bumper and how long they could keep the front wheels off the ground. It was a real feat of strength when one of the challengers lifted another make of car or demonstrated their prowess by lifting the rear of the vehicle so blocks could be placed under it and a tire changed. Why use a jack when a strong villager was nearby?

Village public works required workmen with good muscle development and the ability to work all day shoveling, carrying or lifting. It took many men to dig the trench for a tile drain; you couldn't call this work "A labour of love" it was just plain hard work. Every time a villager died, two people would be called upon to dig the grave; it didn't matter the season, interment of the dead had to take place. Sidewalks for the village were built by several gentlemen of the older generation mixing the concrete by means of a mixing board and shovels. One shovel of cement, six shovels of gravel, a bucket of water and four turns of the mixture. Each square of the sidewalk would be laid after the bed was leveled between the 2x4 forms, and the workmen were sure they had a good base for the concrete. Spreading the concrete and hand troweling required considerable exertion but the finished product would still be in use for several generations.

Schoolboys bragged about the feats of strength of their older brothers and fathers. Families were credited with being good men to have in the bush; they could swing an axe all day. Treshing day would bring together men who could pitch sheaves to feed the separator or load the wagons in the field; men who carried a full bag of grain to the granary and those who built the straw stack. The ladies prepared lots of meat and potatoes for hungry threshers. The ingredients for a successful threshing was good food, good workers and lots of friendly banter.

The tale of the farm boy who started to lift a calf when it was born and kept lifting it every day until the animal reached several hundred pounds is a subject of conversation in every community. It was said the lad could perform this display of strength because he didn't realize the daily weight gain. If you inquired about the local lad who lifted the calf, it was never anyone in the neighborhood; someone had read about it in the Police Gazette.

The strength that could be attributed to everyone in the village was their moral strength. Village people lived exemplary lives and by their own actions, demonstrated to the village youth the virtues of a good citizen.
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