The History of Getting to 83: The Old Time Country Barn Dance

By Manny

There is nothing like an old time country barn dance.   Have you ever been to one?   Prairie fiddlers, everybody dancing!

When you live on land, your neighbors are important but you don’t see them every day… sometimes not for a month.   And we didn’t have TV.

We would have a dance for anything.   If there was a new family moving in we threw a dance, benefit dances if there were hardship, or wedding.

The women would work so hard bringing food, chocolates.  I was a single guy, so I was lucky and got a pass on cooking.

Now, most of those country dances involved liquor, and after that there was always a fight.  Who ever walked out without blood on their face was the winner.   

Many times there was no really good music, just squeaks on the violin and the guys rattling the bones!!    The best ones were when Gene De Louie came to town with his band.  Now any out of town band was great instead of the local piano hammers and folks playing the saw.  Gene would come on a long weekend and it was a big thing, everyone would show up.   You could hardly dance it was so packed.

For the adults it is the social life and for those kids, they would stay all night, sleeping in the corner.

It was the community coming together.   This is something that brought us together as a community.   I bet everyone can benefit from activities where many generations come together and celebrate.

A Joyful Experience

Monday, February 3, 2014, the celebration of my departed Mother's 97th birthday brought me a the gift of meeting Lauren, a student from the Calgary Jewish Academy.

 Our unique "older" students’ blogging group met a second unique group...students from the Jewish Academy in a small meeting room in their school. Our inspiring and motivational leader, Mariette, initiated introductions by commencing a game. Mariette introduced herself and then stated "I bet you never" and followed that with something unique she had done in her life.  If no one could say I've have done this, the person next to Mariette followed the routine. Eventually we knew each other’s name and a minimal amount of information about each other.

Initially, I was nervous and concerned about meeting up with the students because I felt I  had nothing to share...I didn't experience the hard times that most of our group had experienced...in fact I was thinking about backing out and not attending. However, once the introductions and the game commenced I was at ease.

When it came to me to introduce myself I stated my name and said, "I bet you 
haven't rappelled down the outside of a small building "Aussiestyle". I was asked what this meant and followed with an explanation. 

After the introductions and lunch, the "younger" students were advised to chose one of  us "older" students to partner up for our commencement of "fun" in the computer lab. Lauren chose me. We walked down the hall from the room we met in, entered into the computer lab, and sat waiting eagerly for our instructions from Mariette.

We were instructed to go to the Bubbies and Zaidas blogging site to view the various blogs...now the laughter begins. I didn't know what the link was for the blog and therefore located it in a long about way. Mariette came to where Lauren and I were sitting and told us the link was and Lauren typed it in... Lauren then stated something like "you're slow" I started to laugh.

When we finally got to the blog page....I advised Lauren to scroll down to see the various blogs and then suggested she read Bruce's...she found it very interesting, especially reading about how huge the computers and servers use to be "in the day". There is a lot more to this story, however, I will only point out a couple of highlights.

One of the highlights was when Lauren said to me I bet you type by using only two fingers and showed me what she meant...I started laughing again. I told her that when I was employed that my job involved using a computer every day. I jokingly put my hands on my hips and said "I bet you don't know what an ergonomic key board is"  Lauren said no and asked what it was...I explained in detail what it was and its purpose.

A thought that came to my mind when Lauren inferred I used only two fingers to type was to challenge her to see who is the fastest and most accurate, what a blast this would have been.

Lauren is a "hoot", a lot of fun and funny.  My thoughts are that we have the same type of humour.  I had forgotten how much I enjoy being around children, well really, young adults.

The time zipped by and we were back in the original room saying our goodbyes until the following week.

As I left for the day two other students pointed to me and said, "You are the one who rappelled Aussie style".  I said yes and told them quickly and briefly about my experience as a civilian officer with an Air Cadet squadron. I stated that the cadets did the rappel, however none of the male Officers did, therefore, I had to prove to the cadets, the male Officers and myself that I could be the "little engine that could" and the rest is history.  

It was great to be a part of my history, not just the assumptions people make about me now.   It made my day so much better. 

A Romantic Moment in my Life

In June of 1948 I went to London England for some R & R. On the Sat evening I went to a dance, & afterwards was invited to the National Hospital Residence for afternoon tea. It was a warm sunny day, and after the tea I asked one of the young ladies if she would go for a walk with me to nearby Hyde Park. At first she said no, adding that she would rather read a book. I suggested that I toss a coin, & if it came up heads she should come with me. She agreed & I tossed an English Penny. I won the toss, and we went for a walk, and thus began the kind of relationship that one dreams about.  We had a wonderful afternoon, enjoying each others company. Her name was Maureen Cronin & she had a delightful Irish accent. Maureen agreed that I could call her Penny, and that has been her nick name since that time.

At the time I was in London I was serving in the Royal Air Force on a short 3 year contract, & was stationed in northern England at RAF Station Kirkham, a Base near Blackpool, so our communication to Penny was by telephone, post cards, or short week-end visits to London. On Nov 12 we travelled to Rochester Kent by bus to visit my cousin Jim Langford & his wife Joyce. At some distance before we arrived at our destination, I went down on my knees at the back of the bus and asked Penny to marry me.  Penny said Yes, so we had lots to celebrate that weekend.

My brother Carl was in the Canadian Navy serving on the Aircraft Carrier "Warrior", & Penny & I arranged to be married in London on Jan 29th, 1949 while the "Warrior" would be docked in Portsmouth. Carl, and some of the ship crew, & some of my Air Force friends came to the wedding. Penny's Uncle Jack and Aunt Peg also attended. Penny's sister Josie was bridesmaid & she also sang at the wedding, & both Penny and Josie sang during the reception. After the Reception Penny, myself and brother Carl went to Dublin Ireland to meet all the Cronin family.  Our honeymoon in Killarney was delayed until several months later.

Penny passed away with congestive heart failure on July 30th, 2012 at age 84. She was an elegant lady with a kind and gentle soul. We did love, care, and support each other, and I will always remember with pride that first Romantic Moment when I found my lucky Penny, my Irish Rose.

We had a tremendous marriage that spanned 63 years. I think the strongest bond that held our marriage together was being of the same faith. Penny had a great faith and trust in Jesus, and to keep us on tract, if things went wrong in our marriage we tried to fix it. The good lord blessed us with five children that we love dearly and we stay in contact with them by means of Skype.

Wisdom

Pursuing Wisdom is a lifelong journey.   In this video Amalia shares what she has learned about pursuing wisdom.   She considers what she learned to make it possible to be a life long learner and the challenges along the way.  Please enjoy and don't forget to post a comment at the bottom of this post for Amalia & the rest of the Bubbies & Zaidas blogging who are bravely entering the world of Digital Eldering!

Oh how I miss my Abacus

Bruce Eekma

I was born in the good old days, well I don't know if it was always good, but a lot simpler. I started school in 1947, two years after the second World War, outfitted with an abacus to do math plus a small slate the size of a sheet of paper including a chalk pencil, for writing things down.  We did all our math and written task, which the teacher had written on the blackboard the evening before, on our slate and when completed we would show them our completed work. At the end of the day we would just wipe of all this information, so we had a"clean slate" to start the next morning, and the only memory we had to worry about was in our head.

In the seventies I was involved in building large temperature controlled buildings where contractors would install large cabinets called computers. We were told that these large cabinets could remember more then a human and could solve math problems in a second. We were entering the paperless society and there would be less people employed for filing.

Later when I worked downtown for  AGT now TELUS, we had three floors with these large computers, and I was told they were rented out to large oil companies to store all their data. On the main floor we had what was called the Museum of the Future filled with all kinds of gadgets to be use for communication in the future and my favorite was a robot that would walk around and talked to people, the other was a display of phones where one could see the person you were talking to. In my own office I also had an computer with my own Profs id. Plus I was sent on numerous computer courses just so they could steal me away from my abacus and slate.

 

Ever since, my days with the telephone company, I have owned a computer at home and would do office work from home or Google the world. I was very impressed with this new invention because this was my window into the world. And until this last weekend everything was going great, sometimes I would make mistakes or lose something, but there was always a way to retrieve my data without much problem.

Then my week in hell started, I run Microsoft 8, and accepted the free upgrade to Microsoft 8.1. This went without a hint of problems however then it prompted me to refresh my computer to make it run better and this would not harm my files, because they would be set aside, so I gave it a try. Big Mistake because when I got my files back they were unreadable, written in some computer code, which I could not decipher. There was one file, the book that I'm in the process of rewriting, that I couldn't access because it was password protected and even though I had given it this password it still would not let me open it.

At first I panicked thinking that maybe David L Smith had given me his Melissa virus, or Bradley Manning had sent it to Wikileaks. My book A Daughter's Search for her Father has a Nazi link, this is the one I'm rewriting, so maybe some old Nazi War Criminal was afraid that I'm getting too close to the truth. All kinds of crazy thing's go through one's head and nowadays everything is possible.

I finally got in touch with someone from Microsoft who spent three hours trying to solve my problem to no avail. However he claimed that it was not Microsoft that caused the problem but an old word processor that I had used long ago. This did not make me feel any better because the Microsoft word processer had worked for a long time and now all of a sudden it is not compatible. Anyway he did find and loaded this old word processer onto my computer so I could try to repair them myself. I spent numerous hours getting more and more frustrated and finally dumped the whole mess in my garbage can. So I lost a lot of work, it put me six months behind republishing a new version of my book, but I like to thank Microsoft for helping me for three hours and for being very patiently with an old man and next time I will not try to get something that does not have all the kinks ironed out.  

Blogging & Seniors: How did that Happen?

How have we changed?

Mariette Sluyter

We thought we would take a moment to share with you how this project has changed folks.   I would like to provide some perspective and then Bob will take over and share the changes he has seen.   Our group came together with a mix of hesitant interest and skepticism.   When I told folks that I believed people would be interested in their stories they hardly believed me. As the post grew and our team saw the stats they started to understand that maybe, just maybe younger people were interested in what they had to say.  Over 2000 individual blog views in just 3 months has reassured them that their voice is welcomed in the blogosphere.

Now, about half of our team came on board having little or no computer skills whatsoever, and no experience blogging at all.  Through a process of in class lessons, peer tutoring and online cheerleading and support all of our group have gained the necessary computer skills, have started honing their storytelling capacities and are transitioning to moderating the blog themselves. 

As for myself I have been thrilled to see how quickly this team from 66 - 87 have taken to their individual roles as needed.  Moving from tutor to student to cheerleader they are willing to do whatever it takes to support each other.   It is moving to watch people continue to push and learn a very challenging skill in their lives at a time when many would be choosing to not participate.   Thank you Bubbies & Zaidas for reminding me to always keep learning.

Now for Bob's perspective on the changes he has seen in our group.

How Blogging Has Affected People in the Class

By

Bob Peterson

1) It has allowed seniors an opportunity to reflect on topics presented by our instructor and encouraged seniors to share how their own lives were lived or shaped dealing with that particular situation.

2) Recently Blogging web site contacts have chose to make comments about the seniors stories, and we have instantly become part of a much greater community.

 3) It is interesting to read about the paths that others have walked before us and it broadens our knowledge of history that was often overlooked in earlier times.

4) Blogging has encouraged us to learn computer skills which have opened up so many opportunities for us to access information instantly




5) it has made us realize how mind boggling technology has been progressing from year to year, and we wonder what the possibilities are waiting for us in the future.

Sometimes you have to search to find out who you are!

By Bruce Eekma

My name is Bruce Eekma and I was born in the Netherlands in 1939 and immigrated to Calgary, Canada in 1958 at the age of nineteen. I met Margaret, who had emigrated as a young girl also from the Netherlands, a few years later and we were married in 1962. A year ago we celebrated our fiftieth anniversary with our two Sons, two Granddaughters and two Great-Grandchildren and lots of other Family and friends. We still live in Calgary where I have a full time job here at the Calgary Jewish Center as a Maintenance worker and Margaret keeps busy baby-sitting her Great-grandchildren. If we had known how great these Great-grandchildren are when we got married we would have had them first.

My proudest accomplishment was when I published my first book “A Daughter’s Search for her Father” a true story about what happened to Margaret’s biological Father. I wrote this book to help Margaret, who spent most of her life searching, understand what really happened to her Father whom nobody wanted to talk about. Margaret was born in Amsterdam on the 31 of August 1943 in the middle of World War II the result of a loving relationship between a young Dutch lady and a German man. Her Father being German, the enemy of the Dutch people, was the reason nobody wanted to talk about her birth. The shame of being a German baby was why we were only given small bits of information. Her Mother only gave us his name as Wilhelm Bauer and after that, she nor any other family members, were unwilling to talk about this subject anymore.

Then on a trip to Amsterdam in 2008 I was able to obtain Margaret’s original birth certificate which had some dates that really interested me so started to write this book. With the help of the computer, searching the internet, I was able to trace the Wilhelm Bauer family history and discovered that Margaret’s Grandfather Gustav Bauer became the 11th Chancellor of Germany in 1919. Then in 1933, the year the Nazi came in power, he was accused and arrested by Hitler for stealing 30,000,000 RM from the German people. However after a week in jail they had to release him from jail because there was not enough evidence to substantiate the claim. Because of these accusations the Bauer family decided to send their only son Wilhelm Bauer, now a successful German economist, to the Netherlands where he meets a beautiful Dutch girl, they fall in love and nine months later Margaret is born. Shortly after her birth, through jealousy, it was reported to the Nazi Authorities that Margaret’s father was a Jew and for him to have had a sexual relation with someone of the Aryan race was against the Nazi anti-Semitic law’s and punishable with death. So he is arrested and transported to Thereseinstadt concentration camp where his identity is stolen by Anton Burger the SS Camp Commander who after the war assumes Wilhelm Bauer’s name and lived out the rest of his life in Essen Germany a free man. Burger’s true identity wasn’t revealed until 1994, three years after his dead at age 80.