Ridin', Reinin' and Writin'

A round oak table stands in the center of my kitchen/dining room. The table has been with me many years - my children sat around it every morning before they dashed out the door to meet the school bus; they ate there with me again in the evening; lively birthday parties and holiday dinners happened around that table. The finish on the top is wearing through in places and it has developed a squeak but still, every day, I use that table. Some days, like today, I remember where it came from.

When my husband, children and I lived in northern Saskatchewan on the Crooked River Community Pasture, my husband brought mail to an elderly gentleman who lived in the bush about two kilometers from our house. We called him " a hermit" and indeed he was. Frank Miklos never left his property. Once a month, my husband brought his mail to him and returned with the signed pension cheque and a list. Garry shopped for Frank and brought supplies back to him along with whatever money was left over. In the summer, Garry drove but, since no real road existed to Frank's place, in the winter he packed groceries, etc in on horseback. Almost always, Frank offered Garry a glass on his raspberry wine.

Frank made good raspberry wine . . . and lots of it - 45 gallons every year from the rather large patch of berries he grew. I don't think he grew much else in his garden, but he tended those raspberries well and the bushes rewarded him with an ample crop every year - more than he needed for his wine. So he asked if I would like to pick some. Would I!!

I was a bit shy around Frank at first, but I bundled up Lana, just a baby, and drove to his little house, put Lana in a baby chair between the rows and picked. Frank visited a little - he was fascinated by the baby - and I gradually relaxed and talked with him. A private man (that's why he lived alone far away from people, I guess), it was some time before I found out he had left a family in Hungary and had two daughters there. He did not reveal the reason why he moved to Canada alone and I did not ask. He was a bricklayer by trade and the brickwork in his home I assumed he had done himself. (I always wondered where he had found clay for bricks.)

I, too, was invited in Frank's house for raspberry wine. That's when I saw the table. Under a small, smudged window, a soot-blackened round oak table accompanied by equally blackened chairs and sideboard rested in peaceful obscurity.

I loved the table, the whole set, and tried to buy it from him. "You never can tell what I might do," he said, but he would not sell it. I gave up asking.

This was the pattern for two or three years until one winter, when Garry rode to Frank's for his monthly visit, he found him in a terrible state - very sick and weak. Garry quickly rode home, called friends with skidoos and an ambulance. Frank was admitted to the hospital.

Meanwhile, we worried about his property, now left unattended. Moreover, we knew there was cash in his house somewhere because Garry had been returning what was left of his pension cheque every month. We decided we should find it and bank it for him for he would be needing it.

The cash was in the sideboard in a tobacco can - $6000 - not a fortune now, but certainly a tidy sum then. We started a bank account for Frank. (He would only trust Garry or me to OK any cheques he signed!)

When I visited Frank in the hospital, he told me to take the table, chairs and sideboard, but I didn't. "You might need those," I said.

Frank did not come home. He died in Saskatoon hospital a few months later. In truth, I wonder how much of a favour we did him by rescuing him for he was lost and a little frightened away from his "little heaven".

He had one relative in Canada, a nephew in Calgary. When his nephew came to Crooked River, he visited with us.

"Uncle Frank told me that his round oak table, chairs and sideboard is yours,"he said.

Nope - I didn't know what Frank might do, but he did. I refinished the set and it was beautiful. I still have it today. I reminds me of a Hungarian hermit and raspberry wine.