Growing up in Neepawa meant lots of adventures

Details

Published on Tuesday, September 27, 2016

Photo by Rick Sparling. From left: Barry Deveson, Cam Smith and Ron Kleven in search of the bear cave at Park Lake this summer.

By Rick Sparling

Neepawa Press

This three part series is all about growing up in Neepawa. It’s not just from my generation, but from younger and older generations, albeit about mostly the same places. 

The bear cave

An example would be at Park Lake. Fairly close to where the bird sanctuary is now, near the lake’s bank, was what we called the bear cave. There was never any proof that an actual bear lived inside and in fact it was likely a man-made effort. Word has it, from more than one source, that the Burnett boys had built it. They lived up top in a house high up, just off Park Lake Road.

We, Cam Smith, Barry Deveson, Ron Kleven and I, visited Neepawa in early August and drove out to Park Lake to see if we could locate it. It had been about  60 years since we explored the cave. After stomping around through the thistles and long grass, we think we discovered the cave, although it had collapsed and was just a sunken grassy patch . We heard later that the cave was collapsed on purpose as it did present a danger to anyone curious enough to enter it.

I remember clearly going in, but it wasn’t for an extended period of time. Just in and out for fear of two things: 1. It might cave in and 2. There might be a bear inside!

I wasn’t alone on being in fear of this cave. My brother and guys from his era also knew about the cave and kids younger than us played around the cave as well. They likely tried to snare gophers like we did and did some swimming out there also. 

Tim Bolton remembers playing shinny and skating on Park Lake. In and around 1970, Tim was skating with some families and Bill Guinn’s son (Bear?) fell through the ice. Tim’s dad, Cecil, helped pull him out along with some of the other skaters. Very dramatic! The Rotary Club has looked after the park for all of these years.

Haunted house

On the way out to the Lake, we noticed the Burnett house up on the hill and it brought back a memory for Ron Kleven, Barry Deveson and me. Ed Fearns was there as well. We were about 13 or 14 and we went up to the house as we heard it was deserted. 

We knocked on the door and it seemed there was no one home and the door was ajar, so we went inside. There was  an eerie silence and we noticed the table was set and there was mouldy food on a couple of plates and it looked like whoever was at the table might have been interrupted and never made it back to their meal. We looked around thinking we were going to find some bodies, and it could have been a rat or some sort of noise that got us out of there real quick, despite us carrying .22 rifles at the time. 

We considered the house haunted from then on and never returned. Just a note to say that Cam Smith does not endorse this story and thinks it was possibly and probably fabricated. 

Cracking ice

Before leaving Park Lake behind, we all waited in late November or early December for the lake to freeze over so we could play hockey. In some of the milder winters (there weren’t that many) you could hear the ice cracking beneath you which made faster skaters out of all of us! 

John Birnie mentioned in the late fall when the ice was freshly frozen and the moon lit up the sky. Their gang would start a fire on the shore and go for a skate all over the lake. You could hear the crackling of the ice and it would send shivers and goosebumps all over your body. Now that was the “high” of all highs!

Dare devils

Just south-west of Park Lake was another playground for the generations. The CNR Trestle Bridge.

We kids spent many a Sunday afternoon playing dare devils and venturing out on the tracks with our ears to the rail ensuring there were no trains coming along. I don’t think I ever completely crossed the entire structure, but just going out 100 or so feet was being pretty brave...or pretty stupid as Dave Bennet suggested. 

Bob Allen recalls being under the structure when a train passed over and the thrill of it and the loud noise along with the vibrations. 

Ray Crabbe recalls he and his brothers, Ken and Art, going across several times and never saw a train while doing so. Ray thinks he recalls that there was a small “bump out” where a person could escape the tracks and a collision with an oncoming train. 

When you were up on the trestle, there was an amazing view of the town. Gerry Suski recalls that an automobile called the Prefect had a wheel base the exact width of the train tracks and could “ride the rails.” I remember that Gary and Donny Graham let a few pounds of air out of their ‘56 Ford’s tires in order to hold the rails and drove clear across the trestle. Dare devils at their finest!

Sports spots

We had a few favourite spots to play our football and soccer. The Prebyterian Church lawn offered a well groomed pitch as did the Creamery. Those are two places we rarely got to finish our games as someone would come along and kick us off their property. We also used the Courthouse lawn and were never kicked off that place. 

Of course the school had a grass field, but maybe we wanted to avoid the school. After all, we did spend most of our time there all through the winter and spring, so in the summer, we used these other locations. We played one sport or the other every single day all summer long.

The other place we played (after their corn was harvested) was at the Crabbe’s yard. 

One thing about playing there was that with 12 kids in the family, we were never short of players.

Riverbend Park

The Lions Club’s Riverbend Park was one of our favourite places to hang out and we spent every day all summer there doing a number of things to keep ourselves occupied. 

Besides swimming, we spent hours and hours playing Prisoner’s Base, a team tag game that usually had five or six kids on each team. We caught minnows, crayfish, frogs and snakes. The later worked well for nine and 10-year-old boys being able to keep the girls away! 

There was the diving board where many kids learned the fine art of diving. Keith Windus, who had to spend most of his summer on the farm, had a difficult time at the diving board, but was finally goaded into jumping off. He thinks it was likely Larry Evans or Garth King who “encouraged” him. It did get easier after that first jump. 

Tim Bolton first learned to swim here and got in a little too deep. He began to panic, but Rick Horn pulled him to safety. This was back around 1967. Tim also broke his leg falling from a tree down at Riverbend. It doesn’t sound like Tim really enjoyed the park.

Bill Nicholson remembers the Sunday picnics and the Lion’s Club band and the huge crowds that showed up. He also remembers the July 1 baseball tournaments up at the fairgrounds. Andy Wilson at the gate and Dick McKenzie doing the PA, umpiring and feeding the kids a nickel for every baseball they brought him from all the foul balls. Every fall there was an agricultural display at The Arcade.

Saturday nights were always a big event for the farm kids. The Roxy, Hyra’s Pool Hall, the Bamboo and Royal cafes and having coke ‘n chips. The stops at the Roco garage for a cool Wynola and an Eatmore chocolate bar. Picking up groceries at Reg William’s Tomboy store and usually a monthly haircut at English’s Barber Shop, by none other than Doug Anderson. 

The place was packed

Ray Crabbe’s memory of Riverbend Park was getting down to the park in the morning with his brothers and spending the day there, until just before the 6 o’clock siren sounded, making sure to be home for supper. On Sundays, you had to get there early because on family day, the place was packed. If you wanted to stake claim to some grass where you could stretch out a towel, you had to beat the rush.

Further south from the diving board was where we would do running dives off the river bank and the further south you went from there (towards the forks) the more likely you would be peeling off the leaches that grabbed onto you. Rarely would you ever see a leach unless you swam into that area.

Ray also recalls that Tony Evans had a small green shack next to the slide and you could get an ice cream cone for 5 cents. On ‘Family Picnic Day,’ the largest family who attended won a hamper of groceries and the Crabbe family won that prize fairly consistently.

We could stay afloat

Then there was the Red Cross swimming classes. Boy, the water was cold. It seemed like every kid in town was there. I think our gang only went one year and we figured we all knew enough about swimming that we could stay afloat. We weren’t all that crazy about supervision and after all of these years none of us drowned! Talking with Bob Allen from the generation before us and he, along with our age, also swam at ‘The Forks’. That’s the area just south of the diving board where Stoney Creek and Bogey Creek ran into the Whitemud River. He remembers the sandbar nearby and a large checkerboard made of cement close to where the weir was. No one seems to remember any checkers, however. 

The year John Birnie was the life guard at Riverbend Park he had, on more than one occasion, a frantic parent who had come to him because of a missing child. He would have to evacuate the river and the procedure was to organize  a volunteer line-up to walk along the river to see if they could step on a body. Fortunately, the bodies were at home, having gone with friends, or they would just show up, very much alive.

Beautiful Plains Archive. The spray pond at the Neepawa salt plant was a popular hang out for teens in the 1960s.

Hot spring spa

Neepawa was well ahead of its time in that they had a hot spring spa long before they became popular.

The Salt Plant had a spray pond that cooled the condensed water and returned it into the evaporators. The only time the salt plant employees got to go into the pool was when the valves needed cleaning. There was a fire protection system that relied on water pressure from these valves and periodically, they required cleaning. Bob Allen, because he was one of the younger employees and a good swimmer, usually performed this task. My brother, Wayne, also recalls cleaning out the pool.          

We kids, on the other hand, could go in whenever we felt the need. 

We would normally pile our clothes in a good hiding place somewhere around the pool and there would be five or six of us skinny-dipping in this wonderful warm pool. It was only about four feet deep and plenty of steam coming off, which provided a good cover for us. 

Whenever the police came around, we would all head for the middle and the steam would hide us well. Cam Smith recalls local policeman,  Nick Wasyluk yelling out, “C’mon outta there Crabbe!” Nick figured that with so many Crabbe boys, there was a good chance one of them had to be a part of it. 

I recall one of the older Crabbe boys (Bob) worked at the plant and used a spot light which seemed to come around every five minutes or so. We would take cover and he knew we were there, but couldn’t see who we were. I’m fairly certain he moved our clothes from one side of the pond to the other. That caused some panic, I’m sure. 

Wayne Cameron says he also swam at the pond, co-ed! A Salt Well employee hid all their clothes, which they found later, as it was quite dark around there at midnight. Being co-ed, maybe it was just as well that they were in the dark. 

Gerry Suski says that if they didn’t find a good hiding spot for their clothes, the police or the Salt Well staff would find them and move them in order to get a good laugh. In those days, you didn’t get into big trouble or get arrested. They just kicked your butt and sent you home. A true experience for Gerry and his friends. 

I received a note from John Birnie saying that he was one of the guys who removed the clothes on some nights and had a good laugh about it. It wasn’t so funny when his clothes were taken. It was a real challenge getting home some nights stark naked. One fellow, who will go un-named, drove home with no clothes on a Saturday night when literally hundreds of people were on the streets. Imagine if he had car trouble along the way! 

Quite a view

 We and the generation before us used to get up in the catwalk of the UGG grain elevator north west of 5th & Mill St. Vince Piett, the operator when Bob Allen went there, took him on an elevator up to the top and you could see the whole town from there. It was quite the view.  The elevator only held a couple of people as it worked on a weight system and in order to move upwards, you had to take off more weight than the people aboard. It was a crude system, but it worked. We used to jump off into the piles of grain and sort of “swim” our way back to safety. 

See next week’s paper for the second part of this three-part series.