From David Anthony Hohol…

The summer, for most of my life, has always meant time on the family farm. Sitting in the same house where my father was raised, the same house in which my grandfather was born, and the same house my great grandfather built with his own hands with timber from the trees atop his land, always grounds me to the world beneath my feet in a way no other place ever can. The sense of lineage is so thick, there are times I almost have to reach up to brush it away from in front of me so as to see the present more clearly and than days past.  While always close to my grandmother, since my grandfather’s passing, she has become my life’s matriarch and a living piece of my soul. I am so very blessed to have reached middle-age and still have her there to greet me with a warm hug and kiss on the cheek, as I pass through the only door that has always been there for me to open. I cherish every minute of our time spent chatting over breakfast or watching old movies like tiny gold coins falling into my open and waiting hands.  Now in her eighties, she still provides me with the only home I have ever known and for that I am a lucky man indeed.

From the second I return from my latest trek across the globe, I see my grandfather everywhere; sitting in his chair that still graces the rustic farmhouse living room, in the corrals behind the barn rolling out hay bales to his cattle, or out in the fields as I drive across the family land in my 1973 Chevy Scotsdale. Perhaps, most of all, I see him alive and well in my uncle, the only of his four children to carry on the tradition of farming and now the fourth generation to do so.

I hear my grandfather’s voice sometimes; sometimes in the wind, sometimes in the rustling of the towering poplar tress that surround the home quarter, but most often when passing through the ever-present herd of cattle grazing the pastures for yet another summer under the golden Alberta sun.

One thing my grandfather and I always did so easily was just talk. The flow of conversation between us was effortless and I’ve often thought it was simply because we loved talking to one another. We could easily talk our way through entire ball games or even a Hockey Night in Canada double-header, but it was while working out in the fields when the conversations between us became somehow special.

Working together with our hands and our backs, we would talk all day long and in turn we each learned about the kind of men we were; the kind men we wanted to be. Two men in the throws of physical labor, working side-by-side, is a very primal, very masculine ritual. When the two men are grandfather and grandson, the undertows of blood and family only serve to heighten the tribal nature of the experience.

Perhaps we never talked more than while hauling hay bales together. Stacking 50 bales in the back of a half-ton is like completing a puzzle, with each bale sliding into its specific place and in a specific position, until the load is complete. Afterward, we drove the load back to the farm for unloading, to then start all over again. During hay season, my grandfather and I would haul thousands of square bales back home from the fields to the northeast corner of the barn, where the stacks would sometimes reach 30 feet high. With my grandfather being in his mid sixties and me in my early twenties, I was often amazed at his stamina. The young strong man that I was was dog-tired after a day of hauling bales with him. Farm work is a good tired though. It’s not nerve tiring, but physically tiring. After a good supper and a solid nights sleep, one wakes up the next day feeling ready for more. Regardless, when hauling bales back and forth all day long, for days at a time, all there is to do is talk. Our topics of conversation were all over the scale and talking about anything and everything slowly turned grandfather and grandson… into friends.

The conversations we had are countless, but two always stand out in my mind and in the end, reveal the genuine friendship we shared with one another. One summer as we were stacking bales out behind the barn, I began to get on my grandfather’s case for not taking his blood pressure pills. He eventually he got irritated and told me I didn’t understand his situation. I then said, “What do you mean, I don’t understand? I understand you need to take the pills to stop yourself from having a heart attack for Christ’s sake. What else is there?”

It was then he angrily replied, “Dave… If I take these pills,” but then paused for moment before he continued.

“If I take this fucking pills, I can’t even get it up… I can’t even be a god damn man… do you know what that’s like?”

I didn’t know what to say, so quietly answered him as honestly as I could. “No.. I don’t.”

After a few minutes of silence, he then said with a smile, “Don’t think I still don’t give it to your grandma once in a while, Dave” and let out a laugh and I couldn’t help but follow suit.

Like I said… we were friends. Beyond the conversations we had were his stories, and boy oh boy how I loved to hear them. Although he would tell me about painful and disappointing times, more often than not his tales were filled with laughter of life. Whether it was the one about a guy he once knew that would shit his pants for a beer or the one about the farting horse, he always had a great punch line. The stories he told about he and his older brothers and their days as boxers however, stand above them all.

Because a farming community could not spare a lot of money for sporting events and because distances were long a far from major centers, small towns depended mostly on themselves for entertainment. It was for this reason that boxing, for a time, was very popular in small towns across the country. I knew that there had been a lot of boxing in the area, but until my grandfather told me stories I had no idea just how incredibly popular it was. The entire town, as well as others from neighboring communities, would pack the town hall to watch professional boxing cards on a regular basis.

My great uncle Albert told me that it was the high school principal, Jack McLaughlin, a boxer of some note in his day, who started the Two Hills boxing club. Boxing became popular not only in Two Hills, but in towns like Vegreville, St.Paul and Bonnyville and it was not difficult to line up a good card, because some of the men in the area became name fighters. My grandfather told me that he and his older brothers, Albert and John, would all appear on the same five-bout fight card sometimes and they would always win, as the Hohol boys had a tough as nails reputation throughout the county. The oldest brother John became a ranked fighter and was an Alberta welterweight champion. My great uncle Albert was also a good fighter, but told me himself my grandfather was the best fighter out of all three brothers. He described him as a natural who surely would have become ranked nationally if he had continued to fight. Sometimes I think that If I could have one wish granted to me, I would choose to go back through time and be there at ringside to see the three Hohol boys all fighting on the same card.

With that said within only a short time all the fighting in the area came to a tragic end. On a hot summers night back in 1944, Two Hills Hall was standing room only. After my grandfather and his older brothers all convincingly won their bouts, all three stood ringside to take in the main event. Two men who had become well known fighters, St. Paul’s George Werenka and Cyclone Fred Taylor from Gibbons, were about to clash in a heavyweight battle. My grandfather told me there had been several weeks of build up for the fight and the winner was expected to move on to the national boxing scene. According to my grandfather it was a hard, tough fight and Taylor landed more punches, but Werenka landed the much heavier ones. At the end of the eighth round Taylor walked over to his corner and sat down. Suddenly he went limp sliding off his stool and laid unconscious on the canvas. Taylor was taken to Edmonton, but died at the entrance of the University Hospital. My grandfather said it was a shaking experience for he and his brothers, as well as the whole town. Werenka was not held responsible and went on to become the Canadian Navy’s heavyweight champion. Shortly thereafter, the Edmonton and District Boxing Commission tightened requirements for staging professional boxing and fairly so. The changes were of a nature that made it impossible for small towns to afford to promote boxing and as my grandfather said, it was as it should be.

This was one of only countless stories he told me over the years and these stories of his youth and his days as a young man were magical to me. They always whisked way to another time and another way of life far away from the world that is today. Even more importantly, his willingness to share not only the stories of his life but his emotions, his feelings and his dreams led me to get to know the man as well as I have ever known anyone in my life, and in return he got to know me. The connection was felt by us both. We were friends and like old buddies we would argue about sports and politics, pissing each other off at times. At the same time we would share the most intimate and personal feelings with one another.

My grandfather passed away on January 20th, 2003. I think of him 10 seconds out of every day and afterward, always think of how lucky I am to have had in my life. Then I realize he’s still right here with me and I journey back into the big wide world, my wings lifted once again by his ever-present memories, and above above all else by the living monument to his life that is the family farm.

Yes. I am indeed a lucky man.