Birth Story: Laura Kathleen Grant

This memory was recorded by Dale Grant in March 2015.

Laura was our beautiful daughter number 3, born on the 15th of February 1975. I do not remember what I was doing or where I was that day. I do remember taking your mother to the hospital in the later part of the afternoon, driving around town and starting home because your mother did not want to go to the hospital any sooner than necessary. When we finally did go to the hospital the nurses were quite excited when they examined your mother. Joan Anderson from Barnwell had just delivered a baby girl and then it was your mother’s turn. I remember the nurses saying that there had been a lot of baby girls born in the last week and so I said that we would break the trend and have a boy. It was not to be. I had always planned on each one of my children being a boy, but I was blest instead to have wonderful, beautiful, giggly daughters. It is really strange that I cannot remember any more about the day. I am just drawing a blank. Laura brought great joy and happiness into our home. She was always very determined and when she set her mind on something. Nothing could deter her unless it was my loud threatening demeanor.

Stories from the life of Dale: Childhood games

Dale Grant recorded his responses to the following questions in October, 2006.

Were you the oldest, youngest, or middle child? How do you feel about that?
I was the second and the middle child born into a family of three boys. I've never really thought about how I feel about my birth position, since I can't change it anyway.

Tell about your favorite childhood games.
I don't really recall too much until I became old enough to venture outside. Then I had several things that I liked to do. I liked to play with the animals that we had on the farm, especially the horses. I would ride them when I could and one time, so I was told, when I was just little, about two years old, the family found me out by the barn, sitting under one of the horses, playing and not even aware that if the horse stepped on me, well I probably wouldn't be writing this now. These horses were big work horses with hooves as big as elephants. The one horse was real gentle though, his name was Skippy, and I loved him. The other horse was a big black called, Cap. He was quite jumpy and nervous and one time when I was older and leading him across a wooden bridge, he panicked and almost trampled me. Oh dear, I do digress. Anyway, I liked the animals. I would play with my dog for hours on end and often came in with my clothes torn because the dog would get a little too rambunctious sometimes.

I had toy construction sets too that I would play with sometimes. Gee, guess what I do now? I had a tractor trailer end dump - hydraulic ram, loader, grader, etc. that I spent many hours out in the dirt with. I would haul dirt when I could in the summer and in the winter I would haul whatever I could in the house. Sometimes I would have a friend over and sometime Barry played with me, but lots of times I could amuse myself for hours on end with my trucks.

Another game that I liked to play was rodeo. I would conscript Barry and together we would play rodeo. I was older, so I could decide what and how to play quite often. We would ride our pretend horses into the arena and parade around, sing the national anthem and then get into the actual rodeo events. We would ride imaginary wild bucking horses, and sometimes even managed to stay on for the required 8 seconds. I liked to play cowboys and indians too. I liked being an indian. Sometimes I would practice being an indian when I was out riding by myself, when I was old enough. I would practice sneaking up on things and people and sometimes I would be discovered and the cowboys would shoot me and I would fall off the horse. It was great fun.

By the time that I was five years old, I was driving tractors and trucks and helping on the farm. Oh, I still had time to play, and lots of time I made my jobs like playing. In the winter, we would get together with some of the neighbours and play hockey. One winter, Jamie Valgardson's Grandpa, made a place by his house and all the kids from the neighbourhood would gather there and play hockey. It was always a lot of fun. Then I got older, fourteen or so, and discovered motorcycles and girls.