I couldn't find it yesterday, so I resolved to tidy up my desk today and have a real good look for it, because if you'll recall ... I remember buying it just a couple of months ago. It wasn't on my desk, or in any of the drawers, either. So I looked in all four file cabinets, and then on every shelf in my half acre of book shelves. I checked my clothes closet and...yes, my bedside table and the drawer in the coffee table. No, I didn't look in my workshop because, as you might suspect, I wouldn't take my daytimer to my workshop. That wouldn't be right.
However, something good did come of the search pattern I was following. I found some old photographs that I had found about six months ago and set aside at that time with the idea that I would get them into a photo album for proper storage. No, they weren't in the photo album yet because I had set them aside and didn't run across them again until today.
These photos were of my very early days in Jasper, Alberta just weeks after I had left home ... again. It was the dead of winter in 1965 - '66 and I had a little Kodak Instamatic camera. I took roll after roll of film and sent it all back to my parents in Sudbury so they could see what they were missing. You have to admit, a bad day in Jasper beats a good day in Sudbury. No offence to Sudburians, but there are an awful lot of you living out here on the Wet Coast. Think about it.
This a good day in Sudbury.
One of the photos in that envelope was of a CNR railway conductor I worked with in the winter of 1965 - 66 on the Albreda Subdivision between Jasper and Blue River. Roy Richards was one of those rare fellows who you remember all your life. He was quiet spoken, easy to get along with, hard working, unselfish in everything and always had a ready smile, even when things weren't looking so good to others. In short, Roy Richards made an impression on me that I never forgot.
Today I looked up his phone number in an online directory and called the number. A woman answered. I introduced myself and I tentatively asked if Roy Richards might still be living at this address.
"No," she said, "Roy died five years ago."
"Oh, how unfortunate", I said. "I'm sorry to have missed him".
I explained to her how much I had learned from her husband and that he had always treated me with kindness and understanding...even when I was being contrary, which was probably too often. She agreed that Roy had been a wonderful husband and they had enjoyed a great number of years together. Joyce and Roy had married in 1949.
I told her that I had one photograph of Roy that I had taken at Redsand, BC on the Albreda sub. We had taken the siding there for an eastbound passenger train and the snow had been so deep that we had to dig our way into the siding and then dig our way out once the "Varnish" had gone past. Roy was never one to sit by the fire in the caboose while the tail end brakeman went outside to do whatever work that there was to be done. Roy would take turns with his brakemen and do much of the work himself. I've even known him to walk up to the engine through deep snow to line the switch after the opposing train had gone by and then climb up into the cab and ride the head end to the next meet where he'd dig out the switch and line it up for us to take the siding once more.
If you rode the caboose with Roy, you soon learned how to brew a "good" cup of tea, and you learned all about the birds that lived in the area, and of the history of the land and the people. I loved working with Roy.
Joyce and I told each other stories for about an hour. I told her about my trips with Roy on the "west end", and she told my about growing up the daughter of a CNR track worker and living in places like Lempriere...just Joyce, her siblings and her parents living in a small house beside the rail way tracks. It was a major event, she said, when the railroad ran a snow plow to clear the track after a great snow storm so that the trains could run again and her father could get out to Blue River for the mail and for groceries and supplies.
We talked and we laughed while we got to know each other.
After I had hung up the phone, I sat alone at my desk and, holding Roy's photo in my hand I felt overcome with the fond memories of a time well spent, a time long gone and a time well remembered. I wrote Joyce a small note and, folding it over the little photo of her beloved husband, I slipped it into an envelope and placed a stamp on it.
It will go into the mailbox tomorrow.
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