Summer Camp Wasn’t A Ranch

Dad, and a friend of his, Bonner Bain, the brother to Connor Bain from ‘Different Strokes’ got together and thought it would be a great adventure for his kids, my brother and myself to go to a dude ranch for the summer.

It was located forty miles from Rocky Mountain House, a small town tucked on the side of the Rocky Mountains, half way between Edmonton and Calgary. I was somewhere between twelve and fourteen years of age. It started with an interview with the people who were running the ranch. Their names were Oldacre. Mrs. Oldacre was in her late forties and her husband was in his late sixties. They planned to eventually retire on the ranch. They were taking in kids for the summer, and they offered horseback riding, hiking, swimming in their own creek, camping and great food. She had been a cook in a restaurant for twenty years. Dad booked us for a whole month and the Bain kids were booked for about three weeks. The excitement grew as the date got closer and closer to leaving. The day came and we were dropped off with the Oldacres and they drove a bunch of us out in their station wagon. The trip took about four hours.

I had imagined in my mind that it would be like what I’d seen on TV or the movies. Cowboys tending cattle, beautiful white fences and a long extended ranch house with stables for horses and cattle barns. The odd chuck wagon positioned in the right place, some old barrels with rain water stored in them and a hitching post in front of the house. You know, the Ponderosa.

The last forty miles to the ranch was on a gravel road with a lot of potholes and flying rock. As we turned into the property, we were stopped by a barbed wire gate. The fence was barbed wire also and the gate fell over when it was opened. The gravel stopped at this point and the road to the house was mud. It had been raining. I guess, that’s why they told us to bring rubber boots. We passed a couple of old horses in a corral and a couple of tents that had been set up to house some of us kids. There were also cattle in a field next to the corral and close by, an outhouse.

We got to the house and Mrs. Oldacre’s son came to greet us and help with the luggage. We were taken into the house and given a spot to sleep in the living room. The alternative was camping in one of the tents we saw on the drive in. I chose the living room. There were other kids already here and by the time I got to know my surroundings, I figured there were probably a total of thirty of us altogether.

The first couple of days were fun. Exploring the hillsides, the creek, and we all took turns on riding one of the horses. Mrs. Oldacre cooked well and we were fed regularly. They tried to arrange hiking trips, but they didn’t work out too well. Mr. Oldacre had some lumber shipped in, and he began to build a horse lean-too for protection of the animals. We all ended up helping him build his project each day. There was heavy lifting, heavy beams and lots of hammering.

We were about a week and a half into our stay, when I noticed mid afternoon, very dark clouds forming over the valley below us. Slowly and surely they started to come together and began to rotate slowly at first. I got Mrs. Oldacre to watch as this was happening and she scrambled to get everyone together and into the house. Her daughter had come for a visit and she helped out. Her son and Mr. Oldacre ran about trying to herd the cattle and horses to a safe area. We all went into the basement after we got a glimpse of the tornado forming across the valley from us. It was tearing across the trees and destroying everything in its path. We waited. There was tremendous thunder and we could see lightning light up the top of the stairway. The wind was ferocious and hail began to fall. Not just any hail. It was baseball size hail. All of us were terrified. The sound was deafening as the hail clobbered the roof upstairs on the house. Fifteen minutes later it was over. We went upstairs to check things out and you could see a large swath of land that had been decimated to the south of us. Huge hailstones outside everywhere and the tents outside had been puffed out like over inflated balloons. All the animals were safe, but they had terror in their eyes and were not the same for days. We collected a few hailstones and saved them in the freezer. When you looked at them, you could see that they were made up of thousands of tiny hailstones.

That next weekend, was parents visiting day. Mom and Dad drove out with my sisters to see us. It was a long drive and I was surprised mom had agreed to come out for such a long trip. She never went anywhere. We were excited to see them and we related the story of the tornado first off. No one had ever heard of a tornado in Canada and there was scepticism from the parents. I ran inside the house and produced the hailstones out of the freezer and began to show them to everyone while pointing out the path of destruction the tornado took. By the time visiting day was over we were down to about twelve kids.

The next couple of weeks were uneventful. We continued to build things for Mr. Oldacre and Mrs Oldacre took us into Rocky Mountain House for a shopping trip. She needed supplies and she ended up treating us to lunch there at an old-fashioned cafe. We joked about the curbs on the sidewalks because they were so high. We thought if you wanted to get rid of someone, you’d only have to push them off the curb. We didn’t know at the time it was because of the heavy rains they got and it was to prevent flooding. I returned to Rocky Mountain House years later and found that the curbs weren’t as high as I’d remembered. When you’re small, everything looks big to you.

The last few days seemed like they’d never end.

When it came time to go, we were happy to be leaving and finally be home again.