Timeless Values: Navigating Life's Lessons from a Farm in Alberta

Have you ever wondered how childhood experiences in nature could shape a lifelong journey of spirituality and purpose? Join us as we explore a heartwarming tale of growing up on a farm in Alberta, where a deep connection to the natural world intertwined with family life and faith. Our host reflects on pivotal moments that defined his youth, from the profound realization of his purpose at 15 to treasured memories of listening to boxing matches with his father and enjoying the simple, yet delicious, meals prepared by his mother on a wood stove.

Step back in time for a nostalgic look at rural life, filled with both thrilling adventures and everyday routines that painted a vivid picture of a close-knit community. Experience the excitement and risks of galloping down railroad tracks and the communal joy of bobsleigh rides to town during the winter. Feel the transformative impact of electricity's arrival on the farm, bringing modern conveniences like the refrigerator that eased household chores. Relive the spirit of family gatherings, weekend picnics, and carefree flatbed truck rides that defined the host's childhood.

Discover the industrious spirit of family farm life, where economic challenges were met with resilience and creativity. Our host shares personal stories of hard work, like milking cows before school and repairing equipment in the fields, and recounts an inspiring encounter with a school superintendent that led to a pursuit of higher education and entrepreneurial success. Hear about strategic business decisions and innovative management practices, such as profit-sharing, that played key roles in expanding the family business. This episode is a treasure trove of life lessons and timeless values gleaned from 90 years of a well-lived life.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Well, good afternoon. It's Arlo Johnson in Vernon, british Columbia, on the 10th of June. So I'd like to discuss the idea of nature, and I think you know we overlook nature as we're growing up. We see something oh there, it looks nice there and what's that? Oh, isn't that a wonderful thing there? But that's all. We kind of just gloss over it. Actually, nature is the handiwork of God, almighty of Jesus as creator. Now, you know, to look at nature and try to figure out how that all works is just amazing I I've talked about water, plain water, how amazing water is, what kind of a substance that is and how, how god could use 70 of that to make a human being to wander around here on the earth. And I've been on it now for 90 years. The body has been sloshing around for 90 years fixing itself and healing itself from all kinds of things. The it's a vehicle. You know, it really is just a vehicle for people to navigate around this planet. Navigate around this planet to work, to build things to. You know, the thing is, I don't like when I hear people say it's my body and I can do whatever I want with it. No, that's not true, and you can look at that any way you like. It's a not true deal, it's BS. You didn't create anything. Your life was given to you, your spirit was given to you, your body was given to you and it's given to you for a purpose. A purpose I realized when I was about 15 years old. I remember standing out in the yard one time. I forget what I was doing. But I was just standing out there and all of a sudden this thought came over me that I mean, what am I doing here? Why am I here? And I'm standing out there kind of looking around at things, and all of a sudden I said to myself I realized that I was here to make a decision about God and about life and about what to believe. I knew that at 15 years old. I remember that very plainly. You know, you think out of a whole 90 years that you remember this, that and whatever. But I remember that very plainly, whatever, but I remember that very plainly. And the thing is, the reasons to believe things is, or it should be, by example or by. You know truth or whatever. You know you see what, how this works, how that works. How did that get here? How did that work? And then you say to yourself god must have created it. And here he's created this wonderful thing and uh, for us to use. And yeah, I remember while I grew up on a farm. Yeah, I remember when I grew up on a farm in Alberta and I think that was a good place to grow up.

Speaker 1: 4:31

I had two very wonderful parents. I could never have found a mother and a father more dedicated to my benefit seems like the never could have. Never they treated me so good. Never once did my dad ever say anything to me like you know, you know anger or anything else like that, or you should do this and quit doing that. No, nothing, never, nothing. Sometimes he just sit and look at me and I get very uneasy and I thought, why are you just looking at me like that? And they treated me, you know, way beyond what I expected or deserved, and you know it's a pretty nice thing when somebody does that, I guess. But I realized later on that I could never have had two people more dedicated to my well-being than those two. They were very good to me and they weren't fancy people, nothing, just firearms.

Speaker 1: 5:55

And dad was. Dad wasn't a big man really, but he was like broad, wide, he had wide shoulders and he had biceps 21 and a half inches. I'll never forget that, laying on the floor listening to the Joe Louis heavyweight boxing champions of the world going on and they're giving the specs and the size of the fighters. And they got down to Joe Lewis and they said, well, joe Lewis has 21 and a half inch biceps. So we got all excited and we went and got a tape measure and we measured dad's biceps because he was laying there listening to the fight too. He liked listening to that. His biceps were 21 and a half. He was a big, strong guy and boy we were, we were pretty excited about that. Dad's biceps Bigger Joe Louis world champion. Yeah Well, those days are really gone.

Speaker 1: 7:16

You know it's sad, but those days are really gone. Those were days of, I'd say, innocence and we didn't. Well, I remember when we didn't have electric power we didn't have any electric power and my mom cooked everything on a wood stove and everything on a wood stove and cooked everything fresh and new every day because we didn't have a fridge and it was good. You know, I remember coming home from school and running in the door about 3, 30, 4 to 4 and she'd have simple things on, like sometimes it would be a plate with a loaf of fresh white bread on it and then the cupboard with sour cream and strawberries. Oh man, you know we thought that was good, you know that's all it was, but we really like that.

Speaker 1: 8:35

Yeah, when you get to be my age, you start to, you know, reminisce about things, eh, and you think about the history and what goes on. Sometimes I just think about my life. For instance, I had my dad gave me a horse when I was six years old. That horse lived 27 years. He was a three-quarter size horse. He wasn't a big, big horse, he was part something, I don't what, but he was a stubborn thing, but he was. You know, he was good, he was. He could run like the Dickinson.

Speaker 1: 9:13

I was going to school in. This school called Armina it was about two and a half miles from where we were living and these other boys in my class and Hamiltonians that those are race horses. Their dad had bought them a Hamiltonian ponies horses. Well, they weren't just ponies, they were race horses. And we both go down the road half a mile to the north and then half a mile straight west and then we turn off. I turn off. Well, when we got to the corner of the road that went half a mile straight west, that was the racetrack, half mile racetrack. And of course they just look at each other, look at me, and they'd kick their ribs of their horses and they'd start riding as fast as they could. And I was on tony, my horse and I, I just basically just let him run and he lay his ears right back on his head and he'd run and he'd get to the half mile before them every time and just stop dead there and head north at a slow rate. And they used to just hate them that they couldn't beat him. And here he was a smaller horse and whatever, but he just wouldn't let them beat him. Period, yeah, that's, that was that. That was an eye-opener for me. All that smaller horse could be so determined.

Speaker 1: 10:59

Yeah, I remember riding down the railroad track with my sister behind me and I had kind of one-inch nails in my heels so I could use them like spurs and I was riding full gallop down the railroad track. Now, when I think about that, I think what a stupid thing to do If he had stumbled and he'd flown off with a head of rail or something, he could have killed or something. I didn't do it too many times, I don't think so that was stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid thing to do. But you know, in a person's lifetime, you know, if you were to count up the stupid things that a person does, you could write about ten books. It really takes a long time to get any semblance of wisdom. You know, don't do this or that will happen.

Speaker 1: 12:09

I remember going to town six miles in the winter with a team of horses in a bobsleigh, you know, a full box on a slave lid, whatever you know, and full of hay and grain and stuff like that and a seat up in the front where Dad would sit there with his big buffalo coat on In the wintertime. We'd go into town. It would take like two and a half hours for the horses to go the six miles and we had all the hay in there and everything. And we go like you know, eight, nine o'clock in the morning, eight get to town, maybe about 10, 10, 30 and when we got to town there was a big area like a parking lot for horses and horses and sleighs and box full boxes and I would. I can't remember offhand but I know there would be about 30 different teams of horses in this parking lot thing. It had a wall built around it and people would pull in a lot, tie up their horses, get the hay out, put it out for the horses, because you know we're gonna be there a couple of hours and all our kids, you know we were like eight, nine, eight, nine, ten years old, eleven maybe. Oh, we were like eight, nine, eight, nine, ten years old, eleven maybe. Oh, we were all chasing each other around, playing games and doing stuff and, uh, later on I guess we'd be in the restaurant and get something to eat there.

Speaker 1: 14:00

You know it was, it was a day on the town and we'd get groceries and stuff like that and we'd get them right just before we went home and we'd put them in the bobsleigh and then piled all kinds of hay and straw around it to hopefully keep it from freezing until we got home. And of course it took another two and a half hours of plodding along and we'd run behind the sleigh or we'd hang onto it or, you know, get bored and come in and lay in the hay and then get up and run again. Yeah, get home, get the groceries in the house as soon as possible as it was starting to freeze. But you know a totally different way of life, totally. And the uh and the difference, the big difference was well, when we got power, things changed big time. Calgary not Calgary Power Farm Electric came around and they just went mile after mile after mile with power line and then into the yard and I don't know if they brought it right up to the house, but I think they maybe did.

Speaker 1: 15:34

And then we had to get somebody to wire the house. Everything was wired on the outside, you know, it wasn't inside Wires running around the walls all over the place. And then we got lights. No heat or anything but lights used a wood stove. But we could. We had a fridge. We got a fridge, the first fridge we ever had, and that changed a whole lot of things for mom, of all kinds of that she could. She could save things for the next day and she didn't have to. But she baked bread every day. Every day Fresh bread would be on the table by noon and you know I often wondered about that amount. I remember we had like half a beef hanging on a granary, especially in the fall winter time. You know, just hung there, we'd go out and chop a big chunk off and bring it in and roast it, cook it, do whatever, and it you know was was pretty annual, fresh and that's went on all winter.

Speaker 1: 17:02

Now the thing is when you, when you grow up like that, you know it's a different thing. When I was growing up, family was everything. It was totally everything. We had a big family and there was families all around us. Some of my relations and others were a little farther away but either, like on the weekends, for sure, we went to their place on the weekend and picnic party kind of thing. All the time they come to our place, picnic party thing, all kinds of cousins and stuff around, and that went on all the time, every single weekend. We never went anywhere. We didn't go anywhere to see anything else. We went, hung around with our relations, cousins, aunts, uncles, had a big picnic, spent the day there, come home at 5, 6 o'clock at night.

Speaker 1: 18:14

This one uncle had a VA bulk station dealership and he had this flatbed, I think, one-ton truck and you know he'd haul barrels of gas on it but he'd come around with that on, you know, like Saturday morning early and we'd all pile on it of gas on it but he'd come around with that on, you know, like Saturday morning early, and we'd all pile on it, just pile on it, pile on the truck at the back and away we'd go, and you know it could be quite a few of us on a flat deck and I don't think it had any sides on it either. But we didn't worry about that. Nobody fell off. He didn't go very fast either. He went, you know, pretty reasonable speed.

Speaker 1: 19:00

And you know, I remember coming back from the lake we lived south, three miles south of the Nickle, on the Lake, which was a provincial park deal, and we're coming home this one afternoon, on a saturday afternoon or was it sunday, I'm not sure about three o'clock, and my mother and her sister decided they should stop. They thought they saw a bunch of uh, I don't know what kind of berries it was or something. But they got alvin to stop along the side of the road, kind of on a corner, and pull off and they grabbed these buckets and the way they went right through this fence and in this guy's these guys property and property, and they're whispering. You know, I hope they don't think. You know we shouldn't really be in here, blah, blah, blah. And me and my cousin Norman watched them go in there. We got off and we went around where they couldn't see us, went through the bush and crawled in behind some big trees and we watched and we listened to them. They were squeaking through these fences with their dresses and stuff and they said, oh, look here. Oh, here's a whole bunch here. Oh, man, this is good, isn't it? We took a little rock or something and we'd throw it and it would land somewhere, but just pass them and then say what was that? What was that? And then we wait a little while and they look around. They couldn't see anything. They started picking again. We'd throw another rock. Oh, I've been, or they know're here, we've got to get out of here. Oh, and they started running with their pail buckets and berries spilling and running and going through the fence too fast. The barbed wire fence was catching their dresses, ripping them, and Norman and me run around the outside, got back on the truck and were sitting waiting for them and they come rushing in and they said we've got to get out of here. They know we're here. And Norman and I just sat and we couldn't. We had a very hard time keeping our mouth, even laughing I was loud and they didn't know it lasted for quite a while. Oh, that was fun.

Speaker 1: 21:46

The uh yeah, the business of families and family life, family farm life. You know, I didn't realize it growing up on a farm but we had to rely on that farm. In our case we had two sections, 320 acres. A lot of people just had 160. And they were raising a family and building houses, barns, blah, blah, blah and all kinds of stuff. And anyway we had to produce every single stick of everything from that farm, whether it was grain, hogs, chickens, eggs, milk, selling pigs, selling cattle. In the fall grain sell some grain, but most of it we'd keep half of it for feed. And it all went on all year long.

Speaker 1: 23:02

Certain times you'd sell something and you'd get enough money to do something. You'd get a few hundred dollars At that time. That was basically all you'd get. A few hundred dollars At that time. That was basically all you'd get. You know, you could sell ten pigs and maybe make 150 bucks on the whole works, but what I'm getting at there was no pension, there was no workman's thing or any kind of government supplement or help None, none at all, whether it was for health or anything. You went to town, you paid the doctor cash right there. When you were there to town, you paid the doctor cash right there when you were there, and the doctor seems to be doing fine and he didn't charge that much. You know, maybe it was 15 or 20 dollars to stitch up a finger or do this or get something for a bad cold.

Speaker 1: 24:08

And uh, uh, you know, we, the thing is, we had to be an economic unit absolutely on our own. We had to figure out how to do that too. Now there's lots of times they boys that grew up on a farm like that in Alberta or Saskatchewan. They were way better equipped to work in a place where you had to, you know, use your head and figure things out, way better than people living in a city, just living in a home apartment, and I think that's true. Well, I remember having to figure out how to I'd get stuck or the tractor would get something wrong and I had to fix it out on the field on my own, get it going again. And you know, you had to rely on yourself, you had to figure things out, had to rely on yourself, you had to figure things out, and that made it. It was like a school of hard knocks. There's no doubt about that. That's gone. Yeah, the farms nowadays are so mechanized and everything it's a different story, but it's still got its reliance workshop experience. You have to. You still have to get things working and going, and guessing about the weather and whether we can do it now or wait till tomorrow or, you know, get rained out, hailed out all kinds of things.

Speaker 1: 26:18

Yeah, I remember having to get up in the morning and go and milk cows before I went to school. Well, just had to do it. I don't know why I was always in those days you'd get an A If you were really good. You got an H for honors, b, c, whatever. I never had anything less than A's and B's and H's and A's and B's and H's. And in fact last year I was in school I got most half H's and half A's and that was. I think that was grade nine. And last year I actually went to school and I remember the superintendent of schools for the Camrose District the largest district, came out in July I think what middle of July or something came out to the farm and wanted to see me.

Speaker 1: 27:21

I guess dad told him well, he's out, he's raking hay. Actually, right now on the farm, you can drive right through the kind of road you can drive right through the road you can take. So here he comes, driving across the fields in this big blue sedan. I thought who is coming out here? And I remember sitting on this rake with this team of horses and looking at them. And he pulls up, gets out and he says hi, my name is Mr Robinson. I'm superintendent of schools from school district number 22. Oh, is that right? What do you want? He said I've come out here to talk to you about going to university. And I thought I don't know. He said, with your marks and your stuff that you've had we've looked at your records. We really suggest strongly that you keep going to school and get into university. And I thought, oh my God, I'm still sitting on this rake looking at it. And he said you know, arlo, if there's anything we can do for you, please let us know and let's hope we'll see you this fall. Goodbye, goodbye. And he goes and I'm sitting there watching him go and dust flying up in the field and there he goes, it disappears, and I'm sitting there and I'm like big dummy. I'm thinking to myself if I'm that smart, I don't need to go to school anymore, you know, and I thought, oh man, I thought later, you idiot.

Speaker 1: 29:14

I did take some courses later on, in Mount Royal College and in Red Deer and the. It was a business administration course and the whole thing was, mount Royal College was a hands-on deal. You had to come up with a project that you could actually build or start and you had to be able to run it. When your course was through. You had to get the full report on everything, how you were going to do everything, and I had looked at dry cleaning plants in Rocky Mountain House because there wasn't any. And you know Rocky Mountain House was getting to be a good-sized town and I went through everything. You know buying this and the cost of this and how I'm going to do everything, where I'm going to get the money from. And other guys there was some two or three of them went together on a project to build a big hotel and they did. They built a big hotel and others had other projects and I got an A plus in my course and I did.

Speaker 1: 30:34

I started small with a little unit in a furniture store and I had hired a woman to run it. People would bring their dry cleaning in and run it through this automatic machine. But that didn't work out very good. So I got a hold of McGraw Edison in the United States and they had a deal. They were promoting a thing called one-hour martinizing. That was their whole deal. That was it One-hour martinizing you take it in and one hour later you can get it back. And that was a one hour Martinizing you take it in and one hour later you can get it back. And that was their deal. And they had a handbook about this thick. And their deal was you buy the equipment from us, we'll finance it for you and you'll have to put it in, though install it, and you'll need, you know, 1500 to 2000 square feet for sure. And so I thought about it and I did. I signed up for it. Big truck came with all these big machines and boilers and everything, and I ended up with a full plant in Rocky Mountain House. Now the boys that I hung around with two of them were plumbers and one was a car dealer they saw that this one-hour martinizing was a pretty good deal. I was making money. It had said exactly what size sign to have and do this, do that they even guaranteed that if you followed their book one, if there's more than one dry cleaning plant in this town, it will go broke and you will survive. And that's happened. We went.

Speaker 1: 32:29

We went to Calgary and we signed up with the with an outfit called I had my memory going to hell again CNR. Anyway, no, cp. Cep had railroad stations in every town downtown. They were phasing them out, but they had that land right downtown and they were converting this into shopping centers, downtown shopping centers. So we went to Calgary and we went up in this big building and it was CN. It was their company and me and this other guy, clayton Kennedy, who was a car dealer, we went there to negotiate. We wanted to negotiate for a business spot. You know, a commercial business spot in Tamrose and one in Stettler Tamrose is a much bigger town.

Speaker 1: 33:54

Anyway, they were right down at the end of Main Street. If you were on Main Street and looked right down, you'd look at our sign 4 by 20, one hour mark In Camelos. If you looked down the Main Street, you'd see our sign right dead in the middle of the street Because the buildings went crossways to the end of the street. Because the buildings went crossways to the end of the street. The railroad went that way and we went up in this big building and these people are very, you know, nice to.

Speaker 1: 34:27

Oh, hello, come on in. Uh, yes, could we get you anything to drink, and would you like coffee? And I said, well, I guess we could have coffee. That's not what we came for. Though we get you anything to drink, would you like coffee? I said, well, I guess we could have coffee. That's not what we came for, though. We want to talk to somebody about leasing and Stettler and in-camps and your new shopping centers. Oh well, let's just talk about it. We'll go in this office here and we sit in our coffee. We had a map out of the building and you know, on the wall and showing all the different spots in the building and how soon they're going to be ready and they're working on them now, and oh, yeah.

Speaker 1: 35:04

And we went up and we said we'd like this one right here in Stettler and we'd like that one right there in Camrose. Oh, yes, that's a good choice, you know, yeah. And I said, how much is that going to be? How much are you going to be renting for? And they said, well, that's going to be, you know so much to squirt for it and whatever. And I said what does that come to? Well, for Stettler, I think it's $265 a month. And I said, yeah, and what about cameras? Well, that's a little bit bigger and it's a bigger town and everything. So that'll be about $350 of rent for those deals.

Speaker 1: 35:44

I said, I see, and I just looked at Clayton and I said you know what? Do you have a check with you? And he feels around and says, yeah, I do, I do have one. Well, I said let's leave him a check for $500 or $600 total and we'll just put it on the camera. It wasn't this much, it's definitely this much for unit number 22 and unit number 8. And we give him this check and the guy says well, I don't't know, I don't think I could actually take checks right now. I mean, this is a little early yet, you know. Oh no, I said that's fine, you got a text there, you go ahead. And I said also, I said we will want 10 years, 10 years at a fixed price, at this price, with the option, our option, to extend it for another 20 years at the same price. Oh, I see, I said, remember now, 10 years plus 10 year option at our choice, went. Never heard anything.

Speaker 1: 36:56

About a month later I got this big envelope, heavy envelope, and two big copies of leases Black covered deals fancy thing. Open it up, oh man, it was about 40 pages long each one and I looked at it and I said, oh, I was the president of this company that we formed Plaza Cleaners, so I had to sign it and send it back, and I did. I just signed it, president Plaza Cleaners. Blah blah, blah, blah, blah blah Kept one copy and I sent the other one back to Calgary.

Speaker 1: 37:41

Well, we started when we got going. We went to Stettler first, put that plant in, got it going, hired a manager in Stettler who had been running elevators grain elevators fairly young guy. I told him you go ahead and run this, it's your baby to run and we'll do profit sharing with you. Oh, okay, that's better than the grain elevator. Blah, blah blah. He got in there and he was running that thing, you know, like he was in the Chamber of Commerce, running that thing. You know, like he was in the Chamber of Commerce thing. And he was this he was promoting everything, doing real good. Went to Canrose, got that in and got it running, hired another manager there and he was not quite as good, but he was pretty good and had them both running right and I had Hello, howdy, howdy.