Tarpaper Shack

The scorching sun blazed through the south facing curtainless windows, falling on the homemade kitchen table. It was so damn hot the "shit" flies that had made their way over from the barn were not flying, but just walking up and down the table looking for any stray crumbs. The acrid smell of the new tarpaper on the roof filled the only room in our temporary abode which was furnished with the inevitable wood stove, the table, four chairs and four hand made bunks along the walls for sleeping. Since every household thing we owned had been lost in the housefire there was nothing else to clutter up our new temporary home that Dad had built as soon as possible in the early spring of 1939. This would be our living quarters until he built the new house with help from the neighboring farmers. Mom's loss was perhaps the biggest, because, she had had to send three of her five children away after the fire (none ever returned to live at home again). My two sisters went to live far away in the big city with my aunts and my brother went to the army. There was no time mope about our misfortune, the animals still needed to be tended, the crops planted, the vegetable garden sewn, and most importantly, a new house had to be finished before winter arrived. In Canada, out in the country, in 1939 there was no welfare or any other "social net" to save you. You had to sink or swim on your own.