The Fourth Annual Pig Roast, Part 1

I'm not so sure it happened that way, Wyona.

My dad's old friend, Jay Johnson, came to the 4^th Annual Pig Roast.  Glen, Wyona, Moiya and I reminisced with him. 

Many of the stories he knew about our collective past were pieces of stories we also knew.

The stories were fun.

Here are some of them:

On Breeding a Mare or Why Doral and I Should Have Got a Divorce

Doral used to come out to our place 3 times a week to get milk.  I had a stallion named Royal Turk that I used to breed.  Doral and I were hand breeding.  I had the stallion.  Doral had the mare.  I came out of the barn and brought out the stallion and the mare jerked away from Doral somehow.  Doral run behind the stallion and it kicked him right in the head.  He dropped.  Just thump.  I thought it had killed him. 

Reed Bullock was there.  He worked for Bruce and was up in the hanger.  I called Reed and called Joyce and said we needed an ambulance.  Reed came down and we gave Doral a blessing.  Doral didn’t look very good.  It took hours for the darn ambulance to get there.  They came and picked him up.  I was beside myself.  I didn’t know what to do. Reed took me under his wing and calmed me down.  That is what happened.  Doral got kicked on the side of the head.  Any other person would have died right away.  Doral might have had a big tummy but he could do a lot of things a lot of other guys could have never done.  The stallion hit him right on the side of the head and smacked his jaw bone and socket, so his eye was hanging down.  The doctors operated on him and at the end, Doral was pretty good. 

And that incident was after Doral was out helping me butcher beef, either in the spring or fall.  That was a nice warm day.  The tractor was on a slope and I was lifting up the beef so we could skin it out.  When I lifted the beef up, the tractor slipped and broke Doral’s ankle.  Doral never said anything.  He got in his car and drove home and then went to the hospital that same way.

A couple of weeks after the horse kicked Doral in the head, Doral’s brother, Loran, called me and said, “I think you two should get a divorce.”

Doral was a good hunter.  I remember an animal 100 yards away and it was on a dead run. Doral hit it.  We took it home, put it up in my garage we where we skinned it and gutted it out.  We also went to Cliff Walker’s ranch hunting.  Doral told me right where to go on the ranch and said there would be a deer there, I went there and there the deer was standing, so I shot him.

One time we went hunting and I had Doral’s mo-ped I was riding that bike when I got off, I saw a bunch of deer. There was a lake bottom, dry and I could see these 2 deer fighting.  I raised up to shoot one of the two and here came another deer toward me.  He was going to get me, so I turned and shot him.  And those other 2 kept fighting even though I had shot the third.

Another time we were out shooting antelope and we came over a knoll and there were 3 of them lying down.  Doral said, “Let me rest my gun on your shoulder to shoot it.”  So I let him it there, and I couldn’t hear for 2 weeks.  The animals all got up and run away.  Doral said one will be laying over the hill but I had seen them 3 run away.  But we were over and looked and there was one sitting there.

On Hanging Out with Doral

We were in a vehicle, riding downtown, where you turn to come onto 12 Avenue, on 1^st Street West.  We were coming along that street and there was a fellow who thought Doral had cut him off.  Doral hadn’t cut him off, but he drove ahead and cut Doral off and was as mad as a hatter.  Doral got out of the car, right on the corner.  There were other 2 guys there, working in a tire shop.

The guy who had come out of the car said, “Take your glasses off. I am going to hit you.”  Doral pointed at the tire shop and said, “You go over and get those 2 guys to witness the fight and then I will take my glasses off.”That made the guy even madder, but he went over and got the two men.  When they came back, Doral took his glasses off and put them right here in his shirt pocket (said Jay, using his right hand to pat his left shirt pocked).  That is what the guy wanted him to do.

Then Doral hit him so fast, I didn’t know what had happened.  Right in the nose, Doral came hard and fast.  The guy just turned around, got back in his car and drove away.

Those kids up at the church was fooling around, trying to see which one could slap the other guy’s face.  Doral got into the game which you play by having your hand at your side and reaching out and slapping the face of the other guy before he can slap you., I don’t know how Doral got into the game.  One of the kids’s name was Dalton. He walked up to Doral to play and Doral slapped him hard.  The kid said, “Let’s try that again”, so Doral upped and slapped his face again. 

It was his left hand.  Doral could lead with his left hand and he could throw that out so fast.

Doral was just so good to me.  He was the father I never had.  He was my friend, but he also treated me like he was my dad. He took me everywhere.  I never had to buy anything.  I have 2 of his guns.  When I get through them, I will send them to you.

I came out here to the Shuswap quite often with him.  I also went up to Moose Dome with Doral.  We went hunting up there. Doral should have been a millionaire from his oil leases, but that wasn’t a big thing for him.

We were up hunting one time and Doral woke me up.  He said, “I have seen Wyora.  She was dressed in white standing in front of me.  I went to talk to her, and that is what woke me up.  Why couldn’t I have kept my darned mouth shut?”

When Doral found out Wyora had cancer, he said, “I will take her down to Rochester,” but the Dr. told Doral it would be no use.  That is the first time I ever saw Doral cry.

Image from Coit Morrison's Collection

Wyora played Rook with us 2 days before she died.  I stopped there at the house.  I was on my way to the race track. .I stopped and we got talking and Wyora said she wanted to play rook.  So she got out of bed and Erva, Doral, Wyora and I played Rook.  I don’t know now who was partners. 

Today Darla told me that the Robertsons have read the official Rook rules which are different than the way we played the game.   The ‘1’ isn’t high.  

I like the old way.