Arranged in a nonlinear format, Shaking The Family Tree (published by DriverWorks Ink, 2013), represented a collection of informative and humorous stories retold by Limerick author, historian and village councillor, Lorelei Rogers.
Her paternal and maternal families originated from diverse places, including Ontario and South Dakota, but Rogers had roots in Saskatchewan dating to the early 1900s.
Rogers’ family shifted from farm-to-farm and then into the village of Mazenod, 26 kilometres east of Gravelbourg along Highway 43.
Mazenod is a hamlet in Sutton RM 103. Once a village and thriving community with a Co-op and several other businesses, Mazenod’s status was reduced to a hamlet on January 1, 2002.
Rogers' familly also spent a period in Moose Jaw in the late 1940s, but her family lived primarily in Mazenod and region on various farms.
Used to moving around since childhood, Rogers eventually left Saskatchewan for Calgary.
She resettled in Saskatchewan, when she moved to Limerick with her husband Hugh in late 1994.
Although an academic and educator, Rogers, born in 1938, grew up in a family dedicated to farming.
In childhood, she became an avid reader and diligent student with a particular interest in social studies. Much of Rogers' schooling took place in Mazenod at the village’s three-teacher school.
Later, Rogers entered Teacher’s College in Moose Jaw.
Rogers had an extensive teaching career – she taught school in Moose Jaw, Regina and Calgary.
She graduated with an MA in Ed Foundations at the University of Calgary in 1975.
Rogers eventually served on the Calgary Board of Education’s consultant team as a media specialist.
Her academic background sears off the pages of Shaking The Family Tree, as this volume of stories is presented in a well-written manner with precision – these are engaging vignettes about prairie life in South Central Saskatchewan from the 1900s to the 1950s and a bit beyond.
For those interested in local history, these real-to-life chapters narrated by Rogers contained detailed aspects of family history, but she also retold historic tales specific to South Central Saskatchewan, from Assiniboia to Gravelbourg and Fir Mountain – where her Pearson forebears lived following their arrival from South Dakota in 1910.
In Shaking The Family Tree, in many of Rogers' stories, there’s a wealth of vital, first-hand accounts of the province’s agriculture industry and of family life after the Second World War and in the early 1900s in the province.
The most absorbing features of her book are the times when she talks about life at home on the farm in the late 1940s and early 1950s in Saskatchewan – actually not too long ago in general historic terms.
The Mazenod-set chapters in Rogers’ book were especially absorbing, especially since the majority of the author’s true-to-life stories were set in an era before electricity, Wi-Fi connections, modern tractors and paved roads.
Rogers is especially adept at explaining how the older technology operated on the farm. In the book, she recounted how her grandmother’s and father’s steel-wheeled John Deere tractors were started.
“These tractors did not have starters; they did not even have a crank. To get the engine running, the farmer had to spin the flywheel with enough speed and force that it would turn the engine over … “ (p. 59).
Before conveniences like refrigerators were introduced, people in rural Western Canada used ice houses, where ice was packed and stored with sawdust.
In Shaking The Tree, Rogers wrote:
“During the winter, the men of the family would go to the deepest sloughs with a special set of tools – there was a large brace and bit to start a hold in the ice, a large saw about six feet in length with very large jagged teeth, and a pair of tongs.” (p. 110).
Washing clothes involved a tremendous amount of time and labour before modern washing machines and dryers. Rogers is adept at describing the family washing machine – a tub on legs with an arrangement of gears underneath and a wringer activated by a hand crank involving superhuman adult strength Rogers noted as a child, whenever she attempted to twist the crank’s handle.
She illustrated washing day, where her mother’s homemade starch became part of the routine as well as bluing cubes for whitening, scrub boards for pre-cleaning and clothing lines for drying.
The inner-workings of the used and unreliable Maytag washing machine her father bought later had impressed Rogers, but not as a modern convenience – more as a mechanical curiosity belching and churning, with an attached hose blowing exhaust through the wall behind and outside the house.
“These engines fire twice with each piston stroke – once as the piston goes down and again as it comes up. The result is a noisy putt-putt sound that could easily make you crazy!” (p. 122).
In Shaking the Family Tree, the reader is introduced to several unique characters. Glen Henderson, or Greasy, was a memorable figure in the book with unusual features and an explosive temper.
Rogers recollected the time when Greasy killed one of her dad’s favourite horses with a rock, because Pearl wouldn’t leave the pasture when the occasional hired hand whistled for her.
“His aim was deadly – he hit her front leg, broke it cleanly, and she had to be destroyed.”
