How the Jacksons Do It.

Cooper meets Mr. Ed.

Last year my cousin Pam lost her husband in a tragic way. He was my age and we had similar interests, primarily golf. I was at the hospital when he was brought in and did not fully understand the seriousness of his illness. Anyway, almost a year has passed by and Pam has had a difficult time coping with the addditional responsibilities of managing their small horse farm west of Calgary. Aunt Fran is Pam's mom and Uncle Jim is her brother, for clarification.

A couple of months ago, our common uncle Jim called and suggested that we have a work party out at Pam's place. We had a rain out a few weeks ago and re-sheduled to yesterday. Nobody was told to bring tools, yet everybody brought power equipment, compressors, mowers, trimmers, trailers and a variety of useful tools to do the work.

A deck needed renewal

By 9:30 a.m. sister Dawne and Dan were already at work when Gerry and I arrived with my sister Susan and her husband Harry. Dawne was manning an electric lawn mower, Dan was working on repairing a deck that had serious issues. After a 2 minute greeting from Pam, Aunt Fran and Uncle Jim and without any direction, everybody grabbed a tool and headed off in different directions to work. 15 minutes later Doug showed up with a large, ride on mower that would accomplish a whole lot. Along with Doug was his friend and employee Larry Simmonds, who brought out the company bobcat.

One of the buildings that needed a heavy coat of paint. Good Work!!

The interesting part of the day was the lack of guidance as to what needed to be done. It was obvious that there were many chores to do and we were the group to do it. During the day Doug's son Tyler and our son Spencer showed up and found serious chores to do.

We trimmed about 300 yards of fence line, trimmed around dozens of trees, mowed 4 + acres that had not seen a mower in 2007, painted the outsides of 4 buildings, repaired a large deck, cleared and cleaned up 2 large roll off loads of trash, weeded and fixed up gardens, repaired gates and fences and did so without direction and with the best of feelings. Uncle Jim who is 74 worked like a 35 year old, Aunt Fran and Pam put on a wonderful lunch.

Stan, Spencer and Doug

I am impressed with my brothers and my sisters, love and greatly respect all my in-laws, always am impressed with the hard work of Larry, Tyler and Spencer. It was not easy for anybody to be there yesterday. Everybody had other places that they needed to be but there was not one complaint, a lot of good natured banter and a whole lot of love. Thanks to all of you. I am, once again, awed with respect.

Talk to you soon.....