The Icelandic Canadian - 01.06.1982, Síða 39

THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
37
cident was over. I worked for the Stephan-
son store for eight months, was paid fifteen
dollars a month with room and board, and
was speaking English quite well by the
time I left the job. For that I can thank
another Irishman, Bill Whiteside.
Although he had spent six months in jail
for horse stealing, Bill Whiteside had a
heart of gold. He would come to the store,
talk to me and correct my pronunciation.
He was a very good friend, and once in a
while he would give me a dollar. Bill was
clever and witty. He owned a livery bam in
Leslie and kept several teams of drivers for
hire. He also owned a fast pony, and be-
cause I did have experience in riding the
Icelandic horses, he let me ride this pony,
allowing me to become a rather good
jockey. Bill was a trader in general. He was
an agent for a machine company, and he
did quite a bit of horse trading on the side.
Although his horses always did look fine,
there was always something wrong with
them. They were run-aways, or balky, or
wild. As a rule, Bill got the best of every
deal.
Speaking of Bill Whiteside reminds me
of another character that I came across
while working for the Stephansons. There
was a tract of land in the Leslie area that
was owned by some wealthy men in Eng-
land. Although this tract, about two or
three sections, was managed by an Aus-
tralian by the name of Holman James,
Holman’s knowledge of farming was nil.
He had been a bull driver while living in
Australia, and had become the world’s best
whip cracker. Holman had a trunk full of
from ten to fifty foot long whips and had
performed on stage for a number of years.
During that period of time in which I
worked at the store I was able to watch this
man use his whip to cut a cigar into three
pieces while the cigar was held in an
assistant’s mouth. He could also use his
whip to trigger an assistant’s pistol, or to
cut a match in half. Holman was a rather
simple man, although he was educated in
England and did have an English accent.
One day while I was working in the
store, Stefan made note of the fact that my
clothes were getting quite worn and that
they were too small. He then offered to
order a suit of clothes for me at the whole-
sale price of ten dollars. When the new
clothes came, I wanted to go home to show
the suit to my parents. It was ten miles to
our home, so the next Sunday, about May
15th, I left Leslie all dressed up and riding
a bicycle. The roads were rough, and after
five or six miles of difficult riding I ac-
cepted a ride with a neighbor named Jacob
Norman. All of a sudden Jake stopped the
buggy as we saw what looked like a black
cat with two white stripes down his back.
Jake said it would be nice to catch that cat,
so I got out of the buggy and ran after the
animal as fast as I could. The cat stopped
when I got too close, lifted his bushy tail
and sprayed my new suit with a terrible
smell. I had never seen a skunk before as
there are no skunks in Iceland. My parents
thought this a very unfair joke for Jake to
play on anyone, and they told him what
they thought as everyone was sure that the
suit was ruined. Jake apologized for his
prank, and when I returned to Leslie that
evening everyone wanted to know who had
killed the skunk. I took the new suit of
clothes to my friend, Dr. Julius, to ask him
if he had anything in his drugstore that
would kill the smell. He gave me essence
of peppermint and told me to sprinkle it on
the clothes, then to put them into a clean
bag and to bury the bag in the ground. Five
days later I dug the clothes up and the smell
had disappeared. I never did try to catch a
skunk again!
I left the Stephanson home in the fall of
1910, worked on the farm at home doing
plowing and haying for a while, then went
to work for the threshing crew that worked
for Gisli Bildfell. Gisli owned his own
threshing outfit, and I was to be a straw