Over the decades, the landscape of any town changes as new businesses open, others close and aging buildings are replaced. This photo from the early 1970s shows Usher’s Shell gas station at the corner on Main Street where Shopper’s Drug Mart is now located. Note that OK Tire was then in its present location. There were numerous other gas stations in town in those days that no longer exist today. (Osoyoos and District Museum and Archives)
Sometimes an old photo that seems mundane for some can trigger emotional memories for others.
That was the case last week when we ran a photo from 1933 showing a horse hitched to a stoneboat used to carry water.
Old-timer Iris Tweedy called and told us the photo brought back memories of farming after the Second World War with her husband Glenn.
“When I opened that page and saw that horse and stoneboat, I could have cried,” she said.
Veterans could receive a 10-acre lot after the war and she believes it was 1949 when they started farming theirs. Most got lots east of the lake to plant orchards.
“We had the horse and stoneboat and two barrels of water on it,” she said. “There was an overhead water pipe that the farmers could go to to load up the barrels.”
The couple had dug holes and they planted some 700 fruit trees.
“He’d throw a bucket of water in the hole and I’d put the tree in and he’d cover it up and we’d go to the next hole,” she recalled.
The land was full of cactus and the couple had to use a grub hoe to get them up.
Then they used the horse with a plow on the land.
“We were right in the time before the big machinery,” Tweedy said.
If you see a photo here that triggers your memories, please call Editor Richard McGuire at 250-495-7225 or email [email protected].
RICHARD McGUIRE
Osoyoos Times
