by Gerry Klein

1952: I don’t remember when I met Paul. He was three years and a bit older than me so, for me, he was always there. Like my ears – I knew he was there even if I couldn’t see him.
But Paul remembered when he first became aware of my existence. The story came to him when we were emptying our family home in Lafleche when Mom moved out. Paul wanted to salvage anything of value and he saw value in a beat-up old lantern. It reminded him of his first memory of me.
Our family was living in a tiny three-room shack in the yard where our father had grown up. I was the fifth child so there were 7 of us in this shack. It had no electricity, running water, or toilet. On stormy day, probably late 1952 when I was weeks or at most a few months old, Dad and Michael were away, Paul didn’t know where. The cow or cows got out and Mom had to figure out how to manage four tiny kids and stray cows. She piled Judy, Paul and Dan into an old car in the yard – I’m thinking it was the 1928 Chev I barely recall being in the yard – and she drove after the cows. As she was trying to usher them into a gate the front wheel of the car went into the ditch and the car lurched forward at an awkward angle. She went after the cows and told Judy and Paul to take Dan back to the shack, nearly half a mile away.
Paul says he could see that lantern’s light shining through the window and they walked in the wet, windy night to that light, switching off carrying or guiding Dan along the way. Finally, he told me, they came to the door, opened it up and he saw me peacefully sleeping in a bassinette on the kitchen table. It told him he was safe.
About 1960:
There were seven of us, all born within 10 years, and all of us siblings remained close. But Paul was the one I always knew had my back more than any other, and he knew I had his. When my Grade 2 or 3 teacher sent a note home with me every day to tell my mother how disappointed she was in me, Paul intercepted the letter an in the same red ink wrote that I had done exceptionally well that day. I don’t think our mother was fooled but she did express pride in me for one day in a row, which brought me mixed feeling of guilt for lying to my mom but thinking it was better than the daily routine.
It was Paul who warned me when I had a rusty nail protrude through my foot, that if I told Mom she would force me to get a big needle – something I thought was just adding cruelty to an accident – and just when I decided I could extract the nail and ride out the pain, he warned me that could result in me getting lock jaw. Nothing terrifies a Klein more than the idea one’s mouth would be locked open and instead of spreading our wisdom it would be dripping drool. I opted for the needle.
As close as we were s a family, there was one thing that set Paul off. While I, like most of my siblings, couldn’t wait to head out into the world, Paul couldn’t wait to get back home. He loved that farm, he loved the land and, I think in some way, even loved every rough hand that he got dealt. And he had his shar of bad years with not enough rain, broken equipment, bad crops. Whatever came his way, he’d just go out and fix it.
When we were young, I recall Dad bought a tractor that was strong enough to break the prairie on the steep hill on the north side of the hilly land we, apparently without irony, called “The Flat”. He turned up so many stones I recall Dan, Paul, and I stood at the bottom of that hill and challenged each other to jump from one to another without touching dirt. I remember getting to the top of the hill crestfallen, thinking we’d have to pick up all those stones. Paul arrived up top exhilarated, plotting where we’d put the rock pile and how he’d go after those stones too big to pick that would have to be dragged out by chain.
One day, while picking rocks on that land, we came across a string of bones in a washout. When we came to the end there was a skull that was clearly from a bison. I remember looking across the prairie from our position on that hill and we imagined what it must have been like when it was filled with thousands of bison, rather than farms.
About 1956:
To be honest, we made some pretty good cowboys. One summer when Dad was away with all our siblings, I think farming in Sedley, Paul and I were left to hold down the fort while Mom worked at the hospital. She’d assign us a series of tasks that were meant to keep us out of trouble but one day, perhaps in a presage of what was to come, we hit the bar instead.
We were too young to hit the real bar – I think Paul was seven and I was four – but we made do at home. Paul got down Dad’s shot glasses and whipped up a big batch of orange Kool-Aid that looked a lot like the whiskey they poured in the old black and white dusters.
I’d slap a washer on the table and he’d poor me a shot. I had so many washers – and I didn’t mind spending then on him as well – that he soon had to make more whiskey. It wasn’t long, however, I was throwing all that up against a bale in the barn with Paul rubbing my back and imploring me not to tell our mother I was sick. I still can’t drink orange Freshie.
This wasn’t the only unhappy acquaintance I had with the straw by the barn. There was the time Paul, Dan and I thought we’d experiment with the science of parachuting. We climbed to the peak of the barn and dreamed of having an umbrella to float us gently to the earth. But there was none, so we tied strings to the four corners of a sheet, tied it to me and I jumped into an all-too-tiny hay stack. Rather than drifting down like a leaf, however, I landed hard. I still remember what it feels like to have your liver threaten to leak out your sinuses.
Paul knew he was too big for the experiment. He was big for a brother three years his junior and he was just simply big and muscular. I would pump iron and stretch chest-building springs then look at my perpetually scrawny arms then see his muscles straining while he would be reefing on a wrench on the combine and I would think “what the hell?”
It was his size and gate that earned him his nickname Herman. Ken Packet would be in class in the old convent and hear the clump-clump of Paul’s footsteps coming in late down the wood floors in the hall and he thought it sounded like Herman Munster from the old television series.
A couple of years ago Paul told me that, although he felt like he was shrinking, he believed that nickname would follow him to his grave.
And so it seems.
I would like to say that Paul and I never argued but that isn’t the case. Beginning when I entered my teens we ideologically and spiritually diverged. I became more small “l” liberal and an atheist while Paul became more big “L” Liberal, small “c” conservative and Catholic spiritual.
We had long discussions about these things but I don’t think any got heated even though Paul was given to emotional volatility that could quickly result in raised voices. And, when it came to Dan when we were really young, it was sometimes followed by minor physical contact.
There was a time the three of us, Paul, Dan, and I, were in riding, I think it was in the back of our old 1939 Chev when Dad stopped to talk to a neighbour who was filling his water tank from the creek.
Paul popped his head over the seat an recognized we were along side the 12-Mile Creek.
“I didn’t know the creek came this far,” he said.
Dan popped his head up, looked at Dad and the neighbour, then asked “What creep?”
“I didn’t say creep, I said creek.”
“You said creep,” Dan insisted.
I thought it was funny but the next thing I knew they were in fisty cups, tumbling out of the car like Andy Capp and his wife in the comics.
Dad grabbed the two of them by the collars like errant rabbits, tossed them back in the car and said: “I can’t stop and talk for two minutes without you two embarrassing me by getting into a scrap.
I thought it was hilarious.
Paul was quick to take offence but also quick to amend. He and Carol were playing Pictionary with his life-long friend Larry Vadimuk and his wife. The women were cleaning their clocks when one had to go to the washroom and the other spouse went into the kitchen to get snacks. Paul and Larry paused in their blaming each other for losing so badly long enough to peer at the stack of cards. They decided they’d win a round even if it meant looking at the next card.
It was Larry’s draw and the answer was Dinosaur. They got in the ready position and flipped over the sand timer. Larry drew a curved line along the paper and Carol blurted out “Dinosaur!” Larry looked at Paul and said “What the hell were you waiting for? Why didn’t you answer?”
It dawned on the women that the men had been cheating. When Paul phoned me with the story I thought it funny but he felt bad that he and Larry had exchanged heated words. That t soon blew over and they remained close friends until Larry died.
Paul and I never really had words over the important things of life but we did have a 40-ounce hot debate late into one night over which one of us had the better dog. I didn’t really care all that much for mine but I think I still won the debate because Paul eventually had to put his down for killing chickens.
There was one time in the 90s when Paul phoned and asked if I would come down and help butcher a steer. He would share the meat. I drove the four hours south to the farm for the dirty job because I knew Paul hated this part of farming. He lured the steer to the fence with a pail of chop and using the single-shot 22 Coey my dad bought before I was born for just this sort of task, he shot the steer in the head. Stunned but not dead, Paul reloaded and shot again. Still not dead.
Finally, I jumped on its back and cut its jugular. Paul ran off to get the front-end loader, we hooked up the back legs and Paul began to lift only to have the hydraulic line break and oil shot everywhere. I was traumatized by it all – for a few moments there I thought I’d become a Buddhist – and I worried about Paul’s kids who were probably witness to these events. It was a stinking hot day so we had to hurry up the skinning and bringing the carcass to the butcher, who informed us he would have done the task for something like $25.
I looked at Paul and said: “I already spend $75 on gas and have to drive back again.” “Ya, in retrospect we probably should have gone that route,” Paul responded.
But Paul was accustomed to doing for himself. He built the house where he and Carol raised their kids with his own hands, he raised the farm yard from the dirt. When something broke, Paul would fix it. When the rain didn’t come and the wind blew, he figured someway to hold heart and soul together and kept the land when many others would have packed up and gone elsewhere.
Although our Dad was stingy with complements, especially when it came to Paul, he told me that late one day during harvest the tractor broke down and Dad was despondent thinking they’d be out of commission for days while it got fixed.
“I waited all day for Paul to haul that tractor into town to be fixed. As the day went on, I got angrier thinking he must be sleeping in until I went out to the farm and demanded of Tyler ‘Where’s your dad?’
“Combining, I think,” Tyler said.
“Can’t be,” Dad replied. “The tractors broken.”
Dad went to the shop and saw the tractor was gone and there was only a patch of oil and scattering of tools on the floor.
“After I came home, Paul spilt that tractor, took out the oil pump, fixed it and put everything back together and was out combining,” Dad, who was a trained mechanic, told me. “I couldn’t do that.”
There were some things he couldn’t fix, however. In the winter of 1993 we drove to Quebec to help our sister who was dying of cancer. She had also built her house by hand and had some final touches she wanted help with. This was hard for Paul because he always had difficulty dealing with death.
While we were there Judy asked if we would stay and help her die at home so she wouldn’t have to live her last days in hospital.
Paul looked after the kids, cooking and home while I looked after Judy as best I could. I would go around the house with my video camera recording day-to-day events, the kids, Paul’s cooking, the fixes on the house and Judy’s beloved wild bird feeders. I slept with a baby monitor to my ear and would respond to Judy when she was uncomfortable. After a few days I became exhausted.
Late one evening I was going to feed the massive shepherd when Paul offered to do it for me. I was going to film it for Judy but was too tired.
Paul, who had a healthy fear of the dog, put on his winter gear, loaded up the pail with food and tentatively walked through the snow to the dog, who was straining on his chain and barking in anticipation. Paul held out the pail like an offering, stepped on a door we had stored outside that had become covered in snow, slipped and slid on his back to the dog’s feet.
The pail and its contents flew into the air and Paul was covered in dogfood. The dog leaped on him in delight, pinning him down and gobbling the food off his face and parka. It was the last great laugh of Judy’s life.
Caring for Judy was perhaps one of the hardest things we did together. After he was diagnosed, Paul said he hoped he wouldn’t have to die slowly like Judy but would rather go quickly like Michael. Still, when the end came and it was like Judy’s, he approached it with courage and maintained his humour – just as Judy did when cancer claimed her.
It is the natural order of things for those of us who are lucky that we live, grow old, and watch our children grow. Paul died naturally after not only watching his kids grow but realizing he and Carol had raised an incredibly intelligent, accomplished and courageous family.
That is the greatest legacy one can have.

Paul’s wife is Carol Studer