Interviewee: Kent Wood                                                                                                    
Interviewer: Sharon Turner
 
Sharon Turner: My name is Sharon Turner and we are in the office at the Stirling School, We are in Kent Wood’s office and Kent Would you like to introduce yourself and tell us when you were born and who your parents were what brought you to Stirling.

Kent Wood: My name Is Kent Wood and I was born on May 2^nd 1947 my Parents are George Wood and Hanna Wood both of them were raised in the Cards ton area. What brought be to Stirling, My father was the Out manager of Wheat Pool elevators and we were residing in a place called Shouldice which is in the Vulcan, Milo area and he was transferred to Stirling in 1953 and that is how we came to be, actually he wasn’t transferred he was transferred to Maybutt I guess a little Hamlet if you like which was very close to the elevators and there was a general store there and a post office and therefore that is why I would say Maybutt.

Sharon Turner: I am really interested in Maybutt. Was the hotel there when you were?

Kent Wood: No the hotel had burnt down several years before we had arrived there the foundation of the old hotel was there very visible and made a real good area to play in for sure.

Sharon Turner: I have heard that they have the old board sidewalks still there in the fifties were they still there. 

Kent Wood: Not so much you couldn’t see evidence of them at the hotels and as I remember at the general store. There was cement sidewalks there at that time

Sharon Turner: About how many people lived there in the fifties?

Kent Wood: Probably thirty to forty

Sharon Turner: Did you think of yourself as a Maybutt or as Stirling?

Kent Wood: We actually thought of ourselves as Maybutt because that was the mailing address but there wasn’t very much going on at Maybutt and as a result when it came time to go to school I we moved to Maybutt in I believe it was march of fifty three and in September of fifty three I was enrolled in the Stirling school and so once you star going to Stirling school and you just kind of think of yourself as a Stirling and to be right honest with you when you are talking to some people if you mention Maybutt they look at you like you are nuts but if you mention Stirling they will be like oh okay we know where that is. As a matter of fact on the side of the elevator wasn’t Maybutt it was Stirling

Sharon Turner: I have found out that there is a board nailed to a fence post that gives those years up to about 1912.

Kent Wood: That was put there by a man by the name of Larry Degrasii who owns that little Quarter piece of land where the general store and the post office used to be and then he since then has bought I am not sure who he bought it from but he bought Ellison elevator house which Hank Nelson lived there he has bought that because the house up just a little further I guess west and that was the old Gerdrasik place

Sharon Turner: So they lived out there then.

Kent Wood: They lived there he and three of four brothers and his mom lived there and then hand Joyce and the two kids lived in the old Nelson place and initially JN wells ran the post office and he well his wife and one son Roney and there was Petrisha that lived there for a while and they had another daughter that lived there and when we first arrived pushers were at the train station and he was the whatever you want to call it lived there, I think that they had four or five kids. So and then us living up the road a little bit so there were a few kids there to play with and there was actually quite a lot of stuff to do.

Sharon Turner: So you were only like six years old when you moved there. Do you remember moving there?

Kent Wood: Oh yes I can remember moving there and when we got there a man by the name of Joe Weaster the man who had been the elevator manager he hadn’t moved out of the house yet so it was a bit of a shamble and I remember that night working late into the evening to even get a bed set up to go there. It was a readjustment getting in all the people that were there so I can remember quite a bit about that. 

Sharon Turner: The Stirling history book Mentions that your parents and you moved there, did you not have any brothers or sisters. 

Kent Wood: I am the only child.

Sharon Turner: Is that right, what was that like living in a community where there were anywhere between four to ten to twelve kids in a family

Kent Wood: It didn’t bother me. The kids there, Dale and I, Dale Pusher and myself and Roney Wells we would go and play baseball and we would make little baseball diamonds over in the railway kind of land that they got between the road and the tracks and then later on when I became interested in golf I actually made a three hole golf course with sand greens and everything down there to play on and things like that there was always things to do and there was always in the summer time you would always go fishing sown at he creek for suckers and pike and go to Stirling to go fishing and stuff like that. So we were kept fairly busy and the fact that I didn’t have any brothers or sisters really didn’t affect me that much.

Sharon Turner: Well when you live in a little community like that it is almost like everyone is family anyway.

Kent Wood: Exactly.

Sharon Turner: About how old were you when you did the golf course?

Kent Wood: I would probably have been ten or twelve

Sharon Turner: Surprising little boy.

Kent Wood: I had a lot of help, Mertzes in order to make the sand green you have got to mix sand and oil well the contributed a bunch of used oil and I was able to get one of the Gedrasick boys to bring it over and I would wheelbarrow all the sand and I would dig it out from the ground and so it was a couple summers project. It was worth while because then I had a golf course to play on.

Sharon Turner:  Did a lot of people use it.

Kent Wood: Well once they found out that it was down there we had a lot of the guys from town that would come down there, the older guys.

Sharon Turner: From Stirling.

Kent Wood: Ya Myron Eves used to come down there and that was fine with me because I was better than they were and I used to take them on for nickels it was just fine.

Sharon Turner: So here we are sitting at your office at the school and I see a line up here of clubs so you must still be into golf

Kent Wood: Oh yes that’s Mr. Maz’s clubs there I just re-griped them for him last night he is going to take them home tonight.

Sharon Turner: Did you bike into school did you walk in or did you usually get a ride.

Kent Wood: As I remember it initially my parents drove me in but it wasn’t very long after I had started school that the school district hired I believe that it was got two busses and I don’t know if it was if they bought the busses or weather Hubert Mark and Ken Peterson purchased the busses they transported the students from the outer areas into the school and I happened to be on the buss that Hubert owned and it was at that particular time that I first met Chuck Parrett because he was working for Hubert he did most of the buss driving early on and then Merf Fife did some of it later on but that is when I met Chuck but to answer you question it was basically just a little while and then a little while after that we were bussed in.

Sharon Turner: Okay what about now there was a general store down there so did you as a group of friends come up to Stirling to the store or did you just stay down in Maybutt.

Kent Wood: Actually other than to come swim and that in the summer time we just played well with the school of course we more or less stayed at home and played with the people that were there. Gale had a number of brothers and sisters and Roney and I were roughly the same age so we played sports together and we more or less entertained ourselves and then of course at the top in probably about four years after we moved my and Ken Peterson started the first little league baseball team that they had in Stirling and after that we spent more time here in Stirling because we played on the team and stuff like that and so we did entertain ourselves but we did have a fair amount to do here to.

Sharon Turner: I was going to ask you about the school, now did you attend the old school so this school wasn’t up yet when you came here.

Kent Wood: No like I said I can remember moving into this school in I think I was in grade five the first three years of the schooling I went to school in the little red schoolhouse that was separate from the big brick one and the little red one is down north I guess and has been renovated and turned into a house

Sharon Turner: Oh yes I have head about this but I haven’t be3en able to see it, is it still red.

Kent Wood: It is still red I think I kind of had the asphalt siding on it and It kind of looked like a brick down there they moved that and then in grade four we moved into the big brick schoolhouse and if I remember correctly I was in there for part of grade four and then in grade five we moved into the new school.

Sharon Turner: That must have been exciting for everybody.

Kent Wood: The most exciting part of it is I remember two of them was a shiny floor on the gym and the fact that if you had to go to the bathroom in the wintertime you didn’t have to outside and make a half a block trek to the outhouse.

Sharon Turner: Did they have the outdoor.

Kent Wood:Oh yes and it was not real pleasant you didn’t have a lot of kids going to the bathroom in the winter. But in the summer time it was quite a problem because it took you a while to get down there and get back so the teachers were very reluctant to let you go. Burt those were the two things that I remember most. And then probably thirdly the brand new desks and the shiny floors just the real brightness that was associated with a new building.

Sharon Turner: Well for someone who is interested in sports such as you are the3 gym would have had a big influence especially to you. Did you use the church gym before that?

Kent Wood: Well sometimes on the place where the first new school or the core of the one that we are sitting on now there was the recreation hall

Sharon Turner: Oh yes I have heard about this now that was school owned.

Kent Wood: Yes it sufficed but that was about all that it did the thing that I remember most about that is the steel bars on the window and the bars were located in just the right place to put the volleyball net so we used the bars on the window to hold the volleyball net up so that is one thing that I can remember with that old wreck hall there were all sorts of neat crawl spaces that were underneath the wreck hall that we used at recess time that we used to crawl thought and hide in and be lat for class.

Sharon Turner: And now you are the teacher.

Kent Wood: And now I am the teacher, frowning on stuff like that

Sharon Turner: Not only that you know what is going on they can’t lie, you have been there done that. So you have seen all the additions go onto the school and everything

Kent Wood: This is my thirtieth year of teaching; I have been associated with this school for forty two years and the only three years that I haven’t been here was the three years of university.

Sharon Turner: Wholly cow

Kent Wood: So I have seen all the additions, I have seen people come and go, I have seen at least seven or eight principals come and go.

Sharon Turner: Were you here with Joe Stevenson because I just interviewed him yesterday.

Kent Wood: I was here with Joe Stevenson and before him Doug Christenson, and then I remember before Doug there was arrow or something like that he was here for one year and then before that was will Flenchuka that I can remember and then before Wilf Carl Young

Sharon Turner: You were here with Wilf Carl Young, well I guess you would have been a student then.

Kent Wood: I was a student then, I remember when once in grade two I got into a little trouble I went into the old brick school house and going up into the office and it was kind of a hole up there and having to sit and wait for him and the longer you sat the more scared you got and I didn’t visit his office again but as matter of fact he never did come to talk to me finally the teacher came and got me and told me to come back to class but that was enough she probably knew what it was doing.

Sharon Turner: I heard that he was quite strict but he was a good teacher.

Kent Wood: Well I don’t know about his teaching but I do know that all the kids didn’t want to go to the office.

Sharon Turner: What I heard is that he had a way of letting you know that he wasn’t happy with you or what you were doing and you just knew.

Kent Wood: Ya very possible

Sharon Turner: Well how did you get into sports and everything was that from your fathers influence?

Kent Wood: No, my fathers influence. My dad was a pretty fair baseball player back in his youth he played in the Cardston area, the boundary baseball league he was probably one of the top pitchers down there so he was interested in that. Plus my grandpa Wood coached him, he was a coach when we lived up at Shouldice my mom and I, when my dad got the job, we stayed in Wolfer and he commuted back and forth and one day Friday he came home and here he brought me al little bat that he had carved out of a fence post during the week and so that was my first bat and when we finally moved to Shouldice my grandpa Wood came out from the Cavary and he would take me out in to the pasture and play with me that is basically where I got introduced to sports. Since then I just enjoy every kind of sport there are probably very few things that I haven’t tried and I am not really good in any of them but I enjoy doing them all.

Sharon Turner: Are you partial to softball because of your initial connection to sports.

Kent Wood: I was in my youth but right now golf is the game it is a matter of fact thinking back about it now, had I had the opportunity to play softball or golf and get good instruction I would have played golf instead of softball

Sharon Turner: Do you still have the bat.

Kent Wood: Not the original bat

Sharon Turner: Not the one that your father gave you

Kent Wood: I probably broke it several times. You know you hit the ball so hard and with that soft wood, it didn’t last to long.

Sharon Turner: When did you move up to Stirling?

Kent Wood: Okay, I was in grade ten I think that it was in March so in grade ten that would be about sixty two sixty three is when we moved up into the new house that was exciting because here in that old house on main street but again the extent of the indoor plumbing was a chemical toilet in the basement and an old pump that sometimes worked to draw water out of the cistern but up in the new house you had the indoor plumbing you had the pressure system you had hot and cold water you had the bathtub and so it was really exciting.

Sharon Turner: You had electricity all the time down there in Maybutt. So that house how old was it when you moved into it? Was it old?

Kent Wood: Ya it was old

Sharon Turner: Gosh it’s still standing.

Kent Wood: It’s still standing, that house has been through a lot of interesting things. For example it had problems with flood control and lots of times down there, well at least twice that I can remember water was running through one of our basement windows and the basement was full. There you are sleeping and you hear this water running underneath you.

Sharon Turner: Did that bother you

Kent Wood: It didn’t bother me but it drove my mother batty. To get to the buss in the morning you had to put on big
gum boots and wade out to the road. In the winter time lots of times you would have snow drifts that were eight, ten,twelve feet tall around and you were actually blocked in for a week at a time the only way. My dad would say well if you guys want to go into Lethbridge on the weekend someone is going to have to shovel this. So out we would go and in a matter of two three days we would get a path wide enough for him to get the car out.

Sharon Turner: And of course he could get to work just walking.

Kent Wood: Just walking we knew darn well that he wanted to go to Lethbridge just as much as we did but he would say no if you guys want to go to Lethbridge you guys can do the work that old house has been around the block and back a few times.

Sharon Turner: Did it look the same; did it have the little porch on the front?

Kent Wood: It looks basically the same the porch on the front was wonderful in the spring time because it made sure that it was a good hot house.

Sharon Turner: It faces the right way to.

Kent Wood: It was wonderful for that and mom really appreciated that to because she liked to grow flowers and stuff like that

Sharon Turner: Now most people that I have interviewed have the system where you have the four homes on one block and so you had your shed for your tractor and you had a huge garden you had animals you had milk cow and a couple of sheep. Did you have all of that on you property as well?

Kent Wood: See the house that was built was a company house and the property that they bought when they built when they built that house extended back through what used to be the old reservoir and when the town decided 

Sharon Turner: Narrow.

Kent Wood: Narrow and long, and my dad used to in the spring used to go and get some of these calf’s from dairies and so on and so we raised some calf’s in there and I had some rabbits and when we lived down at Maybutt he always had pigs and chickens and stuff like that they had a little barn in there but no cows. When I was down at Maybutt I had a horse. When we moved up to Stirling it was just the calf’s and I had a little shed back there that I grew some rabbits in and stuff like that.

Sharon Turner: Your mom had a big garden at both homes

Kent Wood: Pretty big, actually when we moved from that present site where Darren and Christy live that yard was immaculate since they moved in, I think it got something to do when they move in the reservoir wasn’t available for those big pine trees and they more or less died but when they left there I would say that it was one of the top five yards in all of Stirling. My mom took great pride in flowers and she wouldn’t even let me mow the lawn because I didn’t do it right.

Sharon Turner: So you didn’t have to do all the outdoor chores

Kent Wood: Nope, and that suited me just fine.

Sharon Turner: Did you do indoor chores.

Kent Wood: Very little, Spoilt I was Spoilt, my mom pampered me there no doubt about that.

Sharon Turner: What about working with your dad?

Kent Wood: I worked with him a little bit down at the elevator when I was younger. One interesting thing was that in the elevator there is what they call a boot and it is down in the ground and sometimes the boots are made of steel and sometimes over a series of years they desecrate and there gets to be a hole in them. Well when the cups go down to take the grain up to the top of the elevator and some grain falls out and when I gets wet it starts to stink and spoil so every so often you had to go down into the boot and clean it out, well my job was always down. So I would go down there and I would fill the bucket up and he would pull it up and he made sure that when he pulled it up that he bounced it off the walls and all this stuff comes down on my head and of course one I got done I would cuss him for doing that and he said listen son that’s a good lesson because he said if you don’t want to do that kind of work the rest of your life then you go to school. I will never forget that, and then. Lots of time I would help him shovel grain in the elevator and things like that part of it we worked together and around on the house and fences and stuff like that we worked together on there and things like that and so we hung out together and we spent a lot of time together.

Sharon Turner: What was your parent’s character like how would you describe your dad?

Kent Wood: Umm hard nosed

Sharon Turner: Really

Kent Wood: Ya but a very caring individual. My mother describe her this way if every person could be like her this earth would be like heaven because she was such a caring individual, everybody liked her and everybody liked my dad to but with me he was a hard nosed on some things but a marshmallow on other things you know he cried animal stories and stuff like that on animal shows and you know with me I knew who was boss and that was okay with me

Sharon Turner: Did you go out to Maybutt much after you moved to Stirling?

Kent Wood: No I was getting about an age where there were more tings that were important to me and about. I did go down there occasionally but you could run down there or bike down there or later on when I had a drivers licence to sit and BS with my dad sometimes.

Sharon Turner: But the friends that you left down there.

Kent Wood: They had all left by that time, the store had closed down and the train station was no longer there, Gedrasiks I think were there for a while but not to much longer. By the time that we finely moved to Stirling Maybutt was basically a non entity anymore there was no Post office there anymore

Sharon Turner: What did you do for entertainment in Stirling?

Kent Wood: Well the school offered a lot of entertainment I think more so than it does now for the simple fact that it is real easy for the kids to jump in the car now and go some place else where as we did a lot of things with friends here and we had a fair amount of school dances and school plays and dances parties, you could go and do things at other peoples houses and my house and basically the pool was the hub of social activities

Sharon Turner: I heard that it was just with the Church and the School and a lot of it overlapped and that was just you social life.

Kent Wood: It was and everybody participated however towards the end of my high school you could see the trend developing people were becoming more and more bile and as a result the parties in my grade twelve year I didn’t feel that they were as good as my ones in my grade nine year Basically it was school oriented as far as I was concerned as far as entertainment. 

Sharon Turner: Did you go into Raymond much

Kent Wood: I never ever did go to Raymond much as a child I went more to Lethbridge than to Raymond but I know that a lot of my classmates more or less lived in Raymond and I never ever did go over there very much

Sharon Turner: Ya when you moved up here then you were close to the Nelsons and who else?

Kent Wood: No they weren’t there when we first moved there, the people that lived on that block that we were is Duane Hirshie, there was us and then there was Perry Barton where Stanford’s now live and then going down the other way there was When I came into grade then. Okay Hicken’s were just moved where they are now and I am not sure who was on the house beyond them as far as what was across the street from us there was that little house just straight across and that was it

Sharon Turner: Were Hauns there yet

Kent Wood: No not Hauns but their grandfather I am not sure but we called him buck weed and I don’t know why we called him buck weed but that’s what we called him and Dave Steeds house wasn’t there Shauferts House wasn’t there. There was nothing there it was just more or less wide open space you could look out the front window of that house…
 
Tape 1 Side 2
 
Sharon Turner: Okay which development?

Kent Wood: Ya there was none of the development down the street where Darryl lived none of that was there.

Sharon Turner: On Main Street. So the Livingston house was there.

Kent Wood: The Livingston house was there.

Sharon Turner: And the big three story brick house, Where Seely’s live.

Kent Wood: Ya, ya the house across the street on the corner the little one was there and I think around where Dave lived there was a house and Danny lived there but I think if I remember right that it was taken down or moved when Dave moved there.

Sharon Turner: Your friends were basically friends from the neighbourhood and kids that you went to school with.

Kent Wood: Ya the kids I went to school with I was friends with Bruce Hirsche, and Gary Mertz, and Dale Jenson, and Bruce Michelson, just basically Robert Herget, Terry Oler, kids I hung around with and we just did a lot of things.

Sharon Turner: Did you see them much over the years.

Kent Wood: Very Seldom. Well actually Ken Peterson and I we were in the same class but I see Kenny occasionally most of the other people have moved away.

Sharon Turner: He has to now.

Kent Wood: Ya

Sharon Turner: I am going to ask you about changes that you have seen I mean you are in a peculiar situation because you are at the school as well as having lived in Stirling but what are some of the changes that you think have had a significant difference in the village.

Kent Wood: When I lived here, seventeen years ago the felling that I had is that I knew everybody and they knew me and it was just a small easy going friendly type of community. Since then and maybe, I may not be reading the situation right but I think that that easy going-ness has changed a little bit in the since that you now have paved roads and there are more houses, there are more people and it doesn’t seem that it is quite the same as it used to be it is more like a city now than a small friendly village, easy, laidback, the thing that I noticed also is that at that particular time there were well established family who had lived here for a long time they had large family’s and very few transit people that move in move out whatever and that is what is see is happening more and more it is not quite as grounded the roots aren’t quite as deep although there are kids who are now coming back to the community after they have been gone for a while.

Sharon Turner: To come and raise there kids.

Kent Wood: Ya and that is the big change however I am not sure if I am accurate in that because I do not live here but that is just some observations that I have made. So I say that the roads and all this other stuff has been an improvement but I am not sure that I can do that because I don’t like the feeling that was present when

Sharon Turner: Kind of a romanticized village to grow up in like what you would see on like where the red fern grows or something.

Kent Wood: Exactly and in a since you can somewhat see the same kind of thing here in the school, its bigger things have changed in education and that affects things that have happened. And I don’t get the same feeling the same together ness as it was when I was in school.

Sharon Turner: Well have only been here with only two teenage boys, we haven’t felt that together-ness. I think that defiantly there is that different feeling that you grew up with because there on new kids on the block, you can feel that.

Kent Wood: It seemed like that people just fit in and you know you just kind of roam with the punches.

Sharon Turner: Everyone did everything together.

Kent Wood: And you know that was a pretty good feeling.

Sharon Turner: Good sense of security isn’t it.

Kent Wood: Exactly and so I don’t know if it is an improvement but I would say though driving down the road is a sure an improvement and you are not hitting pot holes all over things like that and in that sense it is better but the feeling of camaraderie and friendly-ness and that was really good then and I think that it is something that it might be lacking now.

Sharon Turner: Now you were a child at that time and that you felt that way do you think that the adults felt the same way do you think that they felt that same camaraderie.

Kent Wood: I really think that the majority of them that felt that way however I do know that there are certain family that didn’t like other family and as a matter of fact there are still present today and so I am sure that there was some of that and I know that my parents were quit happy and they had a lot of friends here and dad did business with everybody in the community and as well as the surrounding area. Hank Nelson, they work for different grain companies but it was never really a competition you know they were friends and they would kind of look after on another they were usually the only two down there and they would make sure that the other hadn’t fallen off the grain cart and that kind of thing. So I form my observation of my parents I think that they were quite happy and we ended up the same way. You know there are problems always but

Sharon Turner: Now you moved off to this house in grade ten, how long did your family stay in that home?

Kent Wood: Until basically eighteen years ago because I bought a house in Lethbridge eighteen years ago and my dad retired from the elevator in November so they stayed in the house so until November so basically they have been there for eighteen years, then they moved to Lethbridge.

Sharon Turner: Did Nelsons, Grant Nelson bought it then

Kent Wood: That is what I understand and I can’t remember, I know that Garth Jenson lived there before Christie and Darren moved there. There were a couple of other families that have lived there, well actually the fella’ that took dads place in the elevator lived there for a couple of years and then they closed this elevator down. So it wasn’t exactly after mom and dad moved from it would have been two or three years later.

Sharon Turner: Where they having rodeos and all that kind of thing while you were growing up here?

Kent Wood: They just sort of started with that when I grew up here and when I lived here they did some stuff and the big probably the biggest thing that was going on at that time was the men’s slow pitch team. We played in quite a competitive league and in the summer time we would have people come down and watch we were actually let me put it this way, the town now looks after the diamonds and makes them look nice, we did it then. But things were just getting started they work on a much larger Steel than they did when I was here they do a lot more a things and of course when I was still here it was just about the time it would be a year or two before I moved into a new swimming pool.

Sharon Turner: Where was the old swimming pool?

Kent Wood: The old pool was up on the corner where those blue buildings are now if they are still there the last time I looked down that way they were.

Sharon Turner: On that same block

Kent Wood: Ya On that same block There used to some bathrooms in there that they still use for something, that used to be the old pool and the pool used to be on the street side next to those buildings.

Sharon Turner: They have had that pool here for a ling time it is nice to have.

Kent Wood: Well the lions club were the ones that were the main push behind that old pool and I don’t remember what year it was but I can remember going to the grand opening and I remember Ray Nelson who was he president of the lions club at that time and Boyd Hirsche cutting the ribbon to open the pool

Sharon Turner: Did you know the Hirsche’s very well, living next door to them there.

Kent Wood: Not really well but mom often chatted with them and you most of the time you just did your own thing and you know just hi, how you doing.

Sharon Turner: Its still sort of that way. Darren and I had quite the conversation about planting our gardens; we did it on the same day.

Kent Wood: Dad did business with Lyn and later with on with Marvin I taught Marty in school.

Sharon Turner: Did you, now you teach his children.

Kent Wood: Not quite yet but it is getting that way by four exam pole I taught Ron to dunk them and I taught several of her kids. When you teach kids of kids that you have taught that tells you that you are getting old, I am waiting to teach kids of kids of kids

Sharon Turner: Then it really scares you, then you know that you are about to retire.

Kent Wood: That’s for sure

Sharon Turner: You said that you had a horse down in Maybutt but you didn’t bring that here.

Kent Wood: No

Sharon Turner: You didn’t get to ride after that.

Kent Wood: No I didn’t get a chance to ride after I left Maybutt the reason  of course was not that I didn’t wasn’t to it was because the horse and I had a little accident with her front shoulder and we had to put her down, never did get another one. And then of course interest you went in different directions

Sharon Turner: Are there any memories that you had in particular that you wanted to make note of.

Kent Wood: Just that its been really interesting I don’t know if this is a memory but it has been really interesting to me to see the way that things have changed in the school to see the way that the additions have come on and the way that things have just modernized and just got I don’t know nicer but bigger and things like that it there is so many nice memories that you know if I went through them all. But I think that the best memory that I have had is in 1980 when I was coaching the girl’s basketball team. I have been introduced to the game in I think seventy-eight and then in seventy-nine I took over and we ended up playing in the final of the zones here and we have made a long term commitment that we wanted to win our zone and be in the provincial tournament in 1980 since we were hosting it and we had to win our zone and actually accomplishing that and having the opportunity to work with those girl was a fantastic feeling, I don’t know it is just hard to describe the chemistry was unbelievable as a coach I could ask them to do anything and they would go out and try to do it for me. No questions asked and I guess it spoiled me for all other teams that I coached because the feeling was not quite the same and even to this day you know if they see me or I see them a block away we’ll make a very special effort to get it together and Shirley Adamson was one of the girls Jack Hickens daughter Ronda was another one of the girls and Jay Oler’s Daughter’s Sandra and Wendy were some of the girls and they were just fantastic and I think that if I were to think about a memory through all the years that probably would be the one as we were ten seconds left in the game when we were playing for the zones I turned around to them and I said, Girls we are zone champions. And the tears, and they weren’t fony ones either. It was just a fantastic feeling, and I think that probably that was the best memory. There were lost of other memories of kids that I have taught, some of the that are still on this earth and there are a couple of them that aren’t on this earth and that is a sad thing that you have to got through as a teacher, when you teach them and you see them pass away. There is actually a particular place in my heart for a whole lot of the students that I have taught and I think that those, to specify Specific things is very difficult the general feeling that you make a lot of good friends. And it is funny because the ones that you were the toughest with are the ones that you seem like they always find you and want to talk to you and that is really nice

Sharon Turner: They appreciate that you cared.

Kent Wood: And the kids that you would think that the kids that you think like I don’t want to see you again are the ones that do. That is neat

Sharon Turner: That’s special I have this little thing that I do and I dint know if I did it before I started the tape but I like to have the person that I am interviewing sum up and say something to their children and there grandchildren who will listen to these tapes some day my feeling is that it will most likely be your children and grandchildren that will make the effort to go to the library and hear your voice and learn about you. What would you want them to know about you?

Kent Wood: I guess what I would say that I always tried to treat people the way that I wish that they would treat me. If you do that what goes around comes around. I think that that is something that I think is vary important it is also very important that when you have a task at hand to do the very best job that you can and if you have done the best that you can then nobody can criticize you and you have no reason to feel not fulfilled. I think that I have tried to do that and I hope that anyone who listens to this tape will take those two things to heart.

Sharon Turner: That is good, that is so important. You have learned that especially working with youth.

Kent Wood: Ya working with youth and actually thing that I have been taught. I have seen that if you do that, then these individuals who think don’t want anything to do with you will come around.

Sharon Turner: You just stand to your principals

Kent Wood: That’s right

Sharon Turner: Good points to be made. I sure appreciate you taking the time to do this.

Kent Wood: There are probably a lot more things that I could tell you about me, things like that.

Sharon Turner: Well I can come back, tell me something else.

Kent Wood: Just interesting things that happened down there, it just was a neat place but to think of specifics now.

Sharon Turner: I am just so interested about it. I have always since I was a child had a bug for history. And when I see old things or old places I just want to know who lived there and what did they do.

Kent Wood: It was neat the one thing that I will share with you is that my friend Larry Gedrasik he was the youngest of the Gedrasik boys and I haven’t seen him for a number of years, he is a teacher in Calgary now but he and I used to be close and I get a phone call in July one year and he says, what are you doing on Saturday, so I say well I am not sure. He said well you’re coming down and being on the Maybutt float for the Stirling Parade. So I said fill me in a little bit more on this. He said oh well we are getting a float and old GN wells is going to be there Ronny Wells and Charlie, Charlie Wells, Johnny, and Steve, and Myself, and you. Steve always called me the Mayor of Maybutt but anyway we get a float and old GN Wells and he proclaimed himself the mayor of Stirling or of Maybutt  and that was kind of interesting and we come down there in the truck and I think that most of the people that saw us wondered what are these clowns doing. But we were having a good time and it didn’t really matter.

Sharon Turner: Brought you fellas all together and that must have been a good weekend.

Kent Wood: That was actually the last time that we were all together because shortly after that I think that GN passed away and a few years later Steve went and then Ronny Wells went and so and another interesting thing that not everybody might be aware of Dale Pusher Who’s father was the station master his son Jamey played for the Detroit Redwings last year who were the Stanley cup champions. He was traded to Anaheim.

Sharon Turner: Well he has done well for himself; he probably learned to skate on the pond out behind the barn.

Kent Wood: No actually Dale left Maybutt when he was in grade nine and moved to Raymond and his father was the station master over there for a number of years

Sharon Turner: Good for him

Kent Wood: But that is just some roots there.

Sharon Turner: You’ll have to watch for them when they come up to Calgary and get some free tickets

Kent Wood: I haven’t seen Dale for two or three years now but my son and Jamie actually played on the basketball team in Junior high and the same soccer team so I know Jamie a little bit. He probably wouldn’t remember me now but

Sharon Turner: That’s neat

Kent Wood: That’s interesting just an interesting fact.

Sharon Turner: Because Maybutt isn’t even on the map

Kent Wood: Maybutt who or Maybutt where

Sharon Turner: I mean Stirling is small enough but Maybutt’s not even on the map.

Kent Wood: You probably heard this one to Maybutt was suppose to be The City that Lethbridge was

Sharon Turner: I have heard that

Kent Wood: The reason for that was instead of putting what they called the round house which was where the trains turned around here and it had something to do with the land not being right or something so they put it in Lethbridge is Lethbridge now instead of it could have been Maybutt I guess. So that was interesting

Sharon Turner: Also the other thing that I was going to ask you is do you know how Maybutt got its name?

Kent Wood: I don’t know.

Sharon Turner: I heard that some man had a daughter named May and their last name was Butt. I should look that up. I wondered if you had known

Kent Wood: No I never ever did hear about that. It was kind of a nice place to be and you know the Gedrasik boys
were quite a bit older than me but I would go out to their place and visit with them and their mother. She was a foreign lady and hard to understand I would go in the house and all she would want to do is feed me and all that kind of thing. The boys would play ball with me and stuff like that you know it was just kind of a neat place to play and to live. It was a good time to be a kid nobody worried if you didn’t show up for a couple of hours and everybody looked after everybody.

Sharon Turner: Times have changed you never know who your neighbour is anymore.

Kent Wood: No but very, very close and, times of stress and stuff like that a community would kind of pull together. I am sure that if you talked to Hank Nelson he could tell you a lot of real neat stories about that

Sharon Turner: Was that Dayrrl’s older brother

Kent Wood: Ya

Sharon Turner: I don’t know him; I have heard people mention him quite a lot. Quite a well know, popular guy I guess.

Kent Wood: He was a good talker. Every time that I get around he wants to reminisce about things like that.

Sharon Turner: I’ll be that he has been done already, I have a list of people at home of all the people who have been done.

Kent Wood: Well if he isn’t he sure should be done.

Sharon Turner: He would be on my list if he wasn’t. Darn, to bad that I don’t get to do him

Kent Wood: He could probably fill you in on a lot more things because like I mean he was born and raised here to. His recollection of what went on before I could remember with kind of fills the void in.

Sharon Turner: He probably goes back to those board walks

Kent Wood: I am sure that he can remember that he can remember the hotel and stuff like that. It was a neat place to live actually but I was sure glad to get out of there and move up to indoor plumbing and running water.

Sharon Turner: The new houses, gosh.

Kent Wood: It was exciting all right.

Sharon Turner: That is a nice place to, Darren ad Cindy have done some nice things with that place

Kent Wood: The only thing that wasn’t there was the entryway, they just did that. The landscaping and that the pine trees that were there, started from about the ceiling to about two feet tall.

Sharon Turner: They are just towering now

Kent Wood: My mom went around and picked up a bunch of nails from around the house and she put a nail into each one of them, she missed a few and the ones that she missed weren’t near a blue,

Sharon Turner: Is that right.

Kent Wood: We used to do a lot of fishing and we would clean the fish and dig a hole. An interesting Memory I guess is that now that I talk about fishing, would be a fellow, the stories that come out of the pool hall here,

Sharon Turner: Did you hang out at the pool hall

Kent Wood: Yes that was an interesting place but one guy, well more than one guy was fishing a fuy by the name of Bob Oler, that would be Jay Oler’s father and he was quite a fisher and a joker and a BS myself and Bruce
Michelson were quite abed fisherman and we would go every Saturday fishing well it just tickled Bob to death to go with these young guys. He could fish and he would pull some real interesting jokes on use but we would take our turns in the car and here he would come to pick you up and you could just barely see his head above the wheel, big smile on his face and he liked to drink Coke Cola. He would have a Coke there for you and everything, just having a time of glory going with these young guys.

Sharon Turner: Sounds like so much fun

Kent Wood: It was, it was. Actually the day that he died it was Max Og and I that had to take him out of his house and take him to the hospital. Like I said you don remember these things and then you say something like fishing and then you think of all of these things. It has been an enjoyable association with the town and with the school and with Maybutt

Sharon Turner:  You loved it so much, why didn’t you raise you children here.

Kent Wood: Basically because when I was looking to buy a house I was single at that particular time and I was spending a whole lot of time in Lethbridge any way so I thought no rather than having to drive back and forth at night it would be better for me to. Plus at that particular time if you bought a house in Stirling and tried to sell it was not a real smart thing to do and a that particular time there was not anything around that I particularly liked. I didn’t wasn’t to do that so I chose to live in Letbridge. It probably is a good thing in the since that I sometimes think that being a school teacher if you live in the community you may be to close and have to many associations with the people that you have to deal with and sometimes I think that you can be a whole lot more productive if you are two steps back. I enjoy the drive down because it gives you a chance to clear your thoughts and plan what you are going to do in the morning by the time you get home you are unwound from the days events.

Sharon Turner: My husband, I ask him if he doesn’t like commuting he says that that is the best par of my day. That is when I just get to get rid of it all and just enjoy the scenery and the fresh air. He has binoculars in his car and will quite often stop up there at the sanctuary and stop and watch the birds, he loves it.

Kent Wood: That’s why I decided to but in Lethbridge. A lot of my friends that I associated with also live in Lethbridge.

Transcribed By Clinton Dovell