Lord Selkirk School - Maroon and Grey Yearbook (Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada)

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ESSAY CONTEST FIRST PRISE ESSAY GALLANT GISLI by JIM FERGUSSON 11-10 Gisli Gudmundson was an old fellow I used to know who was quite content to change his overalls once every two months and whose code was, Livd for today and the devil take tomorrow. His little woman , as he called her, was a damsel of enormous proportions who could probably ha e made a fortune if she had joined a sideshow instead of marrying Gisli, but she must have felt her place was by his side, for she seldom let him out of her sight unless he was going off to work. She possessed, however, the strength of two men, and without her guiding hand (and occasionally fist), Gisli would not have trodden the straight and narrow path, but would, . no doubt, have strayed to the local pool hall, where he would have lost the soiled shirt off his back. The Gudmundson estate was located two miles from town on a dirt road and (it must be mentioned at this time) it was not in the best of repair. The yard as well as the house always managed to look as if they had just suffered the effects of a tornado, although GisJ.i ' s wife did her best to keep it looking respectable. Towards the back of the yard loomed mysterious rows of wooden chutes which Gisli proudl referred to as mink pens . How the mink managed to live in these pens is beyond my comprehension. Gisli ' s primary occupation was his mink ranching, but although the mink were fed each day, this was all the attention they ever received from Gisli. The occasional log could be seen propped against the side of a pen in place of a log that had gradually submitted to the ages, for Gisli never attempted to replace such trivial articles as logs. Somewhere in his long list of occupations, however, Bessi had written carpenter . Once, to prove his carpentery skill to his wife, he armed himself with all available tools and set off in search of a job. After several attempts, he was given the task of hanging a door for an old lady. She gave him the instructions and then left to visit a neighbor while Gisli banged and hammered at the door frame. Imagine her horror on finding, when she returned, that her panel door had been hung so that it opened in the wrong direction. Needless to say, Gisli was called back to make some adjustments, and as he trudged home for his supper that night, he owed never to dabble in the fine art of carpentry again. Still another of Gisli ' s pastimes was fishing, because he had becomd the owner of a rather dilapidated outboard motor. One summer evening, he put the nets in his boat and putted out to a good fishing spot. After setting out his nets, Gisli decided to test his motor ' s ability and he gave it the gun . It was his misfortune at this point to run across the net of another close-shore fisherman, causing the destruction of both the net and the motor. After a serious debate with himself, Gisli decided to go back to mink farming. My first personal contacts with Gisli came when he began to deal with the store at which I was working. So large were some of his grocery orders that it was necessary for me to drive out to his home without any other orders on the truck. Once, however, a telephone message was received from him for one can of soup—to be rushed immediately out for dinner. It had been raining all week, and as I approached the Gudmundson property, I noted that the ditch contained over a foot of muddy water. Since Gisli had never constructed a bridge over the ditch to drive through it was the only way to deliver the tin of soup. With a roar and a spinning of wheels the trucK slid in. Climbed through, and jumped out of the ditch. As soon as the wheels gained the dry ground once more, the Gudmundsons rushed from the house, took the soup, and then, Gisli acting as spokesman advanced to me saying, Now that you ' re here, would you give us a lift across the meat? Without waiting for a reply, the whole family boarded the truck,and for a second time I attempted to ford the stream. With racing engine accompanied by the shouts of excited children, the truck sliced into the water, throning a terrifac stream of muck into the air on each side, but finally the other shore hove into view and the truck emerged, panting. At this point, Gisli, his wife 39