Marilyn Frey’s earthy and wholesome stories come from the heart, and they come from close to home. The first-time author grew up on a farm southwest of Middle Lake, and she’s preserved those formative years and a way of life gone by in her memoir “Reflections in a Farmhouse Window.”
The author read from her book at the Reid-Thompson Library on Thursday, November 6.
When Marilyn retired from her banking career in Cudworth in 2019, she found that she had time to devote to those recollections long stored. She’d produced a number of short stories and anecdotes, and with the encouragement of her writers’ groups, she compiled them into the book.
“I always liked writing,” Frey confessed. “In Western Producer, they always used to have a page allotted to young writers. So, when i was 11, 12, 13 years old, I always sent stuff in, and I was lucky enough to have quite a few things published.”
While she was working and raising a family with her husband Don, the writing fell to the wayside. Still, there was always a compulsion to return to the craft and armed with hosts of childhood stories and later recollections, she set about capturing those on paper in recent years.
Her focus ran the gamut of harsh prairie winters, to cantankerous farm animals, particularly an ornery bull who had a penchant for running the kids up a tree. In those anecdotes, Frey approached them with a rich sensory description that gives an immediacy to the far-flung memories.
Her detailed description of collecting buttercups in a pristine pastureland held particularly strong imagery. Many of her audience members were of a vintage that recalled party lines and the early precursor to social media, the art of “rubbering,” or the coal chutes leading into the basement where a delivery of the black lumps from the elevator meant a warm house.
Frey brought back the innocence of Sunday afternoon ball games with the family and the neighbours, interrupted by a homerun hit into the slough and a messy wade in to retrieve the ball.
Stemming from her later years, there were recollections of a bear encounter on a fishing trip and the stress of leaving a beloved shih tzu with a pair of “off the beaten path” pet sitters.
Marilyn stresses the importance of preserving the stories, not only for her own family, but for those who wouldn’t otherwise know about the hardships and pleasures of a bygone era.
“It’s very important. I know on Sundays, we’d get together with friends and neighbours around the kitchen table to tell stories, and the old and young would share that. Now, I think it’s pretty much the same for all families – you just don’t come together with your neighbours to sit and have coffee where everybody i s there to share those stories.”
Some of those stories, otherwise lost, are captured in Marilyn Frey’s first foray into published writing. Books are available through online retailers.