Former correspondent loves to keep busy

By Joan Janzen

Maxine Girletz is a familiar name in the area, including Oyen, Cereal and Hanna. She currently resides in Oyen, and was the Cereal correspondent for many years for the Oyen Echo.

She was born in the hospital at Taber, Alberta on February 2, 1931, however in those days it was common for nurses to deliver babies in homes. Maxine lived on a farm eleven miles south of Taber, along with her parents, a sister and a brother, who all have passed away.

Maxine Girletz has lived in many communities throughout Alberta and still enjoys keeping busy at her home in Oyen. Photo (submitted)

She and her siblings attended a small country school two miles from her grandfather’s farmstead where they resided, and her dad worked for her grandfather. They lived in a two-room house, raised a few cows and pigs and her mom had a huge garden.

“We made our own fun. I remember running around dragging cactuses tied to bale twine, pretending it was a horse,” she recalled.

She remembers one Christmas while living at Taber when her mom bought each of the children a gift. “My brothers got jack knives and I got “Little Women” books. It was very special.”

Of course there was always a Christmas concert at school, where the children participated in a play and memorized their parts. All the costumes and decorations were made by the parents.

“When I was 12 years old we moved to Turner Valley where my dad got a job in the oilfield driving a truck. It was when the oil boom was starting,” she explained. “We lived on Spooner Corner. Mr. Spooner was an oil tycoon; the land belonged to him and we paid rent to live there.”

The children walked four miles to a country school, took their ninth grade at Turner Valley, and attended a high school located between Turner Valley and Black Diamond to complete grades 10 to 12.

After graduation, Maxine took a comptometer course in Calgary. The comptometer was the first commercial key-driven mechanical calculator. She then worked at a motor car supply store until she married in 1951 and moved to Black Diamond.

“One of my teachers at Wadena was a reverend, and later became Dean at Mount Royal in Calgary,” she recalled. “In later years he married Wilf and I. I knew he was the Dean at Mount Royal so I got in touch with him, so that was really memorable to me.”

Although it wasn’t a big wedding, they had a wedding dance in Key Hall, just outside of Millerville. In those days every little community had a community hall.

In 1957 the young couple moved to a farm north of Chinook, where they started their family. “The first two kids were born in Calgary, and one in High River and another one in Hanna,” Maxine explained. “There was a small hospital in Black Diamond, but you had to go to either High River, Hanna or Calgary for maternity.” Their children attended school at Youngstown.

Her husband Wilf had a successful rodeo career, as well as raising award winning rodeo stock. Those were busy years for her family. “We rodeoed in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Alberta, BC and across into the States,” she said. “But there always cowboys who came and stayed at our place when the kids were a little older.”

The cowboys helped out with chores in return for their room and board. Some would come for a few days, but would end up staying for a year or more. “I don’t think we were ever without spare kids; they were just like our own,” Maxine said. And they all managed to fit in their small 3-bedroom house, until they were able to build a more spacious home in 1968.

“Through the years I timed rodeo events. I did quite a few in Saskatchewan and Alberta,” she said. And while she was at home cooking and caring for numerous boarders, she also found time to sew all the clothes for herself, her kids and her husband. That included all their shirts and jeans for rodeo events. As her kids got older, they built rodeo grounds on their property.

It was a community project with friends and neighbours helping with the welding, painting and construction, and a neighbour lady helped with the food booth. Their 69 Corral Rodeo was held annually just prior to the Medicine Hat Rodeo. It was a big event, with their neighbours, and people from Saskatchewan and beyond attending. The younger crowd came on weekends to practice and started their rodeo career there.

After Maxine and her husband separated, she moved to Cereal where she assisted the kindergarten teacher at school, had her own play-school and helped work at her daughter’s store. It was at that time that Maxine began writing the Cereal local news for The Oyen Echo, continuing to do so even after she had to undergo surgery after suffering from a heart attack.

She lived in Cereal for quite a few years, before moving to Oyen. At Oyen she helped babysit her great grandkids, and eventually moved into an apartment, and then to a suite at Oyen Lodge. Maxine has four children: Glenda, Randy, Ray and Kevin, as well as seven grandchildren and sixteen great grandchildren. Wilf was killed in a rodeo accident in 1995.

At the age of 92 years, Maxine is one very busy lady. She does her own cleaning, cooking and loves to bake. “We have small garden patches here, so I have three of those. I love gardening!” Maxine said. “With my produce I make pickles, freeze stuff, make a lot of salsa, spaghetti sauce and jams. And I still like to walk quite a bit too. My motto is ‘don’t sit around or you’ll lose your legs’.”

However you probably won’t find Maxine sitting around, if you pay her a visit. She’ll be busy doing something.