Note re EPISODE 254 ROCK FELL ON THE MOON
The story written by Alicia Priest shortly before she died in 2013 has so many twists and turns that at present i cannot complete my Episode. Lots of attempts but nothing is just right. The story I sent was generally joyful…Thing One and Thing Two. A family.
Life did not go so smoothly after the family was suddenly uprooted and left the cosy mining town of Elsa. Gerry was a big time thief…or was he?
Alicia Priest captures so much that I fear I cannot do justice to her work.
Dan Bowyer even bought the book because I am so slow in finishing my story about the Priest family….high grade ore theft, family plunged into poverty, tensions, steady decline of Gerald…then some money comes from startling source but the money is soon lost in legal fees, etc. Not many laughs. Maybe best lease the story when the family was full of joy. We will see.
There is also a very chilling side story about Helen’s mother who fled across Eastern Europe with the Red Army not far behind. the story of a German Mennonite family uprooted from the Ukraine many times. Including the horror of the 1932-1933 mass starvation triggered by Stalin which resulted in bodies of starved Kulaks in the sweet and side roads. Awful. Not sure I can complete the story.
Long ago, about 1963 I read a book titled Documents of The Expulsion which covered the subject in all its horrifying detail. Maybe best not told. Helen’s mother got out while thousands and thousands did not. She never talked about the escape in any detail except to say “I did what was necessary to survive.”
Canadians have never faced the kind of hatred that spread like a cancer through Eastern Europe in the 1940’s. Many of those survivors came to Canada in the post war years. Some even worked in the Yukon mines.
alan skeoch Feb. 2021
Alan's Oeuvre