What a fabulous trip we were on.
When Bill (Keeler) was in his eighties, and with me not far behind, we both decided that age would be no obstacle to our love of travel. So, with our route well-mapped and our food cooler filled, we set out at the end of July on our journey to the West.
Bill was so proud of his shiny white Mercury Milan. There weren’t many in Canada, and its previous owner had managed to bring it across the border the year before. Bill snapped it up from the lot of his Ford Dealership the day he had to leave his Crown Vic behind. Sadly, for him, the Crown Vic had seen better days. Bill loved his cars, and he treated each one like a personal friend.
Bill was an excellent driver, and with as many turns at the wheel, I matched him. Along the northern shores of Lake Superior, across the prairies, south to the mountains of Alberta, through the Crowsnest Pass, to the coast, and finally by ferry over to Victoria, we traveled, visiting relatives along the way.
After six wonderful weeks of sights, we were finally heading home. We had one more destination, which Bill insisted on visiting. He had found a town marked Keeler, a dot on the road map of southern Saskatchewan. A little village, Bill thought, where he might find some more relatives to add to his family history. He had found a number of Keelers in Manitoba, and Saskatchewan was not that far away, was it? And so, we planned to visit Keeler(ville) on our way home.
As we sped along the Trans Canada through the bleak prairie land of southern Saskatchewan, we found ourselves traveling beside railway track after railway track. They seemed never-ending, and the whole scene was actually quite depressing to us. There were no signs of human habitation for miles along the way. However, the very thought of finding live Keelers in Keelerville lifted Bill’s spirits. He hoped that he might find another relative whom he could add to his clan’s history.
It was early afternoon. “Maybe we should get a motel room before we turn off,” I suggested. “At least we will have a room to drive back to.” Bill agreed, and with that, several miles on down the road, I pulled up to a small, gray building that had five or six rooms. It was not terribly inviting from the outside, but motels were few and far between. It was my task to choose our motel accommodations along the way, so I hopped out and went in.
“No,” I said to Bill as I came back to the car. “It won’t do. Why don’t we visit Keelerville first and then go on to White City for the night? There’s a hotel there. Do you remember the fabulous breakfast we had in it that Sunday morning on our way out?”
What a great time we were having! Neither our GPS nor Bill’s car had let us down these thousands of miles along the way.
Bill agreed with my plan, and so on I drove down the highway until the GPS told us to turn south for 20 kms, and then I reckoned, having studied the map, we would turn right for a bit. And this was exactly what the GPS told us to do. As I turned onto a narrow, dark laneway of a road, I could vaguely see in the distance what might be some buildings amidst a clump of trees. Keelerville, I thought! But I hadn’t gone fifty feet before I could feel the car sinking into what appeared to be a thick, dark, clay-like loam. The car had completely lost traction and stopped dead.
“I can’t move,” I said to Bill. “I’m stuck.” I could move neither forward nor backward. “I don’t know what to do,” I cried out helplessly.
With that, Bill opened his door and was already part way out on his way to exchange seats. I did the same. But the black, thick muck clung to our running shoes, more and more of it with each step we took. My feet began to feel like heavy wooden blocks. Bill was experiencing the same difficulty. I was able to grab a stick, and both of us removed some of that heavy stuff from our shoes before we each got back into the car.
Now! As I said, Bill was an excellent driver, and I was relieved to see him once again behind the wheel. He tried and tried to go forward and then backward, but the wheels just kept spinning, and with each spin, a little more black guck flew into the air and onto his precious white Mercury Milan.
“Merde,” said Bill. “Merde, Merde, Merde!” I suddenly became aware for the first time that Bill could speak French. Then I soon heard him muttering under his breath, “Damn you bugger.”
I sat in silence, and so did Bill as he kept studying all the buttons on the panel in front of him. But what to do? Finally, out came the manual from the glove compartment. After studying it carefully, Bill had another try. And yes! Would you believe it? He had discovered a hitherto unknown button. He tried it! With pressure on the pedal and in reverse, we eventually inched our way backward, wheels spinning and mud flying in all directions until we had covered the 50 feet or so back to the main road. What a relief! We were once again on firm ground.
We spotted a man in a huge yellow grader coming down the road, so we drove toward him to make an inquiry. I’m certain he wondered if all Ontarians were this crazy. He stopped and turned his engine off. Yes, indeed, there had been a place called Keelerville down that road a ways back. “You must have crossed it,” he told us. “I believe there’s only one person living there now. You’ll find him in the schoolhouse. Let me take you there.” And with that, he switched his engine on, made an abrupt turn, and beckoned us to follow. We crept along slowly behind until he stopped in front of several old, abandoned buildings. Bill was anxious to reimburse him for his troubles, but he would have no part of it, and as he turned around, gave us a smile and waved goodbye.
We pulled up a little farther in front of a dirty, gray, stucco building that had the name “Keeler Community Centre” clearly etched along the top of it. After a few moments, an unshaven man came out of the weedy growth to greet us. Yes, he was a Keeler, the last one to remain here, he said. No, his Keeler family was not from Norwich, where Bill’s had come from in England. His were from Aylesbury. After several minutes of discussing their family backgrounds, the two men agreed they had no family ties.
Then the conversation turned to Keelersville itself. In the midst of wheat land, it had been a centre for grain storage for years and had once been a thriving Keeler community. At one time, there had been over a hundred children attending the three elementary and secondary classrooms. The remaining Keeler dweller, whom we had just now met, was living in one of these deserted classrooms.
It seems that when the railroad came in forty years ago, the grain elevators had all disappeared, and the townsfolk soon left the area. Our newfound Keeler friend was the only Keeler living there now.
Both the Community Centre, which had been named after the family, and the village hotel had been left to decay. The doorways were open, and I wandered in to explore. The bar arm tables were still standing on the first floor of the hotel, but the customer tables and chairs had long since disappeared. One would not venture up the aging staircase to the second floor, which housed the bedrooms. In my imagination, I envisioned the layout of the rooms above, probably quite barren and with just the essentials that travelers would need as they passed through.
Sensing Bill’s desire to move on, I climbed back into the car, mud still clinging to the soles of my shoes. The shiny Mercury Milan, Bill’s pride and joy, was covered in black polka dots. Anxious to locate a car wash, Bill was relieved to find one in White City. Once the car had been restored to its normal pristine state, our attention turned toward ourselves. It began feet first with me. What a relief to see the mud disappearing from my shoes as I held them, one by one, under the washroom tap.
By this time, it was heading on to six o’clock and long past our regular stopping time. We headed over to the White City Hotel, ready to retire for the day.
“We’re filled right up,” said the woman at the front desk in the White City Hotel.
My jaw dropped, “Every room gone?” I asked in a raised voice and much to my dismay.
“Yes,” she said, “All seventy of them gone. We’re really busy right now. Try the motel on the next street”. And so we did. But it, too, was filled.
“I don’t know what we are going to do. We need a room for the night, and the hotel is filled, too,” I told the man.
“Why don’t I call the nearest motel?” said the desk clerk, and to our joy, it had one room left. “Please tell him to hold it, I urged. We can give him our Master Card number,” but he shook his head and told us it would be fine. They would hold it for certain. With that, he gave us directions to the motel, which was quite a piece back from the way we had come. Well over an hour later, we arrived.
“Doesn’t this look familiar?” I said to Bill. When I went to the office, there sat the same man whose room I had turned down earlier in the day. Not surprisingly, it was still vacant! But at this point, neither of us cared. We were dead tired, and it was close to five hours past our stopping time.
The tiny air conditioner sat perched high up on a triangular shelf in one corner of the room while a lamp with a pink shade and 25 Watt bulb on our night table was the only light we had.
As we sat on the side of our beds, each holding a glass of wine while we munched our cheese and crackers, we laughed aloud as we recounted the day’s events. We had had an adventure that we could never have planned.
“The GPS is always right!” I said. And shortly after that, we both fell sound asleep.
