The Waiting Game
The Western Producer, the Saskatoon-based agricultural newspaper, arrived in the mailbox on Thursdays. The post office opened at 8:30 sharp, and the school day began at 8:45. This gave me just 15 minutes to sprint from my home to the post office on the next block to wait expectantly at the service counter for the contents of my family’s “General Delivery” cubby hole, drop the mail back home, and then run to school. It was a good Thursday morning if the postmaster had finished the sorting. It was a terrible disappointment if she hadn’t. It would mean I’d have to wait until after school to learn if I had a poem or story appear in the Young Co-operators’ Club section of the Western Producer. At my school desk, I would be breathless and near-giddy with joy if I had seen my pen-name on one of the two pages devoted to youth writing. But this success was my little secret.
Most of the writers who submitted their creative musings to the paper used pen-names ever since the club was created by Violet McNaughton, the Women’s Editor of the paper, in 1927. In 1975, I was a nine-year-old Charles Schulz fan and selected, “Peppermint Patty” as my nom-de-plume. I enjoyed the freedom of writing anonymously.
The Young Co-operators’ Club was a showcase for poetry, prose and artwork by youth, ages 8 to 21. The majority of Young Co-ops were from rural Saskatchewan, but children from all across Canada, and other parts of the globe also contributed. The influence of this club on prairie writers, to my knowledge, hadn’t been explored in print which is why I wrote Lily in the Loft, a fictional children’s picture book, set in 1947, about a young girl named Frances who wants to be a poet.
Frances’ story is representative of the experiences of many YCs. It isn’t completely autobiographical. Frances is very much a farm girl who loves to write in a hay loft, while I grew up in a small town and did most of my writing in a delightfully dingy basement office. Frances didn’t suffer rejection on her first submission to the paper like I did at nine years old, but we both had to learn how to wait in a time when rejections and acceptances came by postal mail. Such long waits forced us to keep writing to keep our minds from dwelling on the oppressive silence between submissions. This early lesson in patience has served me well, especially now, writing for children’s markets where it isn’t unusual for a poem or story to take years to make it into print, even with the satisfying whoosh of email submissions.
Coming Soon: Visit the Young Co-operators Club Gallery to see photos, stories, and highlights from the YC years. If you have YC memories, I'd love to hear from you!
