If you read my first book “JUST CALL ME CRAZY”, you now understand that there must be something in the clean Saskatchewan air,cold fresh drinking water, and the wonderful prairie environment and warm hospitable people that make this province, even with its shortcomings {that are more than anything else caused by politics and politicians that should be banished to northern Afghanistan}, the best place in the world to grow from childhood to adulthood.

Roll back your odometer 45 years and take a wild ride on a Firestone Mud and Snow tire being pulled behind a Harley Davidson motorcycle across a Saskatchewan stubble field fast enough to make things smell “hot”. Jump off a tractor that’s headed for the rink shack. Learn why soldering a combine gas tank will push the “Rectal Puckermeter” to a solid 10 on the “fear chart”.

Come and see why, “If Yuh Live Tuh Be Eighteen On A Saskatchewan Farm, Ain’t Nuthin Gonna Kill Yuh”.

~ Charlie McIlwrick

This book is written through the eyes of the author who was born, educated, grew up, and survived until he was 18 years of age, in the little, now basically gone rural community of Rutland, Saskatchewan during the late '40s, '50s, and early '60s. Now at 64 years of age, he has herein presented an hilarious account of his farm life at that time, and his wonderful association with his neighbor, Ted Johnson, who was more of a horseman than an "engineman," and who kept a dying town and community wondering for nearly 88 years, just what the hell he was going to do next, with his zest for life and his fierce independence. That either of the two of them ever survived can only be attributed to dumb luck and to the fact that no one would have known what to do with them dead.

Come, if you have the 'chutzpah,' and relive a few of those days on the farm when you couldn't keep goldfish because they froze to death when the fire went out during those long winter nights, the days when you fought over who was going to get to sleep with the cat and the dog rather than who was going to put them out for the night.

Come and taste of a Saskatchewan that is now only history. Come and see why, when a well meaning neighbor told the author's mother that "your kids are going to kill themselves," she responded, "Yes, I know, but when? How soon?" But we lived. Hell, we were too broke to do otherwise!

~ Charlie McIlwrick

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