The best stories are always told over a cup of coffee. That’s just how it goes in small town circles. ‘Coffee Row’ is where many people go to learn the facts of the day, or at the very least, an entertaining version of them.
So that’s what Dwayne Preus and I are doing right now. We’re sitting out in the ‘Sugar Shack’, a cozy little nook of a building located just behind the home of he and Lorraine, his wife of some 67 years. In between gulps of Joe (it’s even Tim Horton’s brand), Dwayne shares details of his life, as well as his adventures of hunting up in the Yukon.
It’s hard not to notice Dwayne’s love for hunting, or his prowess at it – the large male Grizzly bear he bagged in 2004 when he was 73 years old stands stuffed and mounted in the den.
Inside the shack, the stories continue. Dwayne tells me of a job on a farm near Surbiton in the mid 1970’s in which the top of a plank floor in the basement gave way, dropping him down into a cistern. His arm was torn open in the process, and he knew he couldn’t tread water forever. He said a few words “to the good guy upstairs”, but he pushed through and he eventually got out. God’s been good to him, he says, but his arms paid the price for a time.
When we finish up with our caffeine boosts, Dwayne decides to treat me to a tour of where they call home. The Preus family has lived on the land just west of Outlook across the South Saskatchewan River for roughly 45 years. This includes son Arliss, who lives in his own home just up the hill from Mom and Dad. It’s a heck of a sweet spot; the river is just right there, begging to be enjoyed in these prime weather months, and some of the views are just spectacular.
Dwayne and I hop into a John Deere UTV and go ripping around the land, where he shares about the history of the area and how his family has gone about carving their own piece of the proverbial ‘Canadian Dream’. Along the way, Preus talks candidly about what he enjoys out of his life, particularly the homestead that he and his family have managed to forge over time. I’m sitting next to a man who may be pushing 90 years old, but I’ll be darned if he doesn’t have the spry wit or the enthusiasm for life of someone half his age.
As it turns out, Dwayne and Lorraine are going to have all the time in the world to enjoy what they love, as the two of them have finally retired – for good this time – from the family business, Preus Electric Ltd. in Outlook. It goes without saying that they’ve “put in their time”, especially when that time amounted to an incredible 65 years. The timing was quite succinct, too; Lorraine turned 85 years old on Wednesday, May 15, and that seemed to be the perfect time to finally bow out for both of them.
Earlier that morning, while starting our conversation about the business he forged 65 years ago, Dwayne looked at me from across his kitchen table.
“Now let me ask you a question first; how much time have you got, and how much paper have you got?” he grinned.
“Dwayne, I’ve got all the time in the world,” I replied.
“Well, so do I!” he laughed.
I suppose he does now, doesn’t he?
Being newly retired, Dwayne says he and Lorraine always find a way to pass the time, and if you love what you’re doing, then the days and weeks just cruise on by.
“That’s a little difficult to say,” said Dwayne, when asked how it felt to finally be retired. “We manage to keep busy all the time, and if you keep busy all the time, then time passes by. This place here keeps me busy, cutting grass and things like that, and we like it down here. She likes flowers and it gives her more time to do it. We’re going to adjust, and we’ve been very happy so far!”
I suppose it doesn’t take much to figure out why Dwayne and Lorraine stayed on for so long at Preus Electric; when you like what you do, you stick with it, even if that means that a generation or two worth of time goes by.
“I guess it’s because I liked it, and I was happy, and she was happy,” said Dwayne. “We’ve always been happy. We had our ups and downs like everybody else, and we had some sad times too, but it all worked out really nice in the end.”
Dwayne gets a little emotional when he describes seeking out help to get involved in the electrician business, including financial assistance. (EECOL Electric out of Saskatoon gave him his first line of credit) These days, we think of applying for a loan as an everyday occurrence without a whole lot of hassle or worry, but getting any form of start-up cash way back when could be a nerve-wracking endeavor, especially at a time in our society when money was tight all over.
“I had a neighbor that I worked for who was an electrician and a farmer,” he said. “He helped me a lot, and I wanted to get into the electrical business. He said he’d take me into Saskatoon because I had to get a line of credit, because at this time, I had a limited license to wire houses up to 100 amp.
If you ever needed a loan at that time, they weren’t that easy to get and I was pretty nervous,” he continued. “So, he goes in and talks with one guy and I sat outside for awhile. They both come out, and then the man sat me down and said, ‘Well, Hilmer says you’re a good payer and that your folks are good people, so we’re going to give you a line of credit, and we’ll start you off at $250’. I thought that was great.”
When it came time for additional funding, it was at a time when the local credit union was just starting up in the community, with one lone man sitting at a table and a safe in the corner. However, the benefits of living in a small town where everybody knows everybody ended up paying off for Preus.
“He was a nice man, but he was very gruff; a retired school superintendent,” he said. “I told him I needed $500, and he goes, ‘Whoa, that’s a lot of money!’ So he sits down, and I’m nervous again. He gets a few papers, and then he comes over and asks, ‘Are you a member of the credit union?’ I said no, and he says, ‘Sign here!’ So I did, and then he went and sat down again. I’m sweating good. He comes over and says, ‘I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I can take it to the board, but I don’t think that’s probably going to work. I’ll tell you what I’ll do; if they don’t give it to you, I’ll give it to you, and I want 5% interest. You come from a good family, I knew your grandpa and grandma for years, they paid all their bills, and I’m sure you’re going to pay me.’ And you know something – I did!”
In those early days, Preus was wiring general houses in Outlook, and when the power came into the area south of Broderick, he ended up wiring almost all of the farms down there.
“Really nice people,” he said. “I wired about 99% of them all the way down. They treated you incredibly. You didn’t bring your lunch because they insisted on feeding you.”
Life became a little hectic after Dwayne enrolled in a trade school in Saskatoon for eight weeks, which he says he didn’t like because he was married at the time.
“I went there for the eight weeks, and I’d have to drive home on the weekends, and then I’d have to work here on the weekends to catch up on the work, and then I’d have to go back on Monday,” he said. “I wrote my journeyman’s exam in 1958, and soon enough we went down to the post office to get the mail and I was all nervous about that, but I got well over 75%, so I finally got my journeyman’s license. Then you know what happened after that? They started the dam!”
Dwayne was fortunate to get in on the ground floor when construction started on what would eventually become Gardiner Dam, providing service to all the contractors that were involved. It was an excellent learning experience for him, even though he admits that at the time, it was a bit overwhelming for a new electrician.
“Busy, busy time, and just going and going all the time,” he said, describing the work pace. “But I was green as grass and didn’t know anything! The biggest motor I ever wired in Outlook was a few horsepower. I can remember down there, the superintendent came along and unloaded three 90-horsepower submersible pumps and controls, so we had to get those going within two weeks. Boy, I shook my head, but I didn’t want to say no because I needed the money and I had one helper. What I got paid at that time was $5.00 an hour for the two of us and the truck. So, I fought and studied and studied, and I finally got those motors going. I remember the superintendent coming over, ‘Did you get them wired?’ And I said, ‘Well, I’m going to tell you the truth – I got them going, but I blew a lot of your fuses.’ He says, ‘Hey, I don’t worry about a few fuses – you got them going, and good for you!’”
Dwayne credits Lorraine for helping him serve as his inspiration – his “great love” – and the men who worked for him during his heyday, as son Arliss was eventually woven into the business. The jobs took him around the district; Milden, Dinsmore, Elrose, Kyle, Rosetown, even a job in Turtleford. Through it all, he had dedicated staff and crew, and customers would end up becoming friends for life. When it came time to wind things down on the job side, Dwayne moved into something of an ambassador/advisor role at Preus Electric, which kept him involved while simultaneously handing down the business to Arliss.
“I still kept working on jobs all over and then Arliss got involved in the company, but I still couldn’t just stay at home,” said Dwayne. “Things have come pretty well full circle. It was hard for me to quit, though. Every morning, I’d head up to the shop and read my paper and sit there. Somebody would come in and ask Arliss about something, and he’d say, ‘Dad, you want something to do? Go with him and tell him what he needs.’ So I’ve done that quite a bit, and I wouldn’t charge anything because you’d still end up getting the business in the end. When my wife decided she wasn’t going to be there anymore, I didn’t feel that I wanted to be there anymore to interfere.”
It gives Dwayne great pleasure when up and coming electricians come to him for advice, and he’s even happier if he knows he has a solution for them so that their business can flourish or that they can continue to grow and learn in the industry.
But Preus is exceptionally proud of his family, which includes four daughters, one son, 13 grandchildren, and 21 great-grandchildren.
“They all come down here, and we have a big happy family, and I’m proud of it!” he said.
Dwayne says it wasn’t hard for him to juggle work and a family life, not when he had a wife who he says deserves a medal. If there was an obstacle he came across, it was when computers started being introduced and email became a relied-on form of communication. Preus says he just didn’t have the patience for it, even though he tried it a few times. Understandable when you consider that people from Dwayne’s generation only needed a pen and pad of paper to jot down data and keep track of receipts and sales of business.
That being said, such book work did have its challenges when one was starting out.
“Trying to do the book work and getting your billings out was a challenge,” said Preus. “You never want to get behind because then you forget things. Collecting, too. You’d also get beat many times over getting payments, and when you’re starting out, that’s a big challenge. I learned fairly quick, if they’re calling you in from Lucky Lake or Rosetown, or some place like that, what’s wrong with their local guy? Why are they calling me over there? But I used to just go, and I’d learn. I’d get beat up pretty bad, and I couldn’t afford to not get paid when I was first starting out.”
What Dwayne would like to see for Outlook is a solution to bring a much-treasured attraction back to life, and he believes the town hasn’t taken enough advantage of a prior period to further grow and flourish.
“You know, it really boomed during the dam, and I’m not sure we’ve really grown all that much,” he said. “What I’d really like to see for Outlook is to get that bridge fixed up there (pointing at the SkyTrail walking bridge). If we could get it fixed so more people could walk there, that would be big for tourism, and that’s what I want to see for Outlook.”
If one is going to open a business in the area, Preus says doing your homework and knowing what a community needs is vital to success, and he shares the sentiment of many that Outlook’s closeness to the city of Saskatoon is a double-edged sword.
“Well, I predicted quite a few failures, and I saw quite a few of them come and go,” he said. “You’d have to do your homework pretty good to find out what would be a good business in a small town. The biggest problem in Outlook is that we live too close to Saskatoon. In our business, probably 90% now is out of town because there are so many small electricians in town that are wiring houses, and special interest people that are very strong here. All the credit to them, but I just don’t know what kind of a business we need here.”
In the end, what Dwayne loved to do was work hard for people, provide work for others, and do it all in the place he calls home.
“I worked very, very hard, but I had a lot of people helping me through the years,” he said. “There are too many other people who helped me along the way. I was just happy doing what I was doing, and the nice part of it is where it was at, and that’s Outlook. I loved every minute of it.”
Driving back into town, I’m reminded of just how important it is to continue to learn from the greatest generation. People like Dwayne and Lorraine Preus are living proof that a good day’s work is still enjoyable, no matter how many birthdays one has had or perhaps has left. Retire at age 65 like one normally might do? Ha! These two laughed at the notion. There was apparently still too much to do at that time for Dwayne and Lorraine.
We all could learn a whole lot if we just took the time to slow our hectic, tech-driven lives down and listen to the older generations. The life lessons may be simple, but maybe the world needs a little more ‘simple’ these days. The reason why our elders know so much is because they've lived through all of it; the best of it, and in many cases, the worst of it.
I know one thing’s for sure – Coffee Row has got nothing compared to the stories heard inside the Sugar Shack.
