Friday, March 6, 2015Work Boots and Blue Jeans: The Bobbi Hunter Story

Hunter

Bobbi

Work Boots and Blue Jeans:

The Untold Story of Robert Mark
Hunter

Friday, March 6, 2015Work Boots and Blue Jeans: The Bobbi Hunter Story
Hunter

Bobbi

Chapter One: My Parents

Twenty years ago, my dad probably didnt realize that he would meet his future wife and be
married within two years, or that he would have three children. But I think Im getting ahead of
myself: Mark Dwayne Hunter was a young man of about 27 years old when he met my mother,
Alison Dawn Black who was about the same age. Mark Hunter was a mechanic at Woodworth
Dodge. Alison, was a Lab Technologist. Mark also did a little farming on the side, as he rented
a quarter of land. My parents met on a blind date: my Moms friend Colette and my dads friend
Darrel were going out and organized a blind date. They got married and ended up having three
kids: Jackelyn Dawn Hunter, Cassie Rae Hunter, and me, Robert Mark Hunter. After Jackie was
born, they moved to Shoal Lake from Kenton, where they had resided. Mark found work at Sh.
Daytons, a John Deere dealership. Alison stayed at home and took care of my two sisters. And
then they had a third kid, Robert Mark Hunter, or as you may know me; Bobbi Hunter

Chapter Two: Early Life

It was a cool summer morning on June 9th, 2000 when Robert Mark Hunter came into this world.
Apparently, I was placed in an observation NICU due to a possible heart murmur. My mom
didnt get to see me for hours, as she was still knocked out due to the drugs from a C-section. My
parents took me home from the hospital after being transferred from Brandon to Hamiota. We
lived in a house on an acreage south-east of Shoal Lake. It was a while before I had my first
memory: I was leaning heavily on a small toy semi as I dragged it across a beige-colored carpet.
One of the wheels fell off and I think that I started crying. Another time, was when we were
playing, I apparently fell jaw-first onto a coffee table and bit a hole right through my tongue.
When I was three, we decided to move closer to family. I have a memory of my dad starting the

Friday, March 6, 2015Work Boots and Blue Jeans: The Bobbi Hunter Story
Hunter

Bobbi

truck and leaving me in it, as he went to go and get more stuff to bring outside. Sitting there, I
got bored and decided to experiment: I pulled the lever from the park to drive position and the
truck started to roll slowly forward, towards the house. My dad arrived, running around the side
of the house in a nick of time, and pulled the lever back into park. We were moving to
Bradwardine, Manitoba, where we rented a small acreage. This was just a short drive to Kenton,
where my dad had bought a shop. It was here I tried my next experiment: realizing that we had a
lot of barn cats, I decided to try and sneak up on one. I sneaked up behind it, grabbed it and said:
boo! The cat sank its claws into my arm, climbed to my face and sliced my lip open. I got a
rabies shot later that day.
My parents thought that I was a fairly chill kid: I would sit and play with my John Deere toys for
hours on end, as well as building railroads with my Thomas the Tank Engine toys. I can still
remember that as we moved out, I demanded that we take my toys in the first load so that I could
play with them when we arrived. It wasnt a very long move: We moved to Kenton, Manitoba in
2004. It was in this house that I started going to school: I can still remember jumping out of bed,
happy for my first day of school. If only I still had that optimism. In Kenton, we might not have
had as many teachers as Hamiota. We still learned a lot, but my favorite memories are always of
hide and go seek in the dark, which we played on a fairly regular basis. I can still remember
hiding in cupboards and not being found for hours. Now that Im in Hamiota, I realize that I took
that for granted.
I started playing hockey in 2005, in Oak Lake. I never got a goal or a penalty, though I definitely
deserved one more than the other: I taught myself a sliding dive, to dive in front of opposing
players when they had the puck, knocking the puck away and/or tripping them. This became
known as the legendary Bobbi Slide

Friday, March 6, 2015Work Boots and Blue Jeans: The Bobbi Hunter Story
Hunter

Bobbi

In 2006, I went with dad to square bale one afternoon, and within a couple hours, I was running
the machinery by myself, and dad was talking to our neighbor Melvin, who came by. They talk
for a while, when all of a sudden I overfeed the baler, causing it to plug, which breaks a shear
pin. Dont worry, thats a 2-minute 2-buck fix. Still, that was the end of me square baling for a
year or two. That autumn, I also rode with my cousin Chad as he went round baling: we had an
argument over what type of tractor Jason Aldean is referring to in his song Big Green Tractor. I
said it was a John Deere, as I like John Deere, and Chad said it was a Duetz, as he doesnt like
John Deere. It was quite a heated argument. It was around then that I did something rather
peculiar: I changed my favorite color from blue to green, mainly because I liked John Deere.

Chapter Three: The Farm

In 2008, my family and I moved onto our family farm, south of Harding, Manitoba.
After my siblings and I asked our parents a few times, our parents let us get a dog.
The deciding factors were that they thought we were now old enough to be
responsible and that we didnt live in town anymore. In August of 2009, we went to
look at some young puppies in Douglas, Manitoba. There was one that instantly
stood out for me: he was a brown-black puppy and he was the last brown-colored
male left. All of the others were black. We brought him home and he basically cried
all of the way home. We left him in a small kennel in the porch during the night, and
outside in a little pen during the day, where he would spend hours ripping around
the perimeter of the fence, if he wasnt sitting in the shade of a small tree, or, of
course, outside of his pen running around with us.
Living on our farm we had much more to do than when we lived in town: we could
just run around, play catch, jump on the trampoline, or, my favorite, climb and jump

Friday, March 6, 2015Work Boots and Blue Jeans: The Bobbi Hunter Story
Hunter

Bobbi

along bales. At least, it was when I had the energy to run for hours. Indie used to
jump on the bales that were only stacked one bale high, and we used to chase him
around on them. Eventually, hed get fed up with us and decide he had better things
to do. When he left, wed go on the higher bales and dare each other to jump gaps.
One time, I was dared to jump a particularly large gap and for some reason I
accepted. I took a running start and leapt across the gap (or most of it.) For a
second or two, I believed that I would make it across. That was when I hit the end of
the bale with a whack. For a millisecond, I lay vertically, my face and body glued to
the bale and my limbs outstretched. I started to fall, and landed on my back in the
middle of a pile of straw. My sisters stood there laughing as I regained my breath.
It was in 2010 that I started playing hockey in Rivers, after a year of inactivity.
Because I hadnt played the year before, I couldnt quite keep up to everyone else,
and so I had to abandon the Bobbi Slide. I played with Rivers until last year, when I
played with my friends from Hamiota. As there was a team in Rivers again this year,
I decided to return to the people I had played hockey with since I was ten.
Since moving to our farm, I have steadily been doing more work around the farm,
from chores to harrowing fields, as well as combining and baling. Ive had my fair
share of wrecks: I happened to be driving one of our tractors down the road when it
decided to puke oil all over the road: I realized this and stopped but the bearings on
the crank had already basically welded from heat, and it ended up being in the shop
for the winter while my dad got a new crank. It was a CASE though, so what was I to
expect. My next one was later that year and whaddaya know, it was a CASE too.
That story is a long one and if you want to hear it you need only talk to me. There
was also one with the combine, but I wont get into that. I guess this is the nature of
farming: things go wrong, and you have to learn to deal with them and move on.

Friday, March 6, 2015Work Boots and Blue Jeans: The Bobbi Hunter Story
Hunter

Bobbi

Finally: moving from Kenton School to Hamiota Collegiate. At the end of grade five
Jessica, Sebastian, Cameron and I, made our closing graduation speech from
Kenton, and got our report cards. For some people this would have been a happy
milestone: for me, it was a bittersweet moment. I would have two months of
solitude, free to spend my time as I saw fit, only to return to a new school with new
people. Key word being returning to school. Yah, I no longer jumped out of bed
with nave enthusiasm but with hopes of it being a snow day. It wasnt that I hated
school, not quite: I just had better things to do. So at the end of the summer, I
crawled out of bed, got on the bus, and instead of getting off in Kenton, I continued
on to Hamiota. The first week of Hamiota was weird: we had band and a written
schedule, among other things. The main thing though, was the other kids, the
Hamiota kids: they all had their own spots in their society, I guess youd say. It took
me a while to fit in, far longer than it took Sebastian, as he was more outgoing. I
guess because Holden remembered me from baseball it helped. In the end, I ended
up liking Hamiota more than Kenton, though I still miss hide and seek in the dark.
In closing, I hope my parents are glad that they decided to have a third child, and
that they will continue to think that for years to come. I dont yet know what my
future holds, but I realize it is a clean slate, a place to prove that I have learned
from my mistakes.
Oh yah, I apologize for this going on and on but for some reason when I get started
on a topic, I have to outline every single detail. Also, sorry for all of the corny things
I have written.

Robert Mark Hunter