Karl Lapshalla now living in New Hope Lodge in Stoughton has moved around a lot throughout his life. Between Saskatchewan and Manitoba, he has worked on farms, in schools, and as a foreman with the highways.
Lapshalla was born and raised northwest of Melville until he was about nine-years-old.
"In the 40s Dad couldn't buy any land and there was 13 of us kids the boys were coming back from the service and Dad said 'I've only got a quarter of my own!'" Lapshalla said.
As he continued to purchase land in the area, it didn't take long before finding an ad in the Western Producer for a sale of land in Manitoba.
"There was a section and a quarter land, cultivated land, pasture and hay meadows," Lapshalla explained. "Dad said, 'Let's have a look at it. They didn't just look, they bought it and that's where we were from 1946 until about 1953."
In 1953 Lapshalla had finished high school and came back to Saskatchewan where he would help his brother-in-law on a farm with cultivating and harrowing, which he enjoyed.
"I didn't get a chance to do those jobs in Manitoba because of the older brothers," Lapshalla laughed.
Work on the farm though waxed and waned, so Lapshalla took to pouring basements for foundations in the Esterhazy area.
From here he would move onto the high school in Yorkton where he worked construction.
"It was all construction," Lapshalla said. "I was taught how to bend rebar, it was a machine that did it but all you had to do was hold on to the rebar and it took you all over the place."
This was when he received a message that again the farm that his brother-in-law had needed an extra hand, so off Lapshalla went again to help on the farm.
Though he hadn't been through Normal School, Lapshalla found himself trying out a teaching position at a country school near Yorkton in the early 1960s.
"I got there for the first day of school and thought I've got to learn how to work with these kids, learn what they know, and teach them what I know," Lapshalla said. "That's quite a challenge."
This led Lapshalla to actually attend Normal School in Manitoba and he would hold a second teaching position after completing this in a little hamlet. This, however, wouldn't last for long as help was needed on another one of his brother-in-law's farms as the brother-in-law had to go in for surgery.
"I was back to help with seeding time," Lapshalla remembers. "I had to do all the seed work, milk the cows, feed the chickens and pigs, and he was healing up real good. He would come and join me to clean the barn and I told him, "Don't you start lifting something too heavy, you'll rip your stitches all a part!' 'No,' he says, 'I know how much I can lift.'"
From here Lapshalla would find his way into working for the highways, which is where he spent much of his life.
"In 1966, May, I joined the highways and I retired in 1990 after 28 years working on the highway," he explained. "Patching the roads, sealing them, then putting gravel on top. I worked in Esterhazy first then I took a job in Rocanville."
From Rocanville he would find his way down to Pelly, SK. and eventually Stoughton.
While in Pelly, Lapshalla was pleased to say: "I changed the tactics altogether. The boss man before that, he took over Kamsack. They used to do just all little holes and patch with that black mix. I come there and I said 'Boys you know what we're going to do? This road is really cracked up, it needs a good seal job.'"
So off they went to work, not just patching holes, but attempting to fix the roads to avoid continually having to patch them.
While working with the highways, Lapshalla remembers one shop that he was in charge of that required a strict atmosphere.
"[I was told to] write down the inventory and then check a week later and see what [I had] because there was lots of stealing going on them guys would steal your grandmother if they could!" Lapshalla explained. "So I had a little talk with my men, 'Boys if you want a quart of oil or this or that ask me and you might get it, but if you take it automatically I'm going to charge you with stealing.' Everything quieted right down."
Lapshalla would spend time in Stoughton working as well.
"There was a patch broke of real deep and I said boys, 'This is a blade job,'" Lapshalla said. "The other foreman would throw the mix on and the guys would rake it.
There were small little patches maybe 3 ft by 5, I'd say we need to get another tractor or loader. It's a lot faster patching a little hole with the loader than to rake it, to load the mix. It goes faster than raking, so somebody took my idea out of Weyburn and told other crews to do it eventually."
Another unique way Lapshalla would shape the highways crew was to introduce the Polish Patch, something Lapshalla created and being of Polish heritage the name stuck.
"We were using oil that had so much water in it, they called it an emulsion so I tried it. I told one of the guys to dig the hole out."
Taking everything from the hole they dug out, they would mix the emulsion with it until it would pack when someone stepped on it.
"We'd push pile of dirt back into hole, we re-oiled the hole first, then pushed it in," Lapshalla explained." I would come along with the grader and make it as level as possible. It was getting hard like a rock as we gravelled it and drove over it. I told the boys this is what you call a Polish Patch, because I'm Polish. The boys when they went to Weyburn, 'You should see how we patch, no mix, just oil and the stuff we dug out of the road, a Polish Patch we called it.' All was used was oil, no mix, manpower, and very little gravel just to seal it off."
Proud to have been able to introduce different ways to do things, Lapshalla found his time with highways as being very enjoyable besides working in blizzards that is.
"At winter we would have other things to worry about," Lapshalla said. "If there was ice the boss in Weyburn would say, 'Salt it.' I told him, 'We can't salt because it's drifting out there.' 'Well put some down to give the traffic traction.'"
"So we put that salt on, but as soon as that salt hits that ice it turns to water eh and it's drifting across the road and it stuck! Going one way wasn't bad but then we were going against a side wind and all that stuff was coming across the windshield. You couldn't see the road, so I told them next time that we weren't doing it because we were just wrecking the blade and it was dangerous."
Lapshalla enjoyed his work throughout the years and is happy to have been able to accomplish and create a variety of work throughout his life.
