Q. We’ll start with what is your full name?

A. Clara, you want the, my married name or maiden name?

Q. Your married is good.

A. Clara, C-l-a-r-a Almeda, A-l-m-e-d-a McCullough, M-c-C-u-l-l-o-u-g-h.

Q. And your maiden mane was?

A. Sabean, S-a-b-e-a-n.

Q. Who were your parents?

A. My mother was Dorothy Haight, H-a-i-g-h-t and married Ira Sabean, I-r-a S-a-b-e-a-n.

Q. Who were your grandparents?

A. On the Haight side James, I didn’t give you the middle name for my mom and dad did I, if you want it?

Q. Yep, sure.

A. My mom’s middle name was Almeda, the same as mine and my dad was Malcolm, Ira Malcolm after his dad. So, on the Haight side it was James Desbry, D-e-s-b-r-y and Haight is spelled with an A, Haight and grandmother which I never knew, she died when my mom was just a baby was Annie Maria, a lot of people would call it Maria but it was two words Annie Maria they called it, M-a-r-i-a Lewis and that was my, like I had a step grandmother after ‘cause grandpa married again. My mother was the youngest of the first eight and then he was single and his oldest daughter got married, it was a double wedding, got married with him for his second marriage and he had another eight so there was sixteen. Yep, grandpa had sixteen but with two wives and then on my dad’s side was Malcom Bruce S-a-b-e-a-n, Sabean and my grandmother was Ezilpha, E-z-i-l-p-h-a Adeline Haight, H-a-i-g-h-t and she was a sister to my grandpa Jim so it made mom and dad cousins and it was double like, you know what I mean? Both sides of the family and my mother used to talk about, she knew way back then, they used to talk about, they wouldn’t use the word genes but she knew way back then that you shouldn’t be marrying cousins because it may be effective to some of the children and she’d look at us and say, “Well, I’ve had eight and I guess we’re all o.k.” (Laughter)

Q. When were you born?

A. November thirteen, nineteen thirty-one.

Q. And where were you born?

A. In the blue house over there, you can see it. All eight of us, I’m the youngest of eight. All eight of us were born in that house right up there and my grandfather and step grandmother lived here at the time when I was born over there.

Q. How did you feel being the youngest child of eight?

A. I felt like a plaything to some of my brothers that were still around. My brother next to me was thirteen and I was really treated like a, you know something special. I realize now. The gifts I got like at Christmas time was so much to what other people got but it was, like the brother’s gave it to me and I mean if they took to wrestling I was right in the middle too you know and things like this, so I was like a play thing you know.

Q. What did your father do for a living?

A. Well he had no education, he never went to school so it was just taking care of his own properties, planting gardens and at the time we had a big apple orchard out back, what I remember and you didn’t have to spray it that time, we had a really good crop of apples would go in the basement in the fall along with vegetables and then he would cut wood and had cattle in the barn to buy, sell and probably kill our own beef and like that so he just made his own living like you say, labor I guess.

Q. Do you know what the reason was why he didn’t go to school to get an education when he was younger?

A. A lot of them at that time didn’t go unless they really had to because he was needed at home to work but if you could see him write his signature, he learned to write that and he was far better at writing than, oh it was so neat and he wrote it, he didn’t print it.

Q. Could you describe to me what a typical workday for your mother would be like?

A. Well, you see I was the youngest of eight and my older siblings would have remembered more so I think but they was always up fairly early because there was barn chores and while dad did the barn chores my mother prepared the breakfast and like I said she had all eight of us but some of them was out and married and had children before I was born so I’ve got nieces and nephews older than I am but she boarded all the school teachers too that came in that small house. I don’t know how she did it. The school teachers liked it handy, see it was right over here so she boarded the school teachers and she raised a boy that was, well he was local but his mom had died and he was homesick everywhere but with mom and dad.

So, at twelve years old he came to live at our house and then he married my older sister after they lived like brother and sister and he married her. Now, they're both dead of course but, and then speaking about the ones that owned the school and it’s my niece that owns it now, that family would be my brother Fred and his wife moved back from the States after three were born down there and they moved in with us too in that small house so that the one that’s my age, we learned to talk together and walk together and then the one next to us was born in that house before they got out and had a place of their own and then there was one after and that one was born in the hospital, all the others were born at home. So, she just kept going all day long, I know but she was fast, I mean I’m slow and well, see, this is too where my mom and dad lived in this house, well I guess I should say I lived there ‘till I was fourteen and then I was, and then my brother next to me that was in the Second World War was wounded in Italy, came home and well, they didn’t send him home because of the wound or anything like that, they looked after him, he was wounded in Italy and they flew him to England and had to do surgeries then. You know, it healed up over there, he wasn’t sent home but it was when the War ended like, you know and he was sent home and you have a bit of, what is it, gratuity money is it to put towards a business and he thought he’d like to put a store up so he wanted our property there, so the little old store you see there now is the original store that my brother with another brother's help, they put that store up and then because they were putting that up, of course he wanted our old homestead to live in and we went out the road a mile, mom, dad and I, out that way for two years, on that sharp turn out there you might remember, about a mile out and we lived there on that sharp turn for two years.

Mom was never content there because you only seen one way traffic. She lived so many years at the intersection and seen everything she just felt she was going away from everything and another brother owned this which was my grandparents place but it was a shack, it was just a shell really and, so dad being a rough carpenter he thought maybe he could do something with it ‘cause my brother got discouraged. It had no basement, just a little square hole out where my washing machine sits now and I remember it, it was just a mud hole just the size of the washer and well, deep enough I should say for anyone’s height you know and it was a straight ladder that went straight down, not on a slant, straight ladder went down so this is where they kept the milk, cream, and homemade butter and very few vegetables, there was no space and, so anyway my brother, he fell heir to this because he stayed her with my step grandmother until she got bedridden and she gave him the place for being her company, he had to work days but he was here with her at night and then when she got bedridden my mother took her over there and she was in bed four months before she died.

With the busy lifestyle my mom had and nothing to work with, no electricity or anything else, outside toilet and all that so, anyway when my brother got discouraged with this he thought, “I’ve got a cousin in Amherst, I think I’d like to go to Amherst and see if I could get a job”, and he did. So, then dad did buy this place, I did know at the time what he paid but I can’t remember but it was really ready to fall down and when my brother had raised it on jacks to make a full basement it, he was bringing it up a lot higher even than what it is now, it come apart on that ball right there. It came apart because it had been built in sections and it spread at the bottom and this is why he just was discouraged, you know. We hadn’t known it was in two pieces so, they let it go back to where it was repairable and fixed the crack where it split in two and then my dad went from there after he bought it and he was a rough carpenter and there was an old barn standing out there and he took a lot of barn boards and put in the house to fix it up and then gyprock over it and things like that.

Well, of course over the years, that was nineteen forty-eight, so over the years, I’ve been in here see over fifty years in this house ‘cause I moved back with mom and dad here and then when I married in fifty-one my husband moved in and then dad died after we were married, like we were married on his seventieth birthday, we planed to be married on June fifteenth and he said, “Why would you wait ‘till June fifteenth when my birthday is the eighth? You could bring it up and we can be married on my birthday”, which we did, I’m glad we did that and so I’ll always remember he was seventy the day we were married, he was seventy and then he was seventy-seven when he died and then, that was in nineteen fifty-eight and my mother died in nineteen sixty-eight, ten years later. So, I’ve been in this house for over fifty years but anyway over the years we’ve just gone from one room to another and did it all over and then one room at a time or as we could afford it even when they were living and then, well since mom died and that was in sixty-eight, we’ve gone over it again. You know how you do these things, you decide you want to improve it or change it or what not and, so anyway, so the latest I think we did was this room. These beams, the original beam is right underneath that and the carpenter doing it was teasing me that he was going to leave them bare beams out with wooden pegs, square nails, and bark still on and I said, “Well you know, I was just thinking, I was considering, if you could put wood over to cover each one, I was thinking that I’d like it done this way to gain a little height” and you see where the light fixture is now, it would have been down to about the bottom of the board there and a lot of people come in our door out there and they’ll whack their head or whatever and have to duck around lights because we do have a low ceilings and we have a few tall people come in.

Q. What did you think about having all of the teacher’s board at your house?

A. It was just a normal thing and they all made a lot of me and I seemed to do well in school. I don’t know that I was anything special to them but I feel that I was, now a lot of people would think I, you know way back they would say that I was really smart, like you know to take off in school ‘cause we used to double grade you know, primary and grade one and two, sometimes you’d double grade and take two in a year and I did that to start but anyway, some would think I was extra smart but I didn’t feel I was. I just knew if I was going to pass I had to study and I always put a lot of work in my studies which as a lot I know, they’d read it once and they knew what was there. I wasn’t like that but I wanted it right so I would keep at it ‘till I got it so, I always made good marks and I got through grade ten over there and I probably would have gone for eleven and twelve which I haven’t needed but at the time this school closed, they were building the Digby school and they’d be bussed in but it was one year before it would be ready and so the smaller grades was taken like out to North Range where the hall is now, that was a two department school and then they were there for a bit before they built the one in Barton. So, if I could have gone on the school bus right the very next year at my door like my daughter did, I’m sure I would have gone for eleven and twelve but I hadn’t needed it so it didn’t matter.

Q. Would those teachers pay a weekly fee to stay at your house?

A. Yes, yes, umm hmmm, yep.

Q. And did you have any of them for a teacher?

A. Oh, all of them while I was going to school and my brothers and sisters had them too you know.

Q. How would you be disciplined at school?

A. The same as, well I mean the whole class, like a one room school it was, all grades, primary through grade ten, one teacher; and it was like she combined maybe, oh I’ll say like maybe five and six math would be together and maybe a reading class of like seven and eight something like that but we all knew that we were supposed to behave, I mean there’s a little mischief in any school, nothing serious like they have today and you hear on t.v. No.

Q. What kinds of things would you have to memorize in school?

A. Well, we used to have to memorize a verse now and then out of our reader and then, I was good at spelling and I wish I could remember now because if I’m writing a letter and it doesn’t look right, I have to get the dictionary out you know, and maybe I got it right but it just doesn’t look right to me but we used to have a spelling bee sometimes about once a week or maybe once a month, I don’t know. On a Friday afternoon, you know they’d line up on one side of school and then on the other and, anyway I know several times I kept right to the top because I could spell so, anyway I remember that, those things. I’ve still got my grading cards, I kept them.

Q. So, that school then is still standing today?

A. It is. You can just look right out if you want, right out, I’m hooked up to wire here, can I move?

Q. Oh, that’s it right there.

A. That’s it right over there and the name is on it. It says South Range West Sec. Twenty-one and they put that right back on when they bought it because to them it meant something and I’m glad they did but their oldest son painted it all over again and, so it does need painting again but, anyway going up this way there was a South Range East School and well, it’s down and I mean nobody remembers it that I talk to, whether it was section twenty-two or twenty but it would have been either one under this one or over. This is section twenty-one and South Range East was written on that and this is South Range West.

Q. What kinds of things would you do with your friends at school?

A. Well, I don’t know. We used to play games, outdoor games like tag and things like that, go for walks or whatever, you know. Of course the friends were my nieces and nephews because it was all family that lived here when I was growing up. It was, well my middle name was Sabean and I had brothers that had children in school here that went by the name Sabean and well, I could even show you, I’ve got the name, I forget what grade it was now, grade eight I think, I’ve got the names all down that year that the teacher had written everything down in the trusties name, is on, and the secretary to the trusties and all that and the students names and there was a lot of Sabean’s on there. So, my friends was mostly relatives.

Q. What would your daily chores consist of?

A. Back then you mean?

Q. Umm hmmm.

A. Well, we always burned fire wood so, I probably didn’t have to do as much as my older brothers and sisters ‘cause there were fewer of us at home but I know when I got from school I was supposed to fill the wood box, that would be anytime after four o’clock, fill the wood box for overnight and then I didn’t have to help at noon dishes. I felt slighted because I had to go home for my lunch at twelve where all these others that walked for a mile and a mile and a quarter, you know different ways to walk to school, no buses then, they could carry their lunch and I never got to have sandwiches and I felt slighted you know. It was stupid of me wasn’t it ‘cause I could have a hot meal. So, if we had a real stormy day I might go home at recess which was very stupid too. Quarter to eleven we had recess, quarter to eleven to eleven, fifteen minutes, I probably would go home on a stormy day and get my sandwich so I could have lunch at school with the others because I had to go home every time for my meals and then I helped with dishes. My mother usually washed them and them but I know when I was, way back then I used to dry the dishes but, anyway I didn’t have to do a lot of things. No.

Q. What was your favorite holiday when you were a child?

A. I suppose Christmas ‘cause I was a long while catching on about Santa. I recognized my mothers writing onto, it was said from Santa Clause and I knew it was my mothers writing. That’s how I caught on. (Laughter)

Q. What would it be like at your house when the catalogue arrived?

A. Well, I think we all looked at it but back then you didn’t have much money, you just got what you really needed. I just wish back when I was going to school there were Frenchy stores back then like there are now. I’ve got so many things now I can’t get my closets closed or the drawers closed.

Q. Where else would you get the things that you needed?

A. Well, groceries, the same store is in Doucettville that stood when I was a kid, it’s called Kwik Way now but it’s the same building and my dad used to go there and get our groceries and that would be probably once a week and I mean we used a lot then. Molasses was by the gallon and I still buy it by the gallon but I mean they drew it out of a big barrel then, see I clerked at this store over here when my brother was out delivering and what not and the molasses used to come in a big wooden barrel or keg they called it and you just had like a tap you’d open to fill someone’s jug. The molasses came that way and I filled several and the kerosene came that way in a metal barrel with a tap and the kerosene was for lamps, you know. Everybody burned wood but had kerosene for light.

Q. How much spending money would you have as a child?

A. I don’t think I had very much. I used to pick blueberries in the summer but I was a slow picker of course if they sold it was mine and anyway the first I remember about having much spending money, when this family and I were started you got it ‘till you was like sixteen, I don’t know now if, you get it for older than that I think if your in school, well then you got it up until sixteen. I was like about fourteen and a half when they come out with this, so I was, it was eight dollars, mine was eight dollars a month. I was allowed that eight dollars for my spending money for that year and a half until I was sixteen. Eight dollars is what it was, I don’t know what it is now, I mean we drew for our daughter and I can’t even remember what that was but I mean it’s probably up quite a bit now, maybe there’s a family of five you know. It’s a good size cheque I think.

Q. What was your religion?

A. You mean the name of the denomination?

Q. Yep.

A. Protestant, Catholic, whatever?

Q. Yep.

A. Protestant.

Q. And what would Sunday’s be like at your house when you were younger?

A. It was very strict, like you didn’t work on Sundays, you didn’t play games on Sunday, you didn’t swim on Sunday. I’ve changed. (Laughter) I would swim on Sunday and I would play a game on Sunday. Another thing my parents never believed in what I’ll call the devil cards, you know what I mean, they weren’t allowed in the house and my dad had been in some logging camps where they had gambled, playing poker and gambled and all this and that and he was very down on cards and they weren’t allowed in the house. Now, they’re in my house but I don’t know anything about it. I can’t enjoy playing a card game, it still goes back to what dad thought of them, you know but when my daughter brought ‘em in I didn’t say, “You can’t bring ‘em in”, because I couldn’t see the point, you know, anyway, they are in the house but no, we weren’t allowed to play cards and like I said, my mom prepared the meal on Saturday for Sunday so that you just had to heat them up, you know there was like baked beans or potato scalloped or something you could heat up and well, if she had unexpected company she might make a quick batch of biscuits or something like that but no, it was just you got into your Sunday clothes which we didn’t have slacks back then, you got into your Sunday clothes, we had to walk a mile which is this way going to up towards Bear River, we had to walk a mile to the church which is still standing, same church and it was a dirt road and if you had new shoes you’d get blistered heals and you’d have dust on your shoes about this thick when you got there and you had to have a hat and in the summer it was a straw hat and, probably tied under your chin here and in the winter it was a different style hat, a knitted type or what not and we had to walk and then, well there were a few had cars, you know but we walked in time for Sunday school at ten o’clock, then some of us had to walk home, a few had cars so maybe the older ones got rides home and then in the afternoon it was to be very quiet, I mean you could read or go for a walk or write a letter maybe but you had to be very quiet and then there’d be church again in the evening and you stayed in your dress clothes all day. It isn’t like now. You get home, take your dressy things off and get into a pair of slacks so you learned to respect Sunday, anyway it was, yep.

Q. How did you keep up with what was going on in the outside world?

A. Well, we had no telephones, we had a battery radio in that house over there and we had no electricity while we lived there at all but we did have when we moved out there the two years we lived out on the hill, I’ll call it and then this had to be wired when we moved in here and it was just one plug in each room you know, or what not so then when you started to buy appliances we had to do over and over ‘cause you didn’t have, you didn’t have plugs you know, for things but to keep contact with the outside world, we never did take the daily paper, it was just the battery radio and the weekly courier, that was always in the house and our mail system was really good, better than now. We had a mail driver living back here and our post office was up this road and there was one on North Range Corner and the train is how, like the mail traveled by train and this mail driver, he didn’t have to stay for two mails but he used to pick up our mail in the morning and he’d go up to his post office, he’d have Doucettville mail and he’d go up to his post office and then he’d go out to North Range and pick up what was there and take it down to the train and then he filled in his day enough that he met two trains with mail, it was sorted there before he come back and you got mail quick. Now, I can get a letter from my daughter, like from Halifax can be in the mail a week.

Q. What different things would you grow and raise yourself?

A. In the garden?

Q. Yep.

A. Mostly everything. The potatoes were the main thing, we always tried to have enough to fill the potato bin for all winter. We still try to do that but we didn’t have a very good crop this year but anyway, you would have them until they come again like next year in August, you’d have your own potatoes but no, it was turnip, you know, corn, parsnips, we planted dry beans so that we shelled them out for baked beans, we still do that some and then our green string beans, peas, you know, carrots and yep, most everything. I guess we never, nowadays people plant zucchini which I never heard of and green peppers we never and back then for greens all we had was turnip greens or beet greens but now we do plant swiss chard which I never heard tell of when I was a kid and, but you know we had the necessary things.

Q. What sorts of things would you barter for?

A. Well now, what do you mean about that?

Q. Like trade. If maybe you had some vegetables you’d trade for some fish.

A. Yeah, that happened, maybe not with us but with my parents. Yeah, umm hmm, yep, ‘cause they thought they had to have in the winter a pail in the basement of salt herring which I did not want to eat. It’s so full of bones but now I could enjoy a little piece of it I think, a taste but I was a very fussy eater anyway but I think probably my parents probably traded something in like, apples maybe or vegetables for that, I think they might have.

Q. How did electricity change things for you?

A. Well, it was quite a switch from having the outside toilet. Do you know I, it took me a while to get adjusted to sit on an inside toilet after being outside and here you are in the house. (Laughter) When I think of it, I couldn’t part with it now but then my daughter never knew what an outside toilet was and I don’t think she’d adjust to an outside toilet but anyway that was one thing that was very different and then the washing machine which was the ringer washer to start and I still liked it better than my automatic. It did a better job, less wrinkles, cleaner clothes, yep, it did a lot better job that ringer washer than what the automatic does.

Q. What would bath night be like at your house?

A. That was sometime on Saturday. It might not be night, you know, it might be Saturday afternoon. Now that was different too. I’ve said to some of them, “We must have been, people must have thought we were dirty years ago”. We felt clean but my mother had in all the bedrooms she had a bowl and pitcher set, you know, them heavy bowls and pitchers and there was like a tooth brush holder and a soap dish that matched and all these she had set up in the bedrooms and so we took our, brought the pitcher and our water the temperature we wanted it, took to our bedroom and poured in the bowl and of course you started from the face down, you know, your feet was last and by the time you got to the bottom the water was quite cold and it was a little dirty but when I think of how you get in the shower now and it cleans over and over you and we managed with that, what would go in a little bowl. We felt clean anyway.

Q. Who was the doctor when you were growing up?

A. Dr. Harris. He lived in Barton.

Q. Who would deliver the babies?

A. Well, the doctors came to the homes when they got word. Now, we didn’t have phones back this far, they did in certain places, you know, but they would have to go sometimes with a horse or whatever to let the doctor know, if it was winter snow or what not but my mother was a midwife and she counted up to the fiftieth baby and then she didn’t count more but she was on all these cases and I didn’t know what was going on as I grew up, you know. No slacks at that time as I said, and she had this pair of black bloomers, like a, it would only be like a, the material of this jersey knit stuff, you know, but they’d come way down here and when I’d be going to bed I’d see that she’d laid out these black bloomers, they were black and extra clothes on her trunk ‘cause we, each one had a trunk in our room then, that’s where we put our clothes. You didn’t have closets, maybe a dresser with a couple of drawers but you still had things in trunk, you know, and so she’d lay these things out and when I’d get up in the morning mom would be gone and dad would say, “Well, such and such got sick in the night and she had to go.” I hadn’t heard any commotion, it could have been somebody coming with a horse, you know, if it was winter and it was snowing, if it wasn’t, the odd one had a car way back but I hadn’t heard any of this and then it would be sometime during the day and she’d get home and, “Oh, there was a baby at that house”, and I’d say, “Well, what did they name it?”, well, back then you didn’t have to name ‘em quick, you know, like you do now and then I thought that she seemed awful tired and sometimes she’d sneak a nap If she could, she didn’t always have time ‘cause she’d have to go to work preparing supper and, so anyway, I was a while catching on. I bet you I was a teenager before I knew that she was going to help deliver babies. They never talked about it then, you know and I mean they didn’t have maternity clothes like now, they just wore something loose and if I saw somebody I wouldn’t have known that they were pregnant “cause it was just, they just wore like a big coverall thing, like you know that you pull over, well it reminded me of a Johnny shirt like you see at the hospital and so I wouldn’t have caught on if anybody was pregnant ‘til I was, I was in my teen I know ‘cause nobody talked about it. Now it’s taught in schools.

Q. How would you have taken care of your teeth back then?

A. I don’t know if I, I didn’t take as good of care of them as I should have but it was, you know, we had toothpaste like now and a toothbrush but I had, like my two big teeth here in front, I had knocked one out with sliding, you know, slamming a sled and coming down on it, I had knocked one out and then the other I had knocked out with turning our cream separator, you know, and the handle come around and hit me in the mouth and so, and when I had a tooth ache I just couldn’t stand it, oh it made me sick all over so I never thought of fillings and back then they didn’t fill anyway, you know, fill your teeth so if I had a tooth ache, boys it had to come out of my head because I couldn’t stand it, that throbbing, you know, as it was, so I just got them out. Well, when it got to the point here now when I think of it, you know, maybe I could have saved mine where the denture never fit, I probably could have but I think what discouraged me was because these two main ones had got broken, you know, but I haven’t had any trouble with my upper so, I could have cared for my lowers, you know, I just wasn’t particular about cleaning them as often as I should and like that because they were broken here in the front and if you smiled there were no teeth there.

Q. So, how often would you see a dentist?

A. Only when I had a toothache, just to get it pulled out. It wasn’t always a dentist either, it was a medical doctor sometimes that pulled ‘em out. They’d just freeze and it hurt then too, you’d feel the needle going in where now it’s like it freezes gradual. You would really feel it going into the bone and then when you got home it would pain when the freezing was coming out which now it doesn’t but I could stand that better than I could put up with a tooth ache. It used to make me sick all over. (Laughter)

Q. When somebody died, what was the wake like?

A. Well, we weren’t Catholic so there wasn’t a wake, no. Well, way back when I was a kid, see, they were even laid out in the homes, they weren’t at a funeral home like now, I was, when I was real small I mean, they were laid out at home so it was, it was a very sad occasion and everybody was crying, you know, and kisses and hugs and people bringing in food and things like that, you know, thinkin’ you’d eat better if somebody prepared it, we’’, they kind of still do those things, you know, but I mean the body isn’t in the home now, it’s at the funeral home so you get away from that which is night and day when it’s in the house.

Q. How often would you leave South Range?

A. Not very often when I was growing up. I mean, it would be to Digby or Weymouth, that would have been it and maybe Bear River to the Cherry Carnival once a year.

Q. And what was the Cherry Carnival?

A. Well, they still have it. It’s, see Bear River is called the Switzerland of Nova Scotia, maybe you’ve studied that because Switzerland is hilly and Bear River is hilly and in our studies we had that, it’s noted as the Switzerland of Nova Scotia. Well, anyway, they’re noted for cherries and, so every July they’d have a Cherry Carnival and they still do but I mean, I don’t go anymore, they have a parade in Midway and all this like for a whole day, I don’t go anymore, you know, but that was way back when I was a kid, they had the Cherry Carnival.

Q. What were the roads like when you were younger?

A. Mud in the spring (Laughter) and the road from, like here at the intersection going towards Weymouth I remember, see I lived in that house and I, it was just the width of, I guess you’d say one car or a horse wagon, you know, it was just that width, grass always grew in the middle of the roads because it wasn’t used that much. You could go right straight through but I mean it just wasn’t used that much so the grass grew up. Well, I mean they’ve widened them all now for well, two lanes if they were paved, you know, ‘cause school buses travel and all like that but anyway, no, we had mud in the spring, every spring it was just terrible and well, even after we were married my husband, his business was a self-employed trucker, he had his own three ton truck, he’s been stuck in the mud in a big three ton truck here in the spring so, that’s what we’ve gone through with before we got paved and now they need recapping, they’re just terribly rough, you know, it’s been over twenty years and they spend money somewhere else and they can’t recap ‘em all, you know, so………

Q. Now, who would maintain the roads?

A. Well, that was, it was like, well, now they call it Department of Transportation, back then it was called Highway Department I believe, yeah and they had like a Super, you know, and that one person had to, well, it would be walk probably ‘cause they didn’t have a vehicle, had to check all the roads and see that the ditches was cleared and the little brooks that run here and there that they run through not plugged with beaver dam or something like that, you know, so this was, you know, and then they’d have to call in, well some truck to bring in gravel if there was a washout and things like that.

Q. What did you expect to do when you grew up?

A. I don’t think I ever thought about it that much. I just didn’t know what I would, did want to be and then by me being the youngest of the family and, let me see now, just how old was I, fourteen, fifteen, something like that and my mother had a surgery, she was fifty-three anyway, I was needed home that year, they don’t keep you as down like they did back then but I mean, it was down on your knees to scrub a floor, wash a floor I should say ‘cause we had no bare floors, I mean, my brothers and sisters would remember bare wood floors but when I came along we always had carpets that you could wash but it was always every Saturday you was down on your knees with a pail, you know, your scrub cloth and wash the floor so those types of things my mom couldn’t do after surgery so it was, it seemed like I was needed so I just stayed home and then I just always stayed at home and when we come from that house back here, see, my brother had put his store up here and, so he wanted some help like with clerking and give him a little free time ‘cause he had a wife and some family which she needed to be at the house, she did book work for him but anyway, I started out there for twenty-five cents an hour and I kept my own time, it usually wasn’t mornings, usually afternoons but twenty-five cents and hour and I was happy with it, you know, and it seemed to add up. If I wanted to buy anything, I had my spending money and then I was, it got advanced to two dollars an hour by the time I quit. (Laughter)

Q. Now, how did you enjoy working at the store?

A. I liked it, yeah.

Q. Who were your screen idols when you were growing up?

A. I’m not crazy over t.v. I’m not one that enjoys t.v a lot. Now, those good shows, some I’m saying I have liked, they’ve taken off, you know, them family shows. Now, I like Seventh Heaven and Wind At My Back, some of these, you know, family shows but, and I like good movie if it’s a good, clean, family movie, for two hours like I’d like that but as far as these games shows and that Drew Carey, I think that’s so filthy, well I mean, (Laughter) it turns you off, you know, I’m not one that, so I really don’t know, see, I forget the names of some of them I did like, some of them on the shows there, what was her name?, Lindsay Wagner, I liked her, I think she was on the million dollar woman or something, well, I forget no what she played on but anyway I liked her but as far as now, I don’t know that there’s any special, and we’ve only had t.v, well, we’ve had this one seventeen years but we had some before that but I’m not a t.v fan. I would rather get my hands busy knitting, sewing and what not, and that to me is a waste of time. If it’s something I can listen to, why, and I do watch the news, you know, but no, I’m not a t.v fan. Somebody will say to me, “Did you watch that show on t.v?”, “What show, I didn’t know it was on” (Laughter)

Q. What kinds of music did you like when you were younger?

A. Well, I didn’t play myself but we had a pump organ in the house. My mother and dad bought it new in nineteen two when they were married and I just got rid of it about two years ago to my daughter. Now, I used to sit up and I couldn’t read the notes but I could pick it out kind of, you know, I had no music teacher or anything to tell me anything so I just could play to amuse myself a little like that, I wouldn’t be able to do it now because I’ve forgot the little bit I did know but anyway my mother wanted my daughter to have that organ and she told me this before she died and Paula was, my daughter Paula was only four when she died and I thought, “Well, this is strange, my mother wants her to have it. She’s probably not interested at all in music, anyway, she was and through Barton School, that would be before grade six because at grade seven you went into Digby, she took a few music lessons out there that one year on Tuesdays and Thursdays, they were half hour lessons, one teacher for eight students and they had to hurry through because they had to get ready to get ready to go on the bus, sometimes she didn’t even get to sit down at the bench and she had her book to bring home and study from and her teacher warned her, “Don’t you go ahead in the book”, and she paid no attention and she went right straight through studying the timing and all this and that and I paid out fifty dollars for those music lessons and now she’s the full time organist in a church in Halifax.

It was all what she did for herself because I only paid out that and if she wasn’t so busy I would like her to go to some music teacher and take a course and write exams to see where she stands. She does an Easter Cantata and a Christmas Cantata every year in the church she’s in and there’s some quite hard pieces and I’ll tell you, she has to move her hands on the, it’s a clavinova what she plays and, so anyway I said to her, “You know, I’ve told you over and over that my mom said you was to have the organ”, and she said, “Yes”, and I said, “Well, when are you going to take it?”, and she just shrugged like this, you know ‘cause they’d gone out, well maybe her husband got it and still she might have, I don’t know, she’s got an electric organ which she had to practice on home so when she got at church she’d know what she was doing so, anyway, two or three years ago I said, “You’ve got to get that organ out of my house ‘cause see how small our living room is and we had to squeeze it in here ‘cause that’s our bedroom in there and there’s just no room for an organ and I thought, “Well, I kind of hate to see it out of the house, it’s always been in the house”, and the school teachers that my mom boarded, they all played it, you know, and I’d heard it over and over and I thought, “Well, it’s no good to me, mom wants her to have it so I want to fulfill her wishes”, so I said to Paula, “You’ve got to take that organ”, and she said, “Do you think I’ll dust it?”, and I said, “No ‘cause you won’t have time” and mom wanted everything shining so she used to keep putting varnish on it, varnish, it wasn’t varathane then, it could be any color varnish and it would get darker and darker but it would shine, that’s what she wanted and the music in it is as good as ever. I don’t think it needs tuning at all so Paula finally got it up there and they had to have help to get it on a half ton and help to get it off, it’s on rollers but it’s heavy and she says when she goes to practice on her electric she has to go to that pump one which has the one keyboard and she can get more out of it in practice than she could out of the electric. It's got more octaves or whatever, I don’t know, yeah, she can get more out of it so, she’s using it anyway. Yeah, so, no I wasn’t all, but I did sing in a choir, the church choir here for thirty-five years or longer ‘till I put dentures in my mouth and then they would just not stay put, they would move all every which way and I just think to, with age your voice creaks and cracks as you get older but I did alto for years and I sang in different places, mostly with my man cousin who’d take soprano and I did the alto and we did duets everywhere for years, it was. That was, I mean I could sing but I couldn’t play.

Q. How did you meet your husband?

A. Well, I met him in South Range. He has a sister living here, she’s still here and he came to live with her and was doing some work, well it was woods work with her husband, her husband's dead now but anyway, this is how I met him. He was from in back of Weymouth, Riverdale, it’s like a dead end, Riverdale, that’s where he was from but he come to South Range to work is how I met him.

Q. How old were you when you got married?

A. Nineteen and a half.

Q. And what do you remember about your wedding?

A. Well, it was on a Friday, we were married in Weymouth at the Parsonage at seven o’clock. I had no long white dress, I had a blue that come to about here, ice blue is what it’s called, ice blue taffeta and well, I bought a new like hat, purse, and coat, you know, for like travel and what not and we had the two attendants which was my niece who lived in that house over there, she’s in Ontario now and she’s just a year younger, and my husband's cousin was our other attendant. So, we went for seven o’clock for the wedding and by seven thirty you were out of there, so we come home to this house and when we got here it was full of people for a reception and I guess we knew there was going to be a reception but I mean, it’s a small place and it was June, you know what I mean and some could get out on the door steps and sit out around, some of the men but at that time nobody catered to a wedding like they do now, it was all my immediate family that did the reception, like brought the sandwiches and sweets, my sister-in-laws and sisters and, I had two sisters, and my sister-in-laws, and some of my nieces, they all brought the food that was here. No, yes we had electricity then, yeah I’m just thinking, I guess no coffee because we were all tea drinkers so we had cold drinks and tea and that was, that’ll soon be fifty years, see, this next June. Wow, I don’t where that went. (Laughter)

Q. How much would you have known about the birds and the bees before you were married?

A. Well, not nearly as much as I, let me see, at nineteen and a half I didn’t know back then as much as the seven and eight year olds would know now because it’s taught in school. I wouldn’t have known a lot of things way back then, no, that I know now.

Q. What certain things do you remember about the depression?

A. Well now, did we have that in my time? I’ve heard mom talk about it, now what year, does it give you the year that, I think it was before, before thirty-one, so I don’t know, I don’t remember that but I do remember and I still have a couple of the ration coupon book. I keep everything, you know and, well it would be the War from thirty-nine to forty-five, I think that was the years for the last World War. We could only get certain things with ration coupons. Sugar was one thing I know and so, my mom has a book, dad had a book and I had a book and it has your signature in it and some of the coupons are still in that we had, that I’ve saved that we hadn’t, you know, didn’t get to tear out so, you could only get so much on these coupons, things that were scarce at Wartime, so I do have those but no, the Depression would have been before, I remember them talking about it but no, that was before thirty-one so…..

Q. Do you remember your mom say there were some really hard times?

A. Oh yeah. She used to say she would wonder where she was going to find one cent to mail a letter. That’s all it was, was one cent and she didn’t know where she’d find one cent to mail a letter, now we pay forty-six. Yeah.

Q. What things do you remember about Wartime?

A. Well, I was a very nervous person so, I remember even way back in the country, they told us to pull our green, it was green shades we had, pull them when you lit the kerosene lamp at night and this made me a little fearful ‘cause you would hear an airplane once and a while and it was supposed to be that, you know, it might be enemies and what not so you should keep all light from showing which I’m sure them up in the sky would not see light from a kerosene lamp which isn’t very bright but we did have to pull our shades, I remember that and then there was the, that explosion, what year was that in Halifax? My brother and wife were there and they had to lay flat on their face on Citidel Hill and I forget, that was, you know, sometime between thirty-nine and forty-five in, I forget what year it was there. You see the first one, Halifax Explosion would have been before I was born, the real Halifax Explosion, that was before I was born ‘cause I had an Aunt the was secretary to a doctor up there and it threw her against the table and cut her cheek here so that she had to have stitches and she was such a pretty woman but she always had that scar and of course she’s dead now but it was the second World War I’m talking about and my brother he still lives across the road here, he and his wife, and she’ll be ninety in about a week, anyway, they were there because he didn’t go overseas, he didn’t pass to go overseas but he was like driving army trucks and things like that and he was flat footed but there was things he could do and he didn’t pass to go overseas so, anyway, when That explosion was in Halifax and we wondered what was going on with them all day long, we felt our windows rattle and dishes rattle here. Yep.

Q. How do you think the War affected your community?

A. Well, I don’t know. Everybody worried about their closest that were, you know, in active duty, like, well of course I didn’t know my husbands brother but he had a brother killed over there and was buried over there that went over on the same boat as my brother did that was wounded and come back here and built the store and he wasn’t always here, like you would like to, you know what I mean, you were just wondering, “Well, where are they tonight” and things like that and my brother when he come back, he did talk to my oldest brother a little, I mean they’re both dead now but he would talk to my oldest brother a little about what he went through but never to anybody else much, no he just wanted to forget about it all. He wouldn’t talk about it. No, he had a bullet went right in through, right over the top of the heart and it come out right at the back here so that the scar at the back was worse than this was. This was more like a hole a bullet would go in but where it come out it was ragged and so he had a scare about, like that long with stitches where it come out, well, it was a sniper, you see, that did this so, they rushed him, he was in Italy and he had very little for pain and they rushed him, got him in an airplane and rushed him to England, now that would be quite a ways there, from Italy to England is where he was out in the hospital to fix the wound, I mean they took care of the bleeding and things like that but he didn’t have that but he didn’t have much for pain and, so that was, and then he come home here and he run that store for, I forget how many years and it was a boomin’ business. Oh, he was doing good. He had to build bigger. The bigger store burned a few years ago, it changed hands a few times but it burned but that one wasn’t big enough.

The original is there but first off, it wasn’t big enough for groceries so he went out that way with a little shed roof for groceries, then it wasn’t big enough and he come this way with a feed shed which was feed for cattle, you know, well I had to look after both when I was there, of course I couldn’t lift the feed but I’d go to the feed shed with them and see, you know, that they got the right kind and I had the price and everything there to know what they owed me and things like that. Well, then it wasn’t big enough and he built another one a lot bigger and then he had a delivery business with his own half-ton so people would call in and want something and we’d pack up, just maybe in a box or something that we’d unpacked, you know, and he’d take it to the different homes and sometimes they paid him, sometimes it was charged accounts, a few he never got and never would get, (Laughter) and then a few that did owe him, he would tale a calf maybe, on, this is getting away from myself I suppose but, he would take a calf on trade for what they’d owed the store bill and he’d tie it out in the field and, up back of the store there, and it would eat all summer and he’d feed it and what not, so it grew and in the fall he would have it killed, my brother was handy at killing the beef and you didn’t have to go through inspections with this and that like now and as long as it was clean and what not, what I mean, and they cut it up and sold it and, through the store, so this way it was paying for the groceries that he had charged, you know, and then a lot would cut pulp wood, he dealt in pulp wood and the railroad track run out there in North range, I don’t even know if you know where it is, but anyway, so my husband had a three ton truck and he used to load box cars there with pulp wood that my brother Donald was sending for sale and this pulp, well a lot of it was what he had taken in on grocery bills that people owed him.

Q. How would you plan for hard times or retirement?

A. Back then you mean?

Q. Yeah.

A. I don’t know, I tell you there wasn’t much planning at that point way back then. Parents stayed in their own home and someone in the family moved in to care for them which, that isn’t anymore. You go in nursing homes now and I know, my grandmother when she lived here, her old age pension was seven dollars a month and I can’t remember what dad was getting, he got at seventy, like for those seven years, I can’t remember what he was getting, he died in fifty-eight but in sixty-eight when my mother died, she was getting the top pension that was a hundred and five a month and that was the best they did, so she was always talking about, you know, have to save it up for, in case of sickness and things like this, you know, but she lived here ‘till, we lived right here with her and was able to take care of, like she had diabetes and, bad enough that I gave her insulin by needle every morning for eight years and when she went to the hospital at the last, she was there three weeks and last two days and died, so there was no need for her to into the nursing home but there wasn’t any nursing homes then anyway, so she kept active right up ‘till then but it was just, you know, you tried back then I think to save what money you could for when you got older and you might need care, and might be sick but as far as making plans for, you know, your future going in a home, you couldn’t do that then. No, you can now but…….

Q. How would you say people helped each other out in days gone by that would be different from today?

A. Nobody expected pay when there was sickness. You just automatically went and did what you could do for that person and taken in food or, well I can remember my mom taking, going to a few homes where they were bedridden and she’d bath them and what not like that, you know. I wasn’t much at nursing and things like that, I don’t think I could have done the things that she did but, anyway, nobody expected pay. It was just, you was to help each other all you could help. Now everybody gets paid to have home care ladies, you know, and things like this.

Q. What different things do you remember about the Poor Farm?

A. I remember it being there but I don’t remember if I was ever inside. You know where it was, do you?. Marshalltown is where it was and I remember, I mean, seeing it there year after year and always pass by it going to town when we went that way but, anyway, I don’t know, I know the names of a few but I didn’t personally anyone that was in there and at that time there was like, overseers that looked after planting a garden way at the back so, some of those inmates were able to work in the garden and they weren’t all handicapped, you know, that they couldn’t do things so, it was like, it was like a poor farm but I mean they was living there for free and if they could plant a garden, well this helped.

Q. So, at what point would someone have to go to the poor farm?

A. If you didn’t have any money to take care of you and if you was enabled, you know, some were enabled to, just not capable of taking care of themselves or, well, in some cases it was a little this way too, you know, they didn’t know how to spend their money and, so in some cases it was mental that would land them in there and still with somebody overseeing them or bossing them that could work in the garden and things like that, you know, they weren’t all, well physically handicapped, some of it was mental, you know.

Q. How important was politics in those days?

A. It didn’t mean a thing to me, I didn’t understand it and when I got to the age to vote, my brother that had the store, he was at me all day long to go and vote and I was wishing he’d leave me alone because I didn’t know one thing that was going, to me it was something serious, you know, I thought my one vote was going to make such a big difference and I used to think, “Why don’t he leave me alone and I don’t know what I’m voting for”, and he’d say, “But it’s your privilege, it’s your right, you go vote”, and he’d kept at me all day long but it still doesn’t mean anything to me really, you know. I go because my husband thinks we should.

Q. Describe what South Range was like when you were growing up? How bustling it was, was there ice cream parlors?, stuff like that.

A. No, there wasn’t even, when I was growing up there wasn’t even a store right here, I mean, Doucettville was the handiest that way and the post office up this way, she had just a few little things in her store. No ice cream, it was just, well maybe candy bars, you know, and things like that and if you needed school supplies like a scribbler or pencil or something like that, a few little things like that but, no, it was, the stores weren’t close at all, you know, it’s just, we didn’t get to Digby all that often but you went if you had to, you know, and then I mean there was the catalogues, Eaton’s, the Eaton Company and Sears, Simpson’s it was then, Simpson’s and the Eaton’s and you’d send orders, you had no telephones, so you’d send orders through the mail, you see, and then the partial, you could prepay, send it with your, you could send the money, no tax on anything then, you could send the money along with your order or you could send c.o.d. and then there’d be, c.o.d. means cash on delivery, when the mailman brought it you could pay him, now he didn’t have to bring it, we had a really good mailman, I mean there for years, I mean, there were several but, I mean, the one I remember the most, he didn’t have to pay that, but he would pay that at the post office and bring you your order and you’d pay him. Yep, he did that, he trusted people, yep.

Q. How was the law enforced back then?

A. Well, sometimes I think maybe it was more strict than now, I don’t know. It seems to me that this younger generation, they act up and they get away with things that I don’t think we could have years ago. Of course, I didn’t know anything about drugs years ago and there’s drugs everywhere now that, maybe it just gives them all the grit or whatever to do all of these things that, I don’t know, you hear tell of so many murders and what not. Back then, with this, you know, the occasional one, now, well maybe it’s because we hear so much I suppose on the t.v news and we didn’t know back then because we didn’t hear about it.

Q. Who was the largest employer in this area?

A. Well, Tupper Warnes way back would have been the Digby business. I don’t know, do you know anything about where the recycling place is for deposits down there?, that is where Tupper Warnes had a really big business down there. Now he’s in my Sabean genealogy book so somewhere he’s connected to the Sabean’s but he had a booming business there, I mean, he had a store and, you know, a mill and oh, it was like a box factory and, oh different, with the mill they had like lumber and they’d plain it, you could have rough lumber, plain lumber and all this and they even had big piles of sods. I had an uncle and his job was to wheel sods in a wheelbarrow all day. (Laughter) So, that was a booming business and he bought, this Tupper Warnes bought wood lots. See all out and around this area and then he’d have them logged and what not, so there was that one for Digby and then in Weymouth was, wait now what was his first name, they called him Pa Taylor, his first name was not Pa but anyway, Taylor it was in Weymouth, what I remember and then of course the Lewis Lumber Mill that’s there now, that started up, I think while Taylor’s was still running, I think that started, the Irving owns that Lewis one now, you know, J.D Irving owns it but it’s still going under the name of Lewis Saw Mill but anyway that would have been started up by Harry Lewis while Taylor’s was still, I think, a business there.

Q. Do you know haw many people Tupper Warnes would have employed? Was it a lot or a small…….

A. Well, my husband would know more about that than I would. No, I really don’t know but with the ones that logged here and there in the different areas you know, I suppose it could have taken in maybe a hundred with, you know, just a rough guess because he had people working in the mill for him here, there and everywhere and then, see they’d haul the logs in which meant a truck driver, that was another hired man and then they had their own machines like for grating the roads and they didn’t have log lifts like they do now, they had to roll them on with pee-vee, the big logs and they wouldn’t have the big trucks like they got now. Like, my husbands was a three ton, they had no Tandems way back then, you know, the double wheels so it was just roll ‘em on with a pee-vee, if you know what it is?

Q. I don’t know what a pee-vee is.

A. Well, it’s, it has a long handle like this and then there’s an iron hook that’s kind of on a pivot and you hook the log with that and roll it on and it wouldn’t roll back on you, so this was, they used to have to load it, they’d put a, they’d try to build it up a little where they’d pile the logs, so they weren’t really flat on the ground and then they’d put like, two poles or maybe small logs up to the truck body and it had no sideboards on, see and then they’d roll there with a pee-vee up on these two poles ‘till they got their load on and then they used to have to put a chain around that buckled to hold the logs tight, no sideboards.

Q. What do you remember about tourism in days gone by?

A. Not a whole lot about it, not really, no.

Q. Were there many tourists that ever came to this area that you remember?

Q. Well, our house was always filled every summer but I don’t know that they were tourists. They were relatives and back then it was the ringer washer and we had a clothesline down back and there was apple tree’s out in this corner behind the house and we’d, hurricanes had blown them up so we had to cut them up but anyway we used to tie our clothesline there and hook it to an old corner, the corner of an old building down there and I used to have like twelve sheets or more in one wash after they’d all leave but it was relatives, you know, and it was breakfast, dinner, and supper, you’re planing the meal for the table, I’d go to bed at night and I’d think, “oh, what are my putting on the table tomorrow”, you know. So, I can’t say they were tourists but there were tourists came, I know, to the area but I can’t say that any of ours were tourists, they were relatives.

Q. How superstitious were people when you were growing up?

A. Well, there were some superstitious. Well, I for one worried over seeing one crow, one crow sorrow and then I always liked cats and of course it would bother me if a black cat crossed the road in front of us because that was a bad sign, if it was all black, you’d look for a white spot or whatever (Laughter) but I know there’s several that were superstitious of Friday the thirteenth, well I was born on the thirteenth and my brother was thirteen when I was born, I was married thirteen years when I had one daughter so, I was never superstitious of thirteen.

Q. What is the worst weather you can remember around here?

A. Well, a few hurricanes that I didn’t remember we had when I was real small but, whatever year it was we had Edna and Hazel, that year, I think maybe the early fifties, there was apple trees in rows, it was like an orchard from here to the intersection and they all got routed up in those two or three hurricanes and of course at that time, like I said, we used to like the apple’s and then it got so that if you didn’t spray, they were always wormy. We never had spray way, way back and we had good apple’s, they never were wormy, so anyway we got them cleared out of there and then another one I remember, what we called the Groundhog storm was February second, what year that was, I can’t remember now. That was a bad one. I don’t know if it would be as long as twenty-five years ago, maybe but my brother now that lives there, my brother Donald had been killed, I didn’t get to tell you, my brother Donald went through the War and then after all this booming business, didn’t he get killed, he was hit on an intersection out in Bloomfield. He had the half ton pick-up when a three ton truck hit him in the side, so he went through the War and was wounded and then he was killed out there, so then my brother took over the store, just about a year older, a year and so many months, took over the store after that and it was when my brother that’s living now had the store that we had that Groundhog storm, I can’t remember the year, I know it’s written down somewhere but anyway, he’d gone in for lunch right around twelve and then he just got in the house in time. He had a car port on this end and it blew the whole car port right off the house and some of it down on the car and with the jar, it took the chandelier off of the ceiling and it went everywhere, you know, so that was quite a bad storm and every one of our windows, there was like a salt water spray that we could not get washed even in the spring, we worked and worked. It was like, we’re five miles in from the salt water but it was like a salt water spray come with that terrible wind and rain and sleet and everything else with it, so that was a bad one, yeah and we called it, always called it the Groundhog storm, so if you ever hear it, that‘s the one ‘cause, yeah.

Q. What do you know about shipwrecks around here?

A. Shipwrecks, not really that much, no, no. We’re in five miles in from salt water.

Q. Do remember hearing of any big shipwrecks though?

A. Well, this when they talk about that Titanic there. I’ve got a postcard with that picture of that on and all the details on that and I thought when they was making the movie and everything about it, I mean, this wasn’t anything new to me because we always had that, you know, Titanic postcard, yeah, so no, I really don’t know that much about shipwrecks, no.

Q. What ghost stories do you remember from your younger years?

A. Well, there’s a funny one, I didn’t believe it of course. Between here and our church, which our church is about a mile from here, there are two cemeteries, one on the right and one on the left, they’re community cemeteries but the Baptist church is started the one on the left and on the right was started by and Anglican church and before the road was paved, I can remember this deep, well it was like you’d go right down quite a steep hill and it was a hallow and then you’d come up quite another little raise in the road, well when they paved the road they brought it up straight see, so it’s quite level there now but there’s still that little gully there where there’s a brook crossed and the water trickles down, well I didn’t believe it but there always was this crazy story that twelve o’clock at night somebody without a head crossed the road there because the cemeteries are on both sides of the road. That was just so crazy, (Laughter) that was a real ghost story.

Q. What colorful characters can you remember from around here?

A. I don’t know on that one.

Q. What do you remember about Maud Lewis?

A. Well, I remember her and really, her husband was related to my mother. What I remember about Maud Lewis, her husband, and you’ve heard this or read it, her husband had that Model A or Model T, whichever, that Ford there with the cloth top, you know, Model A or Model T, whatever, it’s in all the readings, anyway, we lived like I said in that blue house and he always peddled smoked fillet and it’s partly cooked. You could eat that raw and enjoy it, you know, it’s partly cooked from when they smoke it and it gets overheated and it wasn’t artificial smoke those days, it was a real smoke house they had it in, so anyway he went through, I know every week maybe more than once a week and it would be my sister's girls that lived down there, we used to try our best to get close to the vehicle, his old Model T or whatever it was because his wife was always with him but she wouldn’t let us see her and I didn’t know why she used to get like this and, you know, we didn’t know why, she wouldn’t let us see her and that made us more curious as kids to see what she looked like, she wouldn’t let us see her. I didn’t know until she became famous with painting that she had no chin and she was conscience of it and so she didn’t want us looking at her but it made us more curious, you know, and, so anyway, then the story is that he was murdered in the end, I mean, she died first and then he was in the same little house there and he took, took up painting but he hadn’t done it long enough to become famous but the story is that he was murdered, so I don’t know but anyway, I remember him like, oh yes, I’ve talked to him, you know, a real tall man he was and no teeth, had both sets out and had never had false ones put in and anyway, he was a distant relative to my mother, ‘cause my mother’s mother was a Lewis.

Q. How would you compare life in general today, to days gone by?

A. I think we were happier back years ago. You made your own fun, you know, it was parties and quilting bees, you know, I’ve gone to a lot, well, we still do have quilting parties, you know, but when we used to go to quilting, if someone had a quilting frame all the ladies would go for early afternoon, stay through to supper hour and then the men would come in the early evening and they’d visit in one room with each other while the ladies were all in the other room quilting and then between nine and ten o’clock we’d have lunch and, you know, go home. It could be we would have finished the quilt and I’ve seen a time that we’d put another in the frame and it was fun. You’d just talk and laugh and make your own fun, you know. There wasn’t the stress there is today, no, I think it was more relaxing.

Q. When you were married how many children did you have?

A. I just had one.