O.k, we’ll start with what is your full name?

My full name is Harry Richard Sulis.

O.K, and who were your parents?

My father was Harry Anthony Sulis born in Everett, Massachusetts in eighteen ninety-five and moved to Smith’s Cove in nineteen hundred and my mother was Wilimina Gertrude Gilliat daughter of William Gilliat of Joggin Bridge, Digby County, Nova Scotia.

Who were your grandparents?

My grandparents was Henry H. Sulis of Smith’s Cove, my fathers father and Elizabeth, his wife and my mothers parents were William Gilliat and Alice Gilliat of Joggin Bridge.

When were you born?

I was born September the sixteenth, nineteen thirty-two.

O.K, and where were you born?

In a bungalow just down the road, half a mile, born at home.

How large was the family?

I have three sisters and myself, I was the baby.

And what did you think about being the baby of the family?

Oh, I was, that was, I was it, I was the boss. They were just excess baggage.

What did your father do for a living?

He was a carpenter all his life.

What do you remember about your mother’s workday?

My mother’s workday started at daylight and quit at dark. She had, her washing was done by hand with the old tub and scrub board before she got a washer but it was quite late in life when she got her first Beatty washer and you paid so much a month to get that washer. The man came around and collected the, the premium each month but prior to that, Monday was wash day and it was a hard day. That was all the kids clothes, my fathers and hers, the bedding and the, you know, it was a hard day and water was very scarce at this house in the summertime until we had a drill well but that was after, many years after I took the house over that we had ample water supply. Yeah, so Monday’s which is the wash day was a hard day and Saturday’s for some reason seemed to be the housecleaning day and the cooking day, that’s when she cooked for Sunday dinner and got things ready, you know, cakes and pies and cleaned the house and we played. (Laughter)

O.K. What was a typical school day like for you?

Well we started school down here and we never, we didn’t start ‘till we were six sometimes seven depending on when your birthday was but there was no kindergarten, it was right into grade one and there was six grades in the primary side of the school and there was seven to eleven on the other side, so I remember the teachers having complete control of the school, discipline wise, and I remember very vividly that we had to do a lot of work on our own. Once she got us started then we had to finish whatever was in the text or whatever she put on the board almost unattended because she had to go on with the other grades, you know, so it was a lot of unsupervised, I shouldn’t say unsupervised, she was certainly in the room and if you did anything wrong you were gonna get cracked on the knuckles but yeah, you worked on your own a lot but it was good, it was a good school, we liked it and we didn’t like to go to Digby. We went to Digby in grade seven and we did not like that at all. We were bussed which wasn’t a problem but, I don’t know, we just seemed to like, we liked our own community school and our own kids, yep, it just didn’t, it’s not that we didn’t fit in ‘cause we, you know, we played the sports and all that and everything else that they had to offer but it wasn’t the same. We liked our own little old country school.

Now, was it a one-room?

No, No. It was a two-room, two rooms. One to six on the primary side and in the advanced side was seven to eleven, seven to eleven but after that they built a new school and took the younger grades here in the Smith’s Cove School and then, and bussed the older people to Digby but then they closed the new school and took everybody to town so they’ve been doing that for years.

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

What kinds of things, well certainly the timetables, one times one is eight, (Laughter) yeah, we had to do the timetables and poems, a lot of poems, nice poems too and I can still remember some of it. Yeah, poems and the timetables was probably the main thing, you know, of course some arithmetic but, you know that was mainly the timetables and they were on the back of the scribblers that you had. You could always cheat a little and look on the back. Yep, so it was good and a lot of your work you had to get up in front of the class and do it. You stood, like grade five would line up and do their spelling or whatever she had laid on so you were at the mercy of your peers lookin’ up at ‘ya, it’s not like that today.

How would you have been disciplined at school?

Disciplined?

Yes.

Well, she had a very long, black leather strap which I never had but I know it from the other people, it would sting something terrible and you stayed in after school, stayed in after school and, what else did she do?, send a note home to your parents so, anyway, staying in after school, recess, some extra work like fill in the wood box, cleaning the blackboards all nice, maybe picking up garbage outside, they were all her scale of discipline but she had, you know, like I mean, staying in or a severe tongue lashing she would give you or if it warranted, you’d get the strap but I can’t remember anybody being expelled or anything like that, sometimes she’d send you home if you were bad, send a note to your parents and then you’d dispose of the note and say you had a bad cold and had to come home. (Laughter) There was ways of getting around it. No, basically they didn’t seem to have any problems. It was dependant on the teacher, some were, you know, very, very strict and good at disciplining a group of kids and some had problems but mainly there was, you know, we got along well. The big thing was the Christmas Concert. We went to the hall and prepared for that, you know, that was the big thing of the year, yep, that was good, so that was about it for school, outside toilets, water jug that you had to go up and drink out of, you know, push the little button and get yourself a drink of water and take your turn puttin’ wood in the wood stove. The teacher would say, "Harry, It’s time to put wood in the stove", (Laughter) great big old, one big old stove and the pipes went right across the ceiling and up through the end of the school but they were warm, no, we had no problem that way ‘cause the janitor came early. I remember one old guy, Mr. Banks, he was Irish and he came here from Ireland, he was a small little man and he used to, and if you got there early enough to, while he was still there, he would dance for you, Irish jig, so we always used to like to go see Mr. Banks do the Irish jig for us but the first thing he would do in the winter was open all the big windows and let the stale air out of the room and then he’d build the fires up good and then he’d go around and close all the windows when the fresh air come in, yep, yeah it was good and the teachers, they boarded, they boarded locally, like, you know, close to the school and so on and they were probably from, most of them were from just in the County here, yep, down Digby Neck or somewhere but they boarded locally, yep, it was good.

How would you have been disciplined at home?

Well, my mother was the disciplinarian, my father was working all of the time, (Laughter) it seems that, you know, he didn’t, he certainly knew what we were doing wrong but my mother was a great one just to, oh she’d get excited and discipline you, tongue lashing we called it, so mainly it was verbally, you know, verbal discipline, we never got, oh we might have got an old shingle over our rear end or something but nothing, nothing serious. She didn’t take after us with a rolling pin or anything, yep. Of course girls, they never seem to get in trouble, it was just me. (Laughter) My sisters, I can’t remember them ever getting disciplined, yep, but no it was just boy stuff that we got, you know, nothing serious.

After your chores were done, what would you do with your free time?

Well, we were so busy that I don’t know where we got enough time to do all the stuff that we, like the winter time it was skating, and coasting, and, of course we had to cut wood, so that was, kept you busy after school. We always had to saw our wood up, you never got, my father never got wood that was cut and split for the stoves and we had three stoves at that time, that was my job as soon as I got home to saw the wood, split it, and fill the wood boxes and get the kindling, but we were busy all the time, like, and other times we had, in the summer we were out fishing, we were digging clams and selling them to the Americans, we were catching flounders, selling them to the Americans, pickin’ cherries and sellin’ them and mowing peoples lawns and lookin’ after some elderly ladies that lived alone, we’d do all their chores, you know, we were busy all the time and we had camps in the woods, old brush camps or anything we could get, an old piece of canvass or anything, we had six or seven of those and an old gentlemen over the road here, Cuthburt Welch, he loaned us an old boat and we rowed all over everywhere in that thing, over to the island, we used to go to the island a lot and then my friend and I, Dave Chaubers, we used to dig clams and we’d roam to Digby and sell ‘em to the factory, you know, so we were on the go all the time and every, like, we’d go partridge hunting in the fall and, we never went deer hunting when we were young, we never had nobody to ever really, to go with ‘cause that was a bigger peoples game but we were busy, we were busy at home and then busy outside but there was something going on all the time, you know, coasting parties and skating parties and things down in the old hall here which is the museum now is where, a man used to come around and put movies on, so that was a big highlight, you know, to wait for the movie, yep, get your fifteen cents and go down and, yep, and of course the local store, that was our, really our main point of interest. When we got enough money, we’d go down and get candy and pop, we lived there practically. When we got a little older we got a few cigarettes and puffed them (Laughter) when we had the money, yep, oh yeah, it was good.

What was your favorite holiday as a young child?

My favorite holiday, well let me, oh it would have to be Christmas because my mother would send for a big, big order from Eaton’s and she’d get that all on the, what they call the, the, I don’t know what it was, the plan where you got all this big, a box of stuff and then paid each month for it, you know, so by the next Christmas you just paid off what you got for the last Christmas but that was a big highlight, what, you know, came, what was for Christmas, yep.

What would it be like at your house when the catalogue would arrive?

Oh, that was the, that, the catalogue was, oh that was like, what can I say, that was a highlight ‘cause everybody studied the catalogue, you know. I got my first bicycle out of the catalogue and I saw it in the catalogue. I was fifteen when I got my first bicycle, now they get a four wheeler when they’re five, four and five, yep, I was fifteen when I got this bicycle out of the Eaton’s catalogue but it was a highlight. The girls went through it for the dresses and the woman went through it, you know everybody, everybody, men, woman, and children went through the catalogue. That was a highlight when that arrived and, you know, it’s like Juanita said, it’s just like walking in a big department store, you pictured everything in your mind. We always thought the people in the book that were models were really alive in the book, you could talk to them (Laughter), when we were kids, yeah, oh yeah, that was good, Eaton’s and Simpson’s both, we got both books.

So, where else would you get the things that you needed?

Oh, there was ample stuff in Digby. You could, you know, we had hardware stores and we had clothing stores and shoe stores and, well you name it, Digby is not like that now, I mean we had some of the finest hardware stores there were probably in the Province. There was Dakin’s and Ruggles Hardware Store and they had, they supplied everything you could possibly need and then, like I say, clothes, and men’s, and woman’s, and shoes, and hair, and barber’s, and hairdressers, and, well, everything. I just finished a book on Digby County, a pictorial and write-ups on it written by a Parker. I think I was telling you about it? Excellent, just gives you a whole insight as to what Digby had, you know, very prosperous town, very prosperous and every once and a while when the time presented it, my mother would get me all dolled up like little Lord Fauntelroy ‘cause I was the baby and take me down to the train station and put me on the train in the afternoon for ten cents and take me to Digby and that was big time, that was big stuff that ride to Digby. I can remember that just as vivid as it was yesterday, the smell of the old train and that big thing coming into the station and looking up at it, the steam ‘a flyin’ and the light, you know, for a kid this high, that was something, yep. I miss the old steam engines, the old steam train, it’s a shame they’re gone and then later on when we were kids, well teenagers, when the train blew from Yarmouth going to Halifax at ten o’clock, that’s when we had to scatter for home, that was our curfew, that ten o’clock train whistle and then you went by the train, the whistles, you know, you knew when the trains were coming and you knew when they blew. You knew exactly what time they arrived here in the cove, you could adjust yourself and then the town clock, you could hear that striking in Digby and then the old Princess Helene, the ferry from Yarmouth, she blew, the fog horn blew, the big mill in Digby blew, you knew all these, they were all signals to ya’, you know, different times of day, yeah they were great, yep, they’re all gone and you can’t even hear the fog horn. I never hear the boat blowin’, yeah it’s all, everything is gone, it’s not that I’m deaf, it’s just that they’re not there. (Laughter) I am a little deaf but not that bad.

How much spending money would you have as a child?

Oh, my mother was very generous. I can remember my father, like I can remember the tail end of the thirties, I was born in thirty-two and the War started in thirty-nine and I can remember the tail end of the thirties and I can remember my father when there was no carpenter work in the thirties and early forties before they started building Cornwallis Navel Base and things like that, where the carpenters all went and they got good pay but twenty-five dollars was probably his pay for the week and he was chauffeuring a doctor down here at the Harbour View Summer Resort, so that was good steady money, you know, during the thirties but I can remember my mother would, you know, she’d sneak us a nickel here and there or a dime or, but that was big money and my uncle used to come from the states and he’d give my three sisters and me an American dime and he always arrived here at night and we’d be in bed, so we never slept all night just waiting to get to the store to spend that American ten cents. That was big, you know, big money, yep, but mainly nickels, and dimes, and pennies, you know, you didn’t get no great big, you didn’t need it, you could fill your pockets for fifteen cents full of candy and that’s all what we went for, you know, yeah, it was good but then we worked when we got, you know, big enough to go scratch around for the, the older, elderly ladies of the community or men, they would pay ya’, one lady, Mrs. Jagger, she lived in Kelpy Lodge, she was a spinster down here by the Smith’s Cove trailer court, if you went down on a Saturday morning and you worked for twelve cents in the morning, that’s what you got, she gave you a cheque for twelve cents. She always paid by cheque, so you might have seven cent cheques or twelve cent cheques. (Laughter) She was quite the lady, very, very colorful, yep, yep that was, but sometimes we’d be lucky and work and somebody would give you a dollar. Cherries was the best, you got your most spending money from selling cherries. I think, I remember my younger sister, she died when she was fifteen, Francis, they, I think her and I got, if I remember, twenty-five cents for a box, if I can remember for our local, nice cherries here, well we’d make big money, oh that was something and you could sell ‘em just as fast as you could pick ‘em so she’d pick for a while and I sat by the stand by the road and then we’d change over and then we’d split our money, sometimes we’d share it with my mother or, if she needed something or my other sisters but we made good money picking cherries if it was a year you could make good money, so that was our main stay. (Laughter)

What was your Religion?

Baptist.

So, what would Sunday’s be like at your house?

Well, my father was very strict about no noise on Sunday and he wasn’t a really religious men, I mean he was a baptized Baptist but he held the Sabbath quite, in honor, you know, and he didn’t work, he wouldn’t work on Sunday and he didn’t let us make any noise, like play outside because there was a church next door and he was always preaching, "You don’t do that on Sunday’s", so he kept Sunday quite holy. My mother was a Baptist, you know, and attending church Baptist but my main thing I remember about church was Sunday School. We started Sunday School quite early and we went up to about, oh I don’t know when we stopped that, maybe thirteen or fourteen, yep and then I went in the army, in the military quite young and of course, it’s not that you get away from religion but you just have a service every so often in the military that’s compulsory that you have to go to so, I got out of the service in eighty-seven and the odd time I go down to the Baptist Church and it’s quite enjoyable, you meet people, one thing or another, yep, so that was it for religion.

How would you keep up with what was going on in the outside world?

The only way was the old radio and we all fought for what programs we wanted. (Laughter) The girls wanted one, my father wanted the War news and we wanted something like Batman or whoever was on, Lone Ranger, yep, we all fought for the station at night but mainly during the, there was one time old Gabrielle Heater came on, you probably never heard of him but he was the main War time news broadcaster and he had, he always started out with, "There’s bad news tonight folks", or, "There’s good news tonight folks", you know, he had the voice of doom they called it and then he’d give the complete War news up to date, so my father always wanted to hear that but then after that we could play anything and my mother played the piano and of course that didn’t give you any news but that was entertainment, yep, that piano used to stand around the corner there in the living room, boy she’d pound on that and people would be in here singing and having a great time.

What different things would you grow and raise yourself?

Well, we had a, always had a complete garden, you know, every vegetable that you could imagine, potatoes, and carrots, and peas, and turnips, and squash, and everything, yep, a nice garden and that helped get you by. We never had any animals, no chickens or anything like that. I had a pig once and it ran away. My father got a little pig (Laughter) and it ran away and ended up over here at the ministers place and they caught it in a net and then my sisters used to wash it and dry it and put powder on it and things in his nose and then when my father, it was time to butcher it, my mother took us all away down to my grandmothers and then we wouldn’t eat it, he was the only one that ate it, ‘cause it was our pet. (Laughter) Yep, yep, I forget it’s name but it was something else, yep the first night he took off, he didn’t like his environment I guess, took off and went up to the ministers, yep it was funny.

What different things would you barter for?

Well, I think we were beyond that stage, I don’t think we, we didn’t barter, not in my day anyway, no. I remember hearing people say they took things to the trading company in Bear River, you know they would trade eggs or butter for something else but I can’t remember, no we never did, we never did, other than the fact that my mother might have preserves and she’d give ‘em to somebody and somebody would give her something back but as actually giving potatoes for meat or fish for, no we didn’t, we didn’t do that, we just….

How did electricity change things for you?

Well, we had electricity when we arrived here…….

Other. Did they (inaudible audio) yet, did they? (Laughter)

(Laughter)

We’re deep in thought here. (Laughter)

Other. (Laughter)

We, I started with electricity right in this house so it came as no great thing, you know, later on, but this house was wired when we, this was one of the first houses, they claim, that was wired. There was a man from Digby and a local man here in Smith’s Cove that sort of went around doing their thing, wiring houses, so this was wired when we came here and we had a, even had a bathroom which was a great bonus, you know, so it was sort of an updated place, you know, compared with some others.

Who would the doctor have been when you were growing up?

How old?

Who would it have been?

When I was growing up the family doctor here who lived in Bear River practiced out of Digby Hospital was a Dr. Campbell and he came here, I think during the First, second World War at the beginning or something like that when all the younger men were going off to, in the military, the doctor’s and that, so he arrived here and he stayed a long time.

Would he have delivered the babies or would there have been somebody else?

No, the family doctor delivered the babies, yep, no any doctor in Digby then could deliver a baby. There was quite a few doctors in Digby too, so babies were mainly born at home and any doctor that, or my grandmother was a midwife, if that’s what you call it?

Yep.

Yeah, well she went around delivering babies and sometimes she delivered them alone when the doctor couldn’t get there, yep, and she helped with operations on kitchen tables and, yep, yep, she was really, and she was a great lady to go and help people when they were sick and in need. She would leave her house and go do things for them, yep, it was a……

What were some home remedies that would have been common when you were younger?

One thing I can remember is my mother chasing us down with a mustard plaster. Holy (Laughter), that was (Laughter) hot. It burnt, it didn’t smell good, or, oh mustard plaster, minord salitamit, oh, pinex, pinex cough syrup. I’ll never forget it, my mother used it by the gallons. You got a little bottle from the store, it smelled, it tasted beautiful and it smelled wonderful too but you got a little bottle and you made about a gallon out of this one little bottle, you mixed it with water and, yep, but she’d poke old pinex to us by the gallon, yeah, and of course all of the mustard plasters, oh there was all kinds of weird concoctions they used but mainly the pinex, the minard salitamit, and the, what was the other thing I said?, minard salitamit, pinex, and mustard plaster, those were the three main stays. I’ve been exposed to all of those many, many, many times, yep.

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

How did I take care of my teeth? Well, my mother used to make appointments for the dentist when I was going to school and I’d throw ‘em in the ditch, when I was going to Digby school. As far a she knew I went to the dentist (Laughter) and I had some bad teeth and, toothache, oh my, just terrible and it seemed every night, like when we were playing ball, when you got, you know, your blood really rushing, then you would come home and one would start aching and then all of them and oh it was terrible and I really never had any work done ‘till I went in the army and then they fixed ‘em all up and basically we used to hear people talking when we were kids how terrible it was to go to the dentist. I remember my mother talking to a lady by the name of Emma McGreggor and she said she went to the dentist and she was waiting in the waiting room and this woman was screaming and she almost left and come home ‘cause it scared her so bad, so we grew up thinking, you know, if you go to the dentist, you’re gonna die, so I was nervous of the dentist but I went to the army doctor and he said, "Well, this thing back here must have been giving you trouble, this old snag", and it was, it had for years, so he said, "We’ll get rid of that first", so he yanked it out, I didn’t even know it come out, I said, "Well, if that’s the way it would have been when I was a kid, I would have had much better teeth than I have now", you know, I have my own but they were neglected for a long time but every once and a while we’d scrub ‘em with a toothbrush, we weren’t, people weren’t made to, you know, they didn’t do teeth cleaning and flossing like they do now. Every once and a while you may get a sliver of, a sliver off of a kindling stick and (Laughter) clean ‘em or something (Laughter), you know, pick ‘em or something, but not like it is now. Kids look after, beautiful teeth nowadays, I, that’s one thing I do observe on the younger people, yeah beautiful teeth, they’re looked after, very expensive but they’re looking after them. My daughter has three children and she has a dental plan through the teachers union and thank heavens she has it because it’s very, very, very expensive. Well, it was expensive when I was a kid, but, you know, five dollars a visit or something like that, that was big money, you know, a lot of people neglected because of that, they couldn’t go get overhauled.

When someone died, what was the wake like?

Well, we didn’t have wakes as per say like the Irish or the Scott’s did or anything like that. We had, like my sister died when she was fifteen with an appendix operation, well she, her, the funeral was right here, right here and her coffin was just around the corner. The funeral was held here and then we went to the cemetery and then people would come back to the house and have, you know, coffee and tea and cake, you know, sweets and that, the same as they do today except most of it's done in the vestry of the church but ‘cause she was young, you know, my mother wanted her funeral here so we had it here but no wakes like the Irish where they play the fiddle and dance and get drunk and everything, no we didn’t do that, no. You know the old feller, a good send off the Irish do, yeah, yeah. Are you Irish?

No, I’m not.

No.

What would the roads have been like when you were younger?

Well, we were just talking about that the other day. I can remember this being gravel road. I can remember walking down, no I don’t know what year the first paving job was done but I can certainly remember of going down that highway very young with my mother when it was gravel and the back roads to me were always kept in perfect shape, now we didn’t have the snowplowing facilities and there was problems there, you know, we got more snow than we do now but I can certainly remember how well they ditched and they grated and they picked all the stones off the road and the road, the back roads which were your main roads, most all your roads were gravel, they were well maintained because it was all hand work. They didn’t have one machine and ten men standing around watching it, they had everybody, you know, ten or fifteen men working along the road and they kept ‘em in excellent shape but like I say, the snowplowing facilities were bad, you know.

Who would have been in charge of maintaining them?

Well, they had a local super, foreman for each district. We had George Laramour here, he was the road boss, they called him and he would hire the amount of men he needed, he had so many on permanent almost, like, you know, they sanded and salted the hills, and they cut bushes and grass along, and they did this, and filled pot holes and, you name it, yep, they did it all and with very little machinery, you know, to help them. Maybe they had a grader and a road grader and stuff like that but they kept the roads good, yep, because it was hand work.

What did you expect to do when you grew up?

I expected to be a rocket scientist or a brain surgeon. (Laughter) No, no I didn’t have any plans at all. I always, I always liked uniforms, I was always impressed with, you know, the guys coming home from the military and from the War years. They always impressed me and I liked that but I always had a uniform, I was in the Trail Rangers, then I was in the Cub’s, then I was in the Boy Scout’s, then I was in Sea Cadets, I was in the West Nova Scotia Regiments Militia, and then I joined the regular army in nineteen fifty and stayed ‘till eighty-seven, so it seemed like my whole life I’ve had a uniform of some kind, so, but I never had no great interest of being President of the United States or anything like that, (Laughter) I was just sort of a happy go lucky guy who just took everyday as it arrived, yep, so anyway, I survived this far, if I get over this head cold. (Laughter)

As a teen, what kinds of things would you do for fun?

Oh, a teenager, chase girls mainly. (Laughter) No, we didn’t. We skated, and played hockey, and played ball, loved to, the water, you know, boats, and build rafts and, like I said, camps and, oh you name it. It was all just local stuff, it was nothing that took any money, you know, we had an old ball field down here and we probably used rocks for bases and an old peevee handle for a bat and, but we had a great time, you know, hockey was the same, we never had any coach or anybody to teach us and we never had the equipment but we certainly played hockey every night the ice was good and coasting was big when we were teenagers, coasting was big time.

Where would you go coasting?

Any hill, any hill you could find. Right in back of the house here there was a nice big open field and the old fella let us coast there. Skating parties, we had two ponds, one down by the beach and one up on the hill and all the teenagers and older people were skating every night, big bon fire and we had a little shack to put your skates on, you know, it was good, so there was always something going on and then like I said there was a lot of things in the local hall, plays, live plays, and little movies they’d put on, oh yeah, you kept busy, yep really busy, especially in the summer, yep.

Who would your screen idols have been when you were younger?

My screen idol? Well, I like, I used to love Western’s, I used to like, like, Randolph Scott and John Wayne ‘cause they’d stop on their horse and light a cigarette, you know, (Laughter) boy we really thought that was great. If we could ever ride a horse and light a cigarette, yep, but Randolph Scott and John Wayne I suppose would be, would be mine. Randolph Scott first and then John Wayne come on later, of course he was every male teenagers idol, a big, strong, call ‘ya pilgrim or one thing or another, (Laughter) we thought that was super.

What different kinds of music would you have liked?

Well, I loved music, I really did. I love military bands, you know, a big full band, I always thought, I like bagpipes, a pipe band and I like them combined with brass band, that’s super and we had a lot of that in the military but I like any music, old timer, moderner and, like I say, my mother played the piano and I play the harmonica so, anything, any music was good and entertaining.

What do you remember about dating as a teenager?

Dating?, well, dating was not like it is. You didn’t, we never went to the house, we waited outside hoping the girl would come out ‘cause (Laughter) we were always, we were always scared of her father or her mother or somebody but we watch it now, you know, on t.v and they go to the house with their, all dressed up nice and car outside and we had a bicycle probably hiding behind a tree hoping somebody would come out and go for a walk or something but no, dating wasn’t any big, any big deal with us, we just went skating with a girl, chased her around the ice hoping she’d stop and talk to us or something like that, yep, oh we had fun and we had a group my age that were all, all interested in the same thing, fun, you know, we went skating and we’d probably end up in one of the girls houses or guys houses and just shoot the breeze and you know, just generally have fun but, no we never did any real steady, steady, dating……..

Other. (Harry’s wife) Inaudible audio

Yes.

Other. (Harry’s wife) Inaudible audio

Is he? O.K

Other. (Harry’s wife) Inaudible audio

No, we’re just about done, aren’t we? No, come on in Lou, we’re just about finished.

How do you think this place had changed in comparison to when you were younger?

Well, it’s changed a lot. The old people of course that I, you know, were here when I was, they’re gone and people just don’t socialize between homes like they used to. People have cars, cottages, money, they have it all so they stay with their own family or themselves. That’s mainly how it’s changed because this house was full every night and every other house was the same. People went to socialize to the house, to another home, you know, so it’s changed a lot that way and of course the church is not like it was. The church was the focal point of the community, everything seemed to happen around there but the interest is not, definitely not there in the church anymore. It’s hard, it’s hard for the minister, it’s hard for the people trying to keep it afloat but that’s the way it is, that’s the day and age, yep, but mainly it was house fun, visiting, and that’s gone, yep, that’s definitely gone, t.v’s, cars, everything, you know, and like I say, people got money, they don’t have to stay home and entertain other people, they can go places, yep, Is that it?

Yes, I guess.

A. Oh my gosh, so that’s good.