Q. O.K, we’ll start by…….what is your full name?

A. James Daniel Graham

Q. O.K, and who were your parents?

A. Alton Graham and Nellie, is my mother’s name, Nellie.

Q. O.K, and her maiden name was…..?

A. Comeau.

Q. Comeau. And when were you born?

A. 1920. March 7th of 1920.

Q. O.K, and where were you born?

A. In Lake Midway.

Q. How large was the family that you grew up in?

A. Ten. There was ten of us.

Q. And where do you fit in?

A. Third, from the top.

Q. O.K. How did you feel about being third from the top?

A. Oh it was nice to have a large family. We all grew up together and of course some of them were married by the time the lasts ones came along.

Q. What did your father do for a living?

A. He farmed some and fished.

Q. And what did your mother do?

A. She of course, had a full time job at home.

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

A. Well we walked about a mile and a quarter to school and most of the time there was probably ten to thirteen children that went and that was at the foot of the lake in Lake Midway and the school is no longer there but there’s a home just about in the same area that belongs to Jimmy Gidney.

Q. And what was it like walking to school that far?

A. Oh many days it was very cold and you’d have to turn around and walk backwards into the storm and the same way going home at times. It was cold and cold in the school too.

Q. (Laughter) I can imagine. Who was your best friend at school?

A. Oh well, gee I don’t know. I can’t recall anyone special. We used to have a few fights. (Laughter) The boys used to squabble a little bit from different families.

Q. What would happen when there was a fight?

A. Oh somebody would go home with a nosebleed or something. (Laughter)

Q. What types of things do you remember doing with your friends?

A. Oh we used to skate on the lake and swim in the summer time.

Q. Which Lake would you skate on?

A. In Lake Midway. That’s where we were born and brought up right at the head of the lake.

Q. And what is your best memory of school?

A. Gee. I never liked school very much.

Q. Why was that?

A. I don’t know why but I was happy when, the day I thought I was happy I guess, the day that I became fourteen I walked home with my books. And that was all you had to go to school when you was fourteen.

Q. O.K. What subjects were you taught in school?

A. Well of course Reading and Writing and Arithmetic and I got up into the Algebra in grade nine and I couldn’t understand it and the teacher that we had couldn’t seem to make me understand it and it was probably her fault or maybe mine. I don’t know, but after I was a little older I started a course in internal combustion engines and of course I had to start right back in like grade one and worked up through it and it was so simple that it wasn’t funny. So, it was probably my fault.

Q. (Laughter) What was your favorite subject in school?

A. Probably Geography.

Q. Why was that?

A. Well I don’t know. I’d like to travel but I never got the opportunity to travel very much.

Q. And what was your least favorite subject in school?

A. Probably reading, but I like to read now.

Q. How were you disciplined at school?

A. Well, I don’t think that I got too many strappings but that’s the way they used to do it. They had a strap and if you got out of hand or you’d have to go stand in the corner a little bit. Nobody liked to do that.

Q. And how were you disciplined at home?

A. Probably with a big kindling stick. (Laughter)

Q. Do you ever remember being disciplined at home?

A. No I don’t really. I don’t remember getting any. I probably did, but I don’t remember ‘em.

Q. What were your daily chores?

A. Well we had to cut some kindling for to build fires with. Of course you have to burn wood and carry in the wood ‘cause there was two or three of us that was growing up at the same time to do those things. When you got to be nine or ten years old you had to milk cows and feed the cattle. In the summer time you had to help with the hay and weed the garden and you didn’t like that but you had to do it in order to live.

Q. After your chores were done, what would you like to do with your free time?

A. Well, we never had too much for recreation unless you made it yourself and we used to build bobsleds out of some old apple barrel staves and a piece of plank and there was a big hill up back of us and in the winter time in those days we had lots of crust. You know the heavy crust would freeze in the sleet storms and we’d ride down those and if the jump wasn’t big enough we’d build it up, go over the jump. Sometimes get hurt.

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

A. I think Christmas.

Q. And why was that?

A. Well, big family and lots of goodies and of course they were all homemade. Mom made good donuts. We got, she had ‘em hid in the trunk one time, I remember that and we had a, well he’s a distant relative of mine come over from the states and he lived with us and he was kind of a bad character and he built, made a key through a soap. He got Bud I think, my brother, he’s older than I am to make an imprint of the key and he filed it out and mom had her donuts and fudge in a, locked up in a trunk. I still have the trunk down here (pointing to the cupboard) and he made the key and we used to go in and get one donut and one piece of fudge. Of course it was made probably a month before Christmas time and by the time Christmas got there mom opened the trunk they had no donuts and no fudge left for Christmas. (Laughter)

Q. And what did your mother say about that?

A. Oh, she was kind of upset. Really. (Laughter)

Q. What other holidays or special events do you remember as a child?

A. Well, not too much. Special event I guess was the last day of school.

Q. And what did you do on the last day of school?

A. Oh you used to, money was very scarce in those day and you used to have to wear, we always had lots to eat and was kept warm but money wasn’t very plentiful and you’d have to wear gum rubbers to school, you know them rubber boots up to your ankles and of course it was a long way to walk in your bare feet so come the last day of school you could shed your gum rubbers and there was one or two years when you had no other shoes to put on so you had to go in your bare feet.

Q. And what was that like?

A. Well at first it was very, very painful but your feet got toughened up to it, walking on the gravel and new mowed hay that would be sharp and it would hurt or you’d step on a splinter and it would make you hobble and we used to go pick berries, strawberries, wild strawberries and raspberries. Now and then run into hornets nests and you’d have to take off and get moving.

Q. What was your favorite toy?

A. I guess it was a sled. That’s when I found out that there wasn’t really any Santa Claus and I still can remember that very plain. Mom had it hid under her bed and being nosey I looked under the bed and discovered the sled a couple of days before Christmas. I was kind of saddened to think that the sled was there before Santa Claus arrived. Isn’t it strange how you remember things like that?

Q. What pets do you remember having?

A. Well, a dog. We always tend to have a dog, various ones we had over the years and probably a few cats but they were nothing special to me cats. Lambs, we had sheep of course. I had a little lamb one time and he was born blind. Do you want to hear this little story?

Q. Of course.

A. Anyhow, of course his mother didn’t, he couldn’t go with his mother much, she didn’t feed him so we had to bring him up by bottle. A little dick lamb and come the time my father was out working somewhere, he had trucks too at that time, he was doing something and he wanted, he used to butcher a few lambs, his own and sell them around to different places. So he left word this day for us to butcher the little blind lamb, so it was up to me to look after him and I got him down and had his neck across my knee to do the job and I couldn’t do it. I had to let him up. (Laughter) And I don’t know whatever happened to him but I guess he probably got butchered sometime a later date. (Laughter)

Q. Did they find out that you hadn’t…….?

A. Oh yes, oh yes, yeah.

Q. Did you get in trouble?

A. No, no I didn’t get in any trouble but oh, I couldn’t do it.

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

A. Probably a mad race. That time it was Eaton’s, the Eaton’s catalogue. Everybody had to look at the catalogue.

Q. What sorts of things would be in the catalogue that would be different from today?

A. Oh, not that much but they did, see Eaton’s sold about everything and offered about everything in that. Bicycles, which I never owned one of my own. There was always pictures of bicycles and wheelbarrows and most everything in that catalogue. No, my brother Bud owned a bicycle and I used to use that.

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

A. In Digby mostly.

Q. And where would you go to in Digby?

A. Oh, I don’t know the names of the stores. Darn, I can’t remember their names right now, but I probably will before too long.

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

A. We were fortunate if we got five cents a week.

Q. And if you did get the five cents a week, what would you do with it?

A. Well probably candy when you got big enough and then you used to try to sneak five cents worth of cigarettes, you know. Almost all young boys done that. Thankfully I don’t do it now, Don’t smoke and I never smoked for too many years. Actually probably too many, not a whole lot of years. I remember it one time I, this is how nicotine can get to you I guess. I smoked or quit for seventeen years but I always wanted to smoke during that time. So I quit ‘em and I never wanted one after that for some reason, thank, thank the good Lord that I got clear of that. But they're hard, I would advise anyone to stay away from them.

Q. What was your Religion?

A. Oh Baptist. When we were young though we used to go to the United Church in Centreville. We had to walk to Centreville. It was walk everywhere then. Yeah.

Q. What were Sundays like in your household when you were growing up?

A. Sundays? Well most of the time we would go to Sunday school when we were smaller and then Sundays would become a gathering day. My father used to cut hair for a few people and they would all, it’s been as high as twenty-two or twenty-three at home for Sunday dinner. They’d come, he’d cut, three or four maybe, three or four men would come, he’d cut their hair and of course they’d all stay and have dinner. So they’d all have a free haircut and a free dinner. (Laughter)

Q. And what did you think about that?

A. Oh it was great I suppose to have lots of people around. Yeah, yeah.

Q. What influence did Religion have throughout your life?

A. Well, I’ve never been I guess a very staunch church goer. I’ve always believed there was a God, which I know there is but I just don’t go to church. I did when I was young. I used to go to church and enjoyed an old Reverend Mr. Dimmick. He lived next door to us in Lake Midway. I enjoyed going to church with him. After you grew up it seems though you get away from these things and a lot of people shouldn’t, but we do.

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

A. How did I keep up? I don’t know. I just took things in stride and I worked, I guess about every day of my life since I’ve been big enough to go to work. Up until fifteen years ago and then I retired and then I worked harder that ever.

Q. How would you receive your news?

A. My what?

Q. How would you receive the news?

A. The news? Of, such as….?

Q. Any events, the War.

A. Oh well yeah, I suppose I would take everything in stride, which I always have. Whatever happens you take it in your stride or you don’t, and you seem to get into trouble if you take things, you could take it serious but you know it’s out there and it’s going to happen. Ah, my War years I spent in Saint John. My father and I operated a boat over there for the Saint John Iron Works doing repair work on ships and ah, so that’s where I spent about, well from forty-two to fifty.

Q. And what was that like?

A. We worked very many hours doing that type of work. Like repair work on ships if ships would come in from across the ocean. Sometimes, I seen one Sunday they came in, it was Christmas day too on a Sunday. There was a ship come in, there was a storm in the Bay of Fundy. They done well until they got into the Bay of Fundy and the spar on the, the boom an the mast got loose and they couldn’t go near it of course, it was swinging back and forth on the ship. It was just a cleaning. That would probably weigh three or four tons. The mast on the ship would, that was swinging back and forth and it would clean everything that it hit. Just swippen’ it. I remember that Sunday a crowd came in of workmen. Welding and burning and rebuilding, getting the ship ready to go to sea again.

Q. What was the name of the ship?

A. Oh boy, I can’t remember that one. We worked on so many of them that….. I remember one in particular, I think it was the Empire Story. It went out of Saint John just before dark. This was probably in forty-five. It had a load of tanks and all War equipment, you know, going over seas and we untied away from him about five-thirty or so and we started out of the Bay of Fundy. The last thing they done, they welded cleats on the deck to secure tanks on her and they got those done and away they went. They didn’t go very far. They went down here off of Brier Island and hit off the ledge and drifted back in, just below here, I think. Off of Whale Cove somewhere and it sank there. A whole load of it.

Q. How did the War affect your family?

A. Well, we done, we’re fortunate enough not to have lost anyone in the War, but my brother Bud or Henry, he’s three years older than I am, he was in the airforce and he didn’t go overseas but he was a trainer and he spent, I don’t know three or four years I guess at that. And another younger brother was in the service, Haley. He wasn’t overseas either. He was about four years younger than myself and he didn’t get in ‘till it was pretty near over.

Q. How did the War affect your community?

A. Well, I was a away all of the time doing that and there wasn’t too much of a community anyhow. Only about, you probably know where, you came by Lake Midway? So there’s only four or five houses along there anyhow. So, actually it wouldn’t affect it a whole lot.

Q. What do you remember about your teenage years?

A. Well, when we got old enough there used to be the odd show in Centreville, Silent movies. You used to pat fifteen cents or so to go to one of those and then they started having dances around different places and you used to go to a few dances. So that was your past-time I guess. Walking, and when you wasn’t walking you was running. To go to Centreville from our home where the nearest store was, was about a mile and a half, down in Centreville and you used to have to go up there all of the time and do our grocery shopping and that of course was a gathering place for men in those days. There’d be benches around the store where they would all sit around and see who could probably tell the biggest lie. And then they used to get in some awful arguments over Religion. There was a few of them you know, they would get in some terrible arguments.

Q. How often would you leave your town?

A. Not very often. Maybe on a Saturday night once in a while we would, the mail bus, after we got a little older, would be going to Digby and you’d go up onto that and go to a maybe, you got older and go to a movie but I was fortunate enough to, when I was sixteen I guess, I got my first car so I didn’t have to travel that much on the mail bus.

Q. What were the roads like?

A. Gravel and rough. Sometimes in the spring they were impassible. The frost would go out of the ground and you’d have to get towed out now and then with a pair of oxen or horses. There was one fellow that, he drank a bit and he got stuck up by the cemetery in Lake Midway. There’s a cemetery just above where we live. He, when he looked up, he seen where he was, he was pretty frightened of cemeteries. (Laughter) So, he got out of his car and left it in gear, left the motor going, left it in gear and walked down home which would be about a quarter of a mile to where, got my father to yoke up his oxen and go tow him out. Of course when they got back the engine was going, the wheels still going around. (Laughter)

Q. Describe to me how you felt when you got your first car?

A. Well I think I was quite happy. It was an old twenty-eight Whippit with a little four-cylinder engine in it. We used to come down Bobby, a fella by the name of Bobby Raymond, he’s deceased now. We used to come down here to Mink Cove and Little River and see the girls. One night we went, started home and ran out of gas and had to leave the old thing on the side of the road and got walking up by the Lake and there was a hoot owl and he was a hollering whooo, whooo, you know how they go, and Bobby said, I remember hearing him say that, “yeah, It’s only Jim and Bobby, we’re walking home.” (Laughter) Another night we went down the old Churchill in Sandy Cove. That was pretty steep and it was one of those sleet storms and we started going down there and I don’t know how many times we went around and around. Wound up in the ditch and the doors flew open. Luckily we both stayed in it and come back out on the road and just drove away. We didn’t get hurt or anything but we made a few circles.

Q. Who would maintain the roads?

A. Each section had a, had a, what they call a roadman or something like that and there would be a grader come now and then and grade it but the gravel was hauled from local pits, rotten rock it was called and that was delivered on the road either by a horse or oxen and you used to have to load that by hand, pick it out with a pick and shovel it on. I remember working at that when I was fifteen, sixteen years old. Fourteen maybe. You’d have to help pick it out, load it and unload it and a fellow behind you would come with a rake and he’d rake it off level and that’s the way holes were patched.

Q. And what did you think about that job?

A. Oh, well it was a lot of hard work, but I did learn how to shovel. I can still shovel today a lot better than a lot of young fellers ‘cause they don’t know how. You use your, you use your leg or a, and a, and it really makes a difference. You kind of squat down, put the shovel across your knee and give it a push and you can shovel, I could probably out shovel a lot of fellers yet. (Laughter)

Q. And how dangerous was that job?

A. Oh, not very dangerous, no. It was all, most of the gravel were hauled like on the North Mountain, on the hill and you had no brakes then on it but you had what they called a drag shoe and of course there was a chain fastened to the body of your runner and goes, the wheel, one of the wheels would go up on it, up on the shoe and that wheel wouldn’t turn and that shoe would be dragging along the ground and that would help hold it back. That would help the horses or oxen. The drag shoe is what it was. That had an iron shoe on the bottom of it and to get the bottom, you’d have to back up a foot or two, take the shoe out from under it and hang it up on your, on your wagon again and go. As long as you were on level or going up hill you didn’t have to use that.

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

A. Well, mostly swimming, skating and after I got big enough and got over being bashful, I used to go to dances. Got courage to ask a girl to dance with me. (Laughter)

Q. What would those dances be like?

A. Oh, they were a lot of fun. It was all of course, local music. There was no records. Nothing was recorded in those days. Someone played a guitar and a violin and maybe a mouth organ and there was an old fella by the name of Mr. Cunningham. I think he was from up around Clementsport or somewhere. He used to play a guitar, and a mouth organ, and beat the drum with his foot. He was a one-man band.

Q. What kind of decorations would they have?

A. Oh, very little in those days. Except for, except for maybe Christmas time, you know or something.

Q. Who were some of your screen idols?

A. Oh, boy. It’s been so long I even forget their name now but I remember there was one girl. I used to keep her picture pinned up in my old car and of course Mabel was my girlfriend then. We went together for many years before we were married, off and on, and she didn’t appreciate that too much at the time. (Laughter)

Q. What was your favorite outfit to wear?

A. Oh gee. I guess at that time when I was a young fella you had bell-bottom trousers and a crew turtleneck sweater and bell-bottom trousers.

Q. Where would you get these from?

A. Probably in Digby or the Eaton’s. Mostly the Eaton’s and our denims then used to be bell-bottom too I think, if I remember right.

Q. How much would you pay for these clothes?

A. Probably four or five dollars or two or three dollars for a pair of denims then. They're like about fifty or sixty now, aren’t they?

Q. What sort of music did you like back then?

A. Oh boy. Well I like Country and Western some and a little bit of semi Classical. I like the sound of that. I used to have a few records of, I can’t remember their name now. There was a couple of black women. I liked to hear them sing and I did have some records of theirs.

Q. What do you remember about dating?

A. Dating? Now’s she’s getting personal. (Laughter) Oh I don’t know what to tell ya. I guess it was fun. It had to be. I kept at it for probably twelve, fifteen years. I was married, we were married when I was twenty-seven and I started going with Mabel off and on when I was about sixteen I guess but then there was various girls in between. I used to go to dances over in Saint John a lot when we was over there and there used to be some good times over there.

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

A. Really, I don’t know. It just, life, jobs, apparently just came to me and I done them whatever it might have been. I started out when I was fourteen, like I said, I left school, I worked on the farm home some and when I was sixteen I remember going in the valley, Annapolis Valley up to Greenwich with a crowd of boys and I went to work in an apple warehouse, it’s right there now, it’s a tractor place, for twenty cents an hour and when we first went there we were working ten hour days of course and went there we was paying six dollars a week board but we had to walk home to get our dinner which was at least two miles away. So that was four miles you had to walk and eat your dinner and get back in an hour. You had to scurry. So we put up with that for a week or two and we moved up to another place. Their name was Caulkin, Jack Caulkin and we had to pay ten dollars a week board So we were earning twelve dollars and paid ten dollars a week board and we had two whole dollars left for a week’s work and it was work too. Packing apples in barrels and facing, what you call facing. Your head was down in the barrel. You’d have to clip the stem off an apple and make ‘em circles all the way around, around, round, round and that was the top of the barrel so when you opened the barrel that was, they’d open the barrel, they’d go to England to open the barrel and it was all faced in and then finish filling the barrel with apples and sometimes then you’d have to load box cars when you wasn’t working in the warehouse. Stacking ‘em out in the warehouse, three high. That got to be hard work. Sixteen. So I come home from there and I think I went scallop fishing with my father. Done that for a couple of years and then I went in forty, nineteen-forty, right after the War started in thirty-nine, it was either forty or forty-one, I went to Greenwood and drivin’ truck in the Airport, when they was building the Airport. Done that for a couple of seasons and years, came back home and started scallop fishing again and that’s when they sold the boat that I was in. My father and I went at the same time. Worked over there eight years and came back home in nineteen-fifty, built this house with some help of course, and then I went to work with an older, Mabel’s sister’s husband, Clyde Denton and he at that time, no I went lobster fishing for a year in the Bay of Fundy. Then I went to work with Clyde and he at that time had started to drying fish. Worked in the dryer there some and then he got some trucks and drove trucks. First started with a straight truck, then a tandon, then a trailer and we hauled from here to Cape Breton and Canso, down to Pubnico. Worked ninety to a hundred hours a week for thirty of forty bucks which wasn’t very good. But anyhow, went from that, he started in the fish business and I went to work down there and then I became the maintenance man. Looked after the skinning machines and refrigeration, so everything just seemed to fall in place. Anything, I guess everybody expected me to be able to do it, so I went to work and done it.

Q. What was it like working with your father?

A. My father? Oh it was o.k. He, my father was good to work with and we were together a lot and he was a man that could do many things and he would show ya, tell ya. Oh one time I do remember this. That he always said, “ you can use my tools, he had carpenter tools, you can use my tools but put them back where they, where you got them”, so one day he started looking for a hand saw. So he came, “ Jim you have my hand saw?”. I thought for a minute. “Oh yeah, I know where it is.” So I went up in the hay mow to get his hand saw and at that time we put salt on the hay, you had to, to keep it from getting a, you know, spontaneous combustion. If you put it in a little green, you always add some salt to it. The hand saw was up there laying on that salt and you can imagine what that looked like. So this is the only time my father ever touched me that I remember. I passed him the hand saw, he just looked at it, I started to walk away and the first thing I got a boot right in the side, the side of the seat. (Laughter) I knew what he meant. He never said anything, he just looked at his saw and whammmm.

Q. What about working on the farm?

A. That was hard work and lots of rock to pick and there’s no end to the rocks on Digby Neck. You can pick them up and next year you plow it and you get another batch. I think the frost keeps them coming up and I had a brother Bud, he’s, we’ve always got along fine, we had a few squabbles but he liked to read better than he liked to work. Of course my father would go away and say, “Boys, I want you to plow this piece of ground or pick the rocks off of this piece, or plant something, or do something”, anyhow, you know, he’d always tell ya what to do ‘cause he had to, to keep us going. But Bud, he liked to read. He’d get a hold of a true story or a Western magazine and curl up in the corner. I used to have to fight with him to get him to go out to work. I was younger but I had to take the lead to get him to work.

Q. And how did that make you feel?

A. Well I got peeved at times I guess. (Laughter)

Q. How old were you when you got married?

A. Twenty-seven.

Q. And how did you meet your wife?

A. Oh, well like I said I went with her for sixteen years, or for, since she was about sixteen off and on. I remember the first, I think that used to come down here, she’d be going to church and come down and I’d drive her home. I used to go to church maybe with them and down to her home, was right down here. So I think that’s how I met her. Then she came up home. We went skating on the lake and it just went on from there.

Q. And what is your wife’s full name?

A. Mabel Francis Kelly.

Q. What attracted you to her?

A. She had very beautiful hair. Long, brown, curly and very plain and a good girl. Very outspoken. You’d have to meet her and talk to her a while to know what she was like. She still is the same.

Q. What do you remember about your wedding?

A. My wedding was very, very brief. It was, Mabel was like that. Like I say, very plain. She didn’t want anything like that. She came over to Saint John in nineteen forty-seven in May, the third and we were married at a church called Parsonage by Dr. Vincent, I think his name was and one of her childhood friends and next door neighbor was living over there, so she and her husband stood up with us. And that was our wedding. It was very plain, we didn’t do very much towards the wedding but that’s what she wanted and of course I didn’t have very many bucks then. (Laughter)

Q. Where did you go for your honeymoon?

A. Over to PEI. She had a sister lived over there and went over there for a few days.

Q. And how was that?

A. Oh, a very quite time. Very quiet. Apparently. We come back and she didn’t like to live in Saint John. Stayed over there a little while and come back home and she wanted a little grocery store so we built a store over on the corner, over here. She operated that for a few years and I was still working in Saint John and come home after a year, a few years, she gave that up. We were married seven years before we had any family. We had a boy Marty, and a girl, a daughter Pam, Pamela.

Q. What did you know about the birds and the bees when you got married?

A. (Laughter) Probably everything there was, or thought I, probably everything or at least I thought I knew everything there was, but I still don’t know everything a person really should know, I guess.

Q. How would you learn about that kind of stuff?

A. Well, most of it through older people telling you things I suppose and things that you would probably try out for yourself.

Q. Once you were married, where did you live?

A. I remained in Saint John for three more years after we were married and then I came home here to Little River and we built this home and we’ve been here ever since.

Q. And how much did it cost for this home?

A. Oh, probably six or eight thousand dollars. Somewhere’s around that. We’ve never changed the outside except to take the siding off and shingle it. It’s the same shape and same size. At times we wished we had a bigger home. We had two children like I say and Mabel’s sister has lived with us from the time we came here. She was, she’s never been married of course, she wasn’t well and when Mabel brought her things up from her home down, right down, this house right down here, that was leaving Alma with her parents which were getting along in years and she at that time of course, was a young woman and they liked to bed probably nine o’clock and she wasn’t ready to do that, so Mabel says, “ Well you come live with us for a while”, so she came then to live with us and she’s been with us ever since.

Q. And what did you think about that?

A. Oh, at times you would wish you were alone and other times she’s good company. She tells us what to do. Probably pretty near when to go to bed and when to get up. An old maid. You mustn’t do this, and you mustn’t do that. (Laughter) You know our children, she used to make them mind a lot more than their mother did. Mabel would let them do a lot of things but Alma wouldn’t. No, she was some strict.

Q. When would people get together for a good time in your community?

A. Probably when we were able to go out most of the time was on a Saturday night. Our recreation was probably go to a dance here and there for a few years and then we had friends that lived up in Waterford. We used to go up there in the summertime and have little get-togethers.

Q. What would they be like?

A. Oh, they were very good friends and there is only really one of them still alive. It was all fun, you’d, pitchin’ horseshoes, or throwing darts you know and there was a game with a, oh what’s it called? Ring…, not ring toss, no, it was a round circle, plastic circle and you had a metal dart with feathers on it and, like feathers, they were plastic and you toss it. I used to like that.

Q. What did you grow and raise yourself?

A. On the farm when we was growing up? Oh, all kinds of vegetables. Potatoes, peas. We used to put probably about twenty barrel’s of potatoes in the basement and had an apple orchard. Picked the apples and a few turnips. You’d grow turnips and mango beets for to feed the cattle. The basement used to be right full when you got done in the fall. You just couldn’t get in there, along with some wood and I remember our trap door you used to have to lift up and go down in the basement to get the wood and you used to probably butcher their own pig and you’d fill your barrels, you’d have no freezers then, and you’d have your bacon smoked and probably hang up a quarter of beef out in the building somewhere when the weather got real cold and it would freeze. You’d go saw off a roast or something when you wanted the meat. Nobody had any fridge’s. We didn’t, not in those days. We never had electricity until, well I was probably thirteen or fourteen years old. Probably the lights came down here, the power when I was eleven or twelve. I think it was a couple of years after they came down here that we had the power. It was oil lamps, lanterns if you wanted to go out to the barn you’d use a little lantern. You’d go to bed, sometimes you’d take a lantern or a lamp. Women in those days, they had a lot of work to do. They had to clean their lamps and fill them with oil, bake bread pretty near everyday, do your washing by hand until you got an old washing machine which wasn’t electric. You’d swish it back and forth. It was, I think an old Renfrew or something it was called. It had a circle bottom, flat top on it and ridges in the bottom. You’d shove that back and forth and then it got so you got electric washers. You was right up in the world. Well even before that there was a hand ringer, you know. You used to, all of the kids would have to turn the handle to put the clothes through and ring ‘em. Man, yes there was a lot of work. Churn the butter, you’d have to churn. That was good the new butter milk. There was nothing any better. I don’t know if you ever drank it or not, but it was good. I used to enjoy it. A lot, or most of us did drink buttermilk and there’d be lots of times little specks of butter left in it, you know. It was good.

Q. When you got electricity, how did it change the way your family lived?

A. Probably made it a bit easier for our parents and probably able to read a little better at night. Yeah it was, I must have been about thirteen, I think when, I remember it faintly when they was diggin’ the holes, puttin’ the posts in and about the same time there began to be instead of horse-drawn mail carriages, a fella by the name of Guy Morehouse started a mail service on the neck here and he’d get stuck in the mud and stuck in the snowdrifts and we’d go help shovel him out. And that’s another thing we had to do was, in those days there was lots and lots of snow and we had to, we were obligated to go shovel snow. They’d order you out. We used to go anyhow, I guess whether we was big enough or not, we’d go help and the snow was deep enough that you’d have to shovel it up on to here, another fella would stand on this, shovel it up on the next over top and you’d be right up to the telephone wires in places. Of course the telephone poles at that time wouldn’t probably be over ten or twelve feet high but yeah sure you would sometimes shovel it up three times in drifts in places. Lots, and lots of snow. Unbelievable.

Q. How did that make you feel to have to go out and do that?

A. Oh, sometimes you didn’t want to go but other times it was good to get out in the crowd. They’d come from Centerville. We used to have to shovel from I guess, from Centerville down to probably where our school used to be or something. There’d be drifts you know, maybe you could walk for three or four hundred yards and not any snow and then you’d come to a drift and you’d have to start shoveling. Crowd ‘em in. And there was no aluminum shovels in those days. It was all those heavy iron shovels. That alone was a load, one of them big shovels.

Q. How much of what you needed did you make yourself?

A. Well, I never made a whole lot of things but my father was very, ‘cause I went away from that when I was old enough to work but he made ox yokes when he needed his cattle, a new yoke for his cattle but I remember driving our oxen over to Waterford which was a three to four miles to have new shoes put on them and then after, Mr.Videto did it, you used to go to Centerville to Charlie Grahams, drive your oxen up there and have new shoes put on them. They would have to put him in the, what they call a, darn I can’t even remember the name of the gear they used to put him in. Anyhow you put him in and they had a roller-like- affair with a pad on it, on the bottom and you used to put him in there and you had an iron bar to put in, holes in that and you pull it down and then you put another bar in and you put the ox right up, right up more or less off of the ground, put a big strain on him so you could lift their feet and tie ‘em and that would hold him and then you’d have their neck via fastened in that. (Laughter) You’d tie their foot on the pad, like this and put the shoes to ‘em. Some would really, really raise the devil. They were, they were bad. It was scary at times to see them raunching back and forth in the, in the, isn’t that funny, I can’t remember the name of those things.

Q. What would trips on the oxen be like?

A. Very slow. Oxen didn’t travel very fast most of the time and some cattle, some oxen you could set on the cart and they would go where you wanted to go and others when they were younger of course, you had to, you had to stay in front of them and team ‘em where you wanted to go. They would run away the odd time. Yeah, they’d get going, you wouldn’t know what to do. (Laughter)

Q. What sorts of things would you barter for?

A. I really don’t think there was too much. It seemed that most everyone had home grown things that you know, if one person were growing it probably the other person did the same thing. There used to be a few people come around and sell clothes. A fella by the name of Max Miller, I think he was from Yarmouth and there was an old gentlemen named Henley Weskit. He used to have a little cart, oh the box would probably be fifteen or sixteen no, five or six feet long on it and probably two, two and a half feet wide and he’d have that full of spices and different things for the household you know, and it was painted red with wooden spokes on the wheels and an iron rim on it just like an old wagon and a cart, the cart had a thing on it with a stick through the handle you know, to pull on and we used to either, we would help him pull the cart or most of the time push, he would hang on the handle behind himself, you know, the two bars and we would push him uphill or something and he would give us two or three peppermints. That’s the way we got our pay.

Q. With such a big family, what was bath time like at your house?

A. Oh, gee. Everybody for himself I guess. You grabbed a, we had no running water. It’s a, you carried your water, or no we had an artesian well but it didn’t supply a whole lot of water. That was right when I was small though. We used to have a bucket on a, on a spool and you’d put the bucket in. It had a weight on the side of the bucket to make it sink and you’d wind the bucket up and you’d carry your water. That’s something else that mothers had to do while the kids were small and then they drilled an artesian well which didn’t prove very good. You couldn’t get a whole lot of water out of that but I remember pumping that for water and you done your, you done the best you could do with what you had. Outside toilets, and that’s another thing that the Eaton’s catalogue came in handy for in those days. (Laughter)

(Stop for tape change)

A. Oh, to start off my life, I put the cart ahead of the horse here. When I was about two and a half years old, like I told you, I had a little accident. The old gentlemen that they bought the farm from at home had a Queen Anne Musket and my father had hauled some fish waste in the field for fertilizer and he said to my mother, he lived there with them, or with us and he said, “ If I had a cap for this”, he had a Queen Anne Musket and there used to be a little cap and they were aside, it had a hammer on the side, he said, “I’d shoot a crow or a gull and hang it up and they wouldn’t bother us.” So mom was cleaning up his room one day and she found this cap and she said, “Is this what you’d like to have for your gun?” This is what they tell me and he said “yes”, so he took it and he put it on his stand. Well in a few days time my mother was in there cleaning his room and there was a stove in his room, a heater. I picked up the cap and put it on the stove and went back to get it in a few minutes time and it exploded. I lost my left index finger, distal phalanges, I guess is the proper name for that, and blew this one all to pieces, in my thumb and lost the sight in my left eye. So mom had no phone at that time, this would be back in nineteen twenty-two and she had to carry me over to Henry Cosabooms which was about, pretty near half a mile away and had two other little children at home besides and called the doctor. He lived in Sandy Cove and then he had to come with his horse and buggy which was four miles up to our home to look after me and he was all alone, of course no nurses and he done the best he could for me and that was the way I started my life.

Q. Do you remember how that felt?

A. No, I don’t remember a thing about it but I, they’ve told me and I still have the scars where he cut this finger back and was going to take some of the bone off because it’s solid there and I started to wake up and he didn’t dare to give me any more anesthetic and, so he just folded it up and probably months of tender loving care I got over it. There was a piece hit me in the face there that there’s a scar still in there where the piece of the cap hit me. It could have been both eyes, It could have been worse and it did have an effect on my life I guess. I always figured that well I only got the sight of one eye and my hands and feet, I’ll never amount to anything so I’ll go to work and that’s what I done. I worked. I couldn’t get in the service. When I was twenty…, or when I was in Saint John, that was in forty-three I think that hey, I got a call to go to the service and they rejected me so that’s as far as I went.

Q. What sort of emergency would there be that the doctor would come and help out?

A. Well no doubt he would probably come for, or if you had a horse maybe you would go to his home, a horse or what not. There was very few cars then but he was very good. He delivered I guess, most of the babies and when I was born I remember, mama always joked and said that the fact it did happen, but she said on March the seventh of nineteen twenty there was a big snowstorm. He came to deliver me and mom said he upset me in the snowdrift out, coming up to the house, our house was quite a long way off of the road. She always told me that you know, when I was little. (Laughter)

Q. How would you take care of your teeth?

A. Oh boy, I was, I guess most of the time you brushed with soda. Salt and soda or some darn thing you done but I, my teeth weren’t very good apparently. I lost mine when I was quite young. I had false teeth for a long while. I remember it one time, this was after the bus started, the mail bus. Mother had a sister lived in Digby. Her name was Nora Raymond, they used to call her Tould so, probably had a telephone by then too and I was probably twelve or thirteen years old. She sent me up on the bus to Aunt Nora’s to go to doctor Devernit I think his name was, an old fella that used to be a dentist. So my Aunt Tould Aunt Nora took me to the dentist and I sat in the chair and I done alright until I seen him pick up a syringe with a long, it looked to be a needle about that long (Laughter) and I got up and I took right out. I said, “I guess I won’t have them hauled today” and I went then, I never had another toothache for about six months I guess. (Laughter) It scared me so bad but I had to go back eventually and have them out. Have two or three out at that time. Yeah, I remember that.

Q. How often would you see a dentist?

A. Oh boy, only when you had to. Probably two or three years maybe. Yes, only when you got a toothache. I never had a tooth filled I don’t think when I was a young fella. Probably, I don’t remember the first ones but I probably would have been sixteen, eighteen years old before I had a tooth filled. When you were small and you needed a tooth out it wasn’t too serious. My father used to haul them out with a piece of string you know. They’d tie a piece of twine or a good strong thread around your tooth, take a couple of turns around your finger or something, give her a yank and out that would come and then there was a fella out in Centerville. He pulled a tooth for Mabel one time, I don’t think he ever pulled any for me but he never froze ‘em. He had old forceps and stuff. He could of never had a you know, the freeze, he never could freeze teeth but he’d haul teeth for people. In fact there was an old fella that he got his forceps from, I’ll tell you a little story. It don’t pertain to me of course. His name was Fletch Thompson and that’s, this is who Willie Titus got his forceps from and there was a fella come into Centerville on a sailing boat and he had a toothache. So someone told him there’s an old fella up the top of the hill who’ll pull that tooth for ya. So he walked up the road and he lived, it was up on top of the hill called Angry Hill, he was out splitting wood and it was shore wood that they picked up off the shore, wharf wood you know it had big spikes, iron spikes probably this long in it. Some of them would be bent and the odd one would be straight and he said., “Do you”, went up to him he said, “Are you the man that pulls the teeth here?”, “yes”, he said “sit down on that log”, so this fella sat down and at the same time Fletch picked up a iron bolt, a wharf bolt and he had a pole axe in his hand and he said, “Sit down on that log.” That fella seen him coming, I don’t know whether he stopped yet or not. (Laughter) The stories they used to tell. That actually happened I guess.

Q. What were some home remedies that would have been common?

A. Hmm, oh you got neuralgia you used to have neuralgia in your face sometimes or a toothache, a bag of salt, table salt and heat it and oh different, cinnamon or cloves, cinnamon I guess you’d put on a piece of batten and if you had a ulcerated, or a tooth with a cavity in it, put that in and it seemed to stop it and one time I started to walk to Centerville and one of the children was sick, someone younger than myself, mom came out and I was then quite a little ways away and she said, “you go to the store, when you go to the store you get me a bottle of syrup of squills.” That was an old remedy they used then for cough medicine or something or to put on people and I couldn’t understand what she was saying that way, so all I could hear was Circus on the hills. (Laughter) So I went up to the store, Elwood Morton then, Morton’s store, and I asked for a bottle of Circus on the hills. Well he didn’t know what I wanted, yeah after a while he came, twigged to it or he, and he got me this bottle of Syrup of Squills. Yeah. It was very sour I think, if I remember it right. It must have been something that was for a cough or some darn thing. Yep, Syrup of Squills. Circus on the hills, well I was close. (Laughter) Oh, dear.

Q. When someone died, how would the funeral be handled?

A. Um, well there was a horse and a buggy with, for a hearse and of course local people would dig the grave by hand then. You would sometimes have a lot of hard diggin’ and of course, I don’t remember the first vehicle for a hearse really but Mr. Kenny Dakin used to have a horse and buggy in Centerville and they would deliver them to the, to the cemetery. Most of the time, at that time the corpse would probably remain in the homes for a couple of days before they were transported to the cemetery. Yeah. Funny how you, I don’t remember the first vehicle I ever saw that was a hearse and Mr. Con Gidney up here in Mink Cove used to do the same thing with the horse and buggy, I guess. Oh dear, I don’t know what else to tell ya.

Q. What do you remember about the depression?

A. Oh, that was when, in the early thirties and like I say times were really tough. I was at that time thirty-five, thirty-six. You worked for, if you could get a job, you worked out when you could for twenty, twenty five cents an hour and you were lucky if you got five or ten cents for a week for a, for an allowance because your parents, or your father couldn’t earn very much money but he worked hard. He scalloped, he lobster fished in Saint Mary’s. They used to walk over from home through the woods until the lake froze and then they’d go across the lake and go down the mountain and they had a camp over there, like lobster season started the first of December, they’d stay there for two or three weeks maybe a couple of weeks. They’d take groceries with them, bread and they’d make lobster chowder’s of course and a few things they could get to eat and they had to row dory at that time to fish so they were probably too tired to walk home. I know they would be and they had to keep their lobsters in crates and there would be a boat come, it come up from down to Tiverton in Saint Mary’s bay and pick up their lobsters and their season then would probably be only about three weeks and it would be over because of the ice and after he got done lobster fishing, he started scallop fishing and he owned some of the first trucks. I don’t know whether you ever heard of H.T Warne building trucks in Digby, old defiance trucks, well my father owned two of them and that is where I learned to drive. He had a yellow one, the first one he bought was yellow and he was always busy then hauling waste home from shore and rock weed and I, he would be on the back spreadin’ it and I would get in the truck and drive it ahead for him and there was no automatic transmissions and you had to, everything was with a clutch you know, and you had to learn how to do that and not stall your truck. If you started out too quick you’d probably knock him down the back of the truck so you had to go easy. Yeah he built trucks there for a few years and then the old, had a dump on it at that time but it wasn’t hydraulic. It was on rollers and there was a, like a curved thing in the bottom, you’d unhook it and start out quick and that would start, shove your body back and then it would roll up. That was the way the, the way it dumped and after sometime he bought a second one and they put another fella driving it and they were down to oh, built the Mersey Dam, helped build the Mersey Dam and he had more break downs and he kind of lost what he had earned with one truck what he was doing with the other truck, he’d loose on the red truck ‘cause that was broken down all the time and he had to get out of it. Get rid of the old defiance truck. Yeah.

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

A. Well I never earned any big amount of money at a time but I tried to save a few dollars every year over my life span and I’ve been fortunate enough that I live quite comfortable now. I don’t want for very much and I haven’t got a lot of money but, I have Canada pension, old age pension and a couple of other little pensions so I’m not, you know, I’m not hurting. I never wasted my money, I never drank very much thank God and I never smoked a whole lot so that helped but, put both my children through college and Pam teaches school now, we lost Marty five years ago at forty-one I think he was when he died. Pam teaches school in Port Williams and her husband teaches and they have two children, a boy and a girl. He’s very sport minded. He likes to play golf, run and curlin’. He was to, over the Netherlands last spring in that deal running and two years ago he was down to Pennsylvania Hershey deal and he was to throw a ball and, a soft ball and he went to Sackville and tried out and he came way ahead of any competition there but he went down there and something happened, he didn’t do too good, I don’t know why but he tried out again for it to go this year and he threw the ball down here real good and just a few days before he was to go down to Hershey again, he hurt his shoulder throwin’. No he was playing basket, volleyball and hurt his shoulder so he couldn’t go down there that time. So he got beat out of that but he’s got lots of ribbons and trophies. A few firsts but mostly seconds and thirds. He does good. Yeah, he’s good at golf, down in his seventies. He’s only fourteen. Katherine, she’s taking skating lessons and plays the piano and likes soccer so they, their busy.

Q. How did your parents pass on their possessions?

A. Actually, they never had a whole lot to pass on. They sold their, my father was sick for, we came home from Saint John, he was diabetic before we came home and he came home from Saint John and got sick and had a couple strokes. He was diabetic and was takin’ thirty units of insulin a day and the doctor took a lot of food from him that he shouldn’t have I don’t think and he wound up having a couple strokes and he had to have a toe removed and then it was leg and he died from complications of his last surgery. He never came, he never came out of it and they had sold their farm and moved up to Centerville and mom of course just had at that time, I guess the old age pension is only thirty, forty dollars a month but mom did live ‘til she was eighty-three. My father passed on when he was, I think sixty-nine but there wasn’t very much of the farm left, in fact they only got like three or four thousand for it when they sold it. The land was cheap those days when they sold that.

Q. What do you remember about the Poor Farm?

A. I remember being there a few times with my father seeing some of the inmates and it was scary I thought. I know I wouldn’t wanted to been, be there myself. I think an old Mr. Thomas was the caretaker then, when I remember it.

Q. What did you find scary about the Poor Farm?

A. Well seeing people in the, locked up in different areas and they were locked up some of them and it was like wooden slats and probably the scariest thing I ever seen was, in Bridgetown to a old, well actually it was a Poor Farm and there was a man and they couldn’t keep any clothes on him and he was, you could go there, we used, my brother and I we peddled fish, that’s one other part of my life I never told you about I guess that I peddled fish for a few years and we’d go there on a, let me see Bridgetown, Tuesday morning and you’d see him in there behind the bars and in the straw without a thing on. They wouldn’t, he wouldn’t keep no clothes on and there was another old fella that used to be out around the yard and every week he would say the same thing, he’d say “Where Mr. Webber?” and of course we didn’t know old Mr. Webber and Bud would said, Bud would say “Well he’s dead, he died last week”, and he’d start right into crying and Bud would do that to him every week. He’d say the same thing every, every time we’d go there. “Where Mr. Webber?”, he was a black man and those things stay in your mind don’t they. They in, yeah their not a pleasant part of life but …..yeah.

Q. At what point would somebody have to go to the Poor Farm?

A. Well probably when they were unable to look after theirselve and no income and perhaps a lot of them were a bit mentally retarded or, if that’s the proper word or afflicted in some way and they’d did some farming there. They had a, I think they grew vegetables and had cattle there and so they worked their way there some to help maintain that and, but it actually was a Poor House I guess because the poor probably did go there and yeah.

Q. What do you remember about elections?

A. Seeing three or four people intoxicated probably. This always seemed to happen back when I was a younger fella. They, the different parties had a, and a lot of people, some of them, they wouldn’t go vote unless they could get a pint or something. Some women wouldn’t go with out a box of chocolates so a lot of the fellas that wanted a pint, they’d get intoxicated or partly intoxicated and probably get in an argument over who was going to win, who should win. That, I was never much enthused over politics. I’ve always voted but that’s as far as it went. I didn’t want no part of it because it’s a mixed up game and I think still today that most of them are there for what money they can make and not for the good of the people. It’s a, sometimes you wonder how some people hold those positions because they don’t appear to have the mentality to do it. That’s my opinion of politics and every year seems to be getting worse. It’s a, why their elected of course they have nobody else probably no one better to offer but why their elected, I don’t know but today it’s, locally anyhow it’s mostly lawyers and doctors and probably only there because they can’t make a living at their own profession. They get into politics. (Laughter) This is on tape. I shouldn’t be saying that but that’s not everyone but a lot of people are that way and I know their not there for the, for the good of the people of course, they can only do what their, their superiors allow ‘em to do but it just seems that we pay enough taxes that things should be better especially in the health and education. There’s been too many cuts or either that or they was, they was going, giving us too much and didn’t realize where they were puttin’ the country or the countries in dept, both levels of government so far that, well I know I’ll never see it and you’re a young woman and I doubt if you ever will because the interest on that, our debt is eating us up.

Q. What ghost stories do you remember as a young child?

A. What different stories?

Q. Ghost stories.

A Oh. (Laughter) Not too many I guess. One, I know one night myself, my brother and I built a horse stall, I think it was a horse stall, one Sunday and mom tried to tell us not to work on Sundays. She said, always said “Don’t you fellas be working on Sunday”, anyhow we done this. We sawed and hammered all day. In the wee hours of the morning we heard something pounding on the steps, the upstair steps, we slept up stairs and mom always said that it wasn’t her that done it and my father was away. She said it wasn’t her. Now whether it was the real ghost after us or not. I don’t know but if it wasn’t, wasn’t her I don’t know who it was. Yeah, yeah I can remember, I can hear that sound yeah, yeah. Really banging on the steps. Probably was but she wouldn’t tell us. (Laughter)

Q. What about superstitions?

A. I really don’t think that I have very many superstitions. Mabel does. One crow scares her to pieces. Yeah.

Other. On the boats at all were there superstitions?

A. Oh yeah you hear of ‘em. Never to whistle because, you know to make the wind blow and throw a penny or a dime overboard to buy that much wind and you could get in a lot of trouble. Never do that. A few little things like that and never speak of a pig or pork aboard of a boat. You’re supposed to stay away from that.

Q. How did your community police itself?

A. First I remember of police was the RCMP because there was no, you know it was too small a community and that’s the only police. There was no other police on Digby Neck except the RCMP and our first cars that we had around home was an old Model T and that had three peddles. A clutch, a reverse was in the middle, and the brake. So going out of our driveway was a little bit steep and my brother Bud and I we had that old Model T running around the field with it and we went down the driveway and got to the mouth of the driveway and the reverse band was loose on her and it wouldn’t back up and, so we said we'll have to go out on the road and turn around and out on the road we went with the old Model T. it wasn’t registered and we was underage, no license of course and low and behold of all the times an RCMP came along and his name was Mr. Rankin. A tall fella, slim. (Laughter) He took us to the house and told my, mom said she’d never let ‘em have it again. I can hear her pretty near crying, yeah ‘cause money was scarce of course and he didn’t fine us. He let us take the car back up in the yard but stay off the road. Isn’t that strange how of, you know of a how that would be, he would come along there and we were only going out on the road to turn the thing around (Laughter) ‘cause our reverse band wouldn’t work.

Other. He probably hadn’t been down for two weeks.

A. That’s right. He just, opportune moment. Yeah.

Q. How was the law enforced in your community?

A. How was it?

Q. Yes.

A. Oh boy, well the only enforcement was then, like I say the RCMP and I don’t know, no one seemed to break the law too much. If they did you didn’t know of it. I guess there was, of course there was a, people made home brew. That was no doubt illegal especially around the shore in Centerville. The boys would make it and there was a, an old Mr. Fillio from Weymouth, a fisheries officer. He used to make a trip around once and a while and, the odd fella used to keep small lobsters and they tasted good, I’ve eaten a few of ‘em. I never caught too many lobsters but I used to get a few but the, as far as the law enforcement, really. I used to go hunting and mostly rabbit shooting. I used to try to shoot deer but I never had a real good gun to do it with or not have been able to do it until I got, went up Cape Breton. I had a rifle with a scope on it and I shot some deer up there, I was up there six, five, six years and I got a deer every year but I never enjoyed shooting deer. I never enjoyed eating them so I don’t, never enjoyed shootin’ ‘em. It was just to go along with the other fellas just to make a hunting party and we used to go up to Bedeck and go up on Hunters Mountain. Yeah.

Q. What organizations did you belong to?

A. I never belonged to any until I went to New Brunswick and I joined the Nights of Pithius Lodge. When I came home from there I took a, the mint from that. After some years I joined the Mas... Masonic Order in Freeport. Clyde and I went down there and joined that. I still belong to the Masons and that’s the only two lodges I ever belonged to.

Q. Tell me about the Masons?

A. They’re an order that does a lot of good. Some people are frightened by them but I see no reason. They, they read the bible, believe there’s a supreme being which we all know there is and they, if they’ve got any money they pass it out to different students. They, I know different times they’ve given out money at the, you know to different students to help with. So I can say nothing bad about them. I’m not a, I don’t go very often but I’m still a, belong to the Masonic Order. Some people I guess become engrossed in it and they go to the top in it. Of course there has to be a top in everything and probably they may get, give the order a hard name because maybe it takes away from them going to their own church or something. They think more of the Masonic Order than they do their church or, but no, I can’t say nothing wrong about it.

Q. What do you remember about tourists coming to your area?

A. Ah, Sandy Cove was a, when I was a young fella, there used to be a lot of tourists come there and my father used to, like I said butcher a few lambs and he’d take ‘em down there and sell ‘em to the different homes where they was boarded and stayed and next door over to Henry Cossaboom's there was a. a tourist. I don’t remember their name, it was a woman I’m quite sure. She was there, I used to work over there helping with hay in the summer time. I was only thirteen or fourteen years old. She gave me a jack knife and it wasn’t too long and I lost it. I always felt bad over loosing my jack knife of course. Yeah, but personally I never knew any of the tourists but, and they at that time when they came there most of them were on foot, you know they would probably come and come down the neck on the bus and yeah. Not too many cars but I remember old Reggie Sypher he had a stick leg and one arm, he drove an old Buick. He used to drive people back and forth to Digby. Smoked cigars and this is one of our bad things we used to do when we was going to school. He’d throw out a butt, a cigar butt on the road, two or three of us would go pick it up, tear it up, had an old pipe made out of a pill bottle or some darn thing, tried to smoke that cigar. Make you sick. (Laughter)

Q. Who were some of the characters in your community?

A. Yeah there was a few. Doctor Rice had a son Bert, Bertram his name was. He was afflicted from some reason, I don’t know. He could not speak and he was not a bit steady. He would, moved all around but he, they had him fixed up nice, he had gold teeth and he used to enjoy crankin’ cars, a lot of cars at that time had no electric starter on ‘em. You cranked ‘em by hand and he would always want you to let him crank the car. He was some happy when, when that would, the car would start and he’d be laughing. Oh it was great for him. He got a little bit older and there was young fellas around Sandy Cove used to tease him when his hair started turning grey, turning white. They’d point at his head and they told him your soon going up the grave or they’d point up the grave. Oh that made him mad but I never done that to him thank heavens. Yeah and there was a few fella, there was a fella up around Centerville, Stuart, he’s still living Stuart Ossinger, he was a character. I think he lives around Digby. I’m sure he does, yeah and a fella by the name of, his name was, he’s living too was a Joe Honey they called him, what was his real name? Gerald, not Gerald, Ronald, Ronald Titus. He used to smoke old, a pipe and he’d smoke a rose bud. He used to pack that thing in his mouth. He used to come to our home quite a lot and I had a cousin used to come home. Man we used to be, somebody at home most of the time with our big family and, and everybody had friends and Joe used to come down home and this Margaret, she used to tease him. She’d sat on his knee and he got so he liked her and he’d bring candy and put it in his pocket and she’d make out she was going to get this candy out of his pocket and he’d snicker and laugh. I can see him, yeah. He had an accident up just this side of Centerville, somebody I guess they was drinkin’, had an old Buick car going too fast. They upset it and rolled it down in the woods and it smashed it all to pieces and they said that Joe, he kind of stuttered a little bit. They would say, said to Joe, “Did they get hurt?”, “Oh, tttthey broke bof arms and were ssscratched up some ‘bout all.” (Laughter) Different things like that would be your, your little laugh, I guess. You’d hear that.

Q. What do you remember about Maud Lewis?

A. Oh, not a whole lot. We went there once or twice, was going to buy a painting and I guess she didn’t have any so we never got one. At that time you bought them for a quarter or fifty cents, something but she was a very small wizzeled up old lady when I remember her. I think that was before she and Everett, well they might have been married then but she was, I think Everett was living there with her. Everett Lewis.

Q. How does this area look now compared to how it looked when you were growing up?

A. It hasn’t changed a whole lot except for a lot of the trees are gone and that became a necessity. Actually, the trees, a lot of the trees should have been harvested probably fifteen or twenty years ago. They became mature and Spruce, bark beetle got in them and they all started dying and if we had the money’s worth of trees that’s gone to waste on Digby Neck the last twenty years, I think we could probably write off a lot of Nova Scotia’s debts. It’s a shame the way it’s happened. People who, local and a lot of American people have bought properties and they just buy ‘em and it laid there and laid there and eventually the trees started dying because they become sixty, seventy, eighty years old and that is the life probably sixty years a Spruce tree should be cut and it should be, they should be harvested but I’m not in favor of clear cutting in a good green property but when it becomes so it’s all dying then they have to do that to get it down. All this stuff here was clear cut and about three hundred acres or more and it used to be all green years ago and you could walk through it and the first thing they started going through it and you’d run into areas where you’d have to detour for about five or ten minutes to get around a bunch of wind falls. Dead wood and it should have been cut before that started. Pickin’ out the old wood, lettin’ the young die but when it happened then they had, they cut everything. Not a pretty site but, but it’s a part of life. A tree is like we are. Some live to be fifty, sixty years old and some goes to eighty, ninety.

Q. How would you compare family values today with those of days gone by?

A. Well, I don’t think they have changed all that much for people who care. There are people probably back in my youth that didn’t care too much about their family. They neglected them and done things they shouldn’t do and that’s still going on today. The same, I can’t see probably, maybe a little less. I think the divorce rate and the people partying is higher today than it was then but things are made easier for people to run away now and it only takes probably a few words between people now and they say “oh, the H with you, I’m off, I’m gone”, but back then probably they didn’t, it wasn’t so easy to do that so they stuck it out. I don’t know.