by Ben Robicheau
One of the great things about living on the Islands is being so near the ocean. Practically every house has a view of the water, most have waterfront property and many are just across the street from the harbour. Being this close to the shore has a lot of benefits. From your own living room window you can keep track of ferry crossings, tell if the tide is coming in or going out, or see who is going out whale watching today.
Unfortunately, living across the road from the beach can also have its downside. This was made devastatingly clear to me one day when I was about five years old.
It was a rare, fog-free summers day in Westport and my mother was out in the yard hanging some of the endless laundry on the line. My friend Wallace and I were fooling around in my father’s nearly new ’53 Chev pickup. Wallace was riding shotgun while I was behind the wheel, turning knobs and kicking at the pedals. At some point I must have pulled the gearshift, because suddenly the truck started to move. I remember stabbing at what I thought was the brake pedal, but the truck only picked up speed, I yanked on the emergency brake lever with no success. At this point my mother was screaming, the truck was rolling even faster, and I was out of ideas on how to stop it. With a look of fear, Wallace asked, “What are we going to do?” I replied “I don’t know about you, but I’m jumpin” I went out my door and he went out his.
I picked myself up just in time to see the truck disappear over the breastwork. Our driveway ran downhill to the Front Road, on the other side of the road was the breastwork and an eight-foot drop to the beach. The tide happened to be all the way up, so the truck landed in about six feet of water and as Wallace and I watched in disbelief, it began to slowly drift away.
Apparently the tires, the wooden floor of the truck bed, and the air trapped in the cab roof were enough to keep it barely afloat. With just a few inches showing above water, the tide was slowly carrying my father’s new truck out into the harbour.
Luckily, a fisherman unloading his catch just a short distance away happened to notice the truck sailing by, and before it got too far away was able to hook his anchor under the bumper and tow it back to shore.
By this time the whole island had heard about our little accident. I remember standing on the breastwork with everyone else, scared and crying my eyes out, but at the same time noticing that if a leaned out a little I could see all the people lined up on the breastwork, snaking away into the distance. I think this was probably the first time I had seen the majority of the island population in one spot and I must admit that I was just a little bit impressed that it was my action that had brought them all together and arranged them so neatly.
The truck was quickly hauled up on the beach and a group of men went to work on it. The gas tank and seat were removed, the engine was taken apart and various bits and pieces lined up on the now nearly empty breastwork. The truck was towed to a pond and all its parts flushed out with fresh water. By dark, it was back together and running.
The truck was never quite the same after that. The window cranks seized up, sealing the windows forever shut, none of the dashboard gauges worked, and the bodywork suffered badly from premature rusting. One day about a year after the incident, Dad was on his way to Digby when he hit a bump and the cab of the truck dropped down around his ears. The cab supports had rusted away. He drove directly to McDonald Motors and traded it in on a new truck. For his two year old truck, they gave him fifty dollars.
Surprisingly, having your vehicle end up on the beach was not an unusual problem for Island residents. My father’s truck was not the first of his vehicles to end up on the beach. A few years before this incident, he had a car with which he ran an informal taxi service. One day he was hired on short notice to take some passengers to Digby. Before catching the ferry, he hurried home to freshen up a bit. Bending over the kitchen sink, he straightened up just in time to see his car roll past the window and down the driveway. Running outside, the scene was nearly identical to that which I was to witness a few years later. Luckily, this time the tide was down and the car, after rolling over the breastwork and landing right-side up, bounced down the beach and stopped at the waters edge.
Relieved to find his car relatively undamaged, Dads next problem was how to get it off the beach. The tide was rising and the breastwork was far too steep to get the car up over. There was a break in the breastwork where some of the fishermen pulled up their boats for the winter, but it was on the other side of the fishplant. Normally this would have been a problem as the fishplant stretched from the breastwork to beyond the low-water mark, effectively barring the way for any vehicles that happened to be driving along the beach. But, as luck would have it, just the day before, a neighbour had been in the same all-to-familiar situation, car on beach, tide rising, fishplant in the way. He resolved his dilemma by removing a few of the supporting posts from under the plant wharf, allowing him to drive through to the other side and back up onto the road. The posts hadn’t been replaced yet so Dad was able to take advantage of the situation and return his car to the correct side of the breastwork.
Everything seemed to work out, the car was rescued in a matter of minutes, the passengers were picked up on time and they were able to catch the ferry on schedule. It was only later, as they made their way up Digby Neck, that it became apparent that the unexpected trip to the seaside may have caused a problem. The farther they went, the slower the car would go until finally, going up Sandy Cove hill, it came to a complete stop. Looking the car over for damage, Dad noticed that the tailpipe had hit against the bumper and was now pinched shut. This had slowly strangled the engine until it lost all power. He borrowed a hacksaw from a nearby house and cut the end off the pipe. When the engine started it blew out a huge cloud of smoke and by the time they got to Digby, the car was running normally again.
Although we may hold the record, we weren’t the only people to have vehicles end up on the beach. As mentioned above, at least one of our neighbours had a similar experience. And a regular visitor to the Island, Bill Bent the travelling meat man, had a near-beach experience one day when he came out of a customers house to find his truckload of meaty delicacies teetering precariously on the edge of the breastwork. One rear wheel was spinning in mid-air ten feet above the beach and the truck had stopped just inches from going over. A group of workers from a nearby fishplant rushed to the rescue with a load of wooden pallets, which they stacked up on the beach to support the dangling wheel until the truck was pulled back onto the road. I don’t know if Bill Bent rewarded his saviours, but he probably should have. After all, these guys had literally “saved his bacon”!
THE GREAT CHRISTMAS TREE HUNT
by Ben Robicheau
At this time of year I always think back to the old Westport Schoolhouse and the age-old tradition of the Christmas Tree Hunt. Every year, a group of boys would venture out into the wilderness in search of the perfect tree to adorn the classroom. Since the hunt took place during school hours, there was always fierce competition to be included. The leader of the group, usually the oldest boy in the highest grade in the room, would work hard to persuade Mrs.Garron or Mrs. Swift (depending on whether you were in the P to 4 or the 5 to 8 room) that he really did need every boy in his class to come along. His argument must have been convincing because surprisingly, the teachers always agreed.
Proper attire for this venture usually included rubber boots with heavy socks, long johns or insulated pants and this years new winter coat. Mittens and a toque were optional, depending on the weather and how nerdy you dared to look. Invariably, someone would forget that today was Tree Hunt Day and would arrive improperly dressed for tramping around in the woods. This oversight wouldn’t deter them from joining in however, although they usually regretted it after a few hours of wet feet and freezing fingers, and we would set out armed with hatchets, saws and various other implements of destruction, in search of the sacrificial tree.
Our usual route was up the New Lane to Lighthouse Road or straight up through the fields behind the school, over the hill and into the woods. We would make our decision according to how deep the snow was. Usually there was at least a few inches to slog through, sometimes as much as a foot or more, and no matter what the weather, there always seemed to be fields of wet grass and thickets of soggy alders to fight through. More often than not, within a few minutes of entering the woods, we would find a perfectly acceptable tree. Of course, we would not cut this tree. This was partly out of the traditional belief of Christmas Tree hunters everywhere that no matter how nice this tree was, a much better one was out there waiting to be found. But mainly we didn’t cut it right away because we weren’t going to waste a day off from school by arriving back before the last possible minute.
The next few hours would be spent slogging through the brush, getting progressively wetter and colder. We passed the time by entertaining each other with dirty jokes that most of us really didn’t understand, and by convincing ourselves that despite runny noses, numb feet and rumbling stomachs, we were having a much more enjoyable time than those poor saps back at the school.
When we finally got to the point where we were ready to harvest our tree, there was usually a heated debate about the proper way to cut down a Christmas tree. Some thought a saw was the ideal tool, others said an axe was better. Still others thought you should chop down the tree and then saw off the trunk to get the right height and leave a nice straight base for attaching the stand, which was usually the end of a fish packing box, held on with a couple of ten-penny nails. The most radical tree harvesting method I have heard of was from Gary Haines of Freeport, who claims that while out hunting one December, he came across the perfect tree. Not wanting to take a chance on losing it to someone else and lacking either axe or saw, he shot the tree down with his 12 gauge, giving a whole new meaning to the term, “Christmas Tree Hunt”.
Finally, when it had been mutually agreed that an acceptable length of time had passed and that we had milked the maximum amount of “fun” out of our day, we wearily tramped our way back to the schoolhouse. If we timed it right, we would arrive triumphantly back at school just a few minutes before the dismissal bell, wet, tired, just seconds from hypothermia and probably dragging the very same tree that we had first seen upon entering the woods several hours earlier.
We were usually shocked to discover that while we were out in the wilderness getting slapped in the face by wet branches and induring cold, hunger, and if truth be told, several hours of boredom, the “poor saps” we had left behind had not spent the day in monotonous drudgery as we had imagined. Instead of pouring over math problems or spending tedious hours reading about the mundane adventures of Tom and Betty and their boring dog Flip, it appeared that the day had been spent in preparing the class room for Santas’ arrival. The coloured chalk and stencils had been brought out and the chalkboards were now bordered with drawings of red and green holly. The room was festooned with construction paper chains, also in the traditional Christmas colours. Stencils and cans of spray snow had been applied to the windows that stretched across one end of the room and the panes were all decorated with snowy images of candy canes, bells, trees and angels. There was even evidence that cookies and other Christmas treats had been consumed.
This was always a great part of the school year. For all intents and purposes, school work was over for the term, the Christmas concert was only a day or two away, then Christmas break, then the great day itself. The anticipation was almost unbearable!
I don’t know if students still go out to hunt trees for their school, or even if schools allow real trees any more, but I’ll always have the memory of the traditional Great Christmas Tree Hunt of the old Westport School. I hope I’ve stirred a few Christmas memories for you as well.
Merry Christmas and have a great New Year from Ben Robicheau – brobicheau@cogeco.ca
Thursday, 15 November 2007
Tuesday, 28 August 2007
The Robicheaus Go To Expo '67
Forty years ago this summer Canada celebrated its hundredth birthday by hosting a World Exposition in Montreal. Like many other Canadian families, we discussed the possibility of going to Expo '67, but with news reports of the time talking about the shortage and high prices of accommodations, our parents reluctantly decided that the cost of housing and feeding eleven people was just too much. We kids had resigned ourselves to the fact that the bright lights of Montreal and the international excitement of Expo were not to be when a visitor to the Island changed all that.
For years, every spring and fall, a travelling salesman from Montreal called on the Islands’ stores with a stock of drygoods and various items. While conducting business the subject of Expo came up and Dad mentioned that he would like to go but with nine kids couldn't afford it. The salesman mentioned that he had been to Expo several times and it was a wonderful thing that all kids should get a chance to see. He also mentioned that he owned a cottage near Montreal and he could let us use it for free for a week. That night Dad announced that we were going to Expo after all.
A couple of weeks later we were on our way! As if cramming two parents and nine kids plus luggage into one station wagon wasn’t enough, my sisters convinced my parents that there was room for one more. A friend from Maine, Joyce Farnsworth had just arrived to visit her grandmother for a few days, the next thing she knew she was shoehorned into the back seat and on her way to Quebec.
These were the days before seatbelt laws, so my sister Joyce and brother John, the two smallest, sat in the front with our parents and the rest of us took turns sitting in the back seat or laying way in the back on top of the luggage.
When we finally arrived in Montreal my father went to pick up the key at an address the salesman had given him, it turned out to be Bens, a deli famous in Quebec, indeed in all of Canada, for their smoked meat sandwiches. It seemed that the “salesman” was in fact the owner of several businesses and owned not one but two cottages on a lake in the exclusive Laurentian Mountains. My father returned to the car with the keys to both cottages and a huge party tray of smoked meat and cheese that had been presented to him, this turned out to be our lunch for the next few days.
Expo was as exciting as all the hype made it seem. The impressive geodesic dome of the U.S. pavilion, the British pavilion with its Union Jack painted tower, Ontario with its 360 degree slide and film show. The Nova Scotia pavilion featured a wooden schooner being built on site, and the Canada pavilion had its birthday theme song, which was heard everywhere, (“CA-NA-DA, now we are 20 million”). The passports made you want to visit countries according to how cool their stamp was, at the end of each day we would compare passport stamps. Le Ronde, the huge amusement park with the great rides was even more impressive when it was all lit up at night. We even got to ride on the recently opened Montreal subway, unique at the time because it ran on rubber tires instead of rails. After four days of visiting nearly every country in the world, getting lost, standing in line, feeling sick from too many hot dogs and too much sun and still more standing in line, our time at Expo was over.
Heading back to the cottage for our last night, my father got stopped for speeding. The policeman told him he had to pay a fine on the spot, Dad told him he only had enough money for gas to get us home and couldn’t pay the fine. The policeman replied that there was no way out of it, either he paid the fine or he would go to jail. Dad said, “O.K. I guess you’ll have to take me to jail, but that car has my wife and ten kids in it, you’ll have to take them too.” The policeman looked at the car, called his commanding officer, then told Dad that he guessed this time he’d let him go with just a warning.
The next morning we once again wedged ourselves into the car and began our two-day, pre Trans Canada Highway trip home.
All these years later, I still look back on this, the longest trip we ever took as a complete family, as a highlight of my youth.
For years, every spring and fall, a travelling salesman from Montreal called on the Islands’ stores with a stock of drygoods and various items. While conducting business the subject of Expo came up and Dad mentioned that he would like to go but with nine kids couldn't afford it. The salesman mentioned that he had been to Expo several times and it was a wonderful thing that all kids should get a chance to see. He also mentioned that he owned a cottage near Montreal and he could let us use it for free for a week. That night Dad announced that we were going to Expo after all.
A couple of weeks later we were on our way! As if cramming two parents and nine kids plus luggage into one station wagon wasn’t enough, my sisters convinced my parents that there was room for one more. A friend from Maine, Joyce Farnsworth had just arrived to visit her grandmother for a few days, the next thing she knew she was shoehorned into the back seat and on her way to Quebec.
These were the days before seatbelt laws, so my sister Joyce and brother John, the two smallest, sat in the front with our parents and the rest of us took turns sitting in the back seat or laying way in the back on top of the luggage.
When we finally arrived in Montreal my father went to pick up the key at an address the salesman had given him, it turned out to be Bens, a deli famous in Quebec, indeed in all of Canada, for their smoked meat sandwiches. It seemed that the “salesman” was in fact the owner of several businesses and owned not one but two cottages on a lake in the exclusive Laurentian Mountains. My father returned to the car with the keys to both cottages and a huge party tray of smoked meat and cheese that had been presented to him, this turned out to be our lunch for the next few days.
Expo was as exciting as all the hype made it seem. The impressive geodesic dome of the U.S. pavilion, the British pavilion with its Union Jack painted tower, Ontario with its 360 degree slide and film show. The Nova Scotia pavilion featured a wooden schooner being built on site, and the Canada pavilion had its birthday theme song, which was heard everywhere, (“CA-NA-DA, now we are 20 million”). The passports made you want to visit countries according to how cool their stamp was, at the end of each day we would compare passport stamps. Le Ronde, the huge amusement park with the great rides was even more impressive when it was all lit up at night. We even got to ride on the recently opened Montreal subway, unique at the time because it ran on rubber tires instead of rails. After four days of visiting nearly every country in the world, getting lost, standing in line, feeling sick from too many hot dogs and too much sun and still more standing in line, our time at Expo was over.
Heading back to the cottage for our last night, my father got stopped for speeding. The policeman told him he had to pay a fine on the spot, Dad told him he only had enough money for gas to get us home and couldn’t pay the fine. The policeman replied that there was no way out of it, either he paid the fine or he would go to jail. Dad said, “O.K. I guess you’ll have to take me to jail, but that car has my wife and ten kids in it, you’ll have to take them too.” The policeman looked at the car, called his commanding officer, then told Dad that he guessed this time he’d let him go with just a warning.
The next morning we once again wedged ourselves into the car and began our two-day, pre Trans Canada Highway trip home.
All these years later, I still look back on this, the longest trip we ever took as a complete family, as a highlight of my youth.
Wednesday, 25 July 2007
A FEW STORIES
Here are some stories I submitted to a contest that the TV show Corner Gas was running a couple of years ago. You had to submit stories about small town life. I did pretty good, most of the stories ended up in the top ten.
"ACE"
The small fishing village where I grew up had a local character named "Ace". He got his nickname as a young man because he and his brothers spent hours playing cards. He was so well known by this name that few people knew his real one. One day a man arrived at the town store asking where he could find Bernard McDormand. The old men who spent all day sitting on the bench in the store said he must be mistaken, there was no one by that name in town. He was about to leave, probably thinking that either he had the wrong town or there was some conspiracy to keep him in the dark when the store-keeper, Gladys, who always seemed to know everything about everybody, spoke up. She was happy to inform the visitor, and the crew on the bench, that Bernard was in fact Aces real name.
Ace had an odd talent for fixing the old car engines that most of the boats used for power. His methods were somewhat free and easy, often having a few bits and pieces left over. His philosophy was that "if it would run without those parts then it didn't really need them anyway". One year, just before fishing season, he was tied up at his wharf, trying to get his engine running properly. Finally, in a fit of exasperation he hoisted the engine out of the boat, swung it over the side and dropped it into twenty feet of water. The next morning it dawned on him that fishing season opened in a couple of days and he didn't have an engine for his boat. At low tide he went down on the beach, hoisted the engine back in the boat and a couple of days later went fishing with it.
"HOW TO RUIN A PERFECTLY GOOD TRUCK"
One day when I was about five years old I was playing in my father’s new ’54 Chev truck. I was happily pushing pedals and pulling levers when suddenly it started slowly rolling backwards down the driveway. At the end of our driveway was the street, and just past that, an eight-foot drop into the ocean.
I frantically kicked at the pedals and tried to yank the emergency brake, but the truck kept rolling and I quickly decided my only chance was to bail out. I opened the door and jumped, recovering just in time to see the truck disappear into six feet of salt water.
The tires, the wooden bed and the air trapped in the cab kept it afloat and, with just a few inches showing, I watched my dad’s new truck slowly drift away.
Luckily a fisherman unloading his catch nearby noticed my dilemma and kindly towed it back to shore.
By this time most of the 350 people in town had shown up and as the tide fell, the men went to work. They stripped the truck of everything that could be removed, disassembled the engine, drained the gas tank, then towed the truck to a pond in an attempt to wash away the effects of the salt water. By nightfall the truck was back together and running.
Even though none of the gauges worked, the windows wouldn’t roll down and the body developed a severe case of premature rust, my father continued to drive this truck for another year or so. Right up until the day he hit a bump and the rotted out cab dropped down around his ears. He drove straight to the dealership and traded it in. For his one-year old truck my father got a trade-in value of $50.
"THE LESSON"
I grew up on a small island off the coast of Nova Scotia. My wife was born and raised in the big city of Toronto. Her introduction to life in a small town occurred in 1979 when we moved from T.O. to a new job in Louisburg, Cape Breton. Since our apartment was not quite ready, for the first few days we stayed at a local hotel. Coming home after my second day at work, I noticed that she was industriously knitting away and commented that I didn’t know she could knit. She replied that this morning she couldn’t, but finding herself with time on her hands, she went looking for something to do. Coming across a local craft store, she was impressed by some of the handiwork on display and was inspired to buy some yarn and needles. Returning to the hotel with a one-page brochure explaining all you needed to know about knitting, she was growing frustrated trying to interpret the instructions when a knock came on the door and the maid entered to make up the room. After a few minutes of cleaning and straightening, she approached my wife and said, “Here my dear, let me show you”. For the next half-hour, between cleaning the bathroom and making the bed, she patiently gave a hands-on lesson in the finer points of knitting. Many years later my wife still enjoys knitting and still remembers the kindness of that woman who could find a few minutes in her busy day to lend a helping hand to a young newcomer.
"THE FIRE BRIGADE"
In a small town, phone calls at 2:30 Sunday morning are never good news. Elsie, the local switchboard operator, was alerting us that a neighbors house was on fire. While my mother took off for the house in question, dad went with a group to commandeer the town fire engine, an old pickup towing a trailer with a car engine on it that ran a pump. The town had bought this rig a few years earlier, after the last fire. Unfortunately, no one had maintained it and when the men tried to start it, they realized that the battery was long dead. They pulled one out of a nearby car and after some priming and cranking and cursing, it started. Sputtering and spitting and stalling, they arrived at the scene were a cheer went up from a weary bucket brigade who were scooping water from a nearby beach in a valiant effort to quell the flames. Hoses were quickly rolled out and the key turned to start the pump engine. Nothing, another dead battery. Quickly one was borrowed and the engine turned over but wouldn't start. While the men worked feverishly, the exhausted bucket brigade continued to toss water at the growing fire. Finally to everyone's relief the engine roared to life, the pump started to pump and men grabbed hoses, ready to douse the now raging inferno. Noticing a lack of water pressure, they looked behind to see that the old hoses had split under pressure. Hoses were changed and changed again until some were found that could stand the strain. Meanwhile the engine kept stalling and the fire kept growing. In the end, the house burned to the ground, but the village fire brigade was instrumental in saving the house next door from suffering more than minor damage.
"CURT'S STORE"
My best friend's father ran an honest-to-goodness corner store. It was a very small building situated on one of only two intersections in a very small town. Although diminutive in size, it was a full-fledged general store in spirit. Customers could rely on “Curt's” for everything from penny candy to lightbulbs to fresh meat and vegetables. Squeezed in among the rubber boots and pop cases was a wooden bench which was usually occupied by a half-dozen or so of the local sages. These were retired or otherwise unemployed men who spent their days smoking, discussing things of great import like the weather, and observing every customer who came through the door. The men on the bench were a community resource, they usually had the latest news about the goings-on around town as well as a wealth of history about the community and everyone in it. Great philosophical discussions would rage for hours, interrupted occasionally when one or another of the debaters would rise from the bench and call out, “Curt, cut me off a slab of baloney”. Curt's store is long gone now. Every time I pass the intersection where it once stood, I look at the empty field and can’t help but feel that the village and its people are a little bit poorer for its passing.
"ISLAND GAS"
My father was way ahead of the curve. Decades before the big gas giants started converting all their stations to self serve gas bars and convenience stores; he was already there. Brier Island, Nova Scotia, the fishing village where I grew up, was too small to support a full-fledged gas station, but too isolated to be without some source of fuel, tires, car parts etc. His version of Corner Gas (which actually was on a corner) consisted of a general store which carried everything from meat and vegetables to lumber and paint to sewing needles to boat anchors, as well as the aforementioned boat and auto supplies. The gas pumps were across the road from the store and people would just pull up to the pumps, pump their own gas and then walk across to the store to pay, or more often than not, to yell from the doorway, “Five dollars worth of gas. Put it on my bill.” Being on an island, the threat of people driving off without paying was pretty well non-existent, after all, where would they run too? The self-service aspect of the business even went farther than todays gas bars. Behind the gas pumps, near the edge of the Baptist Vestry parking lot was a wooden ramp that people could drive their cars up onto to change their own oil. Stove oil was also sold, delivered on an old army truck in forty-five gallon drums and transferred to the house tank via a hand-cranked pump. Thirty years later, things haven’t changed much, the business is still in the family, the pumps are now on the same side of the road as the store and the town isn’t quite as isolated as it was, but the corner gas pumps are still an important and central part of the community.
"NEW BOOTS"
Among us kids, the traditional test of new boots was to wade out until water started coming in. Knowing this, my father had warned me that if I got my new boots wet inside, there would be dire consequences.
I was fishing off the wharf with my friend David when he snagged one of the wharf poles. I decided that I could hang over and unhook it. The next thing I knew, I was under twenty feet of water.
My instinct was to kick off my boots and swim for shore. Two things stopped me, first being that I couldn’t swim. It may seem odd that a ten-year old surrounded by water would not know how to swim, but most of the fishermen I knew never bothered to acquire this skill. Ocean water is so cold that within minutes they would be incapacitated anyway.
Second was my fathers warning. I had definitely got my boots wet, if I arrived home with no boots at all, well, I just couldn’t imagine that.
Running out of air, I went up a post hand over hand to the surface. After gulping some air, I assessed my situation. David tried to pull me up but my boots were dragging me down and I couldn’t hang on. Suddenly a simple solution occurred to me; I would just walk ashore.
Sinking back to the bottom, I set off toward shore. I’d pole climb to the surface for air, drop back down and keep slogging along.
Emerging from the sea in water-filled boots, I was met by David, crying his eyes out. Touched by this uncharacteristic display of emotion, I sought to reassure him, telling him to not worry, I was O.K. Finally he looked up and said, “I was just afraid that you’d drown and I’d get blamed for it”.
"THE FEUDIN’ FENCE"
I grew up in a small fishing village of about 350 in Nova Scotia, a place where everyone knew everyone else and everyone knew everyone elses business. Malcolm and Georgie were two men of retirement age who had been next-door neighbours for more than thirty years. They got along for all those years without any problems worth mentioning until the fateful day when Malcolm decided to get his property surveyed. The survey revealed that for the past thirty years, Georgies garage had extended six inches over the property line. For some reason Malcolm took offense to this and demanded that the garage be moved. Georgie refused, and the feud was on. After a few preliminaries, like Malcolm hosing down the side of the garage while Georgie was trying to paint it, and Georgie throwing snowballs through Malcolms open kitchen window, the gloves came off. One built a picket fence on the property line, the other built a board fence next to it. The first responded with a higher fence and the second won the battle with sheets of plywood placed on end, an eight foot wooden Berlin Wall forever hiding the two from each others sight. This went on, with more minor skirmishes, for several years until one unfortunate day when Malcolms wife collapsed in the kitchen. Old habits die hard, and in this emergency Malcolm ran to his nearest neighbour for help. Georgie responded like people in small communities usually do and helped Malcolm care for his wife until she recovered. The fence, which had become known to all as "The Feudin' Fence", came down almost immediately and the two resumed as if the previous several years had never happened.
"THE TICKET CAPER"
My father ran a small-town general store. One of his regular customers was “Percy”, a retired gentleman who liked to pass time by playing practical jokes on his long-suffering wife, Alma. These jokes were of the harmless, mildly amusing sort, that is, until the day he entered the store with a distressed look on his face and asked to speak with my father in private. It seems that Percy had bought a lottery ticket using the same numbers as the winner in the last draw then doctored the date to make it look like it had been bought a week earlier. His plan was to get his wife to check the numbers, wait until she thought she had won the lottery, and then they would both have a big laugh when he revealed his prank.
But, as he now confessed, his wife had got so excited that he didn’t dare tell her it was a trick, and since he had bought the ticket from my father, would he mind going and telling Alma she hadn’t really won a million dollars? My father, being no fool, declined this opportunity to have his head separated from his shoulders by an irate housewife and suggested that Percys best course of action might be to make a clean breast of things before it all went past the point of no return.
Percy left the store looking like a man going to the gallows, he later told my father that he had taken his advice and confessed. But Dad always suspected that he had tried to divert some of Almas’ wrath by sharing the blame because for a long time after, she treated him rather coolly and she told some of her neighbours that she believed someone had put Percy up to it.
"ACE"
The small fishing village where I grew up had a local character named "Ace". He got his nickname as a young man because he and his brothers spent hours playing cards. He was so well known by this name that few people knew his real one. One day a man arrived at the town store asking where he could find Bernard McDormand. The old men who spent all day sitting on the bench in the store said he must be mistaken, there was no one by that name in town. He was about to leave, probably thinking that either he had the wrong town or there was some conspiracy to keep him in the dark when the store-keeper, Gladys, who always seemed to know everything about everybody, spoke up. She was happy to inform the visitor, and the crew on the bench, that Bernard was in fact Aces real name.
Ace had an odd talent for fixing the old car engines that most of the boats used for power. His methods were somewhat free and easy, often having a few bits and pieces left over. His philosophy was that "if it would run without those parts then it didn't really need them anyway". One year, just before fishing season, he was tied up at his wharf, trying to get his engine running properly. Finally, in a fit of exasperation he hoisted the engine out of the boat, swung it over the side and dropped it into twenty feet of water. The next morning it dawned on him that fishing season opened in a couple of days and he didn't have an engine for his boat. At low tide he went down on the beach, hoisted the engine back in the boat and a couple of days later went fishing with it.
"HOW TO RUIN A PERFECTLY GOOD TRUCK"
One day when I was about five years old I was playing in my father’s new ’54 Chev truck. I was happily pushing pedals and pulling levers when suddenly it started slowly rolling backwards down the driveway. At the end of our driveway was the street, and just past that, an eight-foot drop into the ocean.
I frantically kicked at the pedals and tried to yank the emergency brake, but the truck kept rolling and I quickly decided my only chance was to bail out. I opened the door and jumped, recovering just in time to see the truck disappear into six feet of salt water.
The tires, the wooden bed and the air trapped in the cab kept it afloat and, with just a few inches showing, I watched my dad’s new truck slowly drift away.
Luckily a fisherman unloading his catch nearby noticed my dilemma and kindly towed it back to shore.
By this time most of the 350 people in town had shown up and as the tide fell, the men went to work. They stripped the truck of everything that could be removed, disassembled the engine, drained the gas tank, then towed the truck to a pond in an attempt to wash away the effects of the salt water. By nightfall the truck was back together and running.
Even though none of the gauges worked, the windows wouldn’t roll down and the body developed a severe case of premature rust, my father continued to drive this truck for another year or so. Right up until the day he hit a bump and the rotted out cab dropped down around his ears. He drove straight to the dealership and traded it in. For his one-year old truck my father got a trade-in value of $50.
"THE LESSON"
I grew up on a small island off the coast of Nova Scotia. My wife was born and raised in the big city of Toronto. Her introduction to life in a small town occurred in 1979 when we moved from T.O. to a new job in Louisburg, Cape Breton. Since our apartment was not quite ready, for the first few days we stayed at a local hotel. Coming home after my second day at work, I noticed that she was industriously knitting away and commented that I didn’t know she could knit. She replied that this morning she couldn’t, but finding herself with time on her hands, she went looking for something to do. Coming across a local craft store, she was impressed by some of the handiwork on display and was inspired to buy some yarn and needles. Returning to the hotel with a one-page brochure explaining all you needed to know about knitting, she was growing frustrated trying to interpret the instructions when a knock came on the door and the maid entered to make up the room. After a few minutes of cleaning and straightening, she approached my wife and said, “Here my dear, let me show you”. For the next half-hour, between cleaning the bathroom and making the bed, she patiently gave a hands-on lesson in the finer points of knitting. Many years later my wife still enjoys knitting and still remembers the kindness of that woman who could find a few minutes in her busy day to lend a helping hand to a young newcomer.
"THE FIRE BRIGADE"
In a small town, phone calls at 2:30 Sunday morning are never good news. Elsie, the local switchboard operator, was alerting us that a neighbors house was on fire. While my mother took off for the house in question, dad went with a group to commandeer the town fire engine, an old pickup towing a trailer with a car engine on it that ran a pump. The town had bought this rig a few years earlier, after the last fire. Unfortunately, no one had maintained it and when the men tried to start it, they realized that the battery was long dead. They pulled one out of a nearby car and after some priming and cranking and cursing, it started. Sputtering and spitting and stalling, they arrived at the scene were a cheer went up from a weary bucket brigade who were scooping water from a nearby beach in a valiant effort to quell the flames. Hoses were quickly rolled out and the key turned to start the pump engine. Nothing, another dead battery. Quickly one was borrowed and the engine turned over but wouldn't start. While the men worked feverishly, the exhausted bucket brigade continued to toss water at the growing fire. Finally to everyone's relief the engine roared to life, the pump started to pump and men grabbed hoses, ready to douse the now raging inferno. Noticing a lack of water pressure, they looked behind to see that the old hoses had split under pressure. Hoses were changed and changed again until some were found that could stand the strain. Meanwhile the engine kept stalling and the fire kept growing. In the end, the house burned to the ground, but the village fire brigade was instrumental in saving the house next door from suffering more than minor damage.
"CURT'S STORE"
My best friend's father ran an honest-to-goodness corner store. It was a very small building situated on one of only two intersections in a very small town. Although diminutive in size, it was a full-fledged general store in spirit. Customers could rely on “Curt's” for everything from penny candy to lightbulbs to fresh meat and vegetables. Squeezed in among the rubber boots and pop cases was a wooden bench which was usually occupied by a half-dozen or so of the local sages. These were retired or otherwise unemployed men who spent their days smoking, discussing things of great import like the weather, and observing every customer who came through the door. The men on the bench were a community resource, they usually had the latest news about the goings-on around town as well as a wealth of history about the community and everyone in it. Great philosophical discussions would rage for hours, interrupted occasionally when one or another of the debaters would rise from the bench and call out, “Curt, cut me off a slab of baloney”. Curt's store is long gone now. Every time I pass the intersection where it once stood, I look at the empty field and can’t help but feel that the village and its people are a little bit poorer for its passing.
"ISLAND GAS"
My father was way ahead of the curve. Decades before the big gas giants started converting all their stations to self serve gas bars and convenience stores; he was already there. Brier Island, Nova Scotia, the fishing village where I grew up, was too small to support a full-fledged gas station, but too isolated to be without some source of fuel, tires, car parts etc. His version of Corner Gas (which actually was on a corner) consisted of a general store which carried everything from meat and vegetables to lumber and paint to sewing needles to boat anchors, as well as the aforementioned boat and auto supplies. The gas pumps were across the road from the store and people would just pull up to the pumps, pump their own gas and then walk across to the store to pay, or more often than not, to yell from the doorway, “Five dollars worth of gas. Put it on my bill.” Being on an island, the threat of people driving off without paying was pretty well non-existent, after all, where would they run too? The self-service aspect of the business even went farther than todays gas bars. Behind the gas pumps, near the edge of the Baptist Vestry parking lot was a wooden ramp that people could drive their cars up onto to change their own oil. Stove oil was also sold, delivered on an old army truck in forty-five gallon drums and transferred to the house tank via a hand-cranked pump. Thirty years later, things haven’t changed much, the business is still in the family, the pumps are now on the same side of the road as the store and the town isn’t quite as isolated as it was, but the corner gas pumps are still an important and central part of the community.
"NEW BOOTS"
Among us kids, the traditional test of new boots was to wade out until water started coming in. Knowing this, my father had warned me that if I got my new boots wet inside, there would be dire consequences.
I was fishing off the wharf with my friend David when he snagged one of the wharf poles. I decided that I could hang over and unhook it. The next thing I knew, I was under twenty feet of water.
My instinct was to kick off my boots and swim for shore. Two things stopped me, first being that I couldn’t swim. It may seem odd that a ten-year old surrounded by water would not know how to swim, but most of the fishermen I knew never bothered to acquire this skill. Ocean water is so cold that within minutes they would be incapacitated anyway.
Second was my fathers warning. I had definitely got my boots wet, if I arrived home with no boots at all, well, I just couldn’t imagine that.
Running out of air, I went up a post hand over hand to the surface. After gulping some air, I assessed my situation. David tried to pull me up but my boots were dragging me down and I couldn’t hang on. Suddenly a simple solution occurred to me; I would just walk ashore.
Sinking back to the bottom, I set off toward shore. I’d pole climb to the surface for air, drop back down and keep slogging along.
Emerging from the sea in water-filled boots, I was met by David, crying his eyes out. Touched by this uncharacteristic display of emotion, I sought to reassure him, telling him to not worry, I was O.K. Finally he looked up and said, “I was just afraid that you’d drown and I’d get blamed for it”.
"THE FEUDIN’ FENCE"
I grew up in a small fishing village of about 350 in Nova Scotia, a place where everyone knew everyone else and everyone knew everyone elses business. Malcolm and Georgie were two men of retirement age who had been next-door neighbours for more than thirty years. They got along for all those years without any problems worth mentioning until the fateful day when Malcolm decided to get his property surveyed. The survey revealed that for the past thirty years, Georgies garage had extended six inches over the property line. For some reason Malcolm took offense to this and demanded that the garage be moved. Georgie refused, and the feud was on. After a few preliminaries, like Malcolm hosing down the side of the garage while Georgie was trying to paint it, and Georgie throwing snowballs through Malcolms open kitchen window, the gloves came off. One built a picket fence on the property line, the other built a board fence next to it. The first responded with a higher fence and the second won the battle with sheets of plywood placed on end, an eight foot wooden Berlin Wall forever hiding the two from each others sight. This went on, with more minor skirmishes, for several years until one unfortunate day when Malcolms wife collapsed in the kitchen. Old habits die hard, and in this emergency Malcolm ran to his nearest neighbour for help. Georgie responded like people in small communities usually do and helped Malcolm care for his wife until she recovered. The fence, which had become known to all as "The Feudin' Fence", came down almost immediately and the two resumed as if the previous several years had never happened.
"THE TICKET CAPER"
My father ran a small-town general store. One of his regular customers was “Percy”, a retired gentleman who liked to pass time by playing practical jokes on his long-suffering wife, Alma. These jokes were of the harmless, mildly amusing sort, that is, until the day he entered the store with a distressed look on his face and asked to speak with my father in private. It seems that Percy had bought a lottery ticket using the same numbers as the winner in the last draw then doctored the date to make it look like it had been bought a week earlier. His plan was to get his wife to check the numbers, wait until she thought she had won the lottery, and then they would both have a big laugh when he revealed his prank.
But, as he now confessed, his wife had got so excited that he didn’t dare tell her it was a trick, and since he had bought the ticket from my father, would he mind going and telling Alma she hadn’t really won a million dollars? My father, being no fool, declined this opportunity to have his head separated from his shoulders by an irate housewife and suggested that Percys best course of action might be to make a clean breast of things before it all went past the point of no return.
Percy left the store looking like a man going to the gallows, he later told my father that he had taken his advice and confessed. But Dad always suspected that he had tried to divert some of Almas’ wrath by sharing the blame because for a long time after, she treated him rather coolly and she told some of her neighbours that she believed someone had put Percy up to it.
Monday, 23 July 2007
Odds and Ends
Just thought I'd add some things since nobody else is.
This week-end we went to see John Fogarty (formerly of Creedence Clearwater Revival) at the Amphitheatre at Ontario Place. It was a great show, he did a non-stop two hours of mostly CCR tunes and a couple off his new album.
One of the things I enjoy about living here is the opportunity to take in some of the live performances. In the past year and a half we have seen Fogarty, blues legend BB King, Meatloaf and Elton John. Of these I would say I enjoyed BB King the most, a very low key and personal kind of show at Roy Thompson Hall. Fogarty and Elton are tied for second place, Fogarty put on a very high energy show (the guy's 62) and Elton is just Elton, it must give a person quite a feeling to be able to sit down at a piano, hit the first chord of "Benny and The Jets" and bring 16,000 people roaring to their feet.
Meatloaf was OK but a bit of a disappointment, I guess it was too much to expect a guy in his late 50s to still be able to sing "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" with the same feeling and intensity that he did 30 years ago.
We've also been to see comedian Ron James, the Canadian Brass and for the past three years it's been a family tradition to go see the CBCs Vinyl Cafe Christmas Show.
A couple of months ago some friends gave us tickets to see Phanthom of The Opera at the Princess of Wales Theatre in Toronto, they have season tickets but were unable to go on this date, lucky for us. It was a great production and in a very impressive building.
Hamilton is a great city for live music, a lot like Halifax. They have a couple of week-end long free concerts every summer at Gage Park, with local bands and a couple of more well know performers.
This week-end we went to see John Fogarty (formerly of Creedence Clearwater Revival) at the Amphitheatre at Ontario Place. It was a great show, he did a non-stop two hours of mostly CCR tunes and a couple off his new album.
One of the things I enjoy about living here is the opportunity to take in some of the live performances. In the past year and a half we have seen Fogarty, blues legend BB King, Meatloaf and Elton John. Of these I would say I enjoyed BB King the most, a very low key and personal kind of show at Roy Thompson Hall. Fogarty and Elton are tied for second place, Fogarty put on a very high energy show (the guy's 62) and Elton is just Elton, it must give a person quite a feeling to be able to sit down at a piano, hit the first chord of "Benny and The Jets" and bring 16,000 people roaring to their feet.
Meatloaf was OK but a bit of a disappointment, I guess it was too much to expect a guy in his late 50s to still be able to sing "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" with the same feeling and intensity that he did 30 years ago.
We've also been to see comedian Ron James, the Canadian Brass and for the past three years it's been a family tradition to go see the CBCs Vinyl Cafe Christmas Show.
A couple of months ago some friends gave us tickets to see Phanthom of The Opera at the Princess of Wales Theatre in Toronto, they have season tickets but were unable to go on this date, lucky for us. It was a great production and in a very impressive building.
Hamilton is a great city for live music, a lot like Halifax. They have a couple of week-end long free concerts every summer at Gage Park, with local bands and a couple of more well know performers.
Thursday, 24 May 2007
Hello from the Tropics
Hi Everyone,
I'm on my way to work now, and then off to Boracay Island for a weekend of relaxing on what is apparently one of the nicest beaches in Asia, but I thought I'd post some of the email I sent out last weekend so anyone not on my list could have a read.
Well, what can I say so far...My apartment is beautiful, I really cannot get over how nice it is. I have all the comforts of home, which given the heat, means the air conditioner is much appreciated; and I am trying to be very mature about the cockroaches. The family that owns the building is extremely friendly (as are most of the people we've met - very warm and genuine), and had wireless Internet installed just for us! This is a major bonus! Although we are in a city, there is a yard of roosters right outside my window, I'm getting used to them now though and can go right back to sleep when they start crowing at 3am. The 2 guys are sharing a room that has roof access, so we spend a lot of time on the deck up there which overlooks the river and has a nice breeze in the evening. Fire works are quite popular here so we usually see some from up there too. We are on a pretty quiet street and there are always lots of kids around (they are on summer break until mid-June) who think we are pretty fascinating. We are only a 15 minute walk from a huge mall with a big supermarket, dept store and even a movie theatre, so it doesn't get much more convenient than that! Food is very cheap here (by western standards - as is just about everything), so we eat out almost every night. It is fun to go out to the local restaurants and Iloilo is big enough that there is lots of variety, but it makes for a long day! Although our days are very full the overall pace of life is comfortable, and this is something I really appreciate.
On Tuesday we went to the Guimaras Mango Festival and watched a mindblowing dance/story telling competition. It was phenomenal. There were four groups of youth, each representing a different municipality and the amount of work they had put into the presentations was amazing. Last weekend we drove across the island of Panay (which Iloilo is on) to the province of Antique; this trip took us through beautiful mountains, with spectacular views of the sea.
Now, I must go scrample to pack for the weekend, so that I can leave right from the office! I tried to figure out how to put the pictures on the bottom, but it wasn't happening, so if anyone knows, let me know...
I'm looking forward to hearing from everyone and all about what is going on!
Sarah
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
