In Your Words

Grandmother's New Rake

My father's aging parents lived across the road from us. We did not call them Nan and Pop, such terms would be offensive to them. All our lives there were Grandfather and Grandmother, even their in-laws called them that. Now, these two people were dear to me, so don't go thinking I'm making fun of them just because my story might sound a little funny. These two people raised a big family during some of the hardest economic times known to this part of the world. They did that through hard work and much sacrifice with long periods of separation from each other. When I came on the scene they were both in the autumn of their lives, living along in a small house just across the road. They kept to themselves and when or if a stranger would knock on their door, he or she was met at the door, seldom if ever invited inside. My grandmother had some hens so she sold the eggs she and Grandfather couldn't use. Of course, when the poor hens were too old to lay eggs any more, she promptly chopped off their heads and had the hen for Sunday dinner. They were a close-knit pair, dedicated to each other as they had been for some sixty years or more. Now, Grandfather and Grandmother had indeed lived through some hard times. They both grew up poor, used to hard work with little reward, and so they were slow to complain. They worked closely together in the gardens where they grew vegetables or made hay for the horse and cow when they still had both. The subject of my story revolves around the making of hay. Grandfather was a fine hand at making things, he had made his own dray cart, box cart, a slide for hauling wood and later, sled for the same purpose. His pick and shovel both now sported homemade handles because he had broken the original handles over the years. Some said from using them at hard work, other said they had met their fate in an overheated swearing fit. Grandfather made his own hay rakes too, which stood the test of time. Until one day Grandmother came home with her very own store-bought hay rake she paid the ungodly sum of $3 plus tax for. As one might imagine, this hurt the ol' fella right where it hurt the most - his pride. Sure he could have made a dozen hay rakes for $3 plus tax and the money would have gone for tobacco and matches not labour and material. The thing looked ok with its smooth handle and even teeth. It was as light as a feather and probably just as fragile. Grandfather figured he could have raked hay with it for a month of Sundays and never have had as much as a single callous to show for it. Now, Grandmother was very protective of her new rake, which to her, was much better looking than the ones that Grandfather made. Very light on the arms and shoulders, she was quick to point out. She would not let us youngsters us it for fear we would break the teeth off. It didn't seem to matter if we broke the teeth off the other rakes. After all, Grandfather could whittle a new one with his pocketknife. To put the kibosh on it all she wouldn't let Grandfather use it either. She figured he'd break it on purpose, he being still somewhat offended that she had bought it in the first place. This only served to make him even more determined to get her back for buying the thing and then having the gall not to let him use it. Sure, if there was a person on God's Green Earth that knew how to use a hay rake without breaking the teeth of it, it was himself. They say Grandfather was born with a bottle of cow's milk in one hand and a hay rake in the other. (I imagine it was a difficult birth, probably where he learned to swear - from his mother in her racks of pain.) He could be a patient man when he wanted to be, so he held his tongue and temper until the right moment. It came one morning as my mother and I, with Grandmother and Grandfather, were walking up the road on our way inside to spread the hay grandfather had cut down the day before. As all four of us were walking up the hill toward the old railway track Grandmother with her new rake clutched closely to her side. Grandfather turned to my mother with a serious look on his face. He said, "Nellie, maid, I woke up this morning with an awful pain in my side. And I think it's gotten worse." My mother was worried, he being an old man and all, he could be having a heart attack or something worse. She said, "My God, Grandfather, what's happened to you?" Without cracking a smile, grandfather replied, "I rolled over in the bed last night and didn't she have that g d rake in the bed with her. One of the teeth dug right into me ribs." Grandmother, who at first was just as much concerned with grandfather's condition as my mother and I, stormed off ahead of us, muttering, "you're all there to make fun." She was at the garden twenty minutes before the rest of us. Grandfather never got to use the rake after that for sure. But he was satisfied that he had gotten Grandmother back for buying it in the first place. - Cyril Griffin New Perlican, NL

Grandfather

When I write about my grandfather it's about my paternal side because my grandfather on my mother's side died six months before I was born. So I never got to know him though I always wished I had. The grandfather I did know lived across the road from our house. This was not the same place where he was born and raised. He and my paternal grandmother lived alone after their youngest son got his own house just down the road from us and them. My grandfather was tall and lean - not an ounce of fat on him. He walked with a limp because, they say, he had a broken hip which didn't heal properly. Knowing grandfather, he most likely didn't give it time to heal before he was back at work. I don't really know if he came from a big family or not because he never spoke to me of his family. My oldest brother once told us that grandfather had come home one fall from the Labrador when he was still a very young boy in his early teens to learn that his father had died during the summer and his mother had left with whatever was the rest of his family. So he must have grown up pretty much on his own, with little or no education - he couldn't read or write. He could and did work very hard from an early age until he was well into his seventies. He worked wherever he could find it, on ships, in the mines, and the so-called lumber woods cutting pulp wood for the big paper mills. He endured many hardships in his life. But true to his nature he always recalled them with humour. Many times I would sit and listen to his stories of working in the mines or the lumber woods. They always made me laugh. My grandfather always kept animals, as most people did. Even in my time with him he always had a horse. He grew potatoes in great numbers even when it was only him and grandmother living together. He sold most of them to supplement his income. He knew from experience how to rotate the land so as not to deplete it. Grow potatoes in a piece of ground for a couple of years then let it go fallow and grow hay for the animals for couple of years. When I was a young bot I would help my grandfather make hay and store it in his barn loft for winter feed. These were some of my most memorable moments with him. He still kept the land he had grown up on, which was a mile or so inland from where he now lived. He had a hay frame which he attached to his dray cart. The hay frame was made by his own hands, except for the big wooden wheels with iron rims which were probably made by a local wheelwright. He would hitch his horse up to the dray car and proceed up the road to the old north shore railroad track. This track ran just in front of his old homestead in an area called Cherry Orchard. There he would load the dry hay into the hay frame and bring it home to his barn. This is where the fun starts. Now, grandfather didn't want to make any more trips to and from the old homestead than were absolutely necessary. So he would have me and perhaps a cousin or two around the same age stamp the hay down into the frame. We did this by walking through it time after time and pushing it own with our feet. Grandfather would always say "stamp 'er down good," and so we did. The problem came when we got back to the barn. We loved to ride atop the hay all the way home, but trouble started when grandfather started to prong the hay out of the hay frame. We had, according to grandfather's instructions, stamped 'er down so good the hay was almost glued to the frame. As hard as he tried, he could only get small amounts of hay loose with his prong. Then the swearing would start. Now, lots of people used to swear in those days when they were angry or frustrated, and it wasn't ideal for young ears to be hearing it. Grandfather could, as they said in those days, "make 'em and say 'em," other people's swear words couldn't cover the situation. He swore so long and loud my grandmother could hear him in the kitchen where she was making dinner. Meanwhile, we were hid away in the barn loft, laughing our heads off. Although grandfather was deadly serious with his swearing routine, we boys thought it was the funniest thing on earth. Even while we were stamping 'er down we couldn't wait to get home for the entertainment to start. As I said, our grandfather could say 'em like nobody else and of course he had the hand and foot gestures timed perfect to add flair to his newly minted swear words. So I caution you, if you should feel like going into your own rant sometime when things aren't going your way, be careful what your say. You may not only be guilty of sin, but also copyright infringement, which comes with a hefty fine. Who could forget that classic pose, with the two fists wrung-up at the end of those two outstretched arms, the reddened face staring toward the heavens, the look of religious fervor usually reserved for the born again Christian on his weathered face and that all too familiar retort on his tobacco-stained lips, "you're here again today on crutches!" (Reprinted here with permission, I hope.) All this while his two feet stomped his salt and pepper cap into the ground. Oh! But for the good ol' days. There is too much of my grandfather and his swearing fits, or all his stories of working in the mines, on ships and in the lumber woods to recount in one short story. But I thought the world of him and still do. Whenever my cousins and I come together we always get to talking about this times. We always laugh our heads off when thinking of grandfather's antics. It was good to breathe life into him again, if only for the little while it took to read this piece. Cyril Griffin New Perlican, NL

Ramblings on Weather Lore

The month with the most unsavory of reputations was almost over. The 'Cold Hungry Month' and the 'cold March winds' would soon give way to the gentler and milder days of April and May. That's usually the expectation for isn't there a saying that 'April showers bring May flowers.' Expectations, however, don't always pan out for April showers are often snow showers and holidayers on the twenty-fourth of May weekend often shiver in their tents and peer out to find a batch of snow on the ground. No doubt about it; our Newfoundland weather is highly unpredictable. And didn't a cabbie, the most savvy of townies, once tell a disgruntled and rain drenched tourist to, "Hang'er tough, ol'man. The sun will be splitting the rocks in another ten minutes." His forecast might have been a tad optimistic but, like that cabbie, most Newfoundlanders are hardly ever fazed by the vagaries of our weather. That's because at a very early age the weather was 'bred into' us as there was a time when we walked back and forth to school in blizzards and remained copying on the ice pans with our socks and vamps soaking wet. As outdoor folk we tend to enjoy all seasons while taking the extremes of our weather in stride. So, what's all this fuss about 'lambs and lions'in March? Well, people love using descriptive terms, don't they? 'In like a lamb and out like a lion,' and 'In like a lion and out like a lamb,' are most likely among the oldest sayings in weather lore. I didn't realize how old until I heard a reference to it recently on television. It was on an idle evening in late March and I was contented just to sit near the window and observe that spring had finally arrived. The weather had been mild and misty all day and in the twilight my old village was calm and peaceful. The snow, as they say around here, was getting a cutting and in the harbour the ice was turning black and tidal pools mirrored the light from a fading sunset. March was certainly going out like a lamb. The lion, however, had roared many times during the winter and I got to wondering if it had ushered in the month. As usual the weather channel was on as, apart from their forecasts, I find many of their related news features very interesting. Then the most timely of coincidences. The weather girls, as if reading my mind, were discussing the topic. I never did recall how March came in but I did learn that the saying relating to lambs and lions goes far back into the past. In fact their researchers found references to it, in poetry and story, dating back to the sixteenth century. "Well, my ladies," I thought, "That's very interesting but most likely much of our weather lore is far, far older than that." Homer, the most ancient of story tellers, relates how the Greeks looked to the sky for omens before launching their black ships to sail over the wine-dark seas to Troy. Two millennia later, so the Norse sagas relate, the Vikings also looked to the sky for favorable omens before venturing over cold northern seas on their voyages of discovery and conquest. Westward they sailed in their high prow'd ships that, though sturdy, were open to the elements. Fate must have been benevolent to the Vikings and many a sunset must have glowed red over the ice floes else they would never have survived to discover a New World and sojourn a while at Lance aux Meadows on the Island of Newfoundland. Undoubtedly, that most universal of weather proverbs, 'red sky at night, sailor's delight' has heartened many mariners since the dawn of sea faring. But not all signs and omens portend fair sailing as those accustomed to the way of the sea may cautiously observe that a red sky at morning will bring nasty weather later in the day or that, when gulls fly high, stormy weather is usually close at hand. Newfoundlanders, no less than the Greeks, the Vikings and other sailors of renown have learned by experience to heed the omens that portend bad weather. Sadly, the consequences of not heeding these omens can lead to disaster. And didn't the crew of the S.S. Newfoundland see the 'sun dogs' in the eastern sky on that warm, sunny morning in late March, 1914. Despite that dire omen, over a hundred and fifty sealers left their ship that was stuck fast in the ice, to walk miles across the ice floes in search of seals. In their exhausting journey over a hazardous ice field other ominous signs foretold that bad weather was on its way. A heat haze had enveloped some other vessels that a few moments earlier had been clearly visible on the horizon. The weary sealers were now far from their own boat and hadn't come across any seals. Apprehensive and discouraged some of the sealers turned back but over a hundred of them ventured onward to be caught without shelter in a blinding blizzard of a storm that lasted over two nights and a day. During that terrible time on the ice seventy seven sealers from the S.S. Newfoundland perished making it one of the worst disasters in our sea faring history. It wasn't as if those unfortunate sealers were unaware of the omens but for them the way of the sea was always fraught with risk and danger. And for generations of Newfoundlanders the way of the sea was the tall sailing ships that carried their dry-salted cod to Greece and Italy and other markets in the Mediterranean. After off-loading their cargoes they would return via the Caribbean where Jamaican rum and molasses were laded for St. John's and other ports on our Island. Those sailors of old often looked to the sky for signs of storm and took warning from the old saying that; Mackerel sky and mares' tails Make lofty ships carry low sails Thus with sails prudently trimmed for the gales the tall ships traversed the ocean wide. Today, with satellite storm-tracking and hour-by-hour forecasting, searching the sky for omens is little more than idle curiosity. I was reminded of that fact as twilight deepened over an old harbour. A new moon was visible over the darkening hills and reminded me that there were plenty of omens that I hadn't even thought about. I observed it for a while. "It's on its back; a bad weather moon," I thought and recalled my father making the same observation when I was only small boy many years ago. "Why is it a bad moon?" I asked. "Because it's always a bad sign when you can hang a powder horn on it, my son," he answered. I knew nothing about meteorology but I knew about powder horns as they hung from a nail or a muzzle loader in every household in the harbour. "It would be easy to hang a dozen or more on that new moon," I observed, "but there's hardly a powder horn left in the harbour." It was then that I started to swear. For a mere pittance the peddlers took away everything of value the old people had saved up as their treasures. The day the first peddler came in over the hill was certainly a bad omen for our old harbour. The scoundrel should have been shot with one of the lovely muzzle loaders he toted away. - Roy Dwyer

Larry and John

Two men lived in a big white house Just down the lane from my nan. Though they lived under the same roof They did not live together or speak to one another. They were different, Larry and John, as day is from night. Small and clean and bright was the end that Larry called home. Lace curtains hung from the windows, The walls were painted warm and bright. It showed the marks of a woman's hand, Yet no woman dwelled in this place. Nor had there been for many years. Down the dim and darkened hallway to the right, In a room so dismal and colourless With naked windows, bare unpainted walls and uncovered floors lived a tall lonely man we knew as John. There was no warmth or beauty here. No sign that Love had ever entered there. Different though they were, these two men, A common thread passed through them both. It was the love for a woman, long since gone. A wife to one, Larry, Sister to the other, John, no more. It was said that one did blame the other. It this was true I do not know. Cyril Griffin New Perlican

Thunder and Lightning

These days we hear a lot about climate change, I confess that I don't know or understand much of the science behind that concept. However, like most people my age, and I won't tell you what that is, I can remember when, weather-wise, things were much different. When I was young going to grade school there was lots of snow in the winter. Any time between mid November to mid-April the boundary fences along the roadside were buried in snow. Most time the roads weren't plowed at all during the winter. People with cars would store them in the garage or shed until spring. The same could be said about heavy rain, we hardly see any of that these days. Except maybe the odd tropical storm and even then it doesn't seem to last for long. I haven't experienced a major thunder and lightning storm since I was a youngster. Years later, when I lived in Ontario I did experience some heavy rain. The streets would run like rivers but ten minutes after it stopped you wouldn't know it had rained at all. The lightning would seem to come down and blanket the streets, the thunder was deafening and the smell always brought me back to when I was young. We used to have thunder and lightning storms that went on for days, usually in spring or early fall. After it was all over you would hear on the radio how some people's houses had been damaged by lightning strikes - some even burned to the ground. My dad's sister who lived just down the road from us had her house struck by lightning in one of those storms. The lightning tore away a portion of the roof of her old two-story house. She and her five children were in the house when it happened, her husband was away working. As you can imagine, this gave her a terrible fright. She refused to stay in the house along after that during a storm. So when the forecast called for a storm she would pack up her kids and enough grub to last at least three days and move in with us. We could watch her coming up the road with her three girls and two younger boys. She held the youngest boy by the hand, all the other were carrying bundles of clothes or food. She never came empty handed. We lived in a big two-story house slightly different that hers - the roof wasn't so high. It was quite the going on and we kids loved it because it was a great adventure for us and we didn't even have to leave home to enjoy it. The sleeping arrangements at our house had to undergo a little revision to accommodate our new arrivals. My oldest brother lost his private room with his own double bed, it went to my two oldest female cousins and the youngest girls slept with my sisters. All six of us boys shared the same room with two of us making room for our cousins. Of course it didn't matter, there wasn't much sleeping going on. My mother and my aunt slept together in my parents room as our dad was also away working. We had lots of fun telling stories and jokes, and having pillow fights trying to scare each other with ghost stories and others about the fairies. My two older female cousins lost out cause there were sharing a room just as they did at home. But they wanted to know what was making us laugh so much during the night. Breakfast was a riot as we all ran downstairs in the morning - mom and my aunt trying to feed us all while the biggest question was where were we all going to sit. This usually went on for several days. Occasionally a flash of lightning would come through one of the two kitchen windows and bounce off the stove. Mom and my aunt would jump away from the stove. We thought that was hilarious. We couldn't go outdoors because of the rain so we were confined to quarters, but we could always find something to occupy our time. Eventually the storm would end and things would go back to normal until the next weather event. This went on for several years until my aunt and uncle built a new one-story house and tore down the old one which gave them a big front yard. My aunt decided she would try to stay at home when the first thunder and lightning storm came, but she had everything ready to evacuate. She was nervous but she stuck it out and that was the end of our weather related get-togethers. Now it's just one of those beautiful memories we share whenever we get together. Cyril Griffin New Perlican, NL

A Bit of Speculation

Like many things taken for granted, I hadn't given it a second thought. He might as well have asked "Why is the grass green?" or "Why is the ocean blue?" on that sunny summer's morning when he came by my slipway where I was making repairs to my boat. He pointed towards an old stage near the slipway. "Why do many of your old buildings have white circles on their doors?" he asked. "I don't rightly know," I replied. I had a feeling the design was there for a reason and rather than dismissing it as a whim or a flight of fancy, I'd give it some thought. Like the stranger, I was now intrigued by the peculiarity and might come up with an explanation before he left. We chatted as I applied several layers of fiberglass over the damage my boat had sustained during the seal hunt. He had grown up on a farm in rural Ontario and had taken up photography to capture a cultural landscape where old buildings were rapidly disappearing. He realized the same was happening in rural Newfoundland, where he had arrived with a sense of urgency, to document what remained standing in old architecture through the lens of his cameras. "Do you mind if I take a look inside your stage?" he asked. I offered to accompany him. Halfway down the flake we paused on the long boardwalk leading to the stage. He got out one of his cameras and zoomed in on the old structure. "You're taking a picture of the circle," I surmised."Yeah, it got me puzzled. I haven't seen anything like it on old farm buildings back home. "Do you mind if I speculate a bit?" I asked. "Go ahead. I'd be delighted to hear your explanation." The straight, narrow walkway and the fact the stranger was wearing thick-lensed glasses gave an inkling to a possible answer. "Take off your glasses," I told him. He seemed surprised but did as I asked. "Now face the stage and tell me what stands out." "It's a bit hazy but that white circle on the door most certainly stands out," he remarked. "And so it should. Now visualize standing here in ages past. It's nightfall; no flashlights; no electricity in the harbour. A fog rolls in. An elderly fisherman is on a narrow walkway leading to his stage; its clapboard darkly preserved by a mixture of cod-oil and ochre. He's in a hurry, with fish to be done, before he turns in for the night. His eyesight is failing. Cataracts, high blood pressure or the onset of diabetes; he'll never know the cause as there are no doctors to advise or treat him. He doesn't have glasses. As darkness sets in, he treads carefully toward a totally dark building. A single misstep and he's out on a rickety flake. He stumbles over it into the water. Luckily the tide is out. He doesn't drown. In a litany of curses he makes his way back to shore." I paused to gauge his reaction. "Then what happens?" he prompted. "He still has fish to stow away. He changes into dry clothes. Then he makes his way back to the stage. Probably crawls down there this time," I observed. "And then what happens?" he repeated. "He's most likely hurting and is determined such a mishap won't happen again." "And?" he queried. "In an idle moment, he finds some white paint or mixes a bit of lime. Then with compass or dividers he makes a guide; a white circle, eye-level, on a dark stained door of a dark stained building. Now he can tread his walkway safely in the dark." "That makes sense,' he acknowledged. "Then seeing its useful function, other fishermen painted the circle on the doors of their stages." "That's likely the case," I observed, "And over time those symbols on their outbuildings may have become more decorative than functional. That's why so many remain to tantalize us today." "Well, it certainly had me tantalized," he admitted. "No doubt there's plenty in that stage to whet my curiosity." That I agreed on. Now I had to find an excuse to get back to my boat. -Roy Dwyer

Working Away

When I left home in 1966, Come Home Year in NL, I didn't realize at the time that this would be my life for many years to come. I went to school the first year and in June 1967 I went to Toronto to look for work. I was only seventeen years old. It would be over three years before I would go back home again. I found what I still consider my first real job a few days later. It paid $65 a week salary, minus deductions, and room and board was $20. There were many young Newfoundlanders working in Ontario at the time. I was young, single, and had a dollar in my pocket. Life was good. I tried several times over the years to find work at home but there was none. I was still working in Toronto when I met the beautiful young woman who would become my wife of forty years. Strange thing about it though, was she lived next door to me back home, or more accurately just up the road. She wasn't living in Toronto and would not leave home until we were married for over two years. I know all this sounds confusing - try living it - but it's true. We never went steady, we never lived together before we were married. How could we? There was three thousand miles of land, ninety miles of ocean and four provinces between us. She's gone now over seven years and I still miss her very much. You know I asked her three times to marry me before she finally said yes? Thought I was dreaming, didn't want to wake up. All this happened over a period of years, why, you didn't think I asked her three times on the same night, did you? Anyway, we got married on December 7th, 1974. I came home a week before the wedding, left again a week later and went back to work. For the first seven years of our marriage, I was away for over four years. There were no turnarounds in those days. I worked two full-time jobs in Toronto at the time. Work started at 11:00 Sunday night at the Royal Bank Data Centre in downtown Toronto. The other started at 8:00am on Monday morning in Etobicoke, a western suburb of Toronto, until four in the afternoon. I did most of my sleeping on subway trains, streetcars and transit buses. I did this for two and a half years, might have gone on longer, but I got food poisoning and nearly died. I was trying to build a house back home for my wife and family, and I wanted it to be mortgage-free. Sometimes, every three or four months, on long weekends I would fly home. You could say we were newlyweds for almost twenty years, but it was no honeymoon. I tell people that my wife and I had two children and I never saw her pregnant and believe it or not it's true. I did try to surprise my wife when our youngest daughter was born by buying a plane ticket home for two weeks before she was due to give birth. But one day in June of that year, my boss at my day job told me that I had an urgent phone call from home. It was my sister-in-law telling me my wife had had a fall and was rushed to the hospital. Well, I left work, phoned Air Canada, changed my ticket, and got out late that night. My brother and his wife met me at the airport in St. John's. They said 'Congratulations! You have another girl!' So much for surprising the wife. I stayed home for a couple of years after that. When my wife got out of the hospital we moved into our unfinished house. We lived as a family for a couple of years, I found a job at home and was grateful I could come home every day from work. But there wasn't enough money to finish the house, so I left again and headed out west to Alberta. It would be nine months before I got home again. The little girl I said goodbye to in her crib could talk to me on the phone before I saw her again. If that wasn't bad enough, my older daughter hid under the table when I did get home. She said she wasn't coming out until the strange man went away. I recalled this same thing happening to my dad many years before when we were growing up at home. He worked away a lot. My older brother hid under the kitchen table and said he wasn't coming out until the strange man, our dad, went away. At my father's wake many years later I would say, 'I didn't know how much that could hurt until it happened to me.' What do you do? You're a married man with a wife and family who depend on you for a roof over their heads, food in their bellies, clothes on their backs, shoes on their feet and a chance at a good education so maybe they won't have to live like you do. My dad never say me down and told me what it was to be a husband or a father. He just packed up his tools and went off to work wherever he could find it. After Alberta, I got a job at the local post office, a part-time job that lasted for fourteen years. By then my wife and I had our first grandchild, a little girl, and life was good again. Until one evening we got a call from our family doctor. Our granddaughter was diagnosed with cancer. She was three and a half years old and would spend the next three years mostly at the Janeway Children's Hospital, most of the time in isolation. Things got tough both emotionally and financially. I had to get a full time job somewhere. That somewhere was Winnipeg, Manitoba where I worked for a years and a half and got home once for three weeks. One night I had a really bad nightmare: I was in a funeral home and there was a small white casket. I never slept for days after that for fear it might come true. The awful reality was that I couldn't afford to go home even if it did. I did get a transfer back to St. John's where I worked for another six years, night shift at the postal plant. I didn't have a car so I had to stay in a rooming house and go home by bus most weekends. My mom died about four months after I got home. The last words she spoke to me where 'are you home for good now' I said yes. To all the young men who still go off to work every day in NL, who leave home for weeks on end, who always say the same thing, 'I'd rather get a kick in the arse than get on another plane,' I hear you, son. You're living what was my life. We can only hope someday our kids will grow old enough to know we did it all for them and their mom, because we loved them. Cyril Griffin New Perlican

Mom Makes a Quilt

During the winter months, mom would make quilts for our beds. Quilts were thick and heavy, making them warmer than regular bed sheets. Mom had a quilting frame which she used for this job. The frame consisted of two long boards about the size of 2x4 studs. In each of the studs there was a hole, which was flat, not round, about four inches long. There were two flat slats which slid into these flat holes. The slats had tiny holes in them evenly spaced and probably made with a hot poker. These tiny holes were used for pins or nails which held the frame steady. The material consisted of many pieces of cloths, old curtains, dresses, worn out bed sheets and of course, empty flour sacks, some dyed blue or green. Sometimes women would buy a piece of cloth from a store so the quilt would have a uniform colours or pattern on top. All the smaller pieces were sewn together by hand at the kitchen table. There were several layers of cloth required to make the quilt. Every stich was sewed with love, there were many stitches. My mother's quilting from was very old. I think she said it had once belonged to her grandmother. It had a piece of sailcloth about four inches wide fastened the length of the 2x4 studs. You sewed the side closest to you to the sailcloth. Then you stretched your cloth to the other 2x4 stud. You tacked it to the sailcloth with a wide stitch of sewing cotton. Then you used the flat slats to tighten the material until it was taut. This was done by placing a peg or nail in the small holes in the slat. You sat on a chair and traced out your sewing pattern on the cloth in even rows right to left. Mom's pattern was shaped like the diamonds you see on a deck of cards about 18 inches high. There was a smaller cut-out inside this pattern. When you sewed, you went all around the bigger diamond, then you sewed the smaller one inside. This was done with a needle and a spool of thread, and mom wore a thimble on her finger to push the needle into and through the layers of material. This pattern was traced the full length of the material. Once this section was done, about four feet, you loosened the tack in the sailcloth and rolled the finished part onto the stud closest to you and started the process all over again. You can imagine the time and effort it took to make a quilt for a double bed. After this step was completed, you still had to sew a border around the whole perimeter of the quilt. Remember this is only one quilt - there will be others made between cleaning the house top to bottom, cooking and washing for six children, chopping wood, carrying water from the well and coal from the shed and feeding the horse. I may have said a time or two that I am not a writer or a poet, now I can add not a quilter either. This story is told from memory over sixty years old. Forgive me if some quilter might object to my description. I will, however, hold to the statement that every stitch was made with love. Cyril Griffin New Perlican

A Family's Loss

On June 20, 1925, Gladys (Spurrell) and John (Jack) Bishop Smith of Gooseberry Cove, Trinity Bay, gave birth to their first child, Ernest. As he grew up, Ernest was no stranger to hard work, beginning at a young age to help his father in the fishing boat. By 1942, Ernest's two younger brothers, George age 12 and Andrew, age 10 were now old enough to join their father at the fishing trade. With WWII raging in Europe, Ernest did not hesitate to do his part. He headed into St. John's and, lying about his age, he enlisted with the Newfoundland Regiment on May 27, 1942. It would be almost a month before he would reach the age of 17. Basic training continued in St. John's into the summer and fall of 1942. The Knights of Columbus Hostel on Harvey Road was the place for military personnel to go on Saturday nights. It was here on December 12, 1942 that Pte. Ernest Smith, along with many of his fellow serviceman, attended Uncle Tim's Barn Dance. On that fateful night, with approximately 350-400 servicemen and civilians in attendance, a fire broke out shortly after 11 pm. The fire spread rapidly and in the panic to escape, pandemonium erupted. With the war on, blackout regulations were in effect. Means of escape were few with shutters nailed to the windows and doors opening inward, and the building was quickly engulfed in flames. Many of the attendants were overcome by the smoke and fire. Of the 99 who died that tragic night, 80 of them were military personnel. That night a neighbour in Gooseberry Cove had been listening to Uncle Tim's Barn Dance Band on VOCM radio and reported the incident to Jack and Gladys the next morning. Little did they realize then that the news would come later that day that their beloved 17-year-old son was one of the fire victims. To add to their devastation, their boy was not to be brought home to be buried next to their baby daughter, Elizabeth, who had died in 1928, but he was to be laid to rest at Mount Pleasant Cemetery along with his fellow servicemen who had perished in the fire. Back in Gooseberry Cove the family mourned the tragic loss of a dear son and brother. Gladys was eight months pregnant with her ninth child when her beloved Ernest died. One month later, on January 18, 1943, she was delivered of a healthy baby boy and it was only fitting that she name him Ernest after the son she had lost. The name 'Ernest' was a painful reminder to the parents of a son who could never be replaced, so the new baby was nicknamed 'Smitty', the name he was often referred to by his family and friends. The following year, Gladys, gave birth to her tenth and last child, Robert (Bob). Shortly after this, she was diagnosed with tuberculosis, the dreaded disease plaguing Newfoundland at that time. With Gladys unable to care for her newborn son, a childless couple, Edgar and Julia Avery of Southport, offered to take him and it was with them that Bob went to live. Fourteen-year-old George helped his parents as much as he could, but when his father, Jack, was also stricken with tuberculosis it was an impossible task for a teenager. Jack and Gladys' daughter, Laura, had been working in St. John's as a domestic servant. With both parents being ill, Laura returned to Gooseberry Cove to care for them and her younger siblings. As Jack's and Gladys' illness progressed and the greater burden fell on Laura's shoulders, the decision was made for some of the children to go live with relatives. Thirteen year old Andrew was sent to Queen's Cove to live with his uncle and aunt, Abraham and Elizabeth Spurrell. Eleven year old Sam went to nearby Butter Cove to live with uncle and aunt, Jim and Mary Spurrell. Besides Laura and George, there were still three younger children at home - seven year old Arch, five year old Bill and one year old Smitty. Sadly, Gladys succumbed to tuberculosis on April 20, 1946. Following her death Arch and Bill were sent to live with a foster family in Torbay. Two-year-old Smitty was taken in by neighbours, John and Dinah Smith. Jack, died of tuberculosis on July 3, 1947, just over a year after Gladys' death. The Smith children had already known heartache and separation, but now they had also lost both parents. Less than five years after the tragic loss of their brother Ernest, their parents were now gone and the brothers and sister were separated. Laura returned to work in St. John's and her brother George followed her. Andrew grew up in Queen's Cove and later moved to St. John's. Sam grew up in Butter Cove. Arch and Bill stayed with their foster family in Torbay until they were old enough to be on their own. Arch made the decision to move to Ontario and Bill soon followed him. Bill followed in his older brother Ernest's footsteps and joined the armed forces. He enlisted in 1958 and had a distinguished career for 30 years in the Canadian Army. He was part of the recovery team when the American military plane, Arrow Air Flight 1285R, crashed in Gander on December 12, 1985. Ironically, it had been the exact date 43 years before that his brother had died in the K of C fire. Smitty moved to Sunnyside with the Smith family who raised him. Bob stayed with the Avery family in Southport and Edgar Avery's widowed mother, Sarah (Avery) Newton helped care for the young child. Sadly, Edgar's wife, Julia, had passed away only one year after they had taken Bob in. Bob was only 16 when he moved to Ontario to live with his older brother, Arch. Of all the Smith children, only Arch and Bill had the privilege of growing up together. All the others were scattered and living in different communities. The death of their oldest sibling, Pte. Ernest Smith, was only the beginning of the tragedy and heartache that was to befall the Smith family. In later years, the Smith siblings did try, as much as possible, to connect with one another, but they were always haunted by the years they lost as a family. This is the story of just one of many Newfoundland families whose lives were devastated and torn apart by tragedy and disease. Elaine Spurrell

A Voyage on the Kyle

It was the second week of December some years ago when the coastal boat, the SS Kyle, stopped in Mary's Harbour to deliver goods and pick up passengers. The boats like these were the link to small communities around Newfoundland and Labrador. The ships were too big to get to the little community wharves so everything being delivered and picked up had to board a small open boat to transfer to and from the Kyle while she lay obediently at anchor. On this cold evening there were a few men, a few older women, and an attractive young woman holding a small baby bundled in a load of warm blankets. The small boat approached the SS Kyle, and the ladder on which to climb up and board the bigger boat came into view and the passengers prepared to climb up. The men stood to assist the 'women first' rule, leaving the younger woman and baby until last when they could all help them. The wind rocked the small boat gently but harshened the cold on their faces. The young woman was afraid, so the men held the baby and assisted her up the ladder. Then the tallest of them all carried the baby up the ladder with ease. Soon all were in the warm common room of the big boat. The ship's whistle blew and the engines roared into action as the SS Kyle prepared to depart Mary's Harbour and head to Port Hope Simpson. The crew helped serve hot tea, the baby was quiet, and the sailing was smooth. The young woman was my mother. The baby was me. Father was stationed in Port Hope Simpson with the Newfoundland Ranger Force and in a couple of hours I would meet him for the first time and our lives as a family began. I'm a grandmother now, Mother and Father are gone, and the SS Kyle, after years of coastal service, ran aground in Harbour Grace and is still sitting there. When I see that ship my mind goes immediately back to that sea cruise I took on her at only three weeks of age. Bonnie Lowe Shoal Harbour, NL

Pay Equity

Back when I was a young boy of twelve or thirteen there wasn't a lot of summer jobs that young people could avail of. We didn't have all the fast food outlets or coffee shops you see all around today. The only work available was with the local fish merchants who although they employed many hundreds of people, the pay was dismal. I'm not out here to condemn or praise anyone. I'll let heaven and hell do that for me. Just remember if you will that my story took place not so long ago. The first time I actually worked for wages was up on the hill, some distance from my home where myself, my older brothers and many of our friends worked spreading salt fish on flakes to dry. My first hourly wage was thirty cents per hour. We would spread fish "heads and tails" on these long fish flakes made of sticks covered at the top with chicken wire. Later in the evening we would take the fish off the flakes, stack them in neat piles onto wooden pallets, and cover it up with plastic. The next morning we would uncover the fish and spread it out again on the flakes. When the fish had dried after several days spread out in the sun, the company truck would come by and we would load the dry fish onto the truck. The fish was taken "down below" to the plant where it was packed into fifty pound boxes for shipment to New York and other places. Sometimes, a few of us got to go down with the truck to help offload the fish. Since my story is supposed to be about wages more than a story of curing salt fish, forgive me if I have strayed somewhat, the two are so closely connected it can't be helped. Cod fish is fresh, even though it lies in salt water, when it is caught by the man fishermen around the bays and coves within those bays it is gutted, split to remove the back bone or "sound bone" and then put in heavy salt for a time. The fish merchant sends his men to buy it from you and continues the process of curing the fish at his premises. Some is sold for a higher price by the fishermen already dried. My history lesson for today. When the salt fish first came to us as we worked on the hill, it was very wet, this was called "waterhorse" because it had recently been washed by machine down below. By the way the waterhorse fish was very wet and also much heavier than when it was dried. Every time the fellow in the trunk threw you a yaffle of fish, you would be sprayed with cold salty water, and after a couple of hours of this, soaking wet from head to toe. But all in a day's work, you could change when you went home at dinnertime which is whenever the fish is all spread. Later that evening, it's back up the hill to the the fish off the flakes. I did eventually get to go down below with one of the trucks and by some twist of fate, I got to work in the salt fish loft. I got a big raise - in fact it was twice my previous salary - sixty cents an hour. I was twelve years old at the time. I thought with that kind of money I could buy a big car and have some uniformed chauffeur drive me around town. That was my first year working in the salt fish trade, you might say. Next summer I was hired on again, no working my way down from the hill this time. We started at 8 o'clock in the morning, had a lunch break at noon, usually stayed at work because it was too far to walk home, eat lunch and walk back again in one hour. Quitting time was not so certain, as most evening we would have to walk home very fast at 6 o'clock, then come back to work until someone said you could go home. How many times did I hear the skipper who owned the plant say, "If you don't come back tonight, don't come back tomorrow." If I had a nickel for every time I heard that, I could have invested in the local utility company myself, like the skipper did. Imagine my surprise on my first payday of my second year on the job when I learned my wage was fifty cents an hour - full ten cents less than the year before. A brilliant business plan, if you stop to think about it, the longer you're in the business, the less it costs you to operate. Good for the skipper, but even at the tender age of thirteen years old, I figured it out, if I hung around here long enough I'd be working for nothing. Business 101 at Upper Canada College where all the rich kids go. But this is not the end of my story, there is more to come. So pour yourself up another cup of coffee, or something stronger if you prefer, and sit a spell longer. It gets more interesting as we go along. A schooner came to the plant that year with a load of salt bulk fish from down around Fogo Island. It was a wooden schooner which was powered by a diesel engine but also rigged for sail. Myself and two other young fellas were assigned to unload this vessel. It had a forward hatch, the opening of which was approximately four feet square. So we uncovered the hatch with the help from the crew of the boat. After uncovering the hatch, the crew stepped aside and we three offloaded the boat ourselves. So this is where it gets real interesting, I learned through the day from talking with the other boys working with me, that we were all three of us being paid a different hourly wage. Mine was the lowest at fifty cents per hour, the fellow beside me who was a year older got my previous year's wage of sixty cents, while the third person, a boy of seventeen was earning 78 cents per hour. I imagine he must have made about 85 cents an hour the year before, taking into account the business model I mentioned earlier. So let's review the situation with an open mind. Three boys, standing in a hatch about four foot square, each of us throwing yaffle of fish after yaffle of fish to the people onshore one after the other. Each person performing the same fanction at the same speed, yet each one is paid differently. So I don't know about you, but it seems to me we were being paid for our age rather than our work. Now we couldn't do anything about that, you'll have to take that up with our parents. Now, in the autumn of my life, looking back on the whole affair, I can see it for what it really was - legalized salvery - aided and abetted by the government of the day. Men and boys doing the same hard physical labour for long hours and more expected of them when the normal day was over. There was no standard working day, therefore no overtime wage for hours worked beyond the norm. Men with families, mostly big at the time, earned the same as boys with neither. A set of multi-layered minimum wage laws based on age and gender that encouraged the use and the exploitation of children. Let's not forget the words of the skipper, "if you don't come back tonight, don't come back tomorrow." It was the same in the construction industry, men paid less than a dollar per hour and charged two dollars a day if they were in a camp. Up in the lumber woods cutting pulp wood by the chord where my father and his father and brothers worked. Sleeping on dirt floors covered with boughs, no hot water to wash themselves on their clothes. Living on beans and bread with "work till you drop" the order of the day. What can one expect in a country where the poor still subsidize the rich and corrupt politicians pass laws that favour the corporation over the family, a legal entity with no mouths just pockets to fill, over flesh and blood human beings. Not much has changed.

Richard's Ritual

Back when I was a young boy of seventeen, I attended school on what we here in NL still call The Mainland. The school was located in eastern Ontario and was run by a religious order. The student body was male only and came from as far west as Ontario and east to Newfoundland. They came from many different backgrounds, some even from different cultures as some of their families were recent immigrants to Canada. Some of the students had been there before and some, like myself, were first-timers. For many of us it was our first time living away from home. As we settled into our new environment, we made friends along the way with other students who had similar interests or talents. I myself became friends with a couple of other fellows, one from Nova Scotia, the other from northern Quebec. We slept in the same cubicle in the dormitory. We each had our own bed and two-door wardrobe for our clothes and other things. Lights went out a 9:00, everyone was expected to be in bed at that time. We were told to shower every night before going to bed, which was fine except the showers were in another building adjacent to ours. I'm sure you've heard it before, the expression that "Cleanliness is next to Godliness," but in this case they were separated by three flights of stairs, four floors and another building at least a quarter mile away. My newfound friend from northern Quebec wasn't French as you might expect. He had an Irish surname and his first name was Richard. Now, Richard was something of a unique character in himself. A kind of slow deadpan in his delivery - he could have been a great straight man in any comic duo. He was funny in his own way and could be real serious when the occasion called for it. Most time he combined the two and easily moved from one to the other, so you could never tell if he was serious or not. Soon into our friendship, Richard, who slept in the bed next to mine, decided that my accommodations needed a nightly ritualistic cleansing. Why he came to this conclusion, I don't really know. At first I thought it might be something I did, like break wind in my sleep or something. As far as I remember I didn't do that, but who knows what happens when you're asleep. This nightly ritual of his started early in the school year and continued until the Christmas break when he went home and I went further away from home to Toronto. Now. Wen lights went out at 9:00 everyone was supposed to be in bed. The student director would make several tours of the dormitory every night to make sure everyone was obeying the rules. He would from time to time catch a student reading under the cover or out of bed talking to another student, but Richard was never caught. Which led me to believe that divine intervention was at play. Maybe Richard was performing a worthwhile function and the powers that be were simply providing the space and time for him to share his worthy service to mankind. As I said before, we each had our own bed with a tall wardrobe beside it to hang our clothes, with some drawers and shelves to store smaller items like socks and underwear. Everyone put their dirty socks in a sock bag which had your name on it. The ritual began shortly after lights out. Richard would get out of bed, open his dirty sock bag and smell each sock separately until he found one that smelled bad enough for the purpose at hand. (Now, it should be noted here that Richard could have been a considered a connoisseur of dirty socks. He took great care to find just the right smell, not just any sock would do. I often wondered if he suffered from any sort of brain damage in later life due to his pursuit of excellence.) With the dirty sock in one hand, he would repeatedly wave the sock out over my bed as if he were at a funeral. He would make several trips around the foot of my bed and both sides while uttering strange incantations in a language known only to himself. He was very serious and solemn as he performed his nightly ritual. I would pull the bedsheet over my head to keep out the awful smell. (Over time, with repeated washings, the bedsheet provided less protection from the sock, and as I said, Richard really knew his dirty socks.) This went on every night until Christmas break. Shortly after our return to school, Richard's father passed away. Richard went home for the funeral and when he came back he was, as one might expect, a little subdued and solemn. We were all young and death was a strange and frightening concept to most of us. We all tried to be a source of comfort to our friend, after all, it could have been any of us. That night though, I went to bed feeling a little relieved - surely Richard wouldn't be in any mood for his ritualistic practices. Alas, I was wrong. He did get into bed at lights out, pulled the covers over himself and lay back to sleep. But suddenly in the darkness I heard him say "I almost forgot!" and with that he got out of bed and began his usual routine with all its stinky piety and reverence. I haven't seen him since those days in school long ago, but I always wondered what became of my good friend. Yes, Richard knew his dirty socks, but he also knew about demons. He figured any evil spirit worth its salt and seeking the ruin of souls would visit our cubicle in the dark of night and think, "the poor souls in those beds are already rotting in Hell and have been for some time, judging by the smell," and pass us by. Cyril Griffin New Perlican, NL

Me and Sally Ann

I left home in late August of 1966. I remember it well because it was Come Home Year and despite all the money the government spend on promoting the event, I still got it wrong. The railway was on strike at the time so I had to fly to Montreal and then take a bus to my final destination which was Brockvile, ON. I was sixteen years old at the time and had my seventeenth birthday in transit. It was very exciting and scary at the same time. For I had not been more than forty minutes from home in my life and that was to visit my nan. My uncle Brendan, my mom's youngest brother, went over the plan with me a hundred times until he was sure I had it right. He was accustomed to travelling through Montreal for his work. But I was still on my own and my mother was very worried of me getting lost or worse. I went to school on the mainland from September of that year until June 1967. (I visited Montreal again for Expo '67 where I was lucky enough to get Gordon Lightfoot's autograph at the Canadian Pavilion. He was doing a soundcheck for the song he wrote for Canada's 100th birthday, "The Canadian Railroad Trilogy.") There was a Christmas and Easter break at school and since I couldn't afford to fly home, I went to Toronto. My two oldest brothers were working there and I stayed at my brother's boarding house until my dad's sister, who lived in the city, took me to stay with her and her husband. I stayed with her daughter and her family at Easter. When June rolled around I decided to go to Toronto and look for a summer job because there was no work at home. It would be over three years before I would get back home. There was a construction strike in Toronto that summer and this created a ripple effect in the job market. I did manage to find a job in Don Mills - a distant suburb of Toronto. The job paid $65.00 a week salary. Needless to say, I didn't get rich that summer. The $65.00 was gross pay in more ways than one - there were deductions from that for income tax, OHIP medical insurance, unemployment insurance and Canada Pension. On weeks when I was lucky enough to work two evenings of overtime - which paid $2 a hour - I would clear the huge sum of $48.00 from which I paid $20.00 for room and board, and a little over $2.00 for transit, leaving me with $26.00 a week to live on. Believe it or not I did manage to open my first bank account and save a few dollars. My job in Don Mills was very far from my home base - it took over two hours each morning to get to work, half of that on the high-speed subway system. I was so far from the city core that the transit system called it Zone 2 and I had to pay almost twice the regular fare to get there. There was a point where the bus driver would stop and check that everyone had paid the right amount for Zone 2. If they hadn't, they either paid or got off the bus. Remember, I was young, far from home, living in the largest city in the country where the only people I knew were the relatives I had never even seen before coming to Toronto. I had no friends to go to if I needed help, I never saw the people I worked with outside of work and I was very quiet and shy at the time. Not well-equipped to deal with life in the real world of the big city. A couple of weeks into my job I found that I didn't have enough bus fare to get back home one day. Around the middle of the week I found myself short of bus tickets with no money to buy more. Like I said, I was young, shy, and more than a little ashamed that I had allowed this to happen. I could have asked my cousin whom I boarded with for a couple of dollars, but she was still sleeping when I left early for work. That evening, when the bus stopped at the checkpoint of Zone 2 and Zone 1, I had to get off the bus. At first I said, what the heck, I can walk home, simple, just follow the same route I took to get here. I didn't realize how far the high speed subway could travel in an hour, not to mention the lengthy street car ride before and the bus after I left the subway. I forgot for the moment that I was in the largest city in the country and the enormous distance between here and my boarding house. Well I started walking. After two hours of this I was getting nowhere. It was hot, the concrete sidewalk was hotter still, I was tired from the heat and all the walking, not to mention the thirst. It would have taken a day to walk home. It was a desperate situation until I saw a sign in the distance for the Salvation Army. Now, I didn't know much about the organization, I being a good Catholic boy from rural Newfoundland where every religion had its own church, school, hospital, cemetery and its very own Heaven and Hell. I did know they had a reputation for helping people in need of help, regardless of their religion or anything like that. So I decided to go in to the building when I got abreast of it. When I entered, there was only one person there. He was in a small office. The gentleman in the office came out when I approached and asked how could he help me. I said, "Sir, I need fifteen cents to buy a bus ticket to get home." (I should mention that a glass of draft beer cost five cents in Toronto at this time.) I told him I had started to walk home but it was hot and I was very tired. He asked me where I lived and I told him, and he smiled and said "That's a very long way. Too far to walk." I guess this man, who was dressed in his uniform, was accustomed to dealing with young people in trouble. I could tell he didn't want me to leave. He asked me over and over again if there was anything else he could do for me. But I said, "No thank you, I just need fifteen cents for a bus ticket." He was trying to help me, and I understood that, but I told him I had a job, a place to stay and I would get something to eat when I got home. Just so you don't get me wrong - he didn't refuse to help me, he just thought I needed more. Which I'm sure he would have given me had I asked for in. In the end, he went into the small office, opened a drawer behind the counter and took out the fifteen cents and gave it to me. When he placed the coins in my hand he held my arm for a moment and asked me one more time if there was anything else he could do for me. I thanked him for his kindness and told him I would return the money when I got paid. He said there was no need to do that. One evening about a week later, I got off the bus outside the Salvation Army building and went inside. The same gentleman was sitting in the office. He came around the corner as he had done the week before and asked me how he could help me. I said, "Sir, you may not remember me, but last week I came in here and asked you for fifteen cents for a bus ticket and you gave it to me." It was the fifteen cents that made him remember and he shook my hand and asked how I was doing. "Well," I said, "and today I've come back to repay my loan." The gentleman told me there was no need, it was nothing. But I told him it meant a great deal to me at the time, and I placed the fifteen cents in his hand. God bless the Salvation Army and the good deeds they do without asking who or what you are. The young man did not forget, the old man he has become has not forgotten either, even though that was long ago. Cyril Griffin New Perlican

Pancakes for Breakfast, Dinner and Supper

During my first year in Toronto, my older brother and his new wife moved up to the city to look for work. Now, why my brother did not come alone still remains a mystery to me. It was easy in those days for a man to find lodging anywhere in the city. However, it was almost impossible to find a place for a man and his wife unless you had relatives that could put you up for a while. I was still at my first job making my $65.00 a week minus all the deductions. My brother and his wife did stay with some cousins of ours for a while but it was clear they needed their own place. Our cousin, who worked high steel at the time, did manage to find my brother a job with the company he worked for. The situation in Toronto in the construction industry was such that you worked six weeks without a paycheck when you first started. The first six weeks' pay was held back so that you would have steady income between future jobs. This was good in a way, but very hard starting out. My brother was new to the city and like me had never been away from home in his life. By this time I had a working knowledge of the city due to the fact that I had to travel almost all the way across it to get to my job. I used to say at the time I knew the city like the back of my hand: dirty, wrinkled and full of knuckleheads. So I took my brother to the union office where he had to get a work permit. We managed to find a place to life and I moved in with them. Now my brother had a good job which would pay good money if only you could survive the first six weeks with no pay. We had to make do with a meager $48.00 or less each week depending on whether there was any overtime. Imagine, if you will, three adults living n a rented flat in a house where the mice and the cockroaches were in a constant battle to outbreed one another. Not the ideal location, but all we could afford, or should I say, I could afford. I forget how much the rent was for the flat but it couldn't have been much. We were working on a budget of $48.00 or less a week for rent, groceries and transportation to and from work for two men. We spent most of my money on transit, believe it or not, because I had to show my brother how to get to his job sites which changed from time to time. That meant we had to travel to the site together and return, and sometimes repeat the trip to make sure he got the instructions right. You see, my brother had gotten lost going to the corner store the first few days he was in the city, so there was cause for worry. With the rent paid, the bus tickets secured, there wasn't much left for food. We sat down one night at the kitchen table counting mice and cockroaches just to see who was winning the battle for breeding supremacy, sizing up our situation. We came to the conclusion that belt-tightening was definitely the order of the day. We had to go seven weeks before things would improve. It came down to the fact we had less than five dollars for groceries. A box of pancake mix and a bottle of syrup did the trick with money to spare. So my brother, his pregnant wife and I went on a steady diet of pancakes and syrup for breakfast, dinner (on weekends) and supper. It was all we could afford. I thought sometimes that we should cook some of the many mice, just so we could have some meat for a change and perhaps give the cockroaches a leg up in the breeding war with the mice. Needless to say, our first pork chop dinner seven weeks later felt like a banquet in a five-star hotel. Even today, over fifty years later, I still get stomach sick when I see a box of Aunt Jemima pancakes on a grocery store shelf. (Please don't think I'm racist, I love the woman, she kept me alive for weeks back in the old days of the mid '60s.) Things got better in time, we moved out of the flat into a much better place. My brother and I were both getting paid every week and a few months later a beautiful little baby girl made us a family of four. I don't know who won the war between the mice and the cockroaches, maybe it's still going on. Anyway, my money is still on the roaches. Cyril Griffin New Perlican

Sister Lucy

Back in the year of 1966, I left home for the first time in my life. It's a bit strange when I look back on it now, because 1966 was Come Home Year in NFLD, the government spent a lot of money promoting the event. I went off to eastern Ontario to school. The school was run by a religious organization and was male only. The staff were all members of the religious order that ran the school except for two nuns from the neighbouring town. One of the nuns, Sister Lucy, taught English and Chemistry while the other, Sister Anne, helped us with our music. Now, the sisters didn't have a car at the time so one of the staff had to pick them up at their convent and then return them in the afternoon when classes were over. Sister Anne, who taught music only came a couple of days a week but Sister Lucy came every day. Lucy was accustomed to teaching your boys and she could hold her own with the best of them. I still remember how she used to light matches on the top of her show in chemistry class. She had grown up in a big family with older brothers and sisters in the province of Quebec. Sister Lucy was a very good teacher who encouraged us to be creative in our writing of essays and short stories in English class. She had a very nice disposition - for a nun - even smiled now and then - also unusual for a nun. I was glad to be in her class. She would always tell us stories about growing up in Quebec and what life was like in a big family. She had a younger brother who was a sports writer with the Canadiens hockey team on their road trips in what was then original six of the NHL. The convent decided that Sister Lucy should get her driver's license because the convent was coming into the twentieth century in a big way They had already started using their own names, later they would get rid of their black habits and begin wearing regular women's clothing - but that was to come later. So Sister Lucy was sent a driving school by the convent but they didn't have a car yet and no one to take her out driving except the driving instructor who came by a couple of times a week for an hour. So in an effort to help Sister Lucy and perhaps more, because once she got her license they would not have to pick her up at the convent every day and then drop her off again in the evening, the priests decided to let Sister Lucy get behind the wheel of the car when they picked her up so she could get some much-needed practice. This went on for a while until that fateful morning when something went terribly wrong. I don't know exactly what caused the accident and the priests were reluctant to disclose details. But anyway, poor Sister Lucy wrapped the car around a utility pole somewhere along the route between the convent and the school. Maybe she just decided the pole would look much better if it were wrapped in shiny red metal or something like that. Anyway, the car was a write-off, and both Sister Lucy and the priest received non-life-threatening injuries because at that time seatbelts were not mandatory in cars. Well, as you can imagine, Sister Lucy was mortified by the accident - her pride was hurt more than anything else. Although she had injuries, they weren't visible because of the habit she wore. The priest wasn't so lucky, his head had bounced off the windshield and you could see the cuts and bruises. Sister Lucy was so upset that she had destroyed the priests' new car. The staff tried to reassure her that it was no big deal, the car was fully insured and no one seriously hurt. Sister Lucy was in such a state that the rector of the school called us all together one night after supper. He told us how badly Sister was feeling over the whole thing and we should not ask her anything about the accident or even inquire as to her well-being as that would only serve to make her feel worse. We all agreed to keep quiet about the accident and not ask questions that might make her feel uncomfortable. This was alright in a way, but very difficult to carry out. You must remember we were a bunch of teenage boys who wanted to know all about the accident. The tension in class was palpable with everyone wanting to know but afraid to ask. This went on for about a week, it was getting worse every day instead of better. I couldn't stand it any longer cause I really did like Sister Lucy. So I took it on myself to do something about the situation. I didn't mention to anyone what I had planned, just went ahead with it. So one day, while we were waiting for Sister Lucy to come in for English class, I wrote this little poem, which rhymed beautifully, and put it on her desk. I'll tell you what the poem was later. Sister Lucy comes in carrying her briefcase as she always did, lays it on the floor beside the desk. She spies the piece of paper on top of the desk. Picks it up. Reads it. She put her free hand to her face and ran out into the corridor without a word. I figured I'm on the next train heading east. The poem, if you will: "Sister Lucy had a car, And it was painted red. Everywhere that Lucy went, The cops picked up the dead." Now I ask you, if that wouldn't lift up your spirits, what would? Sister Lucy came back to class shortly after as if nothing happened. She didn't mention the poem or anything but you could see the tension was gone. She was back to her old self again. Just after class the announcement came over the PA system, "Would Cyril Griffin please report to the office." I thought, should I pack my bags now or wait for later, and will my train ticket home include meals as well, cause I didn't have any money. I went into the office and the student director told me to sit down. Figured this is it for me. Goodbye school, hello mom and dad I can explain the whole thing - only I couldn't. The director said, "I don't know what possessed you to do something like that, but don't ever do it again." He said that Sister Lucy, who had gone to see him with my poem, had made him promise not to say or do anything to me. In early June of that year while we were waiting in the foyer of the school for a ride to the train station, Sister Lucy came up to me, shook my hand. She held it for a moment, looked me in the eye and said, "Cyril, whatever you do, don't change." Cyril Griffin New Perlican, NL