Kelly Russell

Ted Russell's Pigeon Inlet

Stories in Print

If there’s one sure proof that times are getting more civilized than they used to be, it’s the way business is carried on nowadays. Why years ago, according to Grampa Walcott, it was something awful and to prove his point, a thing which Grampa is always ready and willing to do, he tells this story, about how he got the pair of swile skin slippers that he’s been wearing now for nigh on 30 years. Of course, he’s had three new pair of soles and two new pair of uppers in ‘em during that time but they’re the same pair of slippers. And he likes to treasure them because, he says, they remind him of the one-and-only time he ever got the better of old Josiah Bartle who was the merchant here 30 year ago. And even then he said he’d never got them only for a thing called algebra. When I asked him what in the world algebra was he said he didn’t know but it must be a wonderful fine thing sure enough, to help a poor man like him get the better of a shrewd old bird like Josiah Bartle.

It was along about the middle of April in 1931 says Grampa, when Liz his missus, that’s Grandma, told him the molasses keg was empty and he’d better go down to Josiah’s store and get some. Grampa wondered how he’d pay for it cuz it was too early in the spring to get credit on next summer’s account and he certainly didn’t want to disturb the bit of gold he had in the sock. And it was then Liz reminded him of his two swile skins. True, one of them had some shot holes in it but the other was perfect and between them, they ought to fetch enough lassie to tide them over till credit time. So taking his empty keg and the two swile skins off he went.

Now Skipper Josiah, the merchant, was glad to see him, business being what it was that time of the year, and told Grampa how lassie was current price, a dollar a gallon. Likewise, swile skins was current price, a dollar a skin. Grampa asked him what about shot holes. Josiah told him they were current price too, 10 cents off for every shot hole. Well, Grampa didn’t need any learning to figure he ought to get a gallon for the good skin and a part of a gallon for the shot-holey one. So when Josiah come back from inside where he kept his swile skins and lassie and things like that and said right friendly like, “Here ya are Ben, here’s your keg with your half gallon of lassie,” Grampa was took a back and said, “It ought to be more than half a gallon”. Well, Josiah rubbed his hands, friendlier than ever, and said no half a gallon was exactly right. You see, he said two swile skins at a dollar each was $2, then 15 shot holes in one of them at 10 cents a shot hole that was a dollar fifty. Take that off the $2 and you had 50 cents left and with lassie a dollar a gallon, here was his half-gallon.

Now Grampa knowed there was something wrong. He said there was nar shot hole at all in one of them and he asked Josiah to give him a gallon for that one and give him back the holey one. But Josiah explained that he couldn’t do that because the two skins went together and what was called, in business, a package deal, where the good points of the one had to offset the bad points of the other. Then Grampa wanted to call the whole thing off and go home again with the two skins and his empty keg but Josiah said no business was business and what was done couldn’t be undone oh my the business world would never know where it stood. Then Grampa made a remark, but Josiah threatened the law on him for it so all there was left for him to do was go home

Now when Liz his missus, grandmother that is now, tipped up the keg that night to full the molasses dish, she noticed there wasn’t much in it. So she wormed the story out of Grampa and give him 24 hours to go back to Josiah and get his rights or else she’d do it. Of course, a thing like that would disgrace Grampa completely so he spent nearly all that night lying awake thinking up a scheme.

Next morning he had it and he went over to Uncle Phin Prior to get his help in carrying it out and Uncle Phin was only too glad to do it. And so the upshot was, late that evening Grampa visited Josiah’s store where Phin Prior with two or three more had just started an argument about the big profits merchants made. They asked Grampa’s opinion and he went even further than the rest and said yes merchants often sold things for 10 times what they paid for them. Well, Josiah got mad and he poked his snout right into the trap. He told Grampa he’d be glad to sell anything he had for 10 times what he paid for it. All right then said Grandpa sell me back that swile skin that got the 15 shot holes in it.

Well, what a hullabaloo. Everybody wanted the particulars and they all agreed that Josiah had paid nothing for it. So being as how ten times nothing was nothing, Josiah was bound by his word as a man to give it back to Grampa for nothing. Now, if Josiah had given in right then he’d have been better off but he couldn’t bear to get the worst of it so he said he wouldn’t be guided by people with less book learning even than he had and then who should come in but the Schoolmaster and they put the thing square up to him. and says Grandpa, was the Schoolmaster that brought up this business about algebra.

According to algebra, said the Schoolmaster, Josiah hadn’t just paid nothing for this swile skin with the holes, he paid fifty cents less than nothing, because he took off fifty cents from the good one on account of it. Now algebra called that a minus fifty cents and ten times that was a minus $5, which again according to algebra meant that Josiah had to give Grampa back the skin and $5 besides. Well, Josiah was fit to be tied and he said that mark his words, algebra someday would be the ruination of business. But he give Grampa back the skin and the $5 besides, and Grampa went home happy.

Liz wasn’t so happy though. She said if that was what algebra was like, it was no better than bingo and she made Grampa give the $5 to the church organ fund. But she let him keep the swile skin and that’s what he made the pair of slippers out of that he wears to this very day. He calls them his algebra slippers and he says that whatever algebra is, there’s no doubt about it, it’s a true friend to the poor man.

When you come to think of it, there’s an awful lot of time wasted in this world tryin’ to make people own up that they’re in the wrong. I’ve seen men like Skipper Joe and Sam Prior get Pete Briggs into a corner, after Pete had got the worst of an argument, and they’d say to him, “Now Pete you know you’re wrong, why don’t you be a man and own up to it, forgettin’ that it’s just because Pete is a man that he won’t own up to it, even when he knows down deep inside him that he is wrong. And Skipper Joe and Sam and the rest of them would be just as pig-headed as Pete if the shoe happened to be on the other foot.

Mind you, a man that’s wrong should own up to it. Like the sayin’ goes, “confession is good for the soul,” and no doubt there’s a time and a place for that sort of thing. But what I’m trying to say is that the place for it is not on the net loft nor yet and the foc’s’le of a schooner. In places like that, it’s only a waste of time expectin’ a man to own up he was wrong. He won’t do it. 

Like the time early last winter, we were havin’ an argument on Skipper Joe’s net loft about the hunter and the squirrel. You know, the one where the hunter is tryin’ to get a shot at the squirrel, but the squirrel is perched up on the big burl on a tree, and he always manages to keep the tree between himself and the hunter. The hunter makes a big circle around the tree but the squirrel keeps shiftin’ his position so that he’s always on the wrong side of the tree, and the hunter never gets a shot at ‘im first or last. Well as you know, the question is: Did the hunter walk around the squirrel? Everyone knows he went around the tree, but then so did the squirrel. And the squirrel managed to keep his face towards the hunter all the time he was doing it, which leaves us with the question: “Did the hunter walk around the squirrel?”

Well, all of us figured out the right answer except Pete. I won’t say exactly what we figured out because there might be other people listening just like Pete, and I don’t want to start another argument. Anyhow Pete took the contrary view, as usual, and he wouldn’t give in first or last. Not even when Skipper Joe went and got his muzzleloader and Jethro Noddy acted out the part of the squirrel, using the post in the middle of the net loft for the tree. And he went off home, still saying he was right and the rest of us didn’t know what we was talking about.

Even the next day, when Skipper Joe tried to bring up the subject again, hoping that Pete might admit he was wrong, all Pete would say was that it was all a pack of foolishness and he was sick of it. which in my opinion is as close as you can reasonably expect a man to come to ownin’ up he was in the wrong. Cuz after all, even if a man is in the wrong and knows it, he still got his self-respect to look after. 

Like the time years ago that Grampa Walcott tells about when Uncle Sol Noddy insulted Skipper Lige Bartle up in the waiting room of the post office. Uncle Sol told Skipper Lige, right to his face, that he was uglier looking than an old dog hood. Naturally, Skipper Lige threatened to have the law on Uncle Sol if he didn’t take it back, and sure enough, a few nights after, when the lodge was having a time, Uncle Sol walked right over to Skipper Lige and said, right in the presence of a lot of witnesses, “Skipper Lige,” he said, “I’ll take that back about you being uglier than an old dog hood, cuz now that I’m getting a closer look, I’m willing to admit you’re not a bit uglier. 

Well now, for some reason or other that made Skipper Lige madder than ever. He said that was no fit apology, but Grampa Walcott finally cooled him down. Grampa put it this way. Uncle Sol had said part of an apology and kept back the other part. The part he said was just enough to save Skipper Lige’’s face while the part he held back was just enough to save his own. And even though most people might figure that Uncle Sol’s face was hardly worth saving, yet after all, ‘twas the only one he had and you had to look at it from his point of view. 

So Grampa advised Skipper Lige to accept Uncle Sol’s apology, such as it was, and by doing so he’d be meeting Uncle Sol halfway, which was the right, and proper, Christian thing to do. Like the character in the Bible who didn’t wait for his prodigal son to come all the way back by hisself, but actually run out to meet him.

I wonder how many of the arguments going on today could end peaceable instead of breeding bad feelings, if only each side would be willing to let the other save a bit of face. If we didn’t insist that the other fellow had to come all the way and own up that he’s in the wrong and we’re right. Sometimes I think that we handle these things better on Skipper Joe’s net loft than they do in lots of higher places.

Today I’m going to try to tell you about the trouble that broke out not long ago between Aunt Sophy and King David, that’s Jethro Noddy’s billy goat. First of all, though, I’d like to say that opinion is divided here in Pigeon Inlet as to which one of them is in the right and if there could be a vote on it, I wouldn’t be surprised but what King David would go in with a sweeping majority. Personally, he’d win my vote because even though I got a high regard for Aunt Sophy, still right is right, and wrong is no man’s right. 

Here’s another funny thing. I’ve read or heard somewhere how a fella said one time that this life was like a big wheel, always turning over so that what was on top now would be sure to end up on the bottom sometime later on. Well, whoever said that never spoke a truer word cuz look what’s happened now. Only two years ago I had cause to abuse King David for stealing my cabbages and Aunt Sophy took his part and was on the outs with me for weeks about it. Now she’s mad with King David and, in all fairness, I had to take his part this time and she’s on the outside with me again.

Well, here’s what happened. Up until a year or two ago Aunt Sophy used to keep three or four sheep. Then she give it up. Like she told me, it was too much trouble for a woman when there was no man around the place. Well, ever since then she’s had a little problem about what to do with her potato scraps. She used to save ‘em in a little bucket in her back porch and every Monday morning she put ‘em out.

Well, King David got to know Monday morning just as well as if he’d had an almanac to go by. I don’t know how he figured it but he did. It wasn’t by the clothes on the line cuz even on rainy Mondays he’d be there just the same and when Aunt Sophy would put the bucket of scraps outside her back door he’d just say whatever grace he says and dig in. Aunt Sophy said afterwards, trying to defend herself, that she usen’t to notice he was there. All she said she’d do was put out the bucket full and take it in empty an hour or two later. Well that might be so but one thing for sure, if she didn’t know, King David did and it got so he used to look forward to it every Monday morning.

Well, three Sunday nights ago coming home from church, Emma Jane Bartle happened to tell Aunt Sophy how hard it was to get food for her three sheep and Aunt Sophy promised to run across next morning with her bucket of potato scraps. And so next morning, with poor King David all ready to ask whatever blessing goats do ask, Aunt Sophy went right by him with the bucket, right over to Emma Jane’s sheep’s house. The only time she looked back was to admire her lovely wash that she had out on the line that fine Monday morning. She says she didn’t notice that King David was there

She noticed him on the way back though. First thing she spied was the big gap in her line of clothes where her best tablecloth had been hanging. Next thing she noticed was King David trotting off down the road towing the tablecloth along behind him through the mud and the slush. So Aunt Sophy went wing and wing after him.

I missed that part of it myself but Sam Prior told me afterwards that when they passed along by his place ‘twas something worth seeing. Aunt Sophy, he said, put him in mind of the Old Polina in the song. He was looking out through the window and he hurried and put his boots and cap on to chase ‘em but when he got there it was too late.

What seems to have happened was this Aunt Sophy got close enough to tread on the rear end of the tablecloth and that of course brought King David up into the wind facing her. But he didn’t let go. Well, she scooped up a mixture of mud in her hand and hove it at him. Now any schoolboy in Pigeon Inlet could have told her that was the wrong thing to do but by this time she’d lost her temper and then she made the biggest mistake of all. She looked around for a rock and spied one just behind her so she turned around to pick it up. It was stuck into the ground so while she was trying to pry it loose with her fingers, King David had plenty of time to survey the situation and figure out what he could do to vent his spite at Aunt Sophy for throwing the mud at him

Grampa Walcott often says that an old man looks back at the happy days when he was young and wishes he could have the same chances over again. Well, I imagine the same thought was in King David’s head when he viewed Aunt Sophy with her back turned, trying to pick up that rock. To him it must have looked like his happiest days had come back again and he’d better not miss this golden opportunity.

According to Sam Prior, who was just too late to save her, King David didn’t hit her hard, just nudged her enough to topple over so that the crown of her head, pin curls and all, went into the mud and it took Sam all he could do, with his brother Joe’s help, to straighten her up, It was only then that those of us who were down at Skipper Joe’s net loft found out about it, from hearing Aunt Sophy expressing her opinion of King David, and Jethro Noddy, and the community council, and a few other things that come into her mind.



Perhaps I should be married. Perhaps I’ve been neglecting a man’s duty all these years. I don’t know. All I do know is that in the thirty odd year I fished the Grand Banks out of Fortune Bay, I was only ashore from November to February, and it was a mystery to me how any bank fishermen ever found time to get to know a woman well enough to ask her to marry him.

And now since I’ve come here to live in Pigeon Inlet, I’ve passed into what you might call the “ungainly age”. What I mean is, if the women are young they call me Sir or Uncle, whereas if they’re not, I can’t somehow keep myself from calling them Ma’am or Auntie. It makes me think that young Bill Rumble had a point. Now his father, Uncle Matty Rumble, was always pestering him to get married and Bill said “’Tis all right for you, Father you married Mother, but if ever I get married I got to marry a strange woman”.

Of course, there’s Aunt Sophy, Grampa Walcott’s daughter, a widow that keeps the boarding house and not long back from Corner Brook all tittivated up, crinolines and everything, from where she’s been visiting her own daughter Soose who’s married there. But every time we seem to be getting to the point where I might work up a bit of courage, something always happens to put her on the outs with me again.

Like that Sunday morning last fall just after she got back from Corner Brook. Now the clergyman got here Saturday and that and early service next morning. So Sunday morning I was up just about sunrise with my good suit on and everything, on my way to church, and some sight it was that met my eyes out in the lane.

Now this lane runs out to the main road where you turn up towards the church and it’s got seven or eight houses along it including mine and Aunt Sophy’s. Jethro Noddy’s fishing punt was lying right across the lane where some skylarking bedlamer boys must have hauled her there the night before. The punt made a perfect fit from fence to fence, leaving no room to squeeze around neither stem nor stern. But that wasn’t the worst. She wasn’t resting on an even keel. The starboard side, the one towards me, was tipped up so that it wasn’t ‘til I hove up alongside of her that I spotted Aunt Sophy. 

I can’t describe her position. It was about halfway, I should say, between a squat and a crouchie. It was hard to say exactly where she was sitting; on the ground, on the port gunnel, or the risings, because the place was overflowing with crinolines. And to make matters worse, these mischievous boys hadn’t even bothered to bail out the punt. 

Well, I rested my chin on the starboard gunnel and looked down at her puzzled-like and she looked up at me I can’t describe what like. Now I should have sized up what had happened. Trying to get to church, she got into the punt alright and that must have got her tangled up trying to get out again. So perhaps I shouldn’t a said what I did. But in a time like that, a fellow got to say something.

“Aunt Sophy” said I “what in the world are you doing there”?

“Come here,” said she, “you foolish gommil and help me”. 

So with that what else could I do but start to climb over the starboard gunnel. Now my weight brought that side down and hers up and ‘tis a wonder the screech she let out didn’t wake up all the rest of Pigeon Inlet. I figured right there and then, she must be fouled up in the tholepin but ‘twas too late to turn back so over I went.

 

“Here Aunt Sophy,” said I, like talking to a child “let me unhitch ‘e”. Well, all I could tell from her look was that a human face can be purple and red the same time. She couldn’t get words out. But she waved to me to go away.

“But,” said I, “I can’t leave ‘e like this Aunt Sophy. What’ll I do?” Then she spoke. 

“Get a woman, you hangashore,” she said. “Get Emma Jane Bartle”. 

Well, Luke Bartle’s house is the next one out the lane, but Luke and Emma Jane are not good churchgoers for early morning service so it took me a spell to wake ‘em, get ‘em downstairs, and explain how Aunt Sophy was out in the lane, hitched up in the tholepin of Jethro Noddy’s punt. But finally, Emma Jane looked out the window and saw for herself. Then she put on something and went out, giving me and Luke strict orders to bide out of sight. Well ten minutes later by Lukey’s clock, he was still too afraid of Emma Jane to peep but I did. They hadn’t made any progress.

 “Luke,” said I, “We got to do something”

“Uncle Mose,” said he “Can’t you sort of lift her off?” 

“Who her?” said I, and he agreed, no I couldn’t.

“But” said he “What about tipping the punt all the way over. Then she’d sort of slide off wouldn’t she?”

“ I thought of that” said I “but the port side is resting on a big boulder.”

“Oh,” he said. 

“Luke,” said I “there’s only one cure for this.”

“What?” said he.

“Give me your handsaw” said I, and he finally went out and brought it in from his back porch. 

“What are you going to do?” he said..

“I’m going,” said I “to saw off that tholepin flush to the gunnel, together with whatever crinolines or anything else happens to get in the way.” And off I went, to do what I thought was right, like any man should do in case of emergency. Well, this time when she spied the handsaw her screech did wake up the neighborhood but I paid no heed and I had her freed before people could gather. 

Did she say thank you? No. What did she say? Nothing, from that day to this. Only once about a week after when I thought I’d call on her and offer some kind of compensation for the clothing I damaged with the handsaw, and what she said then would have been better left unsaid. Because, after all, now how was I to know that a good firm birch hoop off a five quintal fish task wouldn’t make a reasonable substitute for these crinolines.

Of all the jobs I’ve ever done in this world, the one I never want to do again is babysitting. Oh I had a good dory-mate, Grampa Walcott, and we pulled through safe and sound, but when I think back on it…. never again. Grampa was stuck that night good and proper. Grandma and her daughter Aunt Sophy, and her daughter Sooze, who was visiting here from Corner Brook with her six month old baby, were all invited out to a party that the Women’s Association were having on account of there being three generations of members here all the one time. They could have got Liz Noddy, that’s Jethro’s daughter to babysit, but Liz would have come over and brought along her gramophone records, the ones Grampa can’t stand, and he said a night like that would have drove him cracked. So that evening he asked me if I’d take a berth with him, babysitting, and I signed on.

Well from now on whatever babysitting there is to be done in Pigeon Inlet can be done by Liz Noddy, with her bubble-gum, her All Shook Up, her Jailhouse Rock and all the rest of it. The women were gone when I got there, the baby was asleep upstairs and Grampa had the cribbage board all set up on the kitchen table. I asked him did he have any instructions, what to do if the baby woke up. Grampa said no. Well, he said, Sooze had made some funny remark about a formula being somewhere or other but, being as how the only formula we knew anything about was the one for finding how many cords in a pile of pulpwood, we figured that had no connection with the baby so we started our cribbage. 

The women had said they’d be home before ten but, being women, there was no sign of ‘em at half past….. when the baby started to bawl. Well we waited, to see if the squall would die down, but it got so bad it was likely to frighten the neighbours so Grampa went upstairs and brought him down. Well when that baby grows up it won’t cost him much in soap to wash his face. All he’ll have to do is open his mouth. There’ll be no face left to wash. Grampa had him wrong end up when he brought him down but, even after he upended him right, he bawled harder than ever. I made signs to Grampa (there was no sense trying to talk) that there must be a pin stuck in him somewhere. So Grampa held him up, sort of as you might say, by the crosstrees while I examined amongst his rigging. The next thing we knew the whole outfit tumbled to the kitchen floor and there he was, in his bare poles, bawling if it was possible, harder than ever. 

Grampa screeched out something to me about getting the canvas back on him quick. But like I told him, anybody with one eye, or for that matter, nar eye at all, could tell we weren’t supposed to that back on. Grampa agreed, the best thing to do with that was poke it in the stove and look in the sail locker for a new outfit. We located the sail locker over on top of the sewing machine and, after we had an argument about whether we should put a jib on him or a foresail…… we put both on. Like Grampa said, it was best to play it safe. Only trouble was this made him bawl harder than ever.

“Mose, me son” said Grampa “There’s only one solution for this”

“What?” said I

“Grub,” said he. “It would’ve been better,” said he, “if Sooze had told us what to feed him, instead of talking about cords of pulpwood.

But what could we feed a young fellow that age. Now there was cold moose meat in the pantry. But no, the rough edges of a piece of moose meat might choke him. Something smooth we wanted, but what? Well, Grampa had the answer: fat pork. So I took the baby while Grampa headed for the pork barrel, and he came back with a lovely little chunk, oh about a half inch each way. But I had misgivings. Now there’s no question of fat pork as to smoothness, or even nourishment. But, with no teeth to chew it, supposing it gave him indigestion. Well, Grampa had an answer. For that too.

“Mose” he said “We’ll tie a string to it. That way, after he goes to sleep on it, well if it hurt him, we had a way to get it back. So that’s what we done. Well, that baby swallowed that hunk of salt pork like a real North Shoreman and before Grampa had him halfway up the stairs he was almost asleep and quiet as a mouse. Well, it was then that the horrible thought struck me. What if he swallows the string and all? But after Grampa came back downstairs he said as how he had thought of the very danger and he’d tied the other end of the string to the baby’s big toe.

“But,” said I, “When you laid him down, didn’t he stick up his legs and slacken the string?”

“Yes,” said Grampa, “Indeed he did. Then I tied a sheepshank in it to tighten it up. So that when he dozes off and straightens up his legs, up ‘twill come, easy as anything.”

Five minutes later by Grampa’s clock, we creeped upstairs and there was the baby, sound asleep with his legs straightened out. Grampa untied the string from his big toe, picked up the other end off the pillow, and we had that string and fat pork in the kitchen stove, on top of that other thing, just as we heard the women coming back from the party.



Grandpa Walcott thinks ‘tis a crying shame that the youngsters in school nowadays should learn pages and pages about people dead and gone hundreds of years and don’t learn a word about a man that was better than any of them and who lived right here on this shore for over 80 years. Skipper Bob Killick. Skipper Bob, who mastered his own schooner for over 30 summers to the Labrador and then was appointed to just about the highest position any man could ever get to be: a magistrate. 

Now personally I never knowed Skipper Bob but according to those that did, I missed something. Cuz court work and his day was worth traveling miles to go to. Nowadays tis different. Last summer one day a boatload of us left fishing, there was no fish anyway, and went to Hartley’s Harbour to the court work there. But it was no good. Seven cases and all over before dinnertime. Why there was one case alone where Jemima Grimes had Aunt Polly Tacker up for slander that would have lasted all day if Skipper Bob had the trying of it. Cuz he was a great believer in getting at the roots of a case and what he didn’t know about law, which was plenty, he more than made up for by knowing about people and he give his judgments according to.

Like the time Uncle Paddy Muldoon and Aunt Biddy were up before him on account of alcoholic liquor, although like Aunt Biddy told him right out in court, that was an awful unchristian name to call her drop of old berry juice.

Uncle Paddy and Aunt Biddy were the last livyers in Muldoon’s Cove, which was halfway between here and Hartley’s Harbour. And a lonesome life they must ahead of it, excepting when travelers dropped in for a warm and a mug-up, and never was a traveler refused either or both of them

The sample of her berry juice that the policeman sent into St John’s tested 34%. You see it was from an old secret recipe that Aunt Biddy’s grandmother brought out with her from Ireland and that’s how it was that she and Uncle Paddy come to be standing up before Skipper Bob Killick that day in the courthouse in Hartley’s Harbour. And Skipper Bob, instead of mumbling things about regulation this and clause that and statute in such case made and provided, got to the bottom of the case and brought out the facts about Uncle Paddy and his heartburn

Now according to Aunt Biddy, she’d never bother about making the stuff at all if it hadn’t been for Uncle Paddy’s heartburn, a thing he suffered from something awful. Why there were nights when they’d be there alone, she’d ask him to get down his fiddle and play something, and he’d say he’d like to only his heartburn was so bad. Then she’d go and get him a mug of juice and he’d get relief and he’d start to play a jig or two. Then after another mug or two, or perhaps three, he’d play beautiful pieces like Danny Boy and The Wearing of the Green that’d bring tears to her eyes, and his own too. And why, she said, the authorities should find fault with that and talk about ugly things like alcoholic liquor was more than she could understand

Oh yes, she said, she remembered the evening the crowd of fellows come to her house from Hartley’s Harbour and said there was a time on down there that night and did she have a drop of stuff to give ‘em. And she told them no, she had nothing except berry juice and that was to be used for no other purpose except a remedy for heartburn. And how they went off contented enough but they was all back again to her door inside of an hour, and the whole lot of ‘em doubled up with the heartburn, suffering something awful. And how after she cured ‘em and they’d gone off, Obe Grimes had come back by hisself asking her could he take away a bottle in case he had another attack later that night. Yes and how she heard after how Obe had made a show of hisself at the time that night and the next thing she knowed the policeman had come and carried away a sample in a liniment bottle.

Now there was some talk about them paying a fine but, of course, cash was out of the question. Uncle Paddy said they could take his horse but it turned out that the horse he was talking about was the wood horse in his backyard. The policeman suggested perhaps they could pay in berry juice but Skipper Bob just glowered at him and said he hoped he wasn’t getting heartburn

And then Skipper Bob delivered his judgment. Uncle Paddy, he said, shouldn’t be blamed too much for accepting a tried and true remedy for his ailment and the law certainly didn’t want to prevent Aunt Biddy from hearing such lovely music as Danny Boy and The Wearing of the Green. However, he said, if Aunt Biddy ever again did find herself with any heartburn remedy on hand, she mustn’t have any outpatient department, and on no account was she to operate a traveling clinic.

Now what happened in the matter of berry juice after that nobody knows. Only one thing for sure, the public never knowed anything about it and, oh yes, Uncle Paddy certainly didn’t die of heartburn.

It was six months ago since I mentioned how hard we Pigeon Inletters are trying to make ourselves into good Canadians, but I’m afraid we’re making only slow headway. We’re making progress all right, but we can’t seem to catch up.

You take last spring, on a simple thing like figuring out the best way out of a depression. Whether you should do it by cutting down taxes or by starting to build a lot of public works. Everybody else in Canada, why they found it easy, but according to reports we went wrong again. 

Grampa Walcott says he’s going to give up trying. He allows he’ll die like he lived – a Newfoundlander. He’s got a suspicion (he’s wrong of course) that to be a good Canadian, he’s just got to be like everybody else: talk like ‘em, think like ‘em, vote like ‘em. But he admits it might be a wonderful thing, or then again it might not. You’d think if the Blessed Lord had wanted us to have been all alike, he’d have made us that way and saved all the teachers and politicians the trouble they’re going to. But Grampa figures the Lord intended us to be different and to bide different. Like, he says, Jack Spratt and his wife. If they hadn’t been different, it would have been an awful waste of good grub.

The hardest thing for us is this business of being like everybody else. Up on the Mainland they got that fixed up nice. When there’s a holiday coming up, the authorities can tell beforehand exactly how many of ‘em are going to break their necks in motor cars, and how many of ‘em are going to go out in boats and capsize and drown theirselves. It must be a great satisfaction to the authorities, after the holiday is over, to see just how the people behaved in the way they was expected to.

But down here in Pigeon Inlet, it’s not like that. Not with people. Caplin yes. I’m able to predict that every year about the middle of June, the caplin will strike in to spawn on Bartles Beach. And the squid – no. to give the squid their due, they seem to have minds of their own and you go predictin’ the squids will strike in at such and such a time and chances are they won’t come in at all. Still, generally, they do come in like well-behaved fish ought to do. But people? Well, let me predict that Jethro Noddy will tumble off his stage head tomorrow morning and Jethro will just take extra care to prove me wrong.

Like Skipper Lige Bartle. They tell me about the time he rescued a mermaid off a rock at low tide one morning and she rewarded him by telling him she’d answer any question he’d ask her, but just one. He asked her could she tell him where he was going to die. She asked him what good would it do him to know that and he said cuz if he knew where he was going to die, he’d never go near the place. Well as it turned out he died in his bed, but it just goes to show you the kind of man he was.

And we’re even supposed to talk alike. Why they’ve even got books, dictionaries they call ‘em, but perhaps I can best bring out my point but telling you about Pete Briggs. Pete’s youngest boy, Jimmy, about 9 years old, was going to school last winter. One day the teacher asked him to write a sentence with the word father in it. Jimmy, naturally enough, wrote down “Father shot a swile.” And the teacher marked it wrong, the last word that is.

Pete didn’t feel too pleased about it and went straight up and asked the teacher what was wrong with it and she (that’s the same one that said John Cabot didn’t discover Newfoundland), she told him it ought to be spelled SEAL instead of SWILE. Pete said maybe so. She was the teacher and she ought to know, but to him, SEAL was an awful foolish way to spell swile. The teacher met Grampa that same day and asked him how did he spell swile and he said he didn’t spell ‘em at all. He towed ‘em in like everybody else.

But to get back to what I was saying about the dictionary. Grampa says it’s the most undemocratic book in the world, trying to make everybody talk alike. Personally, I disagree with him. I think the cookbook is worse, but that’s another story.

Anyway, as I was saying, one day after I told over the radio the story about some goings-on up there on Gull Mish, Grampa dropped in to see me.

“Uncle Mose,”’ he said, “I hope you’ll excuse me but you got part of the story wrong.”

I asked him what part and he said, “That part about Gull Mish”. Well, where I come from in Newfoundland we always called it mish and, ill-mannered like, I hadn’t noticed that down here in Pigeon Inlet everyone calls it mash. So I argued the point with Grampa. We couldn’t agree and we figured the schoolteacher ought to be able to settle it once and for all. We told him our trouble and asked him, was it mash or mish?

Instead of helping, he only hindered. Cuz, he said, ‘twas nar one of it, ‘twas marsh. Grampa asked him where he got that from and he said there was no doubt about it. Marsh was right because that’s how it was in the dictionary.

Grampa laughed at him. “And how long,” said Grandpa, “have these dictionary things been on the go”.

 “Oh,” said the schoolmaster, “two or three hundred years.”

“And what,”’ said Grampa, “did they call it before they had dictionaries? Do you think,” said Grampa, “that generations of people lived for thousands of years alongside a mish, and even tumbled into the mish, and picked berries off the mish, and then had to wait until two or three hundred years ago for some fellow to write a dictionary to tell him what to call it?”

And the cookbooks. But, like I said, that’s another story.

Now, I personally can’t vouch for the truth of all of Grampa Walcott’s stories, on account of most of ‘em happened before my time. All I can say is that Grampa is as truthful a man as you’ll find in Pigeon Inlet and that’s why today I don’t think I can do better than tell you Grampa’s story about the geese.

‘Twas one fall’s day about sixty year ago, says Grampa, that he took his seven-eighths muzzle-loader and went in on the barrens hoping to get a goose before they all left for the South‘ard. Now, he didn’t see a thing until all at once he spotted this big black cloud rising in the Nor’west and headed straight for him. Thundercloud? No, ‘twas geese, sure enough, but about two gunshots over his head. Anyway, he up gun, hoping he’d get a cripple or two, and fired.

Well, for the next few minutes, he said, there was a shower of geese falling on all sides of him. They were only stunned and the best he could do, he thought, was to secure as many of them as he could before they come to.

He had a ball of fishing line and he cut it into lengths and tied one end of each length to a goose’s neck and the other end to his belt, intending to finish ‘em off when he got around to it. But he was too greedy. In all, he had twenty-five of ‘em fastened that way when they come to and next thing Grampa knowed they were lifting him off the ground and flying away with him. In the excitement he dropped his knife so he couldn’t cut himself loose and in less time than it takes to tell it, there he was, up off the ground with twenty-five tow ropes stretched out ahead of him, headed for Florida, or Jamaica, or wherever it is geese go to spend their winters.

Now, Grampa says he personally got nothing against Florida, likewise Jamaica, but with forty quintals of fish in his stage at that time needing a few more hours sun, he just couldn’t afford the trip. So he started to figure a way to get down out of there. After all, a man who could handle his own schooner ought to able to steer a flock of geese. Grampa decided to take his bearings. He was flying face down, stretched as comfortable as on a feather bed and Red Indian Lake was just coming up on the skyline, so Grampa decided to try something.

Now, there was one big gander with a longer tow rope than the others so Grampa found the right string and give it a little jerk to starboard. Sure enough, the gander slewed and the others followed suit and a minute later Grampa was headed north straight for Pigeon Inlet. ‘Twas only then, he says, that it dawned on him that here he was the first man ever to fly an airplane, and if he could somehow turn it into a helicopter he might come through it alright.

He looked right down at his own house as he passed over Pigeon Inlet and there was Liz, Grandma she is now but they’d only been married a year or two then, and Liz was looking up at him making some kind of motions with her hands. Now, he was sure Liz was giving him some kind of signal if only he could make out what it was. Well, by this time he was almost down off Belle Isle, so he twigged his gander hard aport and headed back towards Pigeon Inlet again.

Well now, by this time he was getting the hang of his steering gear, so he circled around a few times watching Liz until he made out her signal. She was making motions like ringing necks. Now, that was it. Why hadn’t he thought of it before? So he hauled in one goose by his painter and wrung his neck; then two more. Now there were only twenty-two tow ropes out ahead while he and the three dead ones were strung out behind and sure enough he was slowing down, a little bit, and dropping lower. Well, he kept circling around and looked down at Liz again and now he could make out a patch of something white on the ground right by her and he figured she had it there to guide him in making a landing. So he wrung a few more gooses necks and kept circling lower and slower.

“At last,” says Grampa, “I maneuvered them until I was right fair over my house, then I wrung all their necks excepting three, and there we hung. That old gander, what a bird, he and his two helpers were pointed straight up in the sky by this time and hardly holding up the weight of all the rest of us. I had one bad minute when Lige Bartle, seeing this strange thing up in the sky, started to come with his swiling gun. But Liz told him who it was.”

“Finally, I looked down again. The white patch was right below me. So I wrung the other two necks and me and that old gander fluttered down so gentle that I wouldn’t have cracked an egg if there’d been one on that white patch where my feet landed.”

“There I stood,” said Grampa, “chock to my waist in dead geese and glad to be back home again.” 

“Liz, my dear,” said I, “bless your heart for saving me.”

“Ben,’ said she, “take your dirty mucky boots off my clean tablecloth.”

“But Liz,” said I, “you did save me, you know, by advising me to wring their necks.”

“Ben,” said she, “I was only telling you what I’d like to be doing to your neck, up there playing around with a lot of foolish geese, but,” she said, “seeing as how you’re home again after all, wring that other one’s neck and let’s start picking ‘em.”

Well, Grampa untied the twenty-four geese from his belt and was just about to wring the gander’s neck too when something in that old bird’s expression made him change his mind. To hurt that bird, why it would be like hurting an old ship-mate. So Grampa untied him and let him go. He circled around overhead a few times and then took off for Florida, or Jamaica, or wherever it is that geese go to spend their winters.

“And that,” said Grampa, “was my first and only helicopter trip. I was tempted to try it again,” he said, “more than once, because that old gander used to pitch in front of my door every fall for years after with a length a string in his bill. But after eight or ten falls he give it up and I never seen him afterwards. Ah, but he was a wonderful, knowing bird.”

 

When I told you a while ago that the men in Pigeon Inlet were the finest and hardest-workin’ in the world, I’ve got to own up that I was forgettin’ about Jethro Noddy. I suppose every place has got one odd one who’s not quite so hard workin’ and industrious and independent as the others. I know they’ve got one in Hartley’s Harbour and they had one in the place where I lived on the Southwest Coast. In bigger places they’ve probably got two and in a place the size of St. John’s I wouldn’t be surprised if they had three or four. Anyway, Pigeon Inlet got Jethro Noddy. 

Now, let’s be fair to Jethro. ‘Twould be a sin to call him lazy because off and on he can work as hard as any man in the Inlet. Only he don’t stick to it, and when he gets a few quintals of fish caught or a few dollars earned he slacks up right away. Now I can’t guarantee the truth of this, but Levi Bartle, the merchant, tells how he wanted his fish store swept out one day and he asked Jethro.

“Jethro,” he said “How’d you like to earn a dollar” 

Jethro said “No thanks, sir, I’ve already got one”

Now that story might not be exact gospel, because Mr. Bartle stretches it a bit sometimes, but twill give you an idea.

And it wouldn’t be fair to call Jethro a good-for-nothing. After all, he’s got a wife and eight children. But he’s no good on his own. He’s got to be working under someone else and even then you got to watch him. Skipper Joe Irwin tells a story about how Jethro was helping him build a wheelhouse on his boat and Skipper Joe saw Jethro using a hammer to drive in a 2” screw. Skipper Joe bawled at him and asked him, didn’t he see the slot in the head of the screw. 

“Oh yes, Skipper Joe,” said Jethro, as he give the screw another belt with the hammer.

“Isn’t that slot there for puttin’ the screw in?” asked Skipper Joe. 

“No, sir,” said Jethro. 

“What’s it there for then” bawled Skipper Joe. 

“For takin’ it out, sir,” said Jethro. 

Like I said he’s not much good on his own. This spring he’s salmon fishing with Luke Bartle. Then, he’ll be a shareman in Skipper Joe Irwin’s trap skiff. After that, you’ll see him and his biggest boy out in their punt on fine days hand-lining in shoal water. Other times you’ll see him going in over the hills with his trout pole. Then he’ll pick up a few dollars if any sports come to fish for salmon in Bartle’s Brook. They all want him for a guide because he seems to know all the salmon in the pools just as well as if he was one of ‘em. Oh, he’ll get by all right. It might be a tight pinch, but he’ll do it

I’ll never forget how Jethro put one over on me one day last spring and my leg is not too easy to pull. I was busy trying to finish a herring net and I had a few turns of birch wood in my backyard that I wanted to have sawed and clove so I thought I’d ask Jethro to do it. It was near the middle of the month so I figured the Family Allowance was runnin’ short and he could use a dollar or two. So I said, “Jethro, How much will you charge me for sawing that bit of wood ?”

He looked at the pile of wood, then at me. “How much?” he said.

“Yes, how much?” said I.

He looked at the wood again, walked around it, you wouldn’t know but he was a qualified scaler. Then he looked back at me.

“Bout 3 parts of a cord isn’t it?”

“Bout that, now how much will you charge”

“Nuthin,” he said.

“Nuthin ?” said I.

“Not a cent,” he said

“But,” I said,  “Jethro, you can’t do that. It’s kind and neighbourly alright but you, with a wife and family, you need a dollar or two like the rest of us. Now what’ll you charge for sawin’ it.”

“I won’t charge nuthin for sawing it,” said he

“Why not” I said. “You must have a reason. The reason why I’m not going to charge anything for sawing it is – that I don’t intend to saw it.” And off he went. 

Like I said Jethro’s a character. There’s no harm in him and his only fault is that he’s the owner of the other character I’ve got to tell you about the four-legged one King David the Billy goat. if you think Jethro Nadi is a character wait till you hear about King David.

I’ve mentioned before how down here in Pigeon Inlet we’re trying to make a Canadian out of Pete Briggs, and Pete being the kind of man he is, tis not easy. But we’ve made a lot of progress and early last fall we nearly had ‘em won over. Skipper Joe swears that there at the school concert back in November when we were all trying our best to sing Oh Canada, Pete’s lips were actually moving. Skipper Joe can’t swear if any words were coming out but, like we all agreed, the principle was the same, we’d made progress. Then to spoil it all come this unfortunate business about John Cabot.

The nerve of that schoolteacher, says Pete, to tell his youngster, in school, that perhaps John Cabot didn’t discover Newfoundland after all and that perhaps it was some place up on the Mainland he discovered instead. “What next”, says Pete. “We haven’t got much as it is but take away John Cabot from us and we’ll have nothing.” But I’m getting ahead of my story.

Most of the arguments Pete used to use two or three years ago were so foolish that even Pete could see it and had to give ‘em up and try new ones. He even used to say,  he intended to bide a Newfoundlander because he was born a Newfoundlander. Grandma Walcott answered that one for him. She could remember the night Pete was born and he might have been born a Newfoundlander alright, she said, but he was a awful scrawny one and he should thank his stars that he didn’t bide like that.

Now personally I don’t care whether John Cabot discovered Newfoundland or not. What I mean is, ‘twas his own business, and whatever it was he did discover, there’s nothing we can do about it now. So as far as I’m concerned, if anybody else wants John Cabot, they can have him and welcome. Jethro Noddy feels the same way only Jethro says perhaps the mainland wants him so bad they’d be willing to pay a little something for him. Perhaps, he says, there should have been something about John Cabot put in Term 29. But I tell him ‘tis kinda late to think about that now and besides, when I mentioned to Pete Briggs the possibility of selling John Cabot, it made him madder than ever.

Now the trouble started just before Christmas when Pete’s little girl, in doing her history exam, said naturally enough how John Cabot discovered Newfoundland in 1497. The teacher, she’s a young thing just out of college in St. John’s and right bursting with book learning, she put a question mark after it and next day Pete went up to the school and asked her what did she mean by questioning something that every Newfoundlander knowed as well as his own name. He says she tried to brazen it out by saying as how the history experts nowadays were beginning to figure that it wasn’t Newfoundland at all that John Cabot discovered but some place up on the mainland.

Well, Pete was fit to be tied. He asked her how stunned did they think John Cabot was not to discover Newfoundland when it was right there in his path. Or did they think he just said “Oh there’s Newfoundland. I got half a mind to discover it, but no on second thoughts, I think I’ll sail around the end of it and discover the mainland instead cause that’s bigger” Now Pete would’ve said more but right about then he choked up. Anyway he went back home vowing he’d never send his youngster to that teacher again, to get corrupted.

Now it puzzled me & Grampa and the rest of us as to just why Pete was so worked up. After all, Cabot is not a relation. As far as we know there’s no connection between the Brigg’s and the Cabot’s, not even by marriage. So I took it upon myself to find out.

“Pete,” I said to him one day when there were just the two of us, “what odds about John Cabot.” He looked liked he wished he had hair on his head so’s it could bristle.

“What do you mean, Uncle Mose,” he said, “what odds about John Cabot?”

“Why,” said I, “let’s face it. If they want him up there on the mainland we can’t save him.”

“Uncle Mose,” he said, “John Cabot was the only bit of history I learned in school. There was another bit about a fellow named Jacques something or other but I never did get that straight. So if I loose the bit about John Cabot discovering Newfoundland in 1497 ‘twill mean I made a complete waterhaul, and that’s hard to swallow.” 

And he’s still finding it hard, cause only last night when again we were doing our best to sing Oh Canada at the Women’s Association concert, I took good notice of Pete’s lips. There wasn’t a biver in ‘em. It looks like we got to start all over again.

There are about ten or a dozen families living along the back road in Pigeon Inlet, just behind Grandpa Walcott’s, and whenever he’s so minded he lets them take a shortcut through the backyard to get down to the landwash and to Levi Bartlke’s shop. And they’re only too glad to take advantage of his kindness.

But, I’ve noticed that one day every summer he nails up his gate and stands there by it, turning back anyone trying to get through. I asked him why and he said it was cuz after all, ‘twas his property and he had a right to stop them. But, if he didn’t exercise that right, after so many years he’d lose it and then he wouldn’t be able to stop ‘em even if he wanted to. He said, “That’s how it is was with people’s rights. you had to either use ‘em or lose ‘em.” And to prove his point he brought up the subject of mustaches and pipes.

“After all,” he said, “there’s only two things left in this world than a man can do and a woman can’t copy. One is grow a mustache, the other is smoke a pipe. And,” says Grandpa, “if a man loses the right to do these two things he might just as well dress up in one of these sack things like Emma Jane Bartle is scraped up in.”

“Time was” said Grandpa, “when here in Pigeon Inlet you could almost tell the independent spirit of a man by the size of his mustache and in every kitchen in the place, the thing you’d spot first on every dresser was the mustache cup. “Now Mose,” he says, “apart from the two of us, there’s not a man in Pigeon Inlet that got one except Skipper Joe and he uses it for a shaving mug. There’s no mustache cups left cuz there’s no mustaches to use them on.”

“It started 40 odd year ago,” says Grandpa, “when somebody, a traveling agent I think he was, told Aunt Polly Bartle she didn’t look a day over 20. She was 50 at the time, but naturally she believed him and then began to wonder how in the world she ever got tangled up with an old man like Skipper Lige. He was 52. Now, she put two and two together and figured that people would never believe she was as young as she looked while she had to be seen in public with Lige. Then she remembered how young Lige looked when she caught him, just before he had a mustache, forgetting that was 30 years ago, and she come up with the idea that was ‘twas Lige’s mustache that was holding her back somehow and that it would have to come off.”

“It took her nigh on two year to get him to shave it off and the life poor Lige lived in the meantime wasn’t fit for a dog. He knowed he’d be a laughing stock on every net loft and stage head in Pigeon Inlet and, he said afterwards, he never would have given in only for the bullbird soup. He was awful fond of bullbird soup and when Aunt Polly threatened not to cook anymore, cuz her soup was too good to be strained through that thing, he broke down and give in. That started it and within 10-year there wasn’t a mustache left in Pigeon Inlet, except one and,” said Grandpa, “I’d likely have lost that only for Grandma is too fond of bullbird soup herself and give in first. Them rights never come back” he said, “once you let go of ‘em, you’ve lost ‘em for good.”

“Well, there’s still one thing left: the pipe. And if we’re not careful here in Pigeon Inlet,” he said, “we men will lose that too.” Poor Aunt Polly Bartle is not here to start the campaign this time but Emma Jane Bartle, Luke’s missus, is just as wiley and poor Luke will never have the holdout that his father Skipper Lige had.

One night a few weeks ago, she fired the first shot. She was reading through one of those newfangled women’s magazines and Luke was lying down on the settle, smoking his pipe, when all at once she spoke up and said to him “Luke Bartle, stop smoking right at once and throw that dirty murdering pipe in the stove.”

Well, poor Luke looked at her like a fool while she said, “Luke you got something grown growing in your insides.” He asked her what in the world she was talking about and she said right there in the magazine it said how smoking made things grow in people’s insides. Luke said yes he’d heard tell about it but that was cigarettes. She said yes that was what the magazine said but it must apply to pipes too. Otherwise, how would Luke have things growing in his stomach when he didn’t smoke cigarettes, only the pipe. Well there was no answerin’ an argument like that and Emma Jane actually tried to take Luke’s pipe, to put it in the stove. Only, in wrestling with him for it, she got a finger jammed in the bowl, on top of the ashes, and that took her mind off the subject for a spell. Luke told her then that if pipe smokin’ made things like that grow, Grampa Wallcott’s insides must look like a bunch of bananas.

But, next day Emma Jane went all around Pigeon Inlet showing this article to the women and getting them organized. And she done a good job too because a few nights after, I went up to Grampa Walcott’s place and there was Grandma and Aunt Sophy giving him dirty looks while he puffed away at his old pipe, and even dirtier ones when he invited me to light up too.

Then he tipped me the wink and said, “Mose me son” he said, “in all fairness to the women I got to own up that I did know one case where pipe smoking shortened a man’s days. The women caught their ears at that and Grandpa went on, “Yes, he was Uncle Tobias Tacker from Hartley’s Harbour, a pipe smoker if ever there was one. Smoked like a tilt from the time he was 15. Used the same match in the morning to light his pipe and the kitchen stove, and daytimes he begrudged having to take out his pipe to eat his meals. People used to warn ‘im,” said Grampa, “just like Emma Jane is doing now, that it would shorten his days and sure enough it did.”

“There,” said Grandma, “I bet something growed up in his stomach.”

“Well as to that,” said Grampa, “I couldn’t say, but what I know did happen was that one night, while he was smoking in bed, he dozed off and by the time the neighbours got to him it was too late. It shortened his days all right, but being as how he was 102 at the time, it couldn’t have shortened them by much.”

And so it looks as if pipe smoking is one right we men might hang on to for a spell yet, provided that is that plug tobaccy don’t get too dear.

There’s no doubt about it, if Grampa Walcott had had a few more years schooling when he was a boy, he’d have likely ended up a Senator or something. But he didn’t. The way he tells it, and there’s no one living old enough to contradict him, his schooling finished before it even got started. He tells how one morning when he was 6 or 7 yeas old, his poor old mother fitted him out and sent him off to school for the first and only time. He had a slate, a primer and a slate pencil, which was standard equipment in those days. but what ruined it all was that she made him take a little bottle of soapy water and a slate rag to clean his slate with. Oh, an alright outfit for a girl, but the boys in those days had a simpler way of cleaning their slates, not what we nowadays call sanitary, and a bit hard on the elbows of your jacket. But still there it was. Grampa knowed the other boys would torment the life out of him if they seen his bottle and slate rag.

So halfway through that morning, when his mother went up to the schoolhouse door to ask the teacher how he was getting on, the teacher said he hadn’t turned up to school at all. Well later that same morning they found him where he’d crawled right up and under the northwest corner of the school, where the sills come flush down with the ground, and it took Grampa’s father and the schoolmaster all they could do with a flake longer each to pry him out of it. Next morning his father took him fishing which he’s been at off and on ever since. 

But 10 years ago when that adult teacher was here holding night school, Grampa went. He didn’t learn how to write, accepting his own name, but he did learn how to read, especially print, and he can read out the words now almost as fast as his forefinger can move across the page. Why last spring he started to read his first book. He commenced it just after Easter and he finished it last week. Now Grandma didn’t approve. In the first place, she said, it was only an old novel whereas a man his age should be reading nothing but the blessed scripture. And besides, she said, it kept him hanging around the house under her feet like a broody fowl. Besides, he missed two lodge sessions and a meeting of the fisherman’s local. I suppose he’d a missed church too once or twice, but that Grandma wouldn’t stand for.

Anyway, he finished the book and last Sunday evening after prayers he told me about it

“Mose,” he said, “did you ever read any books?”:

“One or two,” I said 

“Boy,” he said, “you ought to read the one about Robinson Crusoe” 

Well now I have read Robinson Crusoe but I didn’t want to spoil the conversation by saying so so I asked Grampa what the book was about. 

“It’s not so much, me son, what the book was about” said Grampa “although to give him his due, Robinson Crusoe would have made a first-rate Pigeon Inleter. But a book like that” said Grampa “broadens a man’s mind, gives him a bigger outlook. Take my own case” he said. “Until I read that book I used to think that the man with the biggest appetite in this world was Uncle Sol Noddy. Uncle Sol was our cook on the Labrador one summer and one night he was cooking a feed of birds for our supper. We found out afterwards that while he was waiting to call us down into the forecastle, he eat two turrs and a white wing diver, and then had the gall to sit in with the rest of us and eat his regular supper.”

“But Uncle Sol,” said Grampa, “was a sparrow compared to these cannibals that Robinson Crusoe tells about. One day while Robinson was on this island by hisself he spotted a girt trap-skiff full of these cannibals chasing this other poor fella and his rodney, and they chased him ashore right into the next cove to the one where Robinson was living. Robinson couldn’t understand what they were bawling about but he figured they must be awful mad with this poor fellow about something. The book didn’t explain what they were mad with him about” said Grampa “but it must have been something terrible. Perhaps he was a government official that was holding back their unemployment money or perhaps he was a member of a royal commission. Anyway whatever it was, they were going to make sure that whatever he done, he’d never do it again.

From where Robinson was hiding in his cove, he could hear a wonderful hullabaloo from the beach in the next cove, so he went into his cave and got his old swiling gun down off the rack. He crouchied down on his hands and knees and worked his way along to the beal of the point between the two coves and peeped over. Sure enough, they had this poor fellow caught and what do you think, Mose me son they was getting ready to do to him?”

 “What?” said I

“They was getting ready to scoff ‘im” said Grandpa, “Friday and all as it was, and I thought to myself,” said Grampa “here’s where even Uncle Sol Noddy would a had to take back water.

 “And did they scoff ‘im sure enough?” said I.  

“They would have” said Grampa “only just then Robinson let go with about seven fingers out of his old swiling gun and these cannibals jumped aboard their trap skiff and made off, no doubt to catch their selves a Friday fish dinner like they shoulda had in the first place. And that’s what I mean” said Grampa “about books broadening a man’s mind. I think” said he “next winter, I’ll read another one.”

 

Tall are the tales that fishermen tell when summer’s work is done,

Of fish they’ve caught, of birds they’ve shot, of crazy risks they’ve run.

But never did a fisherman tell a tale, so tall by half a mile,

As Grampa Walcott told one night in the Smokeroom on the Kyle.

 

With ‘baccy smoke from twenty pipes, the atmosphere was blue.

There was many a “Have another boy” and “Don’t mind if I do.”

When somebody suggested that each in turn should spin,

A yarn about some circumstance he’d personally been in.

 

Then tales were told of gun barrels bent to shoot around the cliff,

Of men thawed out and brought to life that had been frozen stiff,

Of bark pots carried off by flies, of pathways chopped through fog,

Of woodsman Bill who, barefoot, kicked the knots out of a twelve-inch log.

 

The loud applause grew louder still when Uncle Mickey Shea,

Told of the big potato he grew in Gander Bay.

Too big to fit through the cellar door, it lay at rest nearby,

Until, one rainy night that fall, the pig drowned in it’s eye.

 

But meanwhile in a corner, his grey head slightly bowed,

Sat Grampa Walcott, eighty-eight, the oldest of the crowd.

Upon his weather-beaten face there beamed a quiet grin,

When someone shouted, “Grampa, ‘tis your turn to chip in.”

 

“Oh, no boys, leave me out,” said Grampa. “Oh thanks, don’t mind if I do.

Ah, well alright boys, if you insist, I’ll tell you one that’s true.

It’s a story about jigging squids I’m going to relate,

And it happened in Pigeon Inlet in Eighteen eighty-eight.

 

Me, I was just a bedlamer then, fishin’ with my Dad,

And prospects for the that season, they were looking pretty bad.

Now, the caplin scull was over and that hadn’t been too bright,

And here was August come and gone and nar a squid in sight.

 

Day after day we searched for squid, ‘til dark from the crack of dawn.

We dug up clams and cock n’ hens ‘til even these were gone.

And still no squids so, in despair, we give it up for good,

Took our gear ashore and went cutting firewood.

 

Now, one morning, while out in the woods with all the other men,

And wondering if we’d ever see another squid again.

Father broke his axe that day so we were the first ones out,

And as we neared the landwash, we heard the women shout.

 

“Come hurry boys, the squids are in.” Well, we jumped aboard our boat,

And started out the harbour, the only crew afloat.

But soon our keel began to scrunch like scrapin’ over skids.

“Father,” says I, “we’ve run aground.” “Me son,” says he, “that’s squids.”

 

Said he, “The jigger, heave it out,” and quick as a flash I did,

And soon as it struck the water, ‘twas grappled by a squid.

I hauled it in and what do you think? As soon as he crossed the rail,

I’ll be darned if there wasn’t a second squid clung on to the first one’s tail.

 

And another clung to that one and so on in a string.

I tried to shake ‘em loose but Father said “You foolish thing.

You’ve got something was never seen before in Newfoundland.

Drop the jigger, grab the string and haul hand over hand.”

 

I hauled that string of squids aboard ‘til the boat could hold no more,

And then we hitched it in the risings and rowed for the shore.

Now the men were coming from the woods, they’d heard the women bawl,

But Father said, “Don’t hurry boys, we’ve squid enough for all.”

 

So Uncle Jimmy took the string until he had enough,

And, neighbour-like, he handed it on to Skipper Levi Cuff.

From stage to stage that string was passed throughout the whole night long,

‘Til daylight found it on Eastern Point with Uncle Billy Strong.

 

Now Uncle Bill, quite thoughtfully, before he went to bed,

Took two half-hitches of that string ‘round the grump on his stagehead.

Next morning Hartley’s Harbour heard the news and up they come,

In a trap skiff with three pairs of oars to tow the string down home.

 

And when Hartley’s Harbour had enough, the following afternoon,

That string went on from place to place until it reached Quirpon.

What happened to it after that, well I don’t exactly know.

But some folks say that it crossed the Straits and ended in Forteau.

 

Yes, tall are the tales that fishermen tell when summer’s work is done,

Of fish they’ve caught and birds they’ve shot and crazy risks they’ve run.

But never did a fisherman tell a tale, so tall be a half a mile,

As Grampa Walcott told that night in the Smokeroom on the Kyle.

 

In all the years that Skipper Bob Killick was Magistrate along this shore, the shrewdest piece of court work he had to handle was the time when Uncle Sol Noddy stole the two holes from Skipper Lige Bartle.

Now what good, you might say, is two holes? Not much nowadays since most people give up keeping dogs. But years ago, well how else can a man set a herring net under the ice? You cut two holes, about eight or ten feet apart, tie a rope to one end of a flake longer, poke it down through one hole, and hook it up through the other with a hand gaff. Oh yes, if you want to set a bigger net, you cut three holes, or even four.

But two holes was enough to serve Skipper Lige Bartle’s purpose that evening he was coming home down the Arm on dog team from his rabbit slips. He chopped his two holes, then hurried home to get his net and a flake longer so as to have it set and home again before night overtook him. He didn’t even stop for a bite to eat. Just grabbed a pair of dry cuffs and was off again, a spry man.

But spry as he was, Uncle Sol Noddy was spryer. Uncle Sol was already there and had just finished setting his net in Lige’s holes. Well, Lige ordered Sol to take that net out of his holes. Sol said they was his because he’d found them. Lige said they was his because he chopped them. Well, Sol said, be that as it might, he owned them now because possession was nine points of the law.

Skipper Lige was a younger man than Uncle Sol, and a bigger man. And if he hadn’t been a church-going man besides, he said after as how he’d a tied Uncle Sol to his own rope and reeved him down one hole and up through the other. As it was, he went home and he wired Skipper Bob Killick, the Magistrate, to come immediately, or a bit quicker if ‘twas possible. Skipper Bob wired back that he’d come and have court work in May, when navigation opened.

Public opinion was one-sided. Skipper Lige was a respectable man whereas Uncle Sol was the worst miserable hangashore on the coast. And to make matters worse, Uncle Sol was doing real well with the herring and even offered Skipper Lige a meal for his Good Friday dinner. I can’t repeat Skipper Lige’s answer but it made him feel so low that he didn’t have the face to go to church on Easter Sunday

Well, Pigeon Inlet School was packed for court work when Skipper Bob Killick come on his rounds in May and he read out the charge how Uncle Sol had stolen the property of Skipper Lige; namely and to wit, two holes.

Then Uncle Sol, instead of having the common decency to confess what he done and take what was coming, had the impudence to look the Magistrate right square in the face and say he didn’t know whether he was guilty or not, and what he would like to know was, “What was the law concerning holes?” Well, Skipper Bob was took right aback for a minute and he said he allowed the law concerning holes was like the law concerning anything else; you mustn’t steal them. Then Uncle Sol, brazener than ever, asked, “How could you steal a hole anyway?” And when Skipper Bob said what did he mean how could you steal a hole, Uncle Sol said cause a hole, well a hole was nothing, only a hole.

All this time poor Skipper Lige was sitting there saying nothing but swelling up like a gurnet, ready to bust. Then he said as how a hole might be nothing to the hangashore that stole it but ‘twas something to the man that had to chop it. But Skipper Bob called him to order so Lige kept quiet but he swelled bigger, if that was possible, until Skipper Bob ruled that on his first point, Uncle Sol had lost out and a hole was something.

“Alright then,” said Uncle Sol, “I only borrowed the use of his holes, never intending to keep them, and now he can have them back again.” Skipper Lige said the holes was drove out the Bay when the ice went out, but Sol maintained that holes was only fresh air and water and they were still up there in the Arm and Lige could have them and ten thousand welcomes. Well, Skipper Bob had to call a fifteen-minute recess on that, but after it was over he come back and he ruled as how Uncle Sol was wrong on account of how, in what he called the common law, a hole couldn’t be a hole unless there was an edge around it.

Then Uncle Sol tried his last dodge. He said as how a man couldn’t steal anything without shifting it from where he’d found it in the first place and that he hadn’t shifted these holes an inch. Skipper Lige said no, Sol hadn’t shifted the holes, not ‘cause he wouldn’t but ‘cause he couldn’t and if he could’ve he’d a slung the two holes over his back quick enough and gone off with them. Sol said be that as it might, the fact was he hadn’t shifted them and on that point, Skipper Bob Killick the Magistrate had to agree with him.

He give his verdict that, although Uncle Sol hadn’t actually stolen the holes, he had trespassed on them and he asked Uncle Sol what he had to say before sentence was passed. Well, Uncle Sol said, right cheerful-like, that if all he’d done was trespass against Skipper Lige then surely Skipper Lige, as a churchgoing man, would be only too ready to forgive those, including Uncle Sol, who had trespassed against him. And Skipper Lige bust right out then for sure and he said he’d forgive Uncle Sol when Uncle Sol give him back his holes, edges and all, and with that, Skipper Bob delivered his judgement.

He ordered Uncle Sol to cut two holes the following winter, in the same place, for Skipper Lige to set his herring net in and that was the end of it as far as the law was concerned. Of course, Uncle Sol got the best of it in the long run but that’s another story, and like Skipper Bob his ownself said the following summer, after he’d heard the outcome, he doubted very much if even the Supreme Court could do much to cure a hangashore like Uncle Sol Noddy, ‘cause he was one miserable hangashore if ever there was one.

 

After hearing the unkind remarks that Grampa Walcott passed about the stupidity of such animals as the rabbit and the beaver, you might get the idea he’s a man with no respect for dumb animals at all. But don’t get him wrong. You should hear him talk about what he calls genuine animals, ones that any up-and-coming country like Canada might well be proud of to have as their national animal.

Take, for example, the dog hood seal. Now there’s an animal with character. Why a dog hood will sit there on a pan of ice all day long minding his own business. Leave him bide and he’ll do as much for you. But molest him and see what happens, that is if you live to tell about it. Grampa says he’s heard tell about animals in foreign parts that have been known to fight ’til they’re dead. But the dog hood is different. Why he’ll fight after he’s dead. Skipper Lige Bartle, out swiling one morning years ago, shot and pelted one just after daylight and coming back that way late in the evening, the carcass of that old dog hood, he said, snapped at him and if Skipper Lige hadn’t been so yarry, he’d a lost a piece off his starboard leg.

The noblest animal of them all, says Grampa, is the Bull Moose and to prove his point he tells the story about Skipper Jonathan Briggs, that’s Pete Briggs’ father, and the experience he had one time with a bull moose. Now, Grampa is not sure about the exact date. All he’s sure of is that there was no war on at the time because the price of fish was low and times were bad, so he figures it was between forty five and fifty year ago, when Skipper Jonathan was in his prime, the spryest man with the longest legs that Pigeon Inlet ever produced.

Well this day, according to Grampa, Skipper Jonathan had an awful longing for meat. Naturally, of course, with times bad, there was only credit for flour and molasses and ’twas the wrong season for turrs. But he figured if he took his muzzle-loader and walked the two mile across Gull Mash, into the low woods, he might spy a rabbit or something that might help keep body and soul together. So off he went, muzzle-loader, powder horn, shot bag and all.

Now, as everybody knows, the shore to the nor’ard between here and Hartley’s Harbour is awful rugged, with cliffs about two hundred foot high and a sheer drop to the beach below. There’s not a tree to be seen all along that stretch of cliff except one old pine tree right on the edge about a mile to the nor’ard of here. Nowadays with the frost eating away the cliff every spring, that old tree is hanging out over the water and likely to fall anytime. But in those days ’twas standing straight up, right on the edge of that precipice, with the lowest limb about twenty feet off the ground.

Well, according to Grampa’s story, Skipper Jonathan left Pigeon Inlet that morning, followed the dog team trail along the edge of the cliff ’til he got to that old pine tree. Then taking his bearings from it, he turned off and headed straight across Gull Mash towards the woods, oh about two miles back. He stopped just before he got to the scrub timber and put about four fingers in his muzzle-loader, just about the right load for a rabbit. He put a cap on the nipple and went in, about half a gunshot, when what should he almost bump into head-on but this Bull Moose. For size the like he’d never seen before or even heard tell of and so close he could almost reach out and touch him with the muzzle of the gun. And then, as Skipper Jonathan often admitted afterwards, he got excited and lost his head. He up gun and fired right into that Bull Moose’s face although he should have known that four fingers would have about the same effect on that animal as a handful of pepper.

Well, the moose shook his head, give a snort, and took towards him and Skipper Jonathan scooted outta that clump of trees in a hurry and headed back across Gull Mash with the bull moose right on his heels. The mash was dry so Jonathan made good going, but so did the moose. Jonathan looked back once but what he saw didn’t look too pleasant so he hove away his gun and settled down to running. He said after that he remembered seeing a rabbit or two on the mash but they got out of the way to let somebody run as knowed how.

And then, Skipper Jonathan remembered an awful thing. He was headed straight for the cliff with a two hundred foot drop and sure death ahead of him and that Bull Moose, which was even worse, right behind him. But then he thought of something else – a hope. That old pine tree, straight ahead on the edge of the cliff. But the limb, the lowest one, twenty foot off the ground. Could he jump up to it? Well just then the moose snorted right down the back his neck so he opened his throttle, right to the last notch. The tree was just ahead. He judged his distance, not twenty foot from the edge of the cliff and he jumped with his hands above his head and his fingers stretched out, hoping to clutch that limb. Did he clutch it? says Grampa. No. Sad to say he missed it. Missed it on the way up that is but fortunately he grabbed it on the way down and that Bull Moose went through the air below ’im like he was shot from a gun and tumbled right down among the rocks in the landwash. And Skipper Jonathan worked his way along that limb to the trunk of the pine tree, got down on the ground and had that moose dressed and brought home to Pigeon Inlet in a boat before dark that evening.

That animal, said Grampa, dressed eleven hundred pounds and the authorities in St. John’s, when they heard it reported to ’em, wired Skipper Jonathan to distribute the meat among the poor families of Pigeon Inlet. Well, said Grampa, everyone is poor a time like that so ’twas cut and come again in every house in Pigeon Inlet for the next week or two. What an animal.

“Yes,” said Grampa, “if I had my way, the Bull Moose would be the national animal of Canada and every Pigeon Inletter would be proud then to be a Canadian”.

 

I suppose if the truth was told every place in the world got a cross to bear, even places like Toronto and Montreal. Anyhow for sure Pigeon Inlet got a cross. The fact that the District Nurse, instead of being stationed here where she ought to be, is stuck 6 miles away down there in that hole of a place, Hartley’s Harbour. And oftentimes when we were telling visitors how Pigeon Inlet is far and away the best place along the shore they say to us, “How come then you haven’t got the Nurse stationed there?” Well, here’s the story, much as it hurts any red-blooded Pigeon Inletter to have to tell it.

‘Tis a story of skullduggery on the part of a crowd of sleveens, especially Lige Grimes, the Hartley’s Harbour merchant. Now the Member promised us the nurse when he was on his campaign here 6 years ago. Trouble was he made the same promise to Hartley’s Harbour at a political meeting there the very next night. His opponent promised two nurses, one for each place, but nobody heeded him because after all look what side he was on.

Anyhow after the election, the Member got one nurse for the district and wrote to both places saying we better send petitions to the Department of Health and they’d decide which place would get her, according to the size of the petitions. Well, we figured that settled it because as everyone knows we got more people than Hartley’s Harbour, and naturally we didn’t leave any names off. Skipper Lige Bartle’s widow, why we had her down three times, first as Aunt Polly Bartle then as Aunt Mary Bartle and then as Mrs Lige Bartle. Grampa Walcott asked if that was strictly honest but Grandma snapped at him. Of course, it was cuz when we got the nurse Aunt Polly would give her as much trouble as any three ordinary women. So down she went, three times. But, in spite of that we found out afterwards, Hartley’s Harbour petition had exactly as many names as ours. Now how did they do it?

Levi Bartle, our merchant, accused Lige Grimes, their merchant, of taking names off headstones in Hartley’s Harbour graveyard and putting them on the petition. And Lige just grinned and said there was dozens of people in that graveyard who if they’d had a nurse would have been still alive to mark their own name, so what was wrong with someone else marking it for them.

Anyway, the petitions settled nothing so the Department of Health sent the nurse down with orders to spend three months at each place and pick her permanent headquarters to suit herself. Well now for sure we figured we had her, and Levi Bartle bet Lige Grimes $100 on the outcome. Levi shouldn’t have done that. Betting is wrong, especially against a sleveen like Lige Grimes. What made us sure we’d get her though was that right here in Pigeon Inlet is Aunt Sophy’s, the best boarding house on the coast or perhaps anywhere else. Then Bartle’s shop, where she’d have to go to do her shopping, is a palace compared to that dingy hole that Levi Grimes operates in. And to make things certain young Charlie Prior had just come back here from Corner Brook and assuming as how she’d like some company her own age, well there was Charlie, as well set up a young fellow as ever water wet.

She spent her 3 months with us and everything was wonderful. A nice little thing she was, a bit on the skinny side, just out from England. Her name, she said, was Miss Plumtree, although Jethro Noddy and Zeke Tacker said surely nobody had a name like that. Anyway, Aunt Sophy kept the grub to her, and young Prior used to hang around the house most evenings after supper and Aunt Sophy herself was heard to say that courting was the one thing that hadn’t changed since she was a girl.

Then Nurse Plumtree, yes that was her name, moved down to spend her 3 months at Hartley’s Harbour. Poor thing, we pitied her but like we said it wasn’t for long. Charlie Prior took her down in his motorboat and didn’t get back again till all hours. No, we didn’t have a suspicion even when we heard that Lige Grimes had a big cardboard notice tacked up in his shop saying “No smoking and of course none of that other thing allowed. By order of the Hartley’s Harbour Nurses Committee. We even started to lay out the foundation for the new dispensary we were going to build for her.

Well her 3 months down there ended but instead of moving straight up here to settle she went into St John’s to make her report. And still we suspected nothing til one night in Grampa Wallcott’s kitchen, me and him and Skipper Joe were listening to the news over the radio when all at once the fellow said “And now for the news sent in by our Hartley’s Harbour correspondent. He reports that Charlie Prior of the little village of Pigeon Inlet has accepted a position as clerk in the store of Elijah Grimes, the enterprising merchant of the progressive town of Hartley’s Harbour.

We looked at one another. What in the world was this? But the radio went on. Mr. Grimes has just commenced the construction of a new dispensary for Nurse Plumtree who will henceforth be permanently stationed at Hartley’s Harbour. In this connection, Mr. Grimes, on behalf of the Nurses Committee, gratefully acknowledges the receipt of a handsome donation of $100 from Levi Bartle of the aforesaid little village of Pigeon Inlet. I looked at Skipper Joe, he was purple. But the radio wasn’t finished. Nurse Plumtree is in excellent health although 3 months ago she was considerably worried about putting on too much weight. So much for Aunt Sophy’s cooking.

Well, that was the end of it or almost the end. a fortnight later poor Levi Bartle got a big thin package in the mail with a letter from large grimes. the letter said we’re sending you this now cuz we don’t need it no more. He opened the package. Yeah, you guessed it. It was almost covered with fly specks but you could still make out the words “No smoking and of course none of that other thing allowed. By order of the Hartley’s Harbor Nurses Committee”.

 

Whatever trouble we might have making a Canadian out of Pete Briggs, the same can’t be said about Skipper Joe Irwin. Why even before Confederation, Skipper Joe used to say how it would be a good thing, even though he never seemed sure what’d be good about it. I’ll never forget the day when Skipper Joe first found something to be proud of in his new citizenship. Almost four year ago it was, a Sunday afternoon. We were sitting in my kitchen, just the two of us, me being a bachelor he says he loves to come here to get away from the women and the youngsters, to find a bit of what he calls peace and quiet. Well, I happened to turn on the radio, expecting to hear a hymn, or perhaps a word of prayer when what should we hear, Sunday and all as it was, but this hockey game, with a fellow all worked up telling us all about it and a lot of people in the background almost as excited as he was. Yes, a hockey game.

Well in spite of it being Sunday, I didn’t like to switch it off while Skipper Joe appeared interested so we listened. And the game was between a crowd of Russians and a crowd of Canadians from British Columbia. Well, I said that as far as I was concerned, Russia and British Columbia was about the same distance from Pigeon Inlet but Skipper Joe reminded me that ‘twas Canada we joined up with four years before, so we kept on listening

And before long we found another reason for siding with the Canadians. Why, even their names sounded homelike, like our own. Now the Russians, they had outlandish names, like Boboff and Knockemoff and Pushemoff, things like that, whereas the Canadians – why there was one fellow there named Warwick; spry too, and Skipper Joe said he’d be bound, why he’d bet his compass, that fellow was related to Uncle Tom Warwick from Rumble Cove, just down the shore. Uncle Tom had a brother that went away to the mainland forty year ago and Uncle Tom is still expecting him back as soon as he saves up his passage money. But now, with his boy playing on this hockey team, it looks like he’ll bide up there after all.

Anyway, me and Skipper Joe found ourselves getting excited and cheering for Canada and, of course, for Rumble Cove whenever this Warwick did something smart. Then they stopped to take a spell and I said to Skipper Joe how perhaps we ought to call out to Grampa Walcott to come over and hear the game. But Skipper Joe said no, Grampa probably wouldn’t understand it. Well, the Canadians got the best of it, five to nothing I think it was, and Skipper Joe said how at last after four or five year, he’d found something to make him downright proud to be a Canadian.

But just then the door opened and who should come in but Grampa Walcott, all out of breath, trying to tell us what a wonderful thing he’d just heard on the radio and how the Roosians, as he called ’em, had given the Canadians an awful beating. Now we tried to explain to him that it was the other way around.

“And Grampa,” said Skipper Joe, “sure didn’t you hear the announcer telling about young Warwick, Uncle Tom Warwick’s nephew from Rumble Cove?”

“Yes,” said Grampa, “Indeed I did. And a spry young fellow he was too, most as spry as Uncle Tom was in his prime. But,” said Grampa, “he wasn’t half as spry as that Roosian fellow.”

“What Russian fellow?” said I

“Can’t recall his name,” said Grampa. “Twas an outlandish name anyhow.”

“Was it Boboff?” said I

“No, not he,” said Grampa. Well then we tried him with Pushemoff and Kickemoff but he shook his head. Then, “Ah,” he said. “Now I remember.”

“Who?” said I

“Faceoff,” said Grampa. “That was his name, Faceoff. Why,” said Grampa, “he was ten times spryer than young Warwick. Why one minute Faceoff’d be down in one end, the next minute he’d be down in the other end and before you could blink, there’d be Faceoff smack out in the middle. And another thing,” said Grampa. “He had good wind, this Faceoff. The others’d have to stop every few minutes to take a spell but he bided out there the whole time.”

Well, there was no use trying to explain hockey to Grampa at his age so we contented ourselves with telling him how it was his duty as a Canadian to cheer for his own side. He agreed, a bit dubiously though, and he hoped the Canadians had managed to convert Faceoff and get him to be a Canadian too. He said, “ ’cause if they kept on playing this hockey, the time would come when they’d surely need him.”

Whatever trouble we might have making a Canadian out of Pete Briggs, the same can’t be said about Skipper Joe Irwin. Why even before Confederation, Skipper Joe used to say how it would be a good thing, even though he never seemed sure what’d be good about it. I’ll never forget the day when Skipper Joe first found something to be proud of in his new citizenship. Almost four year ago it was, a Sunday afternoon. We were sitting in my kitchen, just the two of us, me being a bachelor he says he loves to come here to get away from the women and the youngsters, to find a bit of what he calls peace and quiet. Well, I happened to turn on the radio, expecting to hear a hymn, or perhaps a word of prayer when what should we hear, Sunday and all as it was, but this hockey game, with a fellow all worked up telling us all about it and a lot of people in the background almost as excited as he was. Yes, a hockey game.

Well in spite of it being Sunday, I didn’t like to switch it off while Skipper Joe appeared interested so we listened. And the game was between a crowd of Russians and a crowd of Canadians from British Columbia. Well, I said that as far as I was concerned, Russia and British Columbia was about the same distance from Pigeon Inlet but Skipper Joe reminded me that ‘twas Canada we joined up with four years before, so we kept on listening

And before long we found another reason for siding with the Canadians. Why, even their names sounded homelike, like our own. Now the Russians, they had outlandish names, like Boboff and Knockemoff and Pushemoff, things like that, whereas the Canadians – why there was one fellow there named Warwick; spry too, and Skipper Joe said he’d be bound, why he’d bet his compass, that fellow was related to Uncle Tom Warwick from Rumble Cove, just down the shore. Uncle Tom had a brother that went away to the mainland forty year ago and Uncle Tom is still expecting him back as soon as he saves up his passage money. But now, with his boy playing on this hockey team, it looks like he’ll bide up there after all.

Anyway, me and Skipper Joe found ourselves getting excited and cheering for Canada and, of course, for Rumble Cove whenever this Warwick did something smart. Then they stopped to take a spell and I said to Skipper Joe how perhaps we ought to call out to Grampa Walcott to come over and hear the game. But Skipper Joe said no, Grampa probably wouldn’t understand it. Well, the Canadians got the best of it, five to nothing I think it was, and Skipper Joe said how at last after four or five year, he’d found something to make him downright proud to be a Canadian.

But just then the door opened and who should come in but Grampa Walcott, all out of breath, trying to tell us what a wonderful thing he’d just heard on the radio and how the Roosians, as he called ’em, had given the Canadians an awful beating. Now we tried to explain to him that it was the other way around.

“And Grampa,” said Skipper Joe, “sure didn’t you hear the announcer telling about young Warwick, Uncle Tom Warwick’s nephew from Rumble Cove?”

“Yes,” said Grampa, “Indeed I did. And a spry young fellow he was too, most as spry as Uncle Tom was in his prime. But,” said Grampa, “he wasn’t half as spry as that Roosian fellow.”

“What Russian fellow?” said I

“Can’t recall his name,” said Grampa. “Twas an outlandish name anyhow.”

“Was it Boboff?” said I

“No, not he,” said Grampa. Well then we tried him with Pushemoff and Kickemoff but he shook his head. Then, “Ah,” he said. “Now I remember.”

“Who?” said I

“Faceoff,” said Grampa. “That was his name, Faceoff. Why,” said Grampa, “he was ten times spryer than young Warwick. Why one minute Faceoff’d be down in one end, the next minute he’d be down in the other end and before you could blink, there’d be Faceoff smack out in the middle. And another thing,” said Grampa. “He had good wind, this Faceoff. The others’d have to stop every few minutes to take a spell but he bided out there the whole time.”

Well, there was no use trying to explain hockey to Grampa at his age so we contented ourselves with telling him how it was his duty as a Canadian to cheer for his own side. He agreed, a bit dubiously though, and he hoped the Canadians had managed to convert Faceoff and get him to be a Canadian too. He said, “ ’cause if they kept on playing this hockey, the time would come when they’d surely need him.”

I read in a book one time where a fellow said there was nothing perfect in this world, and a good job too because, like he said, if this world was perfect why what would be the need of heaven. Well, that’s how it is with being a bachelor. It’s the next best thing to perfection, but not quite. And, as a man who ought to know what he’s talking about, I’ve got to confess that being a bachelor is a wonderful thing, but it’s got a few shortcomings. One of ‘em is this business of cookery. Another one of them, of course, is … but never mind that one, let’s get back to cookery

Now I’m not going to start any argument over whether a man can cook better than women. All I’m going to say is that I could cook if I had to. I remember thirty odd years ago when I was in a banker out of Mose Ambrose in Fortune Bay, that our cook was laid up for a week and, well I didn’t poison anybody and, apart from one fellow from Bay de L’eau, I didn’t get cussed on… much. But it’s a lot easier cooking for a crew of twenty-two men than it is cooking just for yourself and I’ll confess that, if you ever come to my house dinnertime to take pot luck, there’s lots of times you’d find the pot empty.

If there’s one thing I mortally hate more than anything else in the world, it’s trying to make my own bread. I remember the time I made a batch for the crew on the banker while the cook was laid up. It was, well not too bad, because then a man had a mixing pan of dough big enough to give vent to his feelings on. But trying to make bread for just one? Well, either the ball of dough is too small to get a proper hold on, or else you bake so much bread that most of it dries up before you get a chance to eat it. So, in later years, I’ve gotten away gradually from making bread at all, and come to depend more and more on toutens. Right this minute, if you was to drop in for a visit, I’d be hard put to offer you a slice of bread. But I could pass around a plate full of toutens that would make you come back for more. Not only that but, if you did come back a month later for what was left out of the same plateful, you’d find them as fresh as ever.

I’ll give you my recipe for making toutens but whatever you do don’t copy it out. You can’t make them any sense if you go by a recipe and thank goodness you can’t find anything about ‘em in the cookbooks. In my opinion, cookbooks are not democratic. Imagine a man or a woman writing a cookbook and telling me I must only put one cup full of molasses to every three cups of flour, or one spoonful of sugar to every cup full of butter. No, thank you. I’ll make my toutens to suit my own taste and I’ll advise you to do the same. So here’s my recipe to bachelors for making them.

First of all you need flour. How much flour? I don’t know. That’s up to you. It depends, I suppose, on how big a batch of toutens you figure on making. So the first item is flour, any amount, suit yourself.

Next comes molasses. How much? I don’t know. It depends first of all on how much flour you got and second on how sweet you want to make them. And for one man to try to dictate to another man how sweet he ought to make his toutens, well there’s too much of that kind of thing going on in the world already. Look at Europe.

Then comes fat pork. It’s got to be chopped up in little snags about a quarter inch each way or smaller. How much fat pork? Well, that’s your own business, providing of course you don’t have more fat pork than flour. A lot depends on how long you want to keep them from drying up and of course, how fond you are of fat pork.

Well, if you’ve got flour, molasses, and fat pork you can go ahead. There’s two other things that’s nice to have around in case you decide to use them: water and baking powder. Whether you’ll need water depends on how much molasses you use and as for baking powder, and how much of it, well how fluffy do you want them anyway? Personally, I never touch the stuff but that’s no reason why you shouldn’t be using baking powder if you feel like it.

As for how long to bake it, or how hot an oven to have, I don’t know. There is no thermometer on the oven of my old Waterloo, so the only advice I can give you is to bake them until they’re baked and then give him a minute or two extra to make sure. Then, after you’ve tasted one, you’ll find out that men are not so helpless in this world as the women try to make out.

And speaking of women, I’ll never forget the look on Aunt Sophy’s face that day last winter when I was laid up one day with a bit of a cold, and she and Grandma come down to my house to do what they call “looking out for me” and “straightening up my place up a bit”. It was lucky I spied them coming just in time to lock my bedroom door and put the key in my pocket because sure enough, Grandma tried the door but when she found it locked she just gave Aunt Sophy a signal and they said no more about it. But they give the rest of the house a going over, sweeping and dusting, even polishing my stove, talking all the time about “poor, dear, helpless Uncle Mose”.

Then Aunt Sophy opened my kitchen cupboard and spotted a platter full of toutens. She broke off one and tasted it. Then she turned to Grandma and said, “My mother that’s the best toutens you ever made. But you didn’t tell me you sent any down to Uncle Mose”. Grandma looked puzzled. Then she tasted one and she said, “It’s lovely all right, but I didn’t give ‘em to Uncle Mose. It must have been Aunt Mary Bartle. “Go away mother,” said Aunt Sophy. “Aunt Mary can’t make him as good as that.” “Who did make them Uncle Mose?” said Aunt Sophy. “I made them myself,” said I, “that’s who.” and poor Aunt Sophy’s chin dropped down onto her blouse. That was bad enough but then I said something I shouldn’t have said, only I was kind of riled on account of how they’d just been calling me “poor, helpless Uncle Mose”, so I said to ‘em “I’m awful sorry you caught me with such a poor batch. I don’t know what could have happened unless I lost the heat out of my oven just at the critical moment. But, said I, “next batch I make I’ll be more careful and I’ll send a few up to you.”

Well, poor Aunt Sophy, she finished sweeping up my kitchen but the pep was gone right out of her and she and Grandma slipped away the first chance they got.

 

On Christmas Day, of all days of the year, I did an awful brazen thing and I still can’t figure out whatever in the world possessed me to do it, especially in someone else’s house. Perhaps if I tell about it ‘twill help get it off my mind.

You see, I spent Christmas Day with Grampa & Grandma Walcott. They invited me 2 or 3 weeks ago and wouldn’t take no for an answer. Said ‘twas a day when no bachelor should be alone. So I was there. Their daughter, Aunt Sophy – she keeps the boarding house just up the road apiece – well she got no boarders now except a girl teacher and she was invited out to Fred Prior’s. So Aunt Sophy was there too. Just the 4 of us, spending Christmas Day together. Like Grampa called it, a snug crew.

Aunt Sophy’s a wonderful woman, young lookin’ too, and there’s been jokes and gossip about us ever since I come here. Not a word of truth in ‘em of course. How could there be? Why she could pick and choose anywhere.

That’s why I was uneasy until Grampa talked to me after church Christmas morning. He said “Yes, among the decorations Grandma and Soph have put up, there are 2 or 3 these wreaths of boughs with dogberries tied to em” but he figured they were just decorations. After all, what else would 2 grown women like Grandma & Soph have em up for?

That eased my mind a lot cause I’ve heard tell about what young fellows and girls do Christmas-time under those wreaths. Of course I knew Aunt Sophy wouldn’t have the like on her mind but I was afraid I might get under one of ‘em unknownst to meself and she might think I was brazen enough to have it in my mind. Then Grampa told me that one of ‘em was pinned up over the inside door of the front porch and the other to the parlour ceiling.

“So Mose,” he said, “me boy, there’s your chart. Now steer accordin’ to it”.

Sure enough, as soon as I opened Grampa’s front door I could see for meself that Aunt Sophy had these wreaths up, just for decorations, or else she’d forget where she’d hung ‘em. Because there she was standing right under one, inviting me in. But I wouldn’t embarrass her for the world, so I pretended I’d left my pipe home and said I’d be back in a minute. When I did ‘twas through the back door. There was nothing in that to make her look disappointed was there? No. I must have just imagined it.

After dinner – and I hope you’ve tasted saltwater ducks the way Grandma bakes em – we went into the parlour. Sure enough, the other one was hung right from the middle of the ceiling. So I tell you I hugged the shoreline pretty close except when Aunt Sophy was playin’ hymns on the organ. But, she musta forgot about that wreath too, because one time she stood right under it and said that with her high heels, she’d bet she was just as tall as I was. She’s not, of course, but being polite I said yes, I allowed she was. What else could I do?

Once Grandma and Grampa stopped under the wreath and Aunt Sophy nudged me and said “Oh Uncle Mose, look at ‘em. How Christmassy”. Lucky I was holding the snapshot album at the time so I looked at ‘em on page 4, and when she said “No, not there”, I looked at ‘em again on page 10.

Then Grampa kept hinting about how ‘twas a special occasion and Grandma said “oh well, alright” and she sent Aunt Sophy out to the pantry to bring in what she’d find behind the bread tin. Now, perhaps ‘twas the fault of her high heels but even so, she should’ve brought the bottle back in her hands, not on a tray. Anyway she stumbled, the tray tipped and Grampa let out a dismal groan. I got there in time, grabbed the bottle in one hand, while with the other I brought Aunt Sophy up into the wind on an even keel.

She must’ve misunderstood me, because when I asked her was she hurt she just looked straight up at the spruce bough and dogberries.

“Oh, Uncle Mose,” she said, “You’ve caught me at last”.

Then it happened. Or I should say it half happened, because all I could do was stand there like a gommil, holding the bottle.

Then a funny thing happened. You see, she asked me to come with her to the pantry for the wine glasses in case the top shelf was too high, and I said I would, in a minute. Now, I won’t say I hold with what young people do under these wreaths Christmas-time, and I won’t say I don’t. But I will say this. A man got pride in his work and he don’t like to half-do a thing and have people think that’s the best he can do. That’s why as soon as Sophy was gone to the pantry, I asked Grandma if I could take that wreath with me for a minute and pin it up over the pantry door. She said yes.

But did I hang it over the pantry door? No. Cause by that time Sophy had the one brought in from the porch and hung there. She explained that pretty things should be where people could see ‘em.

Is she cross with me? No, either she’s very forgiving or else she’s forgot all about it. Because afterwards, when I tried to apologize and blame it on Christmas, know what she said? She said she wished it was Christmas all the year round.

Kelly Russell

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