Coming Home

Every fall Lawrence would go to the lumberwoods in Maine. That’s my brother. And Mother’d make him ever so many pairs of stockin’s. [And] she used to even give him a lot of pure, clean, white cotton. She’d wash old sheets or whatever it was and had them all pressed in case there was someone had cut themselves in the woods. Imagine!

And he’d go every fall and then he’d come home in the spring. I don’t know what pay they’d get then but it meant he worked all winter, see? He’d bring home some money in the spring to help out.

At that time there was no railroad; he’d walk from Charlottetown home. This is funny. Every night, they’d have to go out to the barn to see the horses to give them a mess. That’s for sure thing. So this night, Father was coming down, and we had a dog. And when Father came to the house the dog made down the hill. Father went to bed, and about an hour after or so a rap came on the door... .

There was a winter road that went from the church to Newtown...and as Lawrence was taking his walk in from town he took this short cut and the dog met him on this road between Newtown and [Iona]. Now, what do you know about that? Could you believe it? Now, how did that dog know that he was on that road? Yeah, I think that was terrific. [Coming] from the

lumberwoods.

Apple Pie

Well, my mother. At the time when she was married there was no pump you know. They had to carry the water quite a distance... , all the water up the hill for everything they did. Later on, they used to go to where the brook was in the summertime and make a fire and wash like that.

Besides that, they used to have to help out with the grain. You know those old machines to put the sheaves out? They’d have to throw the sheaves out and take the grain and make a band — you’ve seen that done? — and bind the sheaves. And then when the field’d be all cut, they’d have to go out and stook. The women helped do that. They’d often help when they were taking it into the barn; they’d help in the same way with that.

We’d be out picking potatoes and we’d come in in the evening. And poor Mother. I never come [home] in the evening but she’d have two or three chickens cooked up... , cooked with all that goes with it. And apple pie. She was the greatest soul for apple pie. That’s what we had when we’d come home in the evening. We’d be terrible hungry. I can see it yet and feel it yet.

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