You'd take a load home with you. We used to yard it1, and we used to have our dinner out there in the bush. There was a little island nearby and we'd all make for there at dinnertime, and boil the kettle. Oh, you'd be hungry as a bear. It was healthy work. That was good stuff too. It'd last for 20 years on the land. This farm is all mud because we were lucky, you know what I mean. The shore is right down here by the bridge. We were lucky that way. Clear Roads I drove mail out here for 20 years, back in the '30s when times were rough. And in those 20 years I went a hundred and five thousand miles with the horse. Not the same horse! Please be God, but it would run out, I think. Pick up the mail...about nine or eight o'clock at night. They drove at night. You know, the train was running them times; came out on the trains. Sometimes the old train'd be an hour late. We'd start up here...and go down through Orwell there, Orwell Cove , and then back up to the post office with the letters I'd pick up. You'd have to take them back up to the post office. Only'd be a couple of hours going around. When the girls got big enough, they went around. They weren't perhaps ten. Two of them'd go, and then in the fall of the year they'd be late getting back; you know, it'd be dark. You'd hear them singing for a mile away. Hell of a great time. The two of them singing to beat the band. Oh, it was good roads. Well, after a storm, you'd have to get out and break the road. There was no snowplows them times, so we all had to get out after a big snowstorm. See, there'd be about ten in the neighbourhood; there'd be ten men out. I've seen snow four feet on the level. The horse ahead would get tired, so then they'd make the fella from behind go ahead for a while. And so on. Each district had to break their certain roads, their own roads, perhaps two and three or four miles. We didn't have roads like they have today. There was no pavement; all clear roads then, about 30 feet instead of 60 today. Ditches just like there is now. Hills and hollows, and through the woods and what not. One Bad Apple Some years ago we had a new priest and he was kind of inquisitive, you know, and he was asking me one day, "What was your schooldays like?" 1. haul it in the woodsleigh. Jack Naddy 143