going out for a drive they were going. And if they weren’t, stay home. You weren’t going to go down there and get down on your knees and plead with them to come for a drive with you. I know I wouldn’t.

[Parents weren’t strict], oh no, no, not like they are today. Oh no, no, if you put the blamey to them, they’d think you were a minister’s son. Yeah, boy, yes, put the blamey to them. The old people would believe anything them days. They’re getting too cute [today], because they’re scared to death of these cars, the old people are you know. Young people goes out . night, [the old people] don’t know whether they’re coming back or not. But a horse and wagon, you knew they’d come back.

I remember one time George Beers in Belle River and I had a date with Annie Ross...and Minnie Bell’s sister Helena Beaton. It was on a Saturday night and we met John Robert Ross, that was Tom’s John Robert in Pinette, coming with the two girls. And he had a new buggy, a brand new yella—wheeled buggy, that he got at Norman Gillis’s, I guess.

He was running up and down the road with the yella beast and it kinda made me mad and we started racing. We were coming down from Malcolm Ronald’s [Beaton] gate. There was a brow there and there was a narrow culvert in the hollow, just pretty near opposite Damon Ross’s, and we collided there. I took five spokes out of his new wagon wheel and he was going to sue me for it. He didn’t, though. I had a bent axle but that didn’t bother me. The girls got out of the wagon and walked home. We were doing the growling there on the road.

I knew if I couldn’t get one [girl] I could get another somewhere between here and Montague... . I took lots of fellas out; they couldn’t get a girl. The girls were scared to death of them. I was no angel myself but, goddam it, it [was] no trouble to get a girl. Bad as I was.

The way it was with me when I was a young fella, I wasn’t a damn bit fussy you know. I could tell pretty well whether a girl liked my what— would-you—call—it, habits, or whatever the hell you’d call it. If she didn’t it was all right with me and if she did it was all right with me.

Horsing Around

[1 was] about ten, eight, nine, or ten [when I learned to ride]. I drove horseback from Point Prim to down there at Wood Islands Church. Horseback, yeah. There was just a certain person that could drive on horseback, young fella. I’ve seen girls riding horseback too, sure. But the old people, you know, they ’d need a step ladder to get on a horse when they get stiff and old. You could jump off the ground on a horse’s back and away

166 BELFAST PEOPLE