credit to our Belfast area. On the ninth loan we were asked for 40,000 dollars and I got a 1 10,000 dollars on that one. Oh well, it wasn’t me. The money was there. The people in the Belfast area that I had to do business

with was just out of this world. It wasn’t in the big way. We never got too much ifthere was a big farmer

working. He had all his money tied up. But you’d go into other, small places and they’d have money, money, money. All kinds of it. Yeah, cash, sometimes cash; and sometimes they’d write you a cheque. There was an awful lot of our boys overseas, and their mothers and their wives were investing their money on Victory Bonds, and it was just a pleasure to go to all those places.

I could tell you a story about one particular lady. I sold her 14 thousand dollars worth of bonds during the period, and the last loan, when I went to see her, she said she didn’t have any money. I put the pressure on pretty hard and then she finally told me if I’d transfer some money out of a bank to another bank for her — she didn’t go to town herself - that she’d give me two thousand dollars more. So I did that and when I come back to the house with the papers she went in another room and came out, dumped two thousand dollars on the table in bills. Cash. And I says, “My goodness,” I says, “you shouldn’t keep all this money in the house.” I said, “You afraid somebody would rob you?” She pointed. There was an axe back of the door. She said, “If anybody came in and tried to rob me, I’d cut their damn head of

And the funny part of it all, she had all this money and she’d walk three miles to the store with a dozen of eggs to get a half a pound of tea1 at that time.

Quartettes

Our first group, that’d be in the ’205, [was] the Legion Quartette... . I was soprano, Bobs West* was tenor, and Jack LeStrange was second bass, and Dan Ross was first bass. All Legion men, yeah. There’s two of us still living; myself and Bobs are still living. Jack and Dan are passed on.

Our other quartette [was] the Belfast Quartette. Johnny MacWilliams was first bass, Martin MacDonald was second bass, I was soprano and Lloyd Martin was tenor. That really went over big. We were very, very popular.

1. It was common practice to trade eggs and other fresh farm products for other food or dry goods which couldn’t be provided by the farm.

194 BELFAST PEOPLE