Winnebago and they wanted us to go with them. They were going to go up to Alaska. When we got out to Saskatchewan, Riceton was only an hour. I said, “I’d love to go. That’s the place where I worked.”

Drove down to the old farm. Found out where I worked 48 years before. But I couldn’t find anybody at all living. I couldn’t find anybody that I knew out there. They were all gone away or dead. The old farm was sold: it was taken over by another big farmer. He bought all that land and some more land around. Even the house was gone. The big barn was gone. He turned it into a big sheep ranch.

First Car

I just went back to the same old work. Working in the woods or farm. We have a bit of woods up the road here about two miles. We was always in our own woods, cutting lumber and wood and everything. Taking out lumber. Haul it to the mills and sell it. And then the pulpwood came out, and chips, and stuff like that. Chip wood. That was smaller stuff. You’d sell that to the chip mills — they’d make boxes.

There wasn’t too much excitement, I’ll tell you. Not till the cars came out. But I didn’t get a car till after I was married five or six years. There wasn’t too much excitement when there was no cars... . We’d walk a bit. We’d walk up to Eldon and around the block.1 There weren’t too many cars around here then. Not too many would have them. Couldn’t afford it. Course, they were a lot cheaper than they are now. Still, I couldn’t afford one.

First car I seen passing was, I believe, 1917. That was at night. They weren’t allowed to run on the road then. 1918, I think, they started running on the Island. But this fella had a car, bought long before that. He took a drive out one night, cut through the country here. We seen the car pass and we didn ’t know what the devil it was. The track in the mud, the tire prints. I took a shingle and I went out and I run the shingle under that track and I had it, looking at it, for days after. I thought it was something wonderful. Something wonderful.

Forget the name of the fella that had it. You see, he knew they were going to run, and he bought this car, took it home from the States somewhere. He lived in Charlottetown. He sneaked a drive out. A lot of the old fellas heard the racket going around and thought it was a horse run out again.

1. The triangular block formed by the Pinette Road, Roseberry Road and the present day Trans Canada Highway. See map on frontispiece.

Baxter Ross 233