l

‘years later, it made interesting reading, and stirred one’s imagination of the conditions in those far-off days. So I am asking you to not read this closing _chapter in which I have attempted. in a very imperfect way to present conditions of the present day in Lower Freetown, but to lay it up on the lshelf and come back to it in one hundred year’s time 1, then read it from _.tl1at perspective.

Unlike the olden days when the mode of travel was on foot or horse- Fback. or after the roads became wide enough to permit of such luxury. ta two-wheeled dray cart or a four-wheeled wagon. tO-day’s transportation is the high-powered automobile, built to travel at a far greater speed that the sixty miles per hour. allowed by law on the open highway. with lsomewhat lesser limits ('35 —40) in populated areas.(a motion to increase ’the speed limit to 70 miles per hour was defeated in Legislature. spring jof 1971) Some si\ty yeais ago autos we1e piohibitcd by law trom travelling 3011 the highways of the piovince as they were “a dangeIous contraption ’ ‘and were supposed to be a terror to all good sensible horses. Gradually. however, they were allowed to run on certain days on certain roads. and the thin edge of the wedge was inserted. so that now, for many years there has been unrestricted travel. One wonders if the people living in the days of the opposition to cars, could have looked forward into the future to the present day, and foreseen the time when a traffic fatality was so common that it does not even rate a front page notice, and numbers in the dozens each year, (40 on P.E.l. in 1969, and some half a dozen fewer in 1970) ifthey would not have given of their life’s blood to prevent the invasion of this all-time killer. But such is the price of progress.

The urge of the times seems to be for faster and more powerful cars. The slow driver on the road is a nuisance, causing traffic line-ups and tempting reckless drivers to take unnecessary risks in passing. The saying “A man over seventy driving under twenty—five miles per hour, is more dangerous than a man under twenty-five driving over seventy” may be more truth than fiction.

When autos started to run 011 P.E.l. the roads were in a very unimproved condition Of course snow plows were unheard of. and when the first snow came in the fall the cars were all put into the garage jacked up. and blocks put under the axles. tires taken otf and the battery removed and taken to a garage in Summerside, where it was supposed to be checked periodically and kept charged. all ready for the arrival of spring. and passable roads.

With the arrival of old man winter. the almost daily chore of the farmer was to hitch his horse and sleigh and make a track on the road for the mail driver to get through with “His Majesty’s Mail". Until about the year 1010. when woven fencing came on the market and began to replace the pole fences along the road-side. which caught their fill of snow. the track was mostly in the fields. where it had to be marked with bilshes stuck in the snow. so the same track could be followed after the next storm. In the spring of the year long stretches of snow. in badly drifted places. often had to be shovelled by hand to allow the wagons to run. This work was unpaid labor supplied by the ratepayers of the district- In the last few

39