Community Litt-

chicken coop and a hen flew up and scared him. He was so scared he almost ran right through the door.

With electricity also came running water and indoor plumbing. Before that time some people in the community, but not all, had gas engines for pumping water. Electricity certainly made all aspects of running a household more convenient and less time consuming and labor intensive. If ever an appliance made life easier for the women in the homes, it was the electric washing machine. Previous to it, “wash day" on lVlonday was a long, drawn out and back breaking affair. It started with pumping and hauling water from the well house, heating it on the wood—fired stove, scrubbing each item on a scrub board (with homemade soap), rinsing and wringing things out and finally, spreading articles on the grass or hanging them over a fence or rope line to dry. Blankets would get washed once a year. You tried not to use much soap because you would never get it out. lfyou had a creek you would wash them in that instead of hauling water in. It makes one tired and anxious just to think about it. Gary lVIacPhail remembers when his Uncle Eddy Morrison from Charlottetown put an electric motor on their washing machine and a couple ofyears after that, he put one on the cream separator. He said that a few years later they hit the big time and bought a “real” electric separator. It certainly was a great thing when farmers also hooked up electricity in their barns. Working around cattle and straw bedding while using gas or oil lanterns was very dangerous. Also, having electric milking equipment was much more convenient and took much less time to get the job done.

3 Years ago one needed to have a license to have a radio. Around 1948 one could listen to soap operas on the radio in the afternoons — Ma Perkin's was put on by the detergent Oxydol. People used to run home from school to listen. There'd be four 15 minute episodes in an hour. People would monitor the use of the radio closely since batteries ran down and had to be filled at the service station.

Today we often take electricity for granted. That is until we lose it

for one reason or another. One such time residents will never forget, was the snow and ice storm in October 1974 when the power was out

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