22 It Happened in Iona ness woman and hard worker. Since the store was attached to the house, long hours were the order of the day and night. She kept a good stock of general merchandise with the train for many years being her usual mode of transport. Short in stature, Mary had a special wooden box which she pulled out and stood on while talking on the wall office telephone. A ritual enacted many evenings was a phone call from either of two elderly ladies from Eldon inquiring whether or not the train had arrived. Mary's loud talk on the phone and her having to stand on the box were a source of considerable amusement. The store was contained in roughly two-thirds of the main building with the remaining one-third, referred to as the "back place", used for storage of shelf merchandise. Outside and a short distance away was the warehouse which housed the heavier things, such as flour, feed, wire and oil. Barrels of molasses were for the most part kept in the store's basement. The rolling of these casks down the outside cellarway was always a tricky undertaking. Hand-pumped gas tanks stood close to the store and especially during the years of heavy gravel hauling from Valley pits in the late 30s and 40s gas sales were brisk. A coal stove in the centre of the store was for many years its heat supply and centre of coziness, with gas lamps really giving the place a glow at night. As a youngster I was very much fascinated by these gas lamps and one night when not many were around I decided to investigate the strength of the mantles and tapped one with the end of my mitt. To my horror the flimsy thing evaporated immediately. Fortunately Joe Cairns soon arrived on the scene and without fanfare simply tied on a new mantle, set a match to it and got it purring again. It was for me a great lesson by discovery. This oldish country store was a great gathering place by day, but especially in the evenings after the arrival of the train and mail. A small room toward the back served for long years as the community post office and source of three district mail routes. Many nearby residents who did not have boxes congregated there to pick up their mail, to shop and socialize. People gener¬ ally were never in a hurry to leave. For those with horses, a convenient wooden rail was available by the side of the store to which animals were tied in a row. As a youth I made frequent trips on foot to the store, or to "the corner" as we called it, most often with a potato basket in hand to carry back the groceries. Many times we would ex-