know, those [kerosene] lamps, we never thought anything [of them]. Now, if you light one of them lamps and the power’s off, you can’t see a wink. Seems so funny. Then, it was all they had.

Times of Joy

You know, when we went skating we didn’t have the skates they have today. They used to lock on your shoe. There was some handle you’d pull and they’d lock on your shoe. Oh Lord, perhaps you’d be going like the wind and the thing’d come off. You’d come down on the back of your head. It’s a wonder we never had concussions. We’d be there for the longest time before we’d get our breath.

But I used to like to coast. And we used to have sleighs and get on the hill over there in front of Beatons’s. Coasting. I used to like that. We’d go down, you know, like the wind, and then you’d walk back up that hill, never think a thing of it. Talk about your exercises. And cold? Lord, I’d get home — I remember I’d get home sometimes and I couldn’t hardly walk. My feet — I just couldn’t move them. But we wouldn’t dare say a word because they wouldn’t let us out again. We’d pull off the things, and warm them, and off again.

The biggest kick I think I ever got out of anything? Moore1 at Eldon used to keep those candy, you know, long sticks of candy. And there’d be a ring on it. My gosh, when my father’d be going to Eldon — they were a cent, I think —we’d send for one of those. And we’d sit on the fence from the time he went out of sight till he’d come home, waiting for that. It was such a thing to get. Can you imagine now the joy we got out of things then!

Same with our stockin’s at Christmas — when you’d hang up your stockin’. We’d have the place where we were going to put the nail, oh, months before that. I’d have my nail, and somebody else’d have theirs, and all those stockin’s would be hanging around. And however they got stuff to go in them, I don’t know. But there’d be an orange and an apple: and the thing that was so lovely was those great, big raisins. Oh, big? You don’t get them now — the great, big fellas. They’d be in a tissue paper.

We’d never get up in the mornings early, but that morning we’d be up before daylight. Going back upstairs feeling those things in the stockin’. Oh, what a joy! Everything was so good.

Then, after breakfast, we’d take a run up overto Beatons to see what they

got, and go somewhere else to see what they got.

1- James St. Clair Moore operated a general store in the village of Eldon. \_____________________

Kate MacLean Emery 27