from Freetown, and the Auld warehouse was rented to Simmons & MacFarlane. That phase of the store’s business has ended.

Keeping a country store in the first half of the twentieth century was a full time job. The day began between 7:00 and 7:30 in the morning and ended when the work was finished, usually between 10:30 and 11:00 at night, six days a week. The store was not only a place where one purchased needed supplies, it was also a meeting place for the people ofthe community. The women, after buying their groceries, would often go to visit friends or relatives in the village, while their husbands stayed in the store and visited and talked among themselves. For a number of years the only telephone in Freetown was the one in the store, and on the night ofan election day, many people would congregate there and the telephone operator in Kensington would be called for information about election results.

Also, there was the evening mail to be received. The train bringing the mail from Charlottetown and points east, as well as the ‘foreign mail’, ice in the Northumberland Strait, or snow on the railroad, caused delay and it might be close to midnight when it arrived. Nevertheless some people would wait, for newspapers and letters were very important in the days before there were telephone, radios or televisions in every home.

And as they waited they talked; and the clock ticking away the minutes and the hours listened and understood it all.

I do not know who built the buildings that became the store, but the owner immediately before my father was Albert Craig. He built another store in Emerald Junction in the early part of the century and moved there to live.

My father, Robert C. Auld, came to Freetown from Covehead in 1906 or 1907. I have an order written by him to Carter & Co. in Charlottetown, dated October 2, 1907, on a letterhead with the firm name of Auld & Co. In another communication, written in the fall of 1910, Charles Taylor is mentioned as working in the store. I think he was a partner in the business, but have no record of the name ever having been Auld & Taylor. Mr. Taylor had previously owned the farm, now owned by Robert Jardine, and in 1916 or 1917 decided to take up farming again, this time in Western Canada. His place in the store was taken by Stavert Walker, a farmer living in Freetown, on the farm now owned by Andrew Mile (code 44). Due to ill health, Mr. Walker decided to move to a place with less rigorous climate and in 1923 he and his family moved to Sydney, N.S. His share in the business was bought by Davis Baker, a farmer living in South Freetown. Until the late 1920’s the firm was Auld & Baker, but in 1929 or 1930 Mr. Baker sold his share to my father, who remained the sole owner of the business until 1960, when he sold to Lorne and Alberta Reeves.

It was in 1929 that the Great Depression hit the Western World, and not even the small community of Freetown was sheltered from the shock of falling markets. Farmers and their families still needed groceries and other supplies, but with the very small amount of money they were receiving for what they had to sell,

they had little money with which to buy. Many businesses throughout the country failed. The store in Freetown survived.

By the mid—thirties there was some indication of recovery in the economic world, and this was accelerated by the outbreak of the War in 1939. During the war years some commodities were rationed and others, not so essential, were in short supply, business was brisk for once again people had money to buy. And after the War ended it was soon evident that society was not settling into the patterns of the pre-1939 world.

The men in the store in the evenings were talking of new, more efficient cars, and the possibility for roads being open for automobiles all the year round; of supermarkets, and self-service stores, and other modern techniques of selling. They talked, too, of television bringing into their living-rooms pictures of places and of events all over the world, and they wanted what they saw advertised, even though many of these things had little to do with their needs.

The clock listened but it could not understand, for this world, of which the men talked, had no place in it for the old store. And the store, which had weathered two World Wars and the Great Depression, could not understand it either. The Space Age had dawned, and this was something with which it could not cope.

Only the main building now remains, and it has changed into a dwelling house, but I hope that inside it, somewhere, is the clock, aging, and full of memories. Submitted by Dorothy Heighton

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