Tales and Items of Interest

of round steak would be cut, the bone sawed and the handsale with the slide weight would be held high and proud. Usually, a 5 or 6 pound rib roast would complete the purchase, all for 3 or 4 dollars. My Mother would have the frying pan hot and lots of vegetables cooked and Gandy would join us for a hearty meal at which time he would tell us stories of his many exploits: pitching baseball, boxing, playing defense in hockey, hunting or trapping. Gandy did it all and loved every moment.

More Memories

The big drum of molasses was kept in the little barn behind the store. To fill a jar in the wintertime, Harry would set the jar under the tap of the drum, go back to the store to fill a grocery order, and in spite of it being “as slow as cold molasses” it 1956 was not uncommon under good conversation for Harry to forget the jar, and oh what a mess!

Lela recalls driving the ‘ 46 Chev half-ton, after her classes at Prince of Wales College, to Eastern Hay & Feed, DeBlois Bros., R.E. Mutch, and Carvell Bros. the wholesale suppliers for the store; and other days delivering groceries on the way to college and being reported for squealing tires when she ran out of time.

The gas pump with the big glass bowl on top indicated the gallons hand pumped. When the gallons required were in the bowl, it would then be gravity fed into the vehicle.

Practicing for the school Christmas Concert provided an opportunity to call at the store on the way to the hall. Those were the days when an O’Henry or Molly’O bar cost a nickel. The problem was to come by that nickel!

Muttart’s store in Marshfield closed in 1957. Harry died late in December of that same year while visiting his daughter Lela, her husband Bill Gillespie and their children in Sept Isles, Quebec.

Alva, the older daughter of Harry and Gladys (Ferguson) Muttart, resides in Don Mills, Ontario where she and her husband John (Jack) Smith raised their two children.

Lela is currently married to Frank Sawler and resides in Halifax. Three of her family live close by, a son lives in Vancouver and a daughter in Australia.

Gladys, Harry’s widow, later married Fenton

Court, general merchant ‘ the community of

Courtesy of Lela Sawler (nee Muttan) The Store depicting gas pumps of the past, with Lela and oldest children Don and Wendy

Bedford. Gladys passed away in 1991. She was a faithful member of the Marshfield Women’s

Institute, Women’s Missionary Society and United

Church Women.

In 1986, the house was sold by Gladys to Roland and Julie Ford who live there with their daughter Heather and son Anthony.

Submitted by Wally Wood

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