As a small child I sucked two of my fingers. Jessie, who
still lived next door at that time, decided she was going to get rid of the habit. She said
I could sleep with her at Grandma’s house if I didn’t suck the fingers anymore.
To sleep at Grandma’s house was really something. I was a long time getting to sleep
but the habit was broken. I remember the house well with a large back kitchen, across the
hall the kitchen with red cobblestones underneath the stove, a red settle (couch) and her
foot sewing machine. In the large pantry there were more tables and chairs, cupboards and
a barrel chair in the bottom of which were mitts and socks. In the front room was a fancy
stove, a round dining-room table and straw bottomed chairs, a two-headed couch, the blue
shiny chandelier, the side board containing her blue Royal Porcelain dishes from England,
the lustreware, and laced-curtained windows, one of which was a bay window and contained
some of her many house plants.
The Ellis family in
the early 30's. Back row: Gord Ellis (our cousin) and a fellow and
three ladies from St.John's (who were also cousins). The man
to the right is Uncle Sim, just back from the Klondike. Front Row:
sisters Dorothy and Millie. (Courtesy of Abbie Whiffen) |
We used to enjoy viewing the pictures on the stereoscope.
There were two large ornate picture frames, one of Grandpa Ellis with his long flowing
beard and the other of Grandma in her high neck dress and hat. Then the front porch with
more house plants in lovely earthenware jardinieres. Upstairs four large furnished
bedrooms and a closet filled with quilts and hooked mats. I learnt later how she came to
have so many mats. When she delivered a baby and the husband couldn’t afford to pay
her the woman would hook a mat for her instead. Grandma was a very energetic, out going
and out spoken person. She often baby sat us and gave Mom some of her dishes and
lustreware before she died. Grandpa had died much earlier. He was quite the opposite of
Grandma, being quiet and soft spoken.
I
don’t remember believing in Santa Claus very much. When Millie was quite small, she
kicked up a fuss wanting to know the truth about Santa Claus and Pop told her, so then I
knew too. But I do remember having fun with Audrey who was six years younger. We convinced
her one Christmas Eve that we had seen Santa and we had. When we went to bed we looked out
the bedroom window and saw Pop going next door with presents for York’s children.
Believe or not we had lights on our Christmas Tree even though there was no electricity.
We had tiny candles in metal containers which clipped onto the tree branches. When our
friends came to visit, we would light the candles, stand and look at them for a minute and
then blow them out. Our Christmas cards would be hung from strings across the ceiling and
we would memorize the names of the senders. Most of them came from uncles and aunts in the
United States and our parents would say, "My, if they could only drop in for a visit,
how nice that would be." They missed their brothers and sisters so far away.
Practising for the Christmas Concert was fun with
recitations and a flag drill and then on the night of the concert York would take us back
and forth on the horse and slide. The Christmas Concert also served as Speech Night and
successful students received their diplomas at that time. One memory of Christmas stands
out; five or six of us children went to visit one of the children’s
great-grandmothers who lived alone in a little old house down by the swimming hole. She
took an apple from her cupboard, put it on the table, cut it in six pieces and shared it
out to us kids. We also had jannies or mummers come to visit during the Christmas
season
but not as many as we wanted as we lived off the main drag. Sometimes we would go
jannying ourselves. On New Year’s Eve I remember Mom and I going to the Watch Night
Service and walking home about 12.30 a.m. with the snow crunching beneath our feet and
Pop with the fresh meat sizzling in the frying pan when we got home.
We learnt our lessons by the light of the kerosene lamp. We
also had a lamp for our bedroom; sometimes during the summer when a "nipper"
would be buzzing around our heads we would get up, light the lamp, watch for it to pitch
and then hold the lamp underneath it until it fell into the chimney. And then there were
the house flies. They were a nuisance and we had no screens. One of the first things I did
when I went home on holiday was to go to the shop and buy a spray gun and spray and make
war on them. One Sunday Mom and Pop went to visit friends at a large fishing town and
they stayed for supper. The next morning Mom said, "You complain about the flies, but
there when they land in the tea, they just flick them out again." The more fish the
more flies, I suppose.
The Northern Lights, the Moon especially when it was full,
the stars and The Milky Way are all part of special memories. They were easier to see
without street lights. We often looked for the Evening Star, The North Star, The Big
Dipper and The Little Dipper. One night Millie and I were coming home from down harbour.
We stopped at the top of the drung (a narrow lane) to watch the Northern
Lights. Millie’s boyfriend
was reported as missing in the war at that time and she started to cry and sob and I
couldn’t do anything but wait until she stopped.
Compulsory education didn’t become law until the early
forties, but Pop said, "Abbie always had that." It was unfortunate it
didn’t become law sooner. The health care system left a lot to be desired as well. A
Dr. Smith came one day to inspect the cattle for bovine TB. Everyone was nervous that day
but the cows checked out okay. I guess it was often survival of the fittest, but Grandma
Ellis delivered hundreds of babies, including twins, and didn’t lose one. Pop
survived three attacks of rheumatic fever while growing up. Mom would knit the homespun
underwear for him. It was cold out on that salt water. When Uncle Sim came home from The
Klondike, he would help Mom with the knitting. I would take it to him and when it was
ready to add more stitches I would have to fetch it back. Grandma’s house always
smelled of iodine then as he would have a big feather and paint his joints with the
iodine. He suffered a lot from arthritis but he was always pleasant, telling stories and
writing poetry.
We went to church and Sunday School every Sunday, weather
permitting, not always because we were told to go, or in my case not always to worship, but
to meet with my friends and to show off any new clothes, especially in the summer when we
got new hats. And besides, there was no TV or special games at home. Churches didn’t
have much competition in those days.
In 1935 King George V celebrated his Silver Jubilee and all
of us children marched around the harbour waving our little Union Jacks and we were each
given some kind of a medal. That was the first time I had been to Custard’s Head -
the other end of Hant’s Hr. On the 24th of May one year our Girl Guide Company walked
to Half-Way Brook, about three miles, had lunch, worked on our badges and walked home
again. Millie was one of the Girl Guides chosen to attend the celebrations at St.
John’s for King George VI and Queen Elizabeth when they visited Newfoundland in June
1939 just before the outbreak of World War II.
Once we went to Heart’s Content in an open truck to
attend their annual fair. All I remember about it was watching sausages being made and
lots of people milling around. In late August we would go blueberry picking which meant
taking a lunch and walking about three miles. I remember picking a gallon and a half. The
price offered was 10 cents cash and 12 cents credit per gallon. We used to sell ours at
the merchant's on the way home, take the credit, and get the cash when we got home.
Looking back I realize that our parents were wise, caring,
generous and industrious, but then they had an advantage: their parents before them had
been the same way. Mother died suddenly, alone, on a Monday morning while getting dressed.
She was fifty-nine. Nine months afterwards Pop died of heart complications. He lost his
desire to live after Mom died. He was eleven years older and never once thought that she
would go first. Before he died he asked a good friend, an old sea Captain, to pray with
him. Then he said, "Put me up on the pillow and let me die." He always liked a
high pillow. One of my regrets is that they didn’t get to visit after I married.
The grandparents’ homesteads are long gone now as well
as the flakes, stages, stables and sheds and most of the gardens are on the commons. There
are fewer people there now, some of them having moved down harbour. But now they have
electricity, paved roads, water and sewer, street lights, telephones and almost everyone
has a car or a pick-up truck. The house that got built in a hurry by the two brothers,
while they were busy earning a living fishing and farming, is still there and in good
condition.
Copyright, May, 1999.
Abbie Ellis-Whiffen. |
