Visit with my Mom. Well today we went over to visit my Mom. Mom is a little 4foot10 lady,with a memory that puts mine to shame. Anyway today we talked about the olden days. What brought the subject up, was saying how Saint Paul de Kent was not growing, but Sainte Antoine was expanding. Mom took over the conversation, and it is always so nice listening to her. She was telling us that the first time she moved to Gallagher Ridge, she was only 15 with a baby, and she said before that her and Dad built their log cabin, they stayed at this sort of hunters cabin.
One day they hitched hiked to Moncton, and they took the train on their way back, the train stopped at Canaan Station ,which was a long way to walk back home. They had the baby with them, (my oldest sister). Anyway they stopped at a little store run by a Price family I think, and the lady took pity on them, and loaned them a tobaggan and a large cardboard box,(Mom said it was a RINSO box). Now I remember Rinso was laundry detergent. And she also gave Mom a blanket for the baby. Mom said ,Dad pulled the toboggan and I walked behind to make sure the box with the baby stayed on . Arriving home, Mom said, when they entered their cabin, all the inside of the walls were icy, the roof leaked so the water ran down the walls and froze. They had to put the wood stove on to melt the ice.
Can you imagine this? The cold, the walking in the deep snow,and arriving home to an icy house? They sure had courage, and will power back then. If we are cold, we complain, if our feet get cold we complain. Mom said she remembers when they lived in Parkton, and they lived at the end of Cedar Street ,which is quite a long way from Mountain Road. She said I would walk up to Mountain Road, buy some groceries and walk all the way back down Cedar Street in snow way above her knees, she said I cried, as I was walking and kept saying, "I need to bring the food to my children". As Mom was telling us this, my brother said, 'nobody realizes what she went through". Then I asked Mom, how she got along with her mother in law, my grandmother. She said your grandmother and grandfather were so good to me, she said that when she lived there my grandfather built an extra addition on his house for them. She said she remembers my grandmother would walk down to the Ice Pond which was quite a ways to walk, she would get water from the spring and walk back home , and use the water to do her laundry, and she wouls scrub the clothes on her scrub board, all the while whistling. Mom said she was a hard worker , she had a big family .Mom said,"no one had better say one bad word about my mother in law, she was a very good woman.
As Mom was telling me these stories, I could vision her in the cabin, and could picture my grandmother on the scrub board or wash board.So as you can see, I enjoyed my visit today.
Did I tell you Mom is 89? Yes and she is so good to us.
So no genealogy talk today, except, just to say, the holidays are coming, most of you will be with your loved ones, if you have aunts, uncles, parents, grandparents, talk with them, question them,and you will see, that they will love to talk about their younger days.Bring a tape recorder, or just pen and paper, or your laptop if you have one. And don't forget your cameras.
Have a great day, Thanks for stopping by.
Aline