 Page 7
The "Pictou Boys"
The first time Ed came to take me out, he left his car parked on the street, came across the lawn
and knocked on the front door.
Until then, I don't think we even knew we had a front door.
Jean stuck her head out an upstairs window and instructed him to come around to the back, which he
obediently did. He came in, met my family and settled himself down in a big chair
in the living room, with his long legs sticking out into the center of the floor. Mum called up the stairs to me, then went back to the living room.
I guess about fifteen minutes went by and there was no sign of me anywhere.
Finally, Mum asked Mike to go upstairs and light a fire under me. Mike said,
"Oh, she's not upstairs; she's in the outhouse". Meantime, unbeknownst to us, the other three fellows were sitting out in the car.
First impressions tend to be remembered for a long time.
Ed & Bill, in Stellarton
The "Pictou boys" were all very quiet, subdued and gentlemenly, until
you got to know them better - then you discovered they all had a delicious, dry sense of the ridiculous.
They used to come over from Pictou every weekend. I remember one summer evening we
drove into some construction and they all wanted to steal a smudge pot (you know, those round, black, smokey
things that used to alert drivers to construction zones). I have no idea why; I guess
it seemed like a good idea at the time. So Ed slowed the car down and Tom hooked one into
the back seat of the car, which promptly filled with smoke so thick you couldn't see your
hand in front of your face. At the next set of construction signs, he gently lowered it back to the road
and we drove away coughing, spluttering and laughing like maniacs.
Mostly, we just went driving around, singing to the radio (one of our favorites was "El Paso"), teasing each other or we went to the dances at
the town hall. You have to know what an ego kick it was for me to walk into those Saturday night dances,
escorted by four tall, slim, good-looking men. I was absolutely astounded that there could
be even one guy that I could have such a good time with, never mind four of them. And that my Mother and my Grandmother
approved of - and who all loved to dance. My girlfriends were always trying to get me to arrange a date with one or more of them.
When my second Grade 12 graduation came around (I graduated from both Tatamagouche and Westville that year),
I managed to convince Jack and Tom to take two of the girls from my class to the dance. I have
a picture of us, all posed and awkward in our formal clothes. My dress was a present from Jean who
had saved most of her month's widow's allowance for that particular reason.
Graduation,Westville (Me, Ed, ? Tom, Sheila, Jack)
Money wasn't something we had - Daddy hadn't been working at Elliot Lake long enough to send much, Mum had
no income, and Jean had a very small pension from my Grandfather. I had decided that once school finished, I
wanted to take a business course in the fall and it wasn't free. I applied for a job at Keltic Lodge, Ingonish Beach, Cape Breton,
and much to my surprise I landed one, in the laundry. I spent that summer living in staff residence,
getting up to go to work at 5 a.m. to avoid the heat of the day. A few years later (post-business-course), I
went back as Secretary to the manager.
Keltic Lodge is simply beautiful, perched on top of a hill across the Smokey Mountain that rises
along the Cabot Trail. Click here and see for yourself.
The experience I gained at Keltic on both occasions was priceless. Not only did I graduate to
"presser" that first year (where I learned that you can take the sting out of burns if you coat them with
bees-wax). I also learned how to fix an antiquated Gestetner (early version
of a duplicating machine) that I was sure was a living entity and that hated me.
It used gobs of black ink that looked and smelled like tar,
squeezed through a form that you punched holes in to create a printed page. It
broke down daily and the nearest fix-it support was hours away in Sydney on the other side of the Mountain. It's
amazing what you can learn to do with gum, string and a bobby-pin or two (especially
if the alternative is to hand-print 300 menus three times a day).
The lessons in diplomacy that I learned also stood me in good stead in the years
to come. When I say "diplomacy", I guess I simply mean learning when it's more expedient to keep
your mouth shut even if you know you're right. I'm thinking about the haranguing matches I had
with the giant of a Chef. He was from Brussels and spoke fluent French, German, Italian...with a very
small smattering of English thrown in for good measure. He was probably 6 ft 6 because I remember he had to stoop over
to go through any door at the Lodge. I was responsible for compiling the menus three times daily,
in consultation with him. We had an on-going disagreement about English plurals: if there were more
than one carrot in the soup, it should be called "carrots" soup, according to Monsieur...the same went for cabbage(s).
If you were eating more than one cabbage, would you not have "cabbages" on the menu? Smart-ass that I was,
I replied that he probably shouldn't be having cabbage anyway; guests would
find it "too gassy, wouldn't they?" I remember one afternoon
he actually chased me around the big cutting block waving a hatchet,screaming, "I do not care what you say!
This is my kitchen. We will enscribe "carrots soup" on the luncheon chart!".
When I complained to the Manager about this behaviour, he just laughed and said "Monsieur is tempermental,
but he's an artist so try and be nice to him."
One more little story, before I end this Keltic episode. One very hot July afternoon, probably
on a Sunday because there was hardly anyone around, I went down to collect the list for that evening's dinner menu.
As I came around the corner to the kitchen, I could see what looked like a trail of molasses all
down the tiled floor and as I approached his office, I could see Monsieur sitting hunched over his desk.
He had a huge white towel wrapped around his hand and his face was as white as it was. He had
severed his thumb while chopping meat with the electric saw.
There was usually a nurse on-call for the hotel guests, but because it was Sunday it was her day off. I remember running
for the Manager who tried to re-attach that thumb with a needle and thread. It's really ludicrous the things that go through your head
at moments of crisis. I remember being distressed that it was black thread and thinking that it looked like something out of a horror movie.
We bundled Monsieur into the car, his thumb and hand wrapped and encased
in a bag of ice cubes and drove however many hours it took to get to Sydney...probably two hours, if I remember correctly.
I sat in the back seat with him and I was terrified he would die right there. Happily,
while they didn't manage to save his thumb, he didn't die and before the season was over, we
were back yelling at each other about carrots and cabbages.
I saved enough money to go back to Tatamagouche to take my business course. I boarded with the
postmistress and her family and got to practice my new typing skills by looking after her correspondence.
While I was away, the rest of the family moved to Stellarton.
|