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Summary
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2.
There were no school buses in those days. The children in the country
walked to school and home again in the evening. School hours for old and young
were from nine in the morning to four in the afternoon.
If a heavy snow came, or extreme cold, some of the children might be
lucky enough to have their father come with the team and sleigh, and he would
usually take along all who went that way.
Most of the teachers were pleasant and encouraging to the younger children,
but I can remember one teacher, a Mr. McPherson, who was very strict and cross
and used the strap some, too. When summer holidays came, we were beginning to
learn
multiplication.
Mr. McPherson told us to learn all the multiplication tables
before coming back to schoo. When I went home I forgot all about the tables until
the night before school was to open, and I can remember waking up at night and
crying because I expected to be whipped for not knowing my tables. But, oh how
happy I was when school was called and another teacher, nice and kind and quiet,
had taken over our school
Those were the days in the 1880's when the revenue from our little farms
as well as all the others around us was scarcely enough to buy food and clothes for
the family. The chief cash income was the milk cheques which came from the
cheese factories that operated at that time from May 1st to October 31st each year.
To add to the cash income, my father spent the winters cutting and hauling
home maple logs which early in the Spring, (usually in March), were cut with a
power saw into stove-length wood. At that time stove wood was cut 22" long.
Later in the year when this wood was dry, maple wood delivered in town
brought about $3.00 a cord. Getting the maple logs in winter made plenty of work,
so I often had to leave school for a time and go back to the bush to help fell the
big maple trees and cut them into logs ready to be skidded together and hauled
home on the bob sleighs.
Also in summer time we had to be up early in the morning, for the cows
had to be driven in from the pasture and milked. Then the milk had to be cooled
and strained into 30 gallon cans, for the "Milk Brawer" came early to gather the
milk and haul it to the factory to be made into cheese.
On our place there were two large barns, with feed above and stables below
for horses and cattle. In the winter time, we had to get all the horses and cattle
fed before we had breakfast, and after breakfast, the horse stables and cow stables
had to be all cleaned and the manure wheeled out in the old wheelbarrow. This
work had to be done before we went to school.
So, the boys and girls of those days realized very young their responsibi-
lities to help father and mother with all the work that had to be done?
In our large front room was a cupboard for dishes. Above the cupboard
was a glass case where mother kept all her china dishes, used only on special
occasions. One morning in September, about 1885, my brother Fred and I came
hurrying in after finishing all the morning chores, to get ready for school. Fred
climbed up on the cupboard and caught the upper shelf of the glass case to get his
pen or pencil. Alas, his weight tipped the case forward, and all mother's china
dishes came clattering onto the floor, broken. Fred was so frightened he turned
white as he said, "Oh, mother, I've broken all your cpina dishes."
Mother did not whip Fred, but she cried bitter tears at the loss of all her good
dishes. It was many months before she was able to buy another good set of dishes.
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