| I remember when Jeb, a fisherman in the village, used to set out mackerel traps. That's what he had a license for. Mackerel. And I think he must have had one for tuna. But not for salmon. Unfortunately the odd salmon used to swim into his trap. Since he didn't have a license for salmon he was supposed to chuck 'em overboard, dead or alive. He could lose his license, boat and traps if he got caught bringin' 'em back. I had a standing order with him for the salmon. No questions asked. No officer, no salmon ever entered this house. There were several other people on the list so you had to wait your turn. He was taking a big chance but it was the "old" way of doing business in the village. Vern and I also had an order for a tuna. Vern would split it up and all I had to do was go get my half. One day Vern called, reminded me of our order, and said he had the tuna and was cutting it up. Now, when I placed this order I had a picture in my mind of maybe 50 pounds apiece. What I'd forgotten was that Nova Scotia held the record of the biggest tuna ever caught on rod and line and weighed in at 1,496 pounds. "How big," I said. "I dunno," he replied, "maybe five-fifty." I thought, "Oh dear (that's not really what I thought). What am I supposed to do with 275 pounds of tuna?" "Ok, bud," I said, "give me a call when you've got it cut up." "I might be all day at this," he said. "Thank heavens," I thought, "this'll give me a chance to lay off some of the action," and I started to make a few calls. The bottom line was I was able to get rid of about twenty pounds. In the end a hundred pounds went to the cat, maybe ten pounds got cooked, and the rest was fed to the gulls. I remember when I first met Weldon. What stood out were his hands. They were wrapped around the handle of a mop (he was the janitor at the place where I worked) and they made the mop handle look like a toothpick. His fingers were twice as wide as mine but short and with deep grooves in them. The skin on his hands and face were like a dark wood. He was short but sturdy with a face like a Shar-Pei. He was a fisherman and had been all his life. He was in his mid-fifties when I met him. He fished in the morning before he came to work (haha). He handlined cod, haddock and pollock, and set lobster traps in the winter season. He fished by himself in a sixteen-foot wooden boat with an outboard. Before he had a motor he rowed. The handlining, hauling traps and rowing explained the size and the grooves in his hands. As a young lad he fished on the Grand Banks in the days of sail. It was dangerous work. The movie, Captains Courageous will give you some idea of what he went through. He'd sell some of the fish and lobsters at work. I think the lobsters were $2 a pair (the same price as a pair of rabbits). It didn't matter what size they were. Back in 1950 he hooked into a 200 pound halibut. The following was written by his daughter Lillian about the event ... Dad used a small lap workboat - the type they use in trap fishing and I believe he had a small outboard motor. He was handlining at the time and had quite a battle bringing it in. Alone in the boat, he would haul it in and then give it some slack when it got rambunctious. Each time the fish tired itself out, he would haul it up a bit and then let it 'take some line' and once again would bring it in until he finally got it to the side of the boat. I really don't know how he managed to knock it out, then lasso it both front and back to the side of the boat, bringing it in that way. Because it was so big, he really didn't get a lot for it - probably in the vicinity of 20 cents a pound - it could even have been less. Doesn't that story ring a bell. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (the movie starred Spencer Tracy). I can easily picture old Weldon out there determined to outlast the fish.  Weldon and the halibut I remember when there used to be a post office in every village. They were usually operated by a resident who set aside part of their house as an office. Our post office was run by a lady out of her basement. She was a cheery sort who loved to chat. You had to go get your mail. There was no such thing as letterboxes (and there still isn't). What we have now is a central post office and mailboxes scattered along the roads. I'll always remember one time, just after I'd moved into the village, when I went to get my mail that she told me how well my sister and her children were doing. She went in to quite a bit of detail. I wondered how she knew so much about my sister, since my sister lived in England. When I got home I clued in. There, amongst all the bills, was a letter from my sister written on one of those pale blue, see-through air mail envelopes that we used back then. I laughed. I put it down to part of the charm of living in a little village.  I remember when Noble kept chickens. A whole bunch of them. He’d sell the eggs and, when it came time, he’d sell the chickens. One time, after his three-year-old chickens weren’t laying much, Noble was ready to sell the birds. JD, JW and myself decided we’d like a dozen each for the freezer. It was an assembly line procedure. JD killed them by piercing the brain, JW dipped them in the hot water and used the machine to strip off most of the feathers, and I’d gut them and pull out the pin feathers. We were doing well but at my end the birds were starting to stack up. It was just about then that Noble poked his head around the door to ask how we were doing when one of the supposedly dead, boiled, featherless birds rose up from the pile and decided to go for a walk. Noble thought it was one of the funniest things he’d ever seen. We did too. |
Lillian Crooks wrote in her book, The History of Indian Harbour, that ... A staple of the community was the small grocery and general store ... When fishing started in early spring, debts were paid off, and groceries purchased with cash until the late fall and early winter when, once again, items were placed on credit until the following spring. I remember when we had two general stores and two gas stations in the village. Credit was available at all of them. What was owed was hand written in a ledger and a gentle reminder was given if you overstepped your limit. One of the stores had a curved glass display case stuffed with treats and the kind of old cash register where the numbers popped up. The general stores were exactly that - they carried everything from rubber boots to cod jigs to smoked meat (smoked on site until the smokehouse burnt down). They were also meeting places where you could catch up on the village gossip. The gas stations were by far the worst offenders when it came to gossip. The gas stations were a place where men met, and where endless stories, in between tots of rum, would be told. I should know, it took me half a day one time to get a puncture fixed. When I wrote this article, a couple of years ago, only one gas station remained (and it did not sell gas). Since then a local family has decided to re-open one of the general stores. It does not do much business (seeing as there's two supermarkets just a fifteen minute drive up the road) but, from my perspective, it's nice to see the return of an old landmark. I was remembering the other day that there was a time when the only boats in our cove were cape boats. Traditional, old-style, wooden fishing boats used by a few of us locals who occasionally fished for cod and haddock. There were no yachts and the only speedboat was owned by a character we called Snake. Snake would squeeze the last penny out of anything, which was not unusual for a lot of old-timers around here. By his standards he was a real wheeler-dealer. Snake didn’t have an anchor for his speedboat so he wouldn’t go far out in the bay when the wind was blowing. However, one time, when he was on the way out, the wind came up. Knowing he couldn’t fish without an anchor he backtracked to my moored cape boat where he cut the line to my anchor, attached it to his line, and took it with him. On his way back he returned the anchor. I didn’t discover all this until the next evening after I’d steamed two miles out to the haddock grounds. When I had my marks lined up I took the engine out of gear and stepped to the bow where I stowed the anchor in an old fish box. I grasped the shank and threw it to port. The line followed for five feet and then nothing. The rest of the line lay in the bottom of the box. I watched the anchor and five feet of yellow line disappear into the depths of the green ocean. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I looked at the line and could see it was cut and I remembered seeing Snake’s boat passing close to mine the previous day. He never came out and said he did it and I never asked. I was pissed off at the time but laugh at it now, it gives me something to remember him by. Anyway, when I look at the cove now all I see is big yachts and fast-powered pleasure boats. Except for one, all of the cape boats have disappeared. I shouldn’t be surprised because I have a sepia photo of this cove taken back in the early 1900's when all you could see were wooden, sail-powered fishing boats. Lots of them. Working boats. In fact I suspect one of them belonged to the man that owned this land. I was told he was a giant of a man and that he would put a rope over his shoulder and pull his dory up on dry land. Quite the feat seeing as it most probably weighed 400 pounds. Leslie tells of never having played a prank on him during Halloween because he was so scared of him. I was also told that he drowned picking up supplies from across the bay where he rowed his dory to a general store. He had no dependants and the old, twenty-by-twenty, two-storey box of a house stood empty for many years. It was the land that appealed to me, I felt like I was in a dream when I walked down to the beach. I often think of him and of the many characters that used to live around here and of how times have changed.  The cove I remember another wheeler-dealer in the village, just like Snake. A friend and I were avid vegetable gardeners. We both had plots that were about 600 square feet in total. We were used to digging them by hand but word got around the village that a feller up the road had a roto-tiller for sale. We both knew of him, and knew that we weren't going to get a deal, but I said I'd give it a try. We were going to split the cost so it would still be a deal for us. So up I went, got a hold of the feller and went up to the shed and took a look at the tiller. It was old but sturdy so I thought it was worth buying. "Ok," I said "How much are you asking?" "$140," was all he said. "Would you take $120?" I asked. "$140" Well, that left me in no doubt as to what the price was. "Ok. $140," I said, and dug out the cash. I was wheeling the tiller out of the shed door when he reached back to a peg on the shed wall and brought down a rubber belt. "Here," he said, "this is a spare belt for the tiller." "Great," I said with a smile on my face. "$7," he said. "No, you keep it," I replied, asking myself at the same time as to what he was going to do with a spare belt for a tiller that he no longer owned. Some people. I remember that if I wanted a saw sharpened, or an anchor made, or a special piece of metalwork, I would go see Willie. Most people called him 'Uncle Willie.' Willie was a blacksmith. Quite a small man but as strong as the metals he worked with. To enter Willie's domain was like entering a black hole from which there was no return. The inside was lit only by the glow from the forge. What windows existed were covered by layers of soot. In fact the entire interior was covered in soot. As was Willie. To find Willie you called his name and it was his voice that pointed you in his general direction. A sharpened saw cost twenty-five cents, no more, no less. He would stubbornly refuse anything extra. He was a blacksmith of the old school and took great pride in his work. I never knew what happened to him, but he must be long gone by now. |