[oldE]

Born in '54, the youngest of ten children. Our community was about 12 miles from the nearest town. The two room school was only 1/4 mile away, so the only time I remember not going was during sickness or the time the river flooded in the spring of '62 and we couldn't get to the schoolyard.
In the summer my friends and I lived either on the river or on our bikes. We would range far and wide. A couple of times around ages 12 & 13, I remember riding 15 miles to Parrsboro.

Did anyone else play "Scrub"? It was a baseball game in which there were no teams because there weren't enough kids, but you played through a rotation. When you started, you called numbers. Numbers 1 & 2 were at bat and on deck. #3 was the catcher, #4 the pitcher, #s 5 - 8 the infield and if you had them, the rest were outfield.
The trick was to get a home run or bat in your other batter, otherwise someone was out and you went back into the rotation as the highest number. We would play that before school , at recess and at noon. I can still remember the first fly ball I caught.

In the winter time we switched to sleds and skates. There was a good pond in the centre of the village and a community recreation committee built an outdoor rink. When I was in Scouts we took on the responsibility of flooding the ice one winter, pumping water out of the fast-flowing river across the road through a culvert and trying to keep the ice in good shape.

TV was one channel, unless conditions were just right. Ed Sullivan and Bonanza were Sunday night staples. About the only time I remember my Dad watching TV was for Hockey Night In Canada.

On the farm, before I was big enough to lift a bale of hay onto the wagon, I would be detailed to the tractor to pull the wagon across the field so my brothers could load. When most of my brothers grew up and left home Dad added a bale chute extension to the baler so the hay would go on to the wagon so I could build the load on the wagon as he baled. I think I must have been about 11 or 12 the first time Dad got me to mow a field of hay.

The house I grew up in had the telephone exchange for the community. It had gone in in '46 a few months after my parents purchased the farm. I suspect I was 10 years old the first time I put through a local call. Listening in on calls was the quickest way to get into trouble I ever encountered!

Thanks for the memories.
Les