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The Victoria Community Development Corporation

Millie Langer

"My grandfather was the first born in Victoria."

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There was five in my family. There were two boys, Norman and Ben, and me. My father and mother were James and Diana (Howell) Stevens. My father worked in Sydney Mines and he also lived in Scotland for seven years. My mother came from Carbonear. My grandparents were Amelia (Clarke) and Robert Stevens and Emily (Knowlton) and Robert Howell.

My grandfather was the first man born in Victoria. His mother came from England. My grandfather was a ship mate. He would go to the West Indies. Once he brought me home a parrot from Barbados. It was a green parrot and he could talk and sing. When the children would go down to the brook swimming, the parrot would say, "Gone to the Brook!"

After I got married, I had two girls and five boys. My husband was a war veteran.

Minnie White and I used to baby-sit and kept house for a Dr. Sparks. He was a dentist on Portugal Cove Rd. in St. John's.

We lived in a two-story house on Penny's Hill. We had no running water, just a well. We'd wash clothes in a wash tub and used scrub boards. We used to make our own soap.

I was old before I saw a radio and it had a horn on it. I can remember when you told the operator the number you wanted to the telephone and she connected you.

There were no fridges. We did have an ice box. For chores, everyone helped each other with whatever had to be done.

My grandfather grew his own vegetables. They had berries and everything you could name in the garden. Because back then there was no going down to the store and buying a loaf of bread, you used to make your own bread and grow your own vegetables. We had cows to milk and we had hens and chickens.

We played hide and go seek, horse shoes and hopscotch. When my father was the band master, I used to fool with the big drum.

We used to have Sunday school picnics and Uncle Able Clarke, an old man, would come out with a box of candy and throw them out to us.

Christmas time, there were no lights or things like that to go on the tree. We didn't keep Halloween, and there was no turkey at Easter just a chicken.

I got as far as grade six in the big long hall, the school that burned down. I used a slate and chalk and a bottle of water and a rag to clean it with. I would cross the brook here to go to school.

There were no cars so people had to walk or go by horse and cart. When the cars did come around, they were high off the ground because there were no paved roads.

We used to jump on the train and go sop far and then jump off again. My mother used to tell me not to be caught on the trains and that would be the first place I would go.

There was one doctor, Dr. Stanford. Aunt Sophie Clarke was the midwife.
They would boil juniper for the worms or anything like that. My grandmother used to make salve and she used to cut the hen's throat if they had anything stuck and she'd sew them back up and the hen would be the best kind.

You couldn't get out if there was a storm. You couldn't even see anything. There are no storms like there was then. I can remember my grandfather used to come down to school with the horse and slide to get us if it was stormy.

I didn't wear slacks. I wore dresses my mother made and I wore long socks and we made our own underwear. We would have lace up boots that came up to our knees. We had rubbers to put over them and my grandmother would knit spats for me.

There were no toilets, no running water, no washers or dryers, no fridges. They hung the animal's meat in the store in the cold. And we have all of these things to make life easier.

We were one of the families that moved to Markland but we came back.

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