The Victoria Community Development Corporation

Hazel Peckham

"We had our own kids to kill in Christmas."

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I had two brothers and one sister. There was four of us and my mother died when she was 27 years old. My mother was Hester Kelloway before she married my father. He was James Parsons. I never saw her, I mean I did see her but I just can't remember. I was the oldest in the family. Now all of them are dead. My father was married three times and I had nice stepmothers. My grandparents were Janie and Bill, Tom Parsons, and Susan and Mark Kelloway.

I went to work when I was 12 years old out to Carbonear doing light housework. I wasn't born in Victoria, but I lived there for 69 years. My husband has been dead for 19 years. I had a lovely husband. One of the best. His name was Ephraim Peckham. He was a great husband. I had a beautiful family - four girls and one boy.

The other day now I was in St. John's. I got two daughters in St. John's, married, and Muriel said, to me, that's my oldest daughter, she said " Mom, I'll never forget when I was 15 years old and up until I left home because if I came home after 10:00 pm and you would come looking for me and you would have the lantern and the cat."Our cat used to follow me everywhere. Yes, wherever I went the cat would follow me.

I never went to bed until my children were home and I never barred the door on them in my life. I don't suppose they was all grown up ahead of time.

We went through hard times-the thirties. That's what they called the depression. I never put ‘em to bed with nothing to eat. We got 12 dollars a month on the dole. Twelve dollars a month for a whole lot of us. I used to card n' spin and sell the wool, you know. We'd get a "scatter" load of logs in the woods and sell them a dollar a stick. If you had 5 sticks, you would get 5 dollars. We use to grow our own vegetables and lots of potatoes, turnip and carrots and piles of cabbage. We'd salt the cabbage. We had our own horse and we had our own kids to kill for Christmas. We had enough potatoes in the cellar for my husband to take a couple of sacks of potatoes and carrots to Freshwater and get some fish for the winter. That was good, too.

Well, if you didn't have no potatoes back then, you done without them. You couldn't buy them to the shop. If you had no cabbage and carrot, you had to do without it. You couldn't buy that to the shop. We're getting lazy now, I think.

I done all I could do. I worked like a dog and my husband worked hard, too. I sent all my children to school and they done good. But my husband worked in Buchans then, so I raised them myself. I thank God for the job I done.

I used to card and spin every week. I'd have enough for a couple pairs of cuffs and a couple pairs of socks. After I'd sell it and get 5 cents worth of baking powder, 5 cents worth of spice and a "letter of backie". My husband wouldn't get a week out of it. We had no electric lights. We had kerosene oil lamps. It cost 18 cents a half gallon.

Do you know what I used to make to bleach me clothes in? Ashes' oil. You'd take the ashes out of the stove. You can make it now if you wanted to. Just pick out the blacky-boys. That's the stuff that burns, you know. Don't let that go in it. Put it on the stove and boil it. You ashes will go to the bottom and the oil will come to the top. Skim it off and put it in bottles. That would get tea stains out of your old table clothes. Not only me, now, all us women made it. We had to cause we didn't have money.

Another thing, a dollar was as good then as $5 or $6 is today because you don't get much for your money today. My husband would come home from Buchans and go to Clarkes. He'd buy 8 sacks of flour, 2 boxes of butter, 2 sacks of sugar, 50 lbs of peas, 50 lbs. Of beans and 5 lbs. Of hard bread and five dollars worth of fat pork. Now, for $150.00, you go and you can ring it up on your fingers. Eight sacks of flour was something then. Clarkes used to have a big truck and they'd bring all that to my house and I'd have a little room to put it in. Five dollars worth of fat pork and you had a job to bring it from the truck to the house. Money now is not like it was then. Living is not like it was then. My husband worked for 25 cents an hour. He got a couple of dollars a day. That was some money! That was good money!

When we would go berry picking, all we would want would be a good big pan of home made bread, a bottle of goats milk and a bundle of caplin.

I had a barrel of cabbage, one time. I went out and hoisted the cover off it and there was a little mouse drowned in the barrel. "Well," I said, " I'm not giving any of that to them young ones to eat." I took the whole barrel of cabbage and hove it up on back of the rocks. When Eph came home, he said, " Hazel, what become of the barrel of cabbage?" and I said there was a mouse drowned in it and I wasn't going to give that to the young ones to eat. I hove it away. And he said, "well, maid, we got to get another one somehow." I said, " I don't care where you gets another one at but that one is gone!" anyway I went out in the cabbage garden and there were big leaves and sometimes small heads left. We used to grow lots of that, you know, and we mucked up enough to get half a barrel out of it. "Well," I said, "Eph, whatever you do put the cover on that so tight as ever you can put it and don't let nothing get in it."

Aunt Lou Burke had a daughter, Maude, she died, poor Maude Burke. She would come and she'd say to me, "Hazel, is you ready?" and I'd say, "Mo, my darling. I haven't got me work done yet." And she'd say, "While your washing your dishes, now, I'm going to dress the young ones and I'll help you pack the lunch." And I said, "Maude, got any caplin?" she had her caplin out in the bucket. "But you take a few cause I haven't got enough." Well, what a feed we'd have with the caplin and the lovely tea and goats milk.

We sold the berries for 10 cents a gallon and then they went up to 30 cents a gallon. I don't care how hard the times come, it will never be as hard as we had it.

Well, Ethel Parsons, she's dead now. I'm going to tell the truth about her. If she had something, she'd half it. If she had a half a dozen herrings in the spring, I can say I had three of them. She was good. Everyone helped one another.

I got a friend, Aunt Lily Parsons, and the two of us grew up together. She's two days older then I am. I used to go down to her house and stay all night. We took the horse slide one Christmas and went up to Slade's Hill and came down the hill. We went under the bridge and broke the shaft off the slide. Well, we picked up the pieces and stuck it down into it. Then we went home. When Aunt Lily's father got up in the morning to go in the woods, out popped the pieces. Her father said, "Them****jannies!" he couldn't go in the woods. Well, we were upstairs listening to him. But of course we wouldn't let him know we were listening to him.

Lily said, "Now, Hazel, you get up and go home and I can"t face going down the house with you cause your as brazen as a dog. "OK," I said, "But, what if your mother wants me to stay for breakfast?" Lily said, " Don't stay for breakfast because if I comes down with you, then you'll start grinning at me and they'll know we done that." Uncle Tom didn't know we broke the slide from that day till this. That was the only little thing that I done.

We used to go jannying. We used to put on whatever we had. One of mother's old dresses or an old tablecloth to put on our head. We used to always have fun times, but of course, you can't do that today.

One time my husband wanted to go jannying. He said he was going to Salmon Cove jannying. He wanted an old quilt. I told him that my quilts were no good to go jannying with. He said, "Sure, you got a good bedspread on your bed." I said, " You're not taking that." "I got me quilt," he said, "and I got a tie to tie it over." I asked him where he got it and he said my mother was gone out so I went up to her bedroom and got it off her bed and took her quilt. He got ready and tied himself up with his father's tie that he wore to church and went back over to his mother's and asked her to let him in.

So he went in and she said he was some nice janny. He asked her for a glass of syrup and told his mother he was going over to see me and told her that he was from Salmon Cove. So he drank his syrup and asked her for a dance. So he got her out on the kitchen floor and had a dance. He lifted it off his face and she said, "My, I didn't even know you!"

"Well" he said, "I couldn't go on with your quilt without telling you." His own mother never realized that it was a quilt she made. He said, "I had to tell you because I was afraid I would dirt it or tear it. So can I take the quilt?"

She said, " Go on, you knows I love you."

In the winter, when we'd go out to school, we would have to walk along the tops of the pickets. There was no shoveling then or no snow plows. If you went through the snow you would get your feet wet.

There are graves that are up in the Gully Path - belongs to Aunt Naomi Peckham and her daughters.

I lived in Salmon Cove when I was young, in a two-story house, with a good father and a nice stepmother. My mother died when I was very young. I didn't know her. I'm living a good life. I had a good husband and a good family. That's something I have to thank God for.

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