The Victoria Community Development Corporation

Norman Penney

"Sometimes there was 12 or 14 people on the same phone line."

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I was not a big hand on the boats. I wasn't a skipper, a mate or anything like that. I went to the Labrador on the Kyle. I used to go in the summer. I went down in 47 or 48 - one of those years. I went down for a $150.00. I had my own food for that summer and I got a $150.00 in the fall. That was from May until October. That was pretty good for a fourteen year old at the time.

I didn't get all the $150.00. I had to buy my clothes out of that. I got $130.00, cause I had to buy rubber boots and rubber clothes for work that summer. And when I got home in the fall I had $130.00. I had money to spend on a new suit of clothes and a few things I wanted. I had no money to spend.

At the time you couldn't go to a store to buy clothes. You had to go to a tailor. He'd make a suit of clothes for you. In Carbonear there was two tailors. I went to them that year. It was the first suit of clothes I ever had. No hand me downs then. The tailor measured you and he'd make a suit of clothes for you.

When you'd go on the Kyle to go to Labrador, it was pretty rough. You'd have all your luggage down in the hole. If the women went down it would be different. They had a place for women. We had our own food. The food on the Kyle was for the crew and the first class passengers.

I spent two years on the Grand Banks on the draggers. I wasn't fishing in Newfoundland then, I was fishing out of Nova Scotia. There would be stern draggers and there would be side draggers. Side draggers had the doors on the side.

There used to be 16 on a dragger. That was a full crew and included the captain, mate and the bo'sun. Sometimes we'd go out and there wouldn't be a full crew. Perhaps there would be 14. That would be worse as work was harder. We'd have to stay up longer hours and sometimes we'd be on deck until we started to fall asleep. Then we got sent below for a nap. We each had a little bunk. Sometimes it would be pretty rough but I was never sea sick in my life. I might get seasick now, because that was a long time ago.

We had a cook and he was a good cook. If we'd get busy he'd help us. I've seen the wind and waves so bad that you couldn't put your plate on the table to eat.

I remember one time we had a fire on board. We were in a storm and the two engineers and the chief was up in the galley playing cards. The galley was where we'd we eat. It was stormy and there was just enough power to keep ahead of the storm. It was about an 80-mile-an-hour wind and she caught on fire. I was in bed so they woke me and I got my clothes on and got out. She was on fire under the fuel tank. So the skipper called for help and the nearest boat was 10 miles away so it started heading for us.

We couldn't put a life boat over the side and the skipper said to take the hose and go down stairs. We wrapped towels around our heads and if one man fell down the rest would keep going. We got it out, sure enough, in under the fuel beam was half burnt off.

I was about 19 years old then. The youngest man on board of her. It was hard work, but I loved it. There were honest and hard working people back then and they didn't mind doing it.

The first hot water I ever saw was boiled with a little round thing called a donut. It was plugged in and put in the boiler of water. That's how we got hot water a long time ago. I remember when we wanted a pan of hot water, that's what we did to get it. Now, you wouldn't be allowed to use it.

I remember going down to Salmon Cove. We had a telephone and our ring was loud. When we'd get a phone call our phone would ring and everyone else would ring. Everyone had a different ring. I'd have to count up to eleven rings. That was on the old crank phones. Sometimes there was twelve or fourteen phones on the same line. Everyone in the community on the one line. When we moved to the Rattles first, we'd be on the lines with sometimes ten people. Everyone could listen to other peoples conversations.

Cars would be a strange thing. They were wonders then. I got a drivers license when I was fifteen years Old I got them cause I lied about my age. We could get our license then when we were 16 years Old We had to drive a standard car. My next door neighbor had a car and he took me up and helped me get my license. This was before the RCMP came. They were just changing over to the RCMP. Constable Lawlor took me out. That was 49 years ago. I did my drivers license test with my buddies in the back seat.

I got aboard the car and the policeman said to go on. The big thing was to hold a standard car in the middle of the hill without stalling. So he took me up to Saddle Hill. I had to go halfway up the hill, stop, and then go up without stalling or rolling back. If you could do that, you were pretty good. I had lots of practice with that and got my drivers license and I've had them ever since.

Back then, infection killed a lot of people. There was no penicillin then. We had to make do with what we had.

Christmas was different, too. No Christmas trees were put up until Christmas eve. I still don't think you should put it up before that. Christmas is more commercial now.

Another things that's different today is that there's no fences. One time everyone used to have fences and keep animals, like cows and goats. You never see that now.

We used to lime the fence. Lime was used instead of paint. We would mix the lime and water and put it on the fence. People also used to put lime in their outdoor toilets and they used it to clean out their wells.

I started using Ham radio about 10 years ago. I've talked to people all over the world. My wife has talked to a lot of people too.

Click here for a PDF version of Victoria: Recalling Our Heritage.

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