The Victoria Community Development Corporation

Rosalie (Rose) Penney

"If my mother never had a penny to give me for school, she would give me an egg and Mr. Clarke would give me three cents worth of cookies for my egg."

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I have two sisters and four brothers. My mother was Margaret (Clarke) and my father was Lionel (Priddle. My grandparents were David and Arabella Clarke and Reuben and Eliza Priddle.

We grew up in an old fashioned house. What I call an old-fashioned house is with a bay window, peak roof, two-story with three bedrooms upstairs and two downstairs. We had a wood stove, my father went in the woods and chopped wood and made splits and as the years passed coal came in so we used coal. We had an old-fashioned iron stove that you could open the little doors and put the wood in.

At our house there was a well and we had to carry the water into the house in buckets. We would lug water one night to do the washing the next day. Anyone with a big family would fill up their wash tub and have it ready to heat up on the stove the next day to wash and bleach their cloths with Gillit's lye. Gillit's lye was thin and flaky. You had to be careful because if you put too much in, it would burn your clothes and it would burn your hands.

Years ago there was no indoor plumbing. You has your outdoor toilets. In the night time you your pot and your pail because in the night time you'd get too much in you pot and have to put it out in your pail. The next morning you would go outdoors to the outdoor toilet and clean out your pot and throw it out like that.

Two of my brothers were heavy equipment operators and two of them were carpenters. My father was a carpenter and he worked on Bell Island for years, and then when he was finished on Bell Island he was a butcher. He used to go around selling meat out in Carbonear. My father had a sleigh in the winter time and in the summer time he'd have a cart and he'd have a box built up on the cart and that's what he'd put his meats in.

When I was going to school I usually walked, but if it was a really bad day, a snowy, stormy day, my father would come down to school and pick me up with the old slide and horse. That was a treat then. The roads were paved in ‘62 or ‘63, I suppose.

If the doctor couldn't get in a midwife was called. Aunt Sophie Clarke was a midwife and I remember when I was young wanting to go and watch her washing the babies. She would get in front of the stove where it was warm and wash and put their clothes on them. The babies would wear bands right across their bellies and I'd be so happy there watching her when I was growing up. Then she would put the diapers down between their legs so the diaper wouldn't chafe the baby. They'd do that for about a week or so. They'd wear that and when you'd go to take them off they would be crinkly.

They used Mercurochrome and iodine then on cuts. If you cut yourself real deep you would go to a tree a get a bit of turpentine and it was called frankum and you'd get that and chew it up then take it out of your mouth and put it over the cut so you would heal. If someone got the flu there were different medicines.

There were two drugstores out in Carbonear. There was Legrow's and Lynch's. The doctor would write out a prescription and you'd walk to Carbonear to get it. My mother was always sick. She had arthritis and then she had a stroke. I would walk out to Carbonear to pick up her prescription. Dr. Kennedy and Dr. Goff would come and visit my mother. If you never had any money you would just tell Mr. Legrow or Mr. Lynch you would pay for it when you got the money. They were really good like that. Oscar Howell, that was the other druggist. He was a life saver in this area. He would never see anyone suffer.

If you needed surgery you had to go to St. John's. My mother went to St. John's on the train in Carbonear. My father took her out to Carbonear on a horse and slide and she got on the train and went to the old General it was called then and she got her gall bladder taken out. When she came home she brought home a bottle of stones.

Some home remedies were Epsom salts. You'd mix up turpentine and molasses for sore hands and things like that. They didn't take penicillin then. A drop of Jack and Jill cough medicine. You'd get a bottle of that for your stones.

When we first started school we used chalk and slate. As we went on we got scribblers. When you'd go up to get a scribbler, you'd look for the one with the nicest cover. The school building was something like down to the high school. A classroom on each side then we went up over the steps and there was another classroom. We used to call the hall the College Hall. The hall was where we had out Mother's Day programs and stuff like that if the church was occupied. The WMS, now called the UCW, would have hot suppers.

When the grade eleven's would have their exams, they would do them in the Hall. The grade elevens would be in school a week later than the rest. When you were writing exams there would be two or three teachers there to watch so you wouldn't cheat had to pick up your pencil if you dropped it.

I started Kindergarten at the old school that burnt down. That was out by the United Church across from the Post Office. That school burnt down in March of ‘73 or ‘74. Then all the students got to go down to the high school. We'd go into Clarke's with a big penney and get a few cookies to eat with our coco malt on the old pot belly stove. It was like powder and the teacher would boil the water for us and stir it around the same as you would do with Hot Chocolate. Everyone would bring their own cup. If my mother never had a penney to give me for school, she would give me an egg and Mr. Clarke would give me three cents worth of cookies.

The way we celebrated Christmas is not like the way we celebrate Christmas today. I think Christmas is too commercialized. Years ago you wouldn't put up your Christmas tree until Christmas Eve. My mother wouldn't make her cake until the day before Christmas Eve and then she would make one for the jannies. We would decorate our tree with a few grapes and a couple of apples, oranges and I would make decorations out of crepe paper. When we would take down the tree, our father used to hold up the apples that were left on it and whoever could bit the apple would get it. My lips would be sour from trying to get the apple. For Christmas Day dinner, we would have a piece of goat instead of turkey, like we have now. We never got any Christmas gifts not unless it was a scribbler or a stick of pencil. We would all hang up our stockings and get an apple or orange and maybe a piece of candy in it. During Christmas we always made our own candy. The best of Christmas was the jannying. They would have on goat skins and dress up with old caps. They would take their mouth organs and accordions with them.

Everyone got a story about sliding. I can remember one time we were out sliding on a slide and my brother Jack he was sliding and him and another fella went and got the slide and what should they use but my father's horse slide, what he went in the woods with and he wouldn't let me get on. So I got vexed with him and I went in and told. I said, "Jack got the horse slide and he won't let me get on ‘cause he wanted to go randying." We wouldn't call it sliding, we'd call it randying. So my father went out and took the slide from him. So he got caught.

In the summer time when it was warm out we'd go down to the brook because I lived over on Penney's Hill. We would go down through the garden, with some Sunlight soap, and a piece of rag for a face cloth and have a wash. I'd have an old dress on so I could sit down in the water and wash my feet and hair with the Sunlight soap. We would wear an old dress because there was no such thing as bathing suits then.

Before washing machines came along, we would use washboards, a big washing tub and Sunlight soap. There was a little place on the washboard to lodge you soap. To wash your white clothes and your pillow slips you would out it on the stove and boil it with a bit of Gillit's lye and it would be done in half an hour and then you would put a drop of cold water over it.

My mother, Maggie, had a friend Aunt Mary Ann, who was selling a stove. Maggie bought the stove for $5.00. My mother bought the stove to put it in the front room. My mother sent my brother Lloyd down to get the stove and put it in the front room. That night she went to bed and in the middle of the night she heard something. Meanwhile, my father was on Bell Isle working and wasn't home. My mother got up to see what was going on and she looked all around and she couldn't see a soul. She checked the beds and Lloyd was in the bed and so was everyone else. So she went and got back in bed. She was just back in bed when she heard something again. She got p again and went downstairs and the dampers were moved on the stove and she got frightened and went up to bed. Shortly after she heard her door squeak and when she looked up she saw a woman from her waist up and she had a black dress on . She got up the next morning and called my brother Lloyd to bring the stove back to Aunt Mary Ann. So they brought it down in the horse and cart and she went down with him. My mother said, "I brought back you stove," and then finished by telling what she saw the night before. Aunt Mary Ann said, "Well here is your $5.00." "No," said my mother, "you keep your $5.00 but I don't want the stove."

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