Speaker: ... oh, I stepped through the ceiling, too. Interviewer: You stepped what? Speaker: Through the ceiling. Interviewer: How? What happened? Speaker: Well, there wasn't any, ah- of-course with not having any hydro, there wasn't any lights on upstairs. I think they had some kind-of a light- ... Rigged-up in the hallway because ah- at night, my neighbour, who was a cousin, and my dad um used to work on it. So, they were running wire upstairs and whatnot ...

Interviewer: So ah, what was it like growing up on a farm? Speaker: Well, it's different than today. Yeah, I grow up without hydro. Ah, nineteen-fifty-one we had hyd-- ... Nineteen-fifty-one we got hydro. Nineteen-fifty-one we got hyd-- just before you got married.

Speaker 2: We just thought we died and gone to heaven when dad moved the- the toilet into the woodshed. You didn't have to go in the snow. Speaker: See I- I was- while I was getting married before we had hydro um, at home, yeah, uh-huh. So no hydro at home.

Interviewer: ... well you do have hydro, but you're trying to be as self-sufficient as you can here, aren't you? Speaker: Yeah but hydro I- I- looked at solar panels and batteries and I thought "No." ... It- it's just- it's not practical. ... Like maybe if I was twenty-five or thirty, but at this stage there's no way I'd recoup investing in solar powers ...

And ah so yeah by the time I was in school there was hydro there. ... Um and for those who complain about the cost of hydro, it was three cents a kilowatt-hour for the first so many and then two-and-a-half after. And it- when you think about it, if we're paying an average of maybe twenty cents a kilowatt-hour when you add in all the distribution charges and taxes and all the rest of it, I can't think of anything else that has increased by that little over the last sixty-five years. So that's why I figure hydro is still a pretty good bargain.

Oh no, no hydro, no nothing. Two kids by this time.

He was a big millionnaire out there eh. So they had a- he always helped them out a bit. So Earl was- wanted to get the hydro in and ah and ah he was ah younger than my dad and older than me so, and ah anyway he was married and then that so, he wasn't speaking to the guy across so the road so there was no- no luck there.

So he had one payment left. And then after he was talking to him he got thinking "Well." He contacted them and they said "Oh you can just pay the interest and it'll be okay for another year." So then he went back to Earl and- so they put the hydro in.

See our- my uncle and aunt had the creamer in Cambridge and they'd get the wrappers for them from them and then she'd wrap it. I don't know, she'd keep it in the basement. It was cool, but there was no- 'till we got the hydro like there was no fr-- ah freezers or-anything. And ah she made her own soap, from this- when you kill the pigs and-stuff she'd save the- the fat in one-thing-or-another and- and made her-

My dad went next door and forked manure for more than I- I think an-- more than a week to get all the manure. That's that farm. And when he was done, they handed him a radio. An old, used radio that they had had before they got hydro. And you see they had hydro by that time and we got that old radio. ... And a-- a-- actually it worked. It was an old battery radio.

Interviewer: So you didn't have hydro? Speaker: No. We didn't have hydro for, I-don't-know, sometime in the fifties I-guess.

Speaker: Heritage owns part of it and that's why we have to ah- well, we look after, it's been- we've heard that they're very impressed with the way it stays. It's- it's one of the few. You-see any church like that had usually had a hydro put in or- or um a heat but we do-- we don't, we've kept it. You-see thi-- the same way. Speaker 2: No utilities at all whatsoever.

But, no we didn't have any bathrooms and I remember reading by the lamp light. We didn't have hydro or- at first or-anything. I can remember being so scared when they put the hydro line in because I- (laughs) you-know, didn't know what this was all about (laughs).

You know as- everybody screams about high taxes but our own cost of living and our homes is- for fuel, hydro, for all the necessities to keep the place- ... Have certainly increased over the past number of years and those- those costs been- Brock Township in all honesty is probably one of the highest ah hydro users in- in ah the township.

Interviewer: What do you think is the biggest change you've seen? Speaker: I think the hydro and the- and the water sh-- came into the community about forty-five years ago.

Yeah, in the olden days it wasn't like it is now, eh? Because there's no hydro there. ... So they had to use the wood stove. And there was no water, w-- they had to carry water for washing the clothes. Had to heat it up on the washboard, eh?

Interviewer: So you didn't- of course you didn't have hydro, so you didn't have any refrigeration. Speaker: No there was no hydro so- yeah, so they used to milk the cows, then they used to separate it.

Interviewer: So tell me a little bit about how the area's changed. What would you say the biggest change has been? Speaker: Oh my gosh. Hydro I guess it- well a lot of places, hydro is a big change. There's a lot of people didn't have hydro, eh? Interviewer: Yeah? So when did you get hydro? Speaker: At the farm there is no hydro. Interviewer: Yeah, but over here. Speaker: Just over here? Well I- when we bought this place the hydro was here, eh? Already, yeah.

... you could do just about anything with livestock fe-- everything from doctoring them to butchering them and um cutting them up and wrapping them and packing the meat in- originally in salt so that the meat wouldn't spoil until hydro came along. And in nineteen-forty-one or two in there someplace, ah I was five years old so it had to be forty-one, I started school in the Moss-School which was a mile north of our place.

Interviewer: (Laughs) When did you get ah indoor plumbing on the farm? Speaker: We- we didn't get hydro until nineteen-forty-eight, and I- I wan-- ah I- I can't help but mention this um, I remember the hydro guy an come down through our farm, I was heading for school one day, and they came down through the farm, three men with long handled shovels ...