I remember being a kid there, and Christmases and playing on the flats down behind where the river was. It wasn't cleaned up or cleared up, it was all bush down in there, forts and sucker fishing and-things-like-that. Lots- lots of sucker fishing. We used to have great fun back in those days when take three-inch long firecrackers, kids could buy the big firecrackers, you get a dead sucker- or sucker you just caught and stick it down the sucker's mouth and light it off, you blown it up, see what the sucker look like.

I remember being a kid there, and Christmases and playing on the flats down behind where the river was. It wasn't cleaned up or cleared up, it was all bush down in there, forts and sucker fishing and-things-like-that. Lots- lots of sucker fishing. We used to have great fun back in those days when take three-inch long firecrackers, kids could buy the big firecrackers, you get a dead sucker- or sucker you just caught and stick it down the sucker's mouth and light it off, you blown it up, see what the sucker look like.

Mm, as long as the sucker's good in it, ah, we didn't have to prime it because it would hold the water the same as a- a steel pump,

Speaker 1: That didn't happen too often but once in a while that did happen. Um, and sometimes the one teacher took us sucker fishing. Interviewer: What's sucker fishing? Speaker 1: In the spring the suckers run up the creeks and-that. Speaker 2: And they're fish. Speaker 1: And they're fish about yay long. Interviewer: Mm-hm. Speaker 1: And, ah, that was- we had Arbor-Day when- I think if we had Arbor-Day we had to clean up the yard and we got that done in time then we got to go sucker fishing.

My sisters helped out more in the house because I was always with my father, right? We'd go over to the Woodville sales barns. He'd be showing um- we had a lot of pigs too as well as cattle and he'd be um selling them over there. Yeah. Yeah and I can remember when I was a kid we'd go sucker fishing.

Then there was a summer kitchen put up ... It was lined up that it became a, ah- a winter kitchen as well as the summer kitchen.

Interviewer: The- now the kitchen would be where you'd cook and where you'd eat as well? Speaker: Yes, where- right away- and the- a few years after they built, ah, another wing to it and then made a summer kitchen. Interviewer: Yes. That would be joined onto the house? Speaker: Yes. But the most, ah- the most, ah, people at that time had, ah- had a summer kitchen either built right beside the house and had a runway (?) between the two or, ah- or had it hitched onto the house. They- th-- they moved the stove out of the main house in the summer. ... Kept the house warm.

Interviewer: Did you have a separate, um, room off the kitchen? The main kitchen? ... Off the main kitchen- the kitchen- the big kitchen you'd mainly, um, cook and the family would all eat in that one, eh? They would- Speaker: Well, ah, this part of the house here, there was a- a double window. Two windows together in the front. ... And there was a living room and a dining room and then a kitchen that had- Interviewer: I thought it was a parlour? Speaker: That had been- years ago it was a- what they used to call a- a summer kitchen.

Interviewer: Um what about the um- the room that you cooked in? Speaker: Kitchen. Interviewer: You didn't have one- in a hot day, did you use it? What did you do on a hot day? Speaker: No, we had a- a log building out there. And a platform between the house and it. And that was what we called a summer kitchen. ... Had a stove out there and then hot time in the summer the cooking was done out there. And if it wasn't too hot we eat out there. And if it was hot, like this kind of weather, we'd bring it in, eat in here.

Interviewer: Um, some people had um a room a-- out back of their kitchen that they um sometimes would cook in in the summer if it was very hot. ... What did they call that? Speaker: That's the summer-kitchen and the back-kitchen. Yeah. And then some people had a house outside too, and they called it the milkhouse. And it was made of stone and they used to keep their milk and butter and-stuff in there.

But th-- I use the one at the back door here, where I built that veranda. There was a- a summer-kitchen or a back-kitchen, and then you went out and went down a few steps and the roof went ahead out you-see.

Interviewer: Ever move your stove in the summertime? Speaker: No, we- we uh- we never had a summer kitchen. ... We just had the one kitchen.

Interviewer: Mm-hm. What else was in your kitchen besides the stove? Speaker: The summer kitchen? Interviewer: No th- the main kitchen.

The wash day. ... possibly one day she would do the white clothes and uh, she would always soak them out on the back uh, there's a little veranda, just uh, on the back of the summer kitchen which led into the cellar there.

The garden was just in front of the um, wood-shed which was just beside the summer kitchen.

... she would put that under the table, right in the centre under the table to keep the mosquitoes away. You couldn't eat supper at all in the summer kitchen without this smudge under the table and the smoke would- would come up from under the table but it didn't bother us at all we ate on-

And then there was a back porch on it that they used- They used to call 'em summer kitchens.

The house is still there ... And they have added some additions. but we had a summer-kitchen and my father had bees and we used to ride the ex- in the extractor to…

So he goes to the house and it's an old log house with a summer kitchen on the side wood, eh? Like another addition thing.

Boards on the floor, eh? Everything else is all earth floor. The boards are here to keep you out of the mud in the k-- in the summer kitchen. The door swung in, there's a lady cooking right here on a Findlay oval stove.