Interviewer: What's this over here? Speaker: Cistern, cistern. There used to be ah, there used to be a big fireplace a-- above that.

Interviewer: No power? Speaker: No, we didn't have that. Speaker: Yeah. Just no cistern pumping, that was it.

Um, she had a s-- a cistern there. And, ah, she used to wash with that.

Interviewer: And where would the soft water come from? Speaker: It would be in your cistern.

Well, f-- from the roof, the y-- you'd have a- eaves-through around your house that would come in and you'd have a pipe end- end in your cistern. That's the way you- it was soft water was nice, nice to wash your hair.

Speaker: It got a fresh blast and then move out. I remember she always liked to get out there because the cistern was out in your- under the summer kit. Interviewer: Oh you had a cistern, now what was that? Describe what a cistern is. Speaker: Cement tank underneath- caught all the rain water. So you'd a hand pump and there- you know, for a wash water, dish water and all that. Interviewer: Soft water. Interviewer: Right. Speaker: Soft water. So that was great- summer that was one less pail you'd have to carry. Interviewer: So it just came off the downspout on the-? Speaker: Yeah. And then the eavestrough and it would all run into the end of the cistern

It came in on the phone lines and it blew the flipping phone completely off the wall and then w-- wet the ground under the old cistern pump.

Speaker: We had a pump in the yard which served the purposes in the house as well as, a cistern which is still there, down below the pantries and one year, ah, there hadn't been enough rain. I remember my father- husba-- oh, this was a little later, going to the river and bringing home water and putting it in the cistern and watering the- the stock from that, but that's a little later, yes. Interviewer: The water that would come into the cistern, where'd- where did it come from? Speaker: Yeah- ah, from the eavedrop-- eavedroppings around the house. Interviewer: Oh isn't that a smart idea? And how would you get it from the cistern into the- up to the- Speaker: From a little hand pump at that sink.

Speaker: And then there was the wood furnace in the main part and then in the back part was the cistern- 0 Interviewer: Mm-hm. Speaker: To collect rainwater.

And we didn't have- we h-- we had this cistern, we built a big cement tank affair in the basement and we ran the water off the roof into this cistern and that we used for our first bathroom, and bathtub, and laundry and-so-on.

The basement in the house, of course, was never heat- heated and, ah, because there was a cistern there it kept a certain amount of dampness there.

Yeah actually, they're- I think they're coming up to their thirty-first or thirty-second year of the annual lob-ball. So that's been an annual thing and it's always Civic-Holiday-Weekend. So it used to be a- a huge ah weekend thing.

... our short-stop and him and Mandy and Sam and Bob, are my sister-in-law and two nephews, would all come up and they would camp out for, for the whole weekend, and stay- they'd actually come up Thursday and make a big long-weekend out of it for Civic-Holiday weekend. So ah, that was always a lot of fun. Always had a beer-tent set up down there and-stuff-like-that so, lotta- lotta fun.

Speaker: Yeah. Um then this year, there's the Legion-bingo. And my friends talking about the Civic-holiday thing. Interviewer: Civic-holiday? Speaker: Yeah, there's a barbeque or-something they do on civ-- on the Civic-holiday. I believe it's at Castle-Home. Ah, he's been doing that now for- well this'll be his third year.

Speaker: I had sixteen plus the eight from the- from the ride. Then I have- Interviewer: The five I'm giving you. Speaker: Eight and a half plus the five I'm getting from you. Interviewer: Yeah, you'll be at forty won't you? Speaker: Yeah. Especially with the Civic-holiday thing. I should be over. Interviewer: Yeah, you should go for more though.

And then he said "No," he said "Can you start Monday?" I said "Yes." (laughs) He said "I want you to come in Monday." And that was the Civic-Ho-- after Civic-Holiday (laughs). And I stayed there- I was going to to go for about three years 'til we were able to start paying on a house or-something. I stayed for thirty-one (laughs). No thirty, I guess. I started in sixty-one and I quit in ninety-one.

Yeah, got a Monday off, it was in the summer, kids weren't going to sc-- us kids weren't going to school, we took off- oh, it was a long weekend. It might have been a Civic-Holiday weekend of Labour-Day weekend, we took off Sunday morning and drove all the way up to Massey or Espanola.

Interviewer: (Laughs). Oh, okay. Hm. You just said you won a lot of competitions for dancing. Where were they held, do you know? Speaker: Well, they were- they were the gathering of the clans. They were held one year in Belleville, the next year in Madoc, the next year in Campbellford, and they just kept going around. And there was people, there was competitors come in from Toronto, as far a way as Milwaukee. Always the forty-eighth Highlanders Band from Toronto. And, ah, it was a- it was a big day in Belleville, the gathering of the clans.

And the way they worked it, if a highland chief hasn't got any sons in Scotland and he's got one daughter and the man that married her assumes her name. If she was a McLean and he was a MacDougall, he'd have to take the McLean name. Instead of the woman changing her name, the man changes his so he's a chief. So that's how them clans stay in the same name for hundreds, thousand years, for a-thousand years you-see.

You-know it saved a lot of fighting in the family, perhaps them bad uncles would grab for it you see but when she got married his name was McLean, he was the chief then, they couldn't, wouldn't dare do anything against her. That was the clan system.