And, ah, she would walk in her old shoes and then she'd just hide them in the ditch and put on her clickety little shoes-

Interviewer: Yeah. Yeah. Um what do you call a kind of a peach where the flesh is tight against the s-- stone. Speaker: That's a clingstone.

Interviewer: Can you describe what the school house like? Speaker: It was one room, brick school house. Interviewer: Ah, can you describe what it looked like inside? Speaker 38: It just had one room and four rows of seats, and a big stove at the back which we could light. And um, um blackboards across the front and down the sides. A cloakroom at the entrance and a library in the one corner. Interviewer: How many pupils would you have in attendance? Say in the winter? Speaker: There wouldn't be any more than in any other city, I think there would be about maybe twenty-five, twenty-six pupils.

Put me in front- and my wife tells the story that she went out in the cloakroom and cried and cried and cried 'cause she got moved.

Those boys were- were after me. I ran into the bathroom, didn't get the door locked in time and they both g-- came in. Interviewer: Oh dear, what did you do? Speaker: I- I just screamed and yelled and clawed and- and finally the other kids- the younger kids were in the- in the cloakroom where the stove was and they- they yell-- they said "Here comes the teacher." (laughs) So they had to run out (laughs).

Interviewer: Did your school have electricity then? Speaker: Oh yeah, you had the- you had hydro but you had no running water, you-see and your toilet was just a- a big tank in the hole in the floor and the girls had one and the boys had the other. Then you co-- cloakroom for all your coats.But you d-- little- your- brought every morning you brought the pail and 'course the water would be getting cold out of the well.

Speaker: And the little cloakrooms where you came in. Interviewer: Yeah. Speaker: And in the wintertime they moved the coat hangers inside because- Interviewer: Oh, they used to be outside? Speaker: Oh, well they were in the cloakroom when you came in.

Interviewer: What did you grandparents do? Speaker: Ah my grandfather was a clothier. He had a clothing store on Front-Street. That's why I remember this flood so well because he's store was flooded out you-know and all the clothing and-so-on.

And I clouted him in his ah earphone and told him, I said, "The flap lock."

Yeah, when it- she hits the stone, you got to be- of a good hold on it or it's going to clout you well on the side of the head.

Yeah, when it- she hits the stone (non-lexical sound: wouh), you got to be- of a good hold on it or it's going to clout you well on the side of the head.

Bout a hundred times when I went to school. Well I don't know 'bout a hundred times, but it happened on a fairly frequent basis. The principle would give them five clouts in each hand, or ten, or- but you had to.

You weren't supposed to bring it [alcohol] in but if you had it under the table- the club seaters, you-know-what-I-mean? Countertop.

Interviewer: What do you call um a hen that's sitting on eggs? Speaker: Clucking-hen.

Interviewer: Oh, I see. What did you call a hen that was sitting on eggs? Not- Speaker: Ah, as- as, ah- that was a clucking hen. (laughs) A clucking hen.

Speaker: The clucker. Interviewer: The one on the- on the nest? Interviewer: The clucking hen was the only one, you-see.

That used to be (inc.) well that was just the basement. It had, in my time, it just had earthen floor and the big furnace was in there. The small furnace was over by the back door there. And it had had coal bins and all in there; they were still in there. It was just a dark (inc.) they had a couple of electric light bulbs in there I never really knew much about it.

It had a little uh cone-shaped section built out on one corner of it and it was a three level apartment building. It was kind-of fun. It had the old ah, ah auger electric power system, coal fire, hot water system and the- had a coal bin in- in the basement where ah they brought the fuel in and dumped it in the window and filled up this coal bin and- and then the heating had to be stoked and shoveled and the ashes taken out of this coal furnace daily by the superintendent of the building.

Speaker: ... and he would in those days when that Mulroney house was being heated, it was heated by coal. Interviewer: Okay. Speaker: So we would go down into the coal bins and shovel coal manually into the hopper everyday. So he was always- he'd go, leave the industrial job and go over to their house and keep the furnace running that way. Oh yeah.

Speaker: ... some kids apparently were in the garage and found some matches and were playing on a- something in there, trying to light them. There was also a coal bin, because we had had a stove that took coal (laughs). Interviewer: Yeah. Speaker: And um, so it- you-know, they- the gas from the lawn-mower and the coal, it didn't take much for it to- to go. And um that stove I think was taken out the year after ...