- My Mother has told me most of these same stories.
The Book "Life on the Miramichi" written by Clayton Stanley Stewart printed in 1986
Being seventy-six years old at the time of this writing, I will go back a long way in time, at least seventy years, that is about as far back as I can clearly recollect, I could go back a few more years, but it would be guessing and hearsay. I will start this book with an incident, that to me is hearsay. One time when I asked an older member of my family, how I got a small scar that I have on the bridge of my nose, I was told that when I was about eight months old, I tried to eat out of a dish that was used to feed a dog we had at home, at the same time the dog was eating; the dog objected and bit me on the nose. As there were no doctors in or near small settlement in those days, and I doubt if anyone in our settlement knew what an automobile was, let alone have one to drive to a doctor with, the bite was just left to heal the best it could. If it had festered, a mixture of old fashioned surprise soap, molasses and hen dung would have been put on it to draw out the poison, but I was healthy, and in healing, only a small scar is left. I suspect the dog was patted and I was spanked. Anyway, that is all the hearsay that will be in this book, the rest will be factual.
I don't remember the dog biting me, but I do remember the dog, he was medium size, had curly black hair, four white paws, and a white spot on his breast, his name was Fido, no particular breed, just dog. We were both pups when I ate out of his dish and he bit me, I guess we forgave each other, or as pups do, forgot about it, anyway, I remember us playing a lot together, and I remember him following me when I went fishing in several little brooks near our home, I remember him following me on my little trap line, which I started when I was about eight years old, and me throwing rocks at him trying to stop him, thinking that he would scare away any weasels that might be near my traps, I remember him dodging the rocks, which I didn't throw close enough to hit him, anyway, and just sitting down until I was out of his sight, and pretty soon he would be right back beside me, I was the one that always gave up. I remember him picking a fight with a porcupine, and getting the worst of it, he got so full of quills that he looked like a little old man with a grey beard, I remember the older boys at home saying, that there were so many quills way down in his throat, that there was nothing they could do to get them out. I remember one of the older boys taking him in the woods, and coming back without him. I don't remember hearing the shot that made the porcupine the complete victor. I do remember the long faces around our house for days after, and the feeling of being alone, and I remember that there never was another dog at our house again. Forty years later I learned, all that needed to be done, was to clip the ends off the quills, and they would have fallen out.
Parkers Ridge, the little settlement in which I grew up, was a collection of twenty-five or thirty homes of various sizes, built along about three miles of a narrow gravel road that runs through the settlement, connecting Boiestown to Stanley, the two lumbering centers of the time. Boiestown, seven miles to the east, was our nearest village, in itself, it was no larger than Parkers Ridge, and probably didn't have as large a permanent population, as the Ridgers all had large families, anywhere from six to sixteen, but Boiestown had a hotel, two fairly large stores, one that sold everything from sewing needles to coffins, and had the office of one of the major lumber companies in the area. At times, the number of men coming to the company office to hire for the logging camps, or going there to be paid, far outnumbered the people that made Boiestown their home. It was the center of activity.
Parkers Ridge only had a post office, run by a family named Parker, from which the settlement got its name, one small store that sold a few groceries, tobacco, oil for lamps and some patent medicines, the most popular of the medicines being Dodds Kidney Pills, Carters Little Liver Pills, and Smith Brothers Cough Drops, (MY MOTHER TOLD ME THAT THEY DID THIS TO ALL OF THE CHILDREN IN TABUSINTAC EACH SPRING) the store also kept a good supply of sulphur, most of which would be mixed with molasses, and given to the children of the settlement in March and April, to clean out the "impurities" collected in the body during the winter. Every night for a month, the little boys and girls, would be given a tablespoonful of a mixture of molasses and sulphur before going to bed. I don't know what was cleaned out, but the sulphur would come right out through the pores of the skin, and in a couple of weeks, we would all smell like a box of Eddys Matches.
But that mixture was easier to take than the Cod Liver Oil given to prevent colds, or the mustard plasters to cure coughs and croups, or the hen dung poultices put on to draw poison out of infections.
The old-fashioned cod liver oil, not only smelled like dead fish, but tasted like it. The mustard plaster was a mixture of about half and half flour and dry mustard, with enough water added to make a paste, spread out on a piece of cloth, so as to cover about a six inch square area, and put on the chest, cloth side down. In a very short time, your chest would look and feel as if it had been out in the hot sun for about a week.
The hen dung poultice, put on to draw poison from infections, was about the worst of the home made medicines to handle. It consisted of about a tablespoonful of hen dung, mixed with half a tablespoonful of molasses. The hen dung was supposed to have "drawn powers" and the molasses to hold it in place. After the poultice was spread on, it was covered with a piece of cloth, and it was a good idea to plug your ears, so you wouldn't hear what your playmates were saying about you.
Parkers Ridge was just sitting in the wilderness, in fact, going north from the settlement, one could travel clear across New Brunswick to the Quebec border and never come to a highway or settlement of any kind. There was a feeling of having lots of room to move around in. Each home in the settlement had from a small to a medium size piece of cleared land, on which potatoes, carrots, turnips and a few other vegetables were grown, and about everyone had a cow or two for milk and butter. At our home there was about an acre of cleared land, and enough potatoes and vegetables were grown for home use, and there was one old cow, that as far as I can remember, only had one calf, the rest of her life she was kept "farrow" so we would always have some milk and butter.
The men in the settlement would work the small farms in summer, then go to the logging camps in fall and winter, then on to the log drives in the spring, when the logging and stream drives were over, they would become farmers again for the summer. As a boy, it seemed to me, that the men of the
Side would choose a fort, get behind them and start the fight on a, countdown side that made the first ten direct hits would be the winner. There would be a short rest period, and the battle would start again. I also remember, that if someone got hit in the mouth with a wet, soggy snowball, the battle could be carried over to a fist fight, and you could get tackled by a girl as well as by a boy. After a while, everyone would get tired, or some of the kids would have to go home, nobody hurt, and like Fido and I all was forgiven and forgotten.
As I think back, I remember winter, with all its snow, a being as good a' 'playtime,' as summer, even with the summer ball games and trout fishing in the small brooks. I guess when child is still a child, seasons make little difference, there is always something to do, especially if there are lots of other children around.
I only remember Christmas, as being a time when most of the men of the settlement would be home from the logging camps for a few days. There were no Christmas tree or trimmings, in any of the homes that I remember. There were presents, such as a new pair of home knit woolen mittens, or socks, sometimes a new cap with eartabs, or maybe a new pair of shoepacs, and if you got a pair of white horsehide shoepacs, it was a real treat. I guess it was necessary that the presents be something useful.
(MY MOTHER ALSO TOLD ME ABOUT THIS CANDY)
The only thing special for Christmas, would be the doughnuts and the homemade molasses candy, made as a treat for the day. Everyone enjoyed helping make the candy, as well as eat it. To make the candy, a cup of molasses, three cups of sugar, a cup of water, and three tablespoons of vinegar, was put in a pot, and brought to a boil on the stove, everyone would take turns stirring it, after the mixture boiled a while, a half cup of melted butter and a tablespoon of soda was added, and all stirred well together, sometimes a little ginger or cinnamon was added for a flavor. It would be let boil until it began to' 'bubble' , it would then be put in a greased pan to cool. When it got cool enough so it could be taken into the hands, the hands would be greased with butter, and the candy "worked" and "pulled" until it became an amber color and fluffy, it was then cooled in cold water, or sometimes put out in the snow, when the candy became hard and brittle, it was ready for eating. Christmas dinner would be pretty much like any other day, except for the doughnuts.
I do not recall that I, or any of my playmates, feeling that we were missing anything at Christmas, I guess maybe because we didn't know about toys and such. We were young, and Christmas was just another' 'playday,' when you are five, six or seven years old, all days are holidays.
I guess my young years, at least until I was nine years old, was characteristic of the times, playing ball, and fishing uncrowded brooks in summer, sliding on home made sleds, and snowball fights in winter. Just a lot of "playing." As there were no inoculations against diseases in those days, I, as did the other little boys and girls in our settlement, ran the gambit of children's diseases, such as measles, chicken pox, whooping cough, and mumps to name a few. There were two kinds of measles, the German measles, and what was called, old fashioned red measles. I didn't mind either of them or the chicken pox all that much. The mumps was a bit annoying, the swelling in the neck and jaw would last on one side for a couple of weeks, and then the other side would swell up for another couple of weeks, sometime both sides would swell up at the same time, then it was difficult to eat, so you drank a lot of soup. The old people always seemed to worry about the mumps, going down,' on boys, they didn't seem to worry about girls, I guess there was a difference.
The whooping couph was a long, drawn out, and annoying disease, if you took it in the fall, it would be way along in the summer before it completely cleared up, it seemed to take the warm weather to cure it.
Of all the diseases I had as a child, the one that gave me the
most distinction, was the old fashioned small pox, and the distinction carried right over into my adult life.
This has been a little window in to life in the early 1900's. Hope that you enjoyed it.
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1899 - 1994 (95 years)
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