Pidgeon Auctions

            MAY YOU ALL HAVE A WONDERFUL AND MERRY
            CHRISTMAS THIS YEAR FILLED WITH LOVE AND
            HAPPINESS AND MAY THE GOOD LORD BLESS &
            KEEP YOU UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN !

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                    A SHORT STORY OF COMFORT & JOY

        On the 23rd of December, 2007, Donnie and I were in Halifax and had to go in to Superstore to pick something up. On the way in, just outside the door, there was a bin full of bags marked "Cinnamon Scented Pine Cones". I passed by and went back. I had no need for them, but couldn't resist and threw a pack in the wagon.
        Donnie asked me what on earth I wanted those pine cones for with all the lovely scents around naturally of turkey and pine trees and all that at Christmastime. I really didn't know why except that that scent on the pine cones there represented something very special to me that I could not even remember.
        In the wagon, they were so strong smelling that several people around us in the store commented and on the way through the checkout, the woman in front of us even made a joke about them. That's all it took for our practical joker, so Donnie pulled them from the cart and cast them over her shoulder giving her the Holy Blessing done with incense. Everybody hooted and it loosened up the whole place.
        The Pine Cones had such a very strong scent and we could smell them through the two plastic bags very clearly all the way back to Durham.
        I kept thinking what would it be that left such fond memories with me about these.
        Just a bit came to me last night and I said, "Donnie, that's not cinnamon scent, it's cloves!". And so it was! But why was I so taken with the strong scent of cloves???
        Early this morning when I woke up, the first think I could smell was cloves (for I had placed a pine cone in every room in the house) and then I remembered:
        When I was a tiny little girl in the late 40's, around Christmastime, it was not uncommon to get a toothache. In those times, there was no such thing as filling children's teeth around this neck of the woods. When the teeth got bad enough, they were pulled. And we didn't get much candy or sweets around here except at Christmastime, which must have egged on the toothaches.
        One might think I would have bad memories of toothaches, but not so!
You see, when I was little and got a toothache, my father would take a whole clove and put it down in the tooth and cover it with his big fingers so that the clove would not sting my tongue. Then he would hold me close on his knees in front of our big old pot belly stove in the front room with his finger still covering the clove in my tooth while he sang an old Scottish song to me (usually "Annie Laurie") as the effect of the strong clove cancelled out the toothache and I fell fast asleep in his arms. I don't remember the pain of the toothaches, I just remember those wonderful times of COMFORT and JOY in my father's loving arms.
        Isn't that what Christmas is all about -- LOVE, COMFORT AND JOY!
        And so to me the smell of those Pine Cones scented with cloves is absolutely beautiful.                         Verna

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            At 10:00 AM on Tuesday morning, November 27th, 2007, Eastern
                 Standard Time, the temperature in Los Angeles, Ca, is 60 degrees
                 Fahrenheit, in New York City 60 degrees Fahrenheit and in Durham,
                 Nova Scotia, it is also 60 degrees Fahrenheit (appx 15 degrees Celsius)                                 ------------------------------------

             Isn't it wonderful to see locals make it big!!!   Does everyone
                  know about that fantastic 2-yr old Colt, "Somebeachsomewhere"
                  from Truro who has already set world records in racing and
                  now is considered a "Million Dollar Horse". The big time races
                  in August & early September 2007 told the story. Congratulations
                  to all those who shared in "taking the big step" with this horse.
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                     TRAMP ART, TRAMPS AND BEDBUGS
            In the August 30/07 "Kovels Komments" (available on internet), they are saying that Tramp Art was improperly named for in fact it was not done by tramps but by home craftsmen.
                They are not a hundred percent correct on this....probably some pieces were made by craftsmen in the homes, but I do know that tramps made many pieces in this neck of the woods anyway....been there -- as the saying goes!
                Now most tramp art is attributed to earlier times than the 40's, but when I was a wee little girl just after the war, I can vividly remember the tramps knocking on our door asking, "Can you spare a bite of food, ma'am?". Those were the times when most people still had an old gramophone in their homes and the most common song I remember playing was, "Hallelujah, I'm a bum, Hallelujah bum again, Hallelujah, give us a handout and revive us again!" -- went with the times!   We didn't call them tramps or bums -- we called them "stragglers". Although we had very little ourselves, my parents did not believe in turning anyone away from the door hungry and always gave what they could spare--usually a big thick slice of homemade bread with molasses. The stragglers were never invited in though....they had to wait on the doorstep and the food was handed out to them.
                Something that is very clear in my mind from those many times I accompanied my mother to answer the door was the cute little boxes, cigarette containers and other trinkets the old stragglers sometimes offered in exchange for food -- items they had made along the way (from match sticks, fish boxes and the like). I remember the little bumpy things all over them (just like we see today called "tramp art"). I don't remember any big elaborate pieces, but just little odds and ends...sometimes a jewelry box if they thought they might get a full meal. The tramps who did not have the skills to make such things occasionally offered to split wood to pay for their food, but for the most part, I recall them being a lazy bunch and didn't really want to work at all. One that stands out in my mind vividly was "old Tom McClusky". He was a real big guy and my mother was scarred to open the door to him if my father was not at home. In fact, if she saw him coming from a distance, she would grab me and we would hide under the table and I was warned not to utter a word, for it was common for him to look in the windows to see if anyone was around.
                But we never even got one piece of this tramp art as my mother would never allow the stuff in the house.....you see, it was just after the war and port towns were crawling with bedbugs that were brought over in the ships, they claimed.   My mother was always afraid that bedbugs may have laid their eggs in the wooden crevices of the hand made wooden wares and we would be inviting bedbugs into our home if she took anything....although, we eventually got invaded by bedbugs like practically every other home in Pictou in those times.
                And this is the subject matter of the rest of this writing--Bedbugs! Nobody ever said a word about it--it was considered a shame to have bedbugs, but pretty well every household got them sooner or later. Quite often, parents tried to hide it from their kids when they had bedbugs in case it might slip out of their lips in school--even hair lice was not considered as bad as bedbugs. The bugs soon spread to logging camps (prevalent in the 50's) and they were running wild. It just took one bug brought in on someone's clothing to lay eggs and they multiplied like crazy. They were dreadful things--left big welts like hives when they bit. They thrived in mattresses and came out at night in the dark to do their damage. They looked like little beetles, but stank when they were crushed--I'll never forget the smell as long as I live.
                 It's a wonder we all survived the severe douses of poison spray that went into the houses in Pictou to get rid these pests....also, there was a weird light bulb that could be screwed into a socket and everyone had to get out of the house for 24 hours while it emitted some poison gas to work on the pests. These horrible things persisted well into the 50's and I can remember going to school through the "heights" in the springtime and it was a common sight to see mattresses burning in the back yards. Everybody, of course, just said the mattresses were old and wrecked and they just wanted to get rid of them....but the whole town knew it was because nothing else would kill the pesky things short of burning their beds. Not one soul I ever heard of in the town admitted they had bedbugs.
                However, I do remember Jack Cunningham (Donnie's old partner) telling the story of going out west on the train with several other men looking for work and he was awakened through the night by a weird sound. He lit up the old barn lantern and there on the train were so many bedbugs in sight, it literally scarred him. The sound was of them moving around. He said the walls, ceilings, floors, covers and everything was black with them...so bad that he left the lantern lit for the rest of the night....because the bugs will go and hide in crevices, clothing or whatever to get away from the light.
                When Donnie & I first got into antiques in the 70's, we though all this was 20 years behind us...but when we were into an old fellow's place out in Diamond, I saw a bedbug crawl up his arm. Hair shot up on the back of my neck, for I could never forget the sight of a bedbug. I told Donnie we had to leave immediately and made up some kind of an excuse to get out of there at which time the kind old fellow piled a few old dishes in my hands "to take home". I tried to refuse them, but there was no getting around it without hurting his feelings--I had to take them. When we got to the car, I told Donnie what I had seen and he panicked too, for we both knew how a bedbug could crawl onto a person and hide in a seam of clothing or whatever and be carried home completely unnoticed. We went flying out the lane and I don't even know what dishes we had, but they were soon biffed into the woods along the way in case anything was on them. When we got home, it was dark and we both stripped stark naked on the doorstep before we went into our house (even shoes) and just ran for the shower and stayed there for nearly 20 minutes in the hottest water we could stand. Then we took a big tubful of varsol and any other killers we could find out on the doorstep and picked up our clothing and shoes on a broomstick and doused them. Then we sprayed the car with every poison we could get our hands on. Mission accomplished!
                And now after 60 years, "the cat is out of the bag"....Pictou, like most other Port town had its fill of bedbugs....this was a well-kept secret, but now it is just a story out of the archives. Consider yourselves blessed that we don't have these problems now!

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                                                                 A SATISFIED CUSTOMER
                       This little fellow was happy with his purchase of a Davy Crockett
                                  Coonskin Hat & a Bag of Marbles at the Baddeck Auction July 7th/07
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    Did you know that Alfred Nobel (who established the Nobel Peace Prize)
    and other Nobel Prizes throughout his lifetime made his money selling
    ammunition and dynamite!

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His name was Fleming, and he was a poor Scottish farmer. One day, while trying to make a living for his family, he heard a cry for help coming from a nearby bog. He dropped his tools and ran to the bog.

There, mired to his waist in black muck, was a terrified boy, screaming and struggling to free himself. Farmer Fleming saved the lad from what could have been a slow and terrifying death.

The next day, a fancy carriage pulled up to the Scotsman's sparse surroundings An elegantly dressed nobleman stepped out and introduced himself as the father of the boy Farmer Fleming had saved.

"I want to repay you," said the nobleman. "You saved my son's life."

"No, I can't accept payment for what I did," the Scottish farmer replied waving off the offer. At that moment, the farmer's own son came to the door of the family hovel.

"Is that your son?" the nobleman asked.

"Yes," the farmer replied proudly.

"I'll make you a deal. Let me provide him with the level of education my own son will enjoy. If the lad is anything like his father, he'll no doubt grow to be a man we both will be proud of." And that he did.

Farmer Fleming's son attended the very best schools and in time, graduated from St. Mary's Hospital Medical School in London, and went on to become known throughout the world as the noted Sir Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of Penicillin.

Years afterward, the same nobleman's son who was saved from the bog was stricken with pneumonia.

What saved his life this time? Penicillin.

The name of the nobleman? Lord Randolph Churchill.

His son's name? Sir Winston Churchill.

Someone once said: What goes around comes around.

Work like you don't need the money.

Love like you've never been hurt.

Dance like nobody's watching.

Sing like nobody's listening.

Live like it's Heaven on Earth.

May there always be work for your hands to do;

May your purse always hold a coin or two;

May the sun always shine on your windowpane;

May a rainbow be certain to follow each rain;

May the hand of a friend always be near you;

May God fill your heart with gladness to cheer you.

                           In particular, Danny brought out a photo of the Aircraft Carrier
"HMCS Bonaventure" when it hit the big storm of the century halfway between here and England in early December 1959.
                           The "Bonaventure" was a majestic Aircraft Carrier of the Royal Canadian Navy built in Belfast, Ireland and named after a Bird Sanctuary in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. She carried Banshee Jet Fighters and Tracker A/S Aircraft and with its advanced features permitted USN and RN Aircraft to be regularly operated during training exercises.
                           Danny was only 22 year old when the "Bonny" crossed the Sea to attend a Nato exercise in England. His position was Leading Seaman as was his friend, Robert Grant, from Briar Island.....remember about three years ago we conducted an auction at the Best Western in Truro for the Estate of Robert Grant--same fellow!   Rube Hornstein (remember the Weatherman on the old Halifax Television Station) had gone over on the trip with them to England and when they were returning from England, he said it was evident that a storm was brewing, but it appeared that evening that the storm would pass off to the side of the ship's course. During the night however, the direction of the storm shifted and they met it head on. The vicious sea tossed and battered the 700 foot ship around like a little toy boat in a child's bathwater. The waves reached as high as 90 feet and looked like a huge wall of water in front of them. All communication was out. At the height of the storm 2 tracker aircraft and a big crane were ripped from their moorings and washed overboard, the anchor punched a hole in the bow.....even the piano in the Wardroom broke loose and pinned a man against the wall. For nearly four days the fate of the Bonnie and the lives of 1200-1500 men aboard including squadrons and ships company rested in God's hands.
                           When the sea finally settled, there wasn't a raft or lifeboat left--the high winds had ripped them all off the ship. The heavy steel frames of the ship were bent eleven back from the front. Although the engines kept running throughout the siege, the ship only moved 11 miles in the four days.
                           Needless to say, after that battering, the ship was taken in for a refit at Saint John.
                           Other men Danny can remember who were on board during this run were Norm (Skip) Bewsher and John Gregory (both of Dartmouth).
                           The Bonaventure was the last of the Canadian Aircraft Carriers and served until 1970 when the government cut defense costs. It was never replaced. "Ottawa's desire for a small ship navy and helicopters made carriers with a fixed wing aircraft impractical", says Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum spokesman.
                           Along the southernmost part of Point Pleasant Park in Halifax sits an anchor off the Bonnie.
                           Below is a photo taken on the ship at the height of the storm. Look close and you will see 3 men in a "goofing" station keeping a watch. 01/17/06

     More information and photos welcome from you who sailed the seven seas.
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....A BIT OF NOSTALGIA....REMEMBER "HUGHIE & ALLAN"...WE MADE A COPY OF THEIR
BUSINESS CARD FROM THE '70'S TO BRING BACK SOME GOOD MEMORIES:

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ABOVE LEFT: JERRY DALY FROM WESTVILLE WITH HIS NEW BABY "JAKE". WHAT A BEAUTIFUL
CLYDESDALE! JAKE WAS A BIT CAMERA SHY HERE, BUT WATCH FOR HIM IN THE PARADES. NOW THAT JERRY'S RETIRED, HE HOPES TO GET BACK INTO THE SCENE AGAIN.
ABOVE RIGHT: DONNIE WITH JERRY'S OLD BUDDY "BARNEY"
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         Here is a copy of an e-mail we received in response to the Turtle Crossing Sign
Hi Verna:    I had to smile when I saw you had one of the 'turtle crossing' signs on the website....I saw them earlier this summer but no one could tell me why they appeared. Here is an article I found in the Chronicle Herald, from last July...as you read down, it mentions the signs along the Guysborough county area. HERALD (Halifax, N S) 04 07 04 Turtles, turtles, yeah yeah yeah (Kim Kierans)
     A 13-year old from Bridgewater had an experience of a lifetime last month as a midwife to an expectant snapping turtle. Shayne Crouse saw a turtle the size of a hubcap crawl above the bank of the river on LaHave Street. He told Stacey Colwell of the Bridgewater Bulletin that he was afraid a car would run over it, so he picked up the turtle by the shell and put it back in the water. But the turtle refused to stay put. It was determined to crawl up the bank. Shayne realized that the turtle was on a mission when she started digging one hole, then another and another after that until finally settling on a suitable nesting site. The snapper dug a nest about a foot deep and laid almost 40 eggs. Shayne stayed with the turtle for hours to make sure no one harmed her or her eggs. He watched as she carefully covered each egg with soil after it was laid. When she was done, he picked her up and put her back in the water. "I just found it really interesting because I'd never seen anything like that happen before." Shayne said. Information on the freshwater turtle on the Nova Scotia Museum of Natural History Website says this is the time of year the turtles leave the water to lay eggs in sand, gravel, road banks, garden soil and even sawdust piles.
The eggs Shayne's turtle laid will hatch in September or October. Not only are freshwater snappers on the move this time of year, but so are female wood turtles in Guysborough County. New traffic signs will soon be up to alert motorists to slow down for turtle crossings.
     Biologist Mark Pulsifer told the Guysborough Journal that he's heard reports that drivers between Guysborough and Sunnyvale are striking as many as five wood turtles on a trip. The new rectangular signs are yellow with a turtle silhouette. The signs will be put up at about a dozen of the most popular crossing places, where the roads run parallel to rivers. Mr. Pulsifer said wood turtles are attracted to highway shoulders in search of "the right kind of gravel for nesting." He said if they survive the crossing, turtles move on to sites such as river beaches where they dig holes and lay about eight eggs which are slightly smaller than ping pong balls. Like the snapper, wood turtles are fussy about where they lay their eggs. Mr. Pulsifer watched one wood turtle dig 13 test holes before finding just the right one. While the wood population around the St. Mary's River is healthy compared to other areas, it's classified as a species of special concern. Raccoons eat 85 per cent of their eggs.
Other threats are the people who take the turtles home for pets and drill holes through their shell to tie them up. "They're cute and cuddly, that's the attraction," Mr. Pulsifer said. The problem comes when people tire of them and want to set them free.
"When you let them go and relocate them to another spot, it changes the gene pool."
Mr. Pulsifer said as many as 70 per cent of the wood turtles his team has come across have suffered injuries at some point. Turtles like to climb "but they fall down a lot." It's against the law to remove turtles from nesting sites, but Mr. Pulsifer said if motorists see a wood turtle trying to cross the highway, "it's okay to pull over, and take them off the road."
Theresa Osborne=Women's Institutes of NS - Exec Sec    NS Adopt-A-Highway Program - Coordinator
NS Institute of Agrologists - Office Contact, Box 550, Truro, NS   B2N 5E3 (902) 893-6520 fax (902) 893-6393 email: osbornct@gov.ns.ca WINS website: www.gov.ns.ca/nsaf/wi/ AAH website: www.gov.ns.ca/nsaf/wi/projects/adopt.htm

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chapter from my brother's book "From the Eyes of a Child (the hungry thirties in P.E.I.)" - Verna

It was on my father’s knee in front of the kitchen stove when I was just a wee tyke that I first heard about “Big Jim”. And that was certainly not the last time I heard the story, for it seemed a cold winter’s night shut up in the house really set in motion the story telling mood and that of “Big Jim” was always a dousie.

Not long before I was born, when my family still lived right in Georgetown, earlier in the depression, there was a long cold snap right in the dead of winter. As was the order of the day, it was “hard times in the Maritimes” and particularly on "The Island".

Now in those times, traveling by ice in winter was perhaps the most common and favoured means of transportation for anyone living near the water; and the route across the River between Georgetown and Newport was a main run then clearly marked with little bushes to denote the thickest ice. The temperature had not risen beyond 20 degrees below zero Fahrenheit for a long time and the severe cold was hard on the fuel supplies, for people had to run the old wood stoves wide open just to keep the chill off their places. My folks were running “mighty low” on fuel, Dad said, and, so, regardless of the weather, it was necessary for him to get bundled up and walk across the ice from Georgetown to Newport and then up to Woodville Mills (a good stretch of 5 or 6 country miles) where he cut down a load of railings (3-4” inch logs) for firewood. Uncle Leigh over there in Woodville Mills had this great big old dirty gray horse they called “Jim” which Dad borrowed, along with Leigh’s sleigh. And Dad hitched old Jim up, loaded the sleigh with the wood and started on the cold trip back.

By then, the day was shot, for Dad probably would have stayed in with Leigh for a while taking about mills and engines. ("That was all those Stewart boys ever talked about", Mom would say). Anyway, it was dark by the time Dad passed by Faye’s General Store near the Newport Ferry Wharf. He could see several of the local men in there congregating, but Dad was “chilled to the bone” by then and all he could think about was getting back home and out of the cold, so he never bothered to stop.

It wasn’t only sub-zero temperatures that night, but it was pitch dark and it took everything Dad could do to follow the bushes on the good ice. It was some frosty, but he was doing great until he got out from shore about a half mile when he heard a loud crack. Before he could do a thing, the horse and sleigh with Dad aboard plunged into the icy water. The sleigh, being made partially of wood, floated somewhat; but Dad was soaked to the neck in the sleigh and poor Jim was frantically threshing around in the frigid water.

Dad quickly climbed up along the shafts connecting the sleigh to the horse and got onto Jim’s back. Then he reached down into the icy water and released the shafts, figuring that Jim would swim ahead and Dad would be able to climb up over his neck onto solid ice. My father could not swim!!! Too late, he realized that the ice in front of Jim was all cracked and broken. And when Dad turned around, he saw that Jim had swam far enough ahead to leave too much distance between him and the sleigh so that a return to the former position was impossible. Dad tried to unbutton his heavy overcoat for it was weighting him down so much he was having trouble moving; but in that short time, ice had formed over the buttons and everything was frozen solid.

There was open water for a good distance on both sides of Jim. but somehow, in the midst of that hair-raising experience, Dad was able to stand up on Jim’s back and make a jump for it. By the grace of God, the upper portion of his body landed on good ice and he was able to drag himself up to safety.

Poor Jim was near mad in the frigid water and Dad knew that neither of them would last long under those conditions. My father’s soaking wet clothes were getting stiffer every minute with the frost and his body was near numb with cold by then, but he ran around on the ice to the back of the sinking sleigh and pulled some of the long rails from it which were caught on the ice. He took them around to the front of the horse and splayed them between the edges of good ice across the open water and under Jim’s neck. Then in the darkness, in that freezing and in his exhausted state, my father proceeded to shimmy across to Jim on those rails above the open water and wound the reins around Jim’s neck and then around the rails to ensure that Jim’s head would stay above water while he ran for help.

It’s a good thing Dad was only in his thirties then, for he went on the dead run with his overcoat caked to him the entire half mile across the ice in that freezing cold to the General Store in Newport. On his arrival there, they immediately rounded up seven or eight good men and it was a God-send that Captain Will Sigsworth and his son, Michael, were there at the store at that time--for the Captain had been known to have experience as a lead man in getting horses out of the water. (There was the occasional time when horses would accidentally break through the ice in those days; but unless they got them out immediately, they were usually goners).

Within five minutes or so all the men were on the run across the ice and it was said that when they left the Newport wharf, they could hear the groans of Jim in the distance.

It was a miracle that Jim was still alive when they reached the scene for nearly a half-hour had lapsed since the accident and the weather was bitter.

Captain Sigsworth gave the orders for the men to cut foot holes in the ice while he got a noose on the horse’s neck with a long rope reaching to all the men. Almost like a tug-of-war team, the men took their places.

Now, most people don’t realize when they see something like this on a movie today that it is next to impossible to pull a big horse like that up out of the water onto the ice with just a rope, but there is a “trick” to it that only the experienced person can administer.....and Captain Sigsworth was the man for the job. He got at the head of the team next to the horse. By that time, Jim was nearly done for, literally gasping for his last breath. It sounds crazy, but what the Captain did next was to swing a big stick and whacked old Jim on the side giving him such a shock that he gulped in a huge breath of air at which time the Captain immediately hollered “heave”. Not a second was wasted and the men pulled with all their might in sequence just like clockwork virtually choking the horse off for a few seconds so that he could not let that big breath of air out, which had displaced water and caused his big body to float up another foot or so in the water—just enough that with great effort they could pull poor Jim out across the ice to safety.

Now after Jim being down there in the frigid water for that long of a time, Captain Sigsworth knew they had no time to lose; so, he got Jim up and sat his son, Michael, on Jim bareback and sent him on the dead gallop back across the ice to the barn in Newport--the reason being that it would be necessary to keep Jim’s body vigorously moving after such an ordeal so that his blood would keep circulating in that freezing cold.

By the time the rest of the men got back to the barn at Newport, Jim was bedded down under layers and layers of rugs, blankets, overcoats and anything else they could find in an attempt to bring the temperature up on his huge trembling body. The chills were so bad that the covers were shaking off him and the men knew that Jim had gone through such a hard time that his body would not warm up on its own. So, they heated up the big pans of hot water on the wood stove and messaged and bathed Jim all over with hot rags until his body temperature finally returned to normal. It took a good part of the evening to bring the horse back to that point and then the men covered him well for the night. It was up to God then whether or not Jim would make it and the men went home and left it in The Master’s hands.

The next morning when Dad went over to Newport to check on Jim, he couldn’t believe his eyes. Jim really wasn’t dirty gray at all but he was a solid white beauty and he was up and rearing to go. No one could ever imagine what the animal had gone through only hours before.

So away Dad and Jim went across the ice again with pick and axe and Dad dug the sleigh out of the ice, which was frozen in solid by then. The firewood was still in the sleigh and Dad even retrieved the shafts which were caught in the ice. Jim was then harnessed up to the sleigh and pulled it out. After chopping the ice off the sleigh, it appeared no harm was done and they both went on their way. A day later than planned, the load of firewood arrived home in Georgetown, just before the supply there had been exhausted.

Dad never ever told Uncle Leigh about the accident, but then Uncle Leigh never ever mentioned Jim’s change from dirty gray to pure white. My cousin, Cecil (Uncle Leigh’s boy) said that Leigh did find out about it later but choose to stay hushed. And Jim never suffered any after effects from the ordeal and lived as long, if not longer, than any of the other workhorses of that day.

                                                              A True Story by Alden Stewart, now retired
                                                             and residing at Brudenell River, PEI
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We were picking up goods at a house for auction, the daughter was there and was reminiscing her teenage days when she lived there nearly 40 years ago with her parents and the other siblings.
      As we viewed the old floor model stereo, she told the story of how excited the whole family was when they purchased the stereo. They were probably the first in the neighbourhood to get one. It cost around $300 then. She recalled it was on a Friday night when it arrived and her parents invited all their neighbours in that evening, rolled back the carpet n the 10'x13' living room and they all enjoyed an old-fashioned dance till 3 o'clock in the morning.
      Anyway, for "old time sake" a relative kept the stereo, perhaps to remind him of the 60's when we "let the good times roll".