Memories

Da worst ting about smokin fish….

Is keepin ’em lit!

I know I know, bad joke!  But was thinking about years back and how lots of fishermen’s stages had a smoker on the side of them.  I don’t recall any ever in use, but Roy’s stage back in Apsey Brook had one, and was often a good spot to hide when playing hide and seek. It was just a tin lined “chimney” with nails sticking out going up the sides.  Roy, and of course whoever else used them would hang caplin or herring up in them, light a fire at the bottom, generally with alder wood, and smoke them to make… well smoked caplin and kippers!

I love the taste of smoked fish of all varieties, and when we got a little older, Eric and I bought a little electric smoker between us.  Had a little element in the bottom with a small pan, and we’d add wood chips and let them smolder to smoke our own kippers, and lots of other things, but mostly trout and our own moose and beef jerky!

We could buy all kinds of chips, and of course get our own alder, and sometimes apple and others.  We’d experiment with making different brines to add different flavours (hmmm did I ever tell the story of “Who put the salt in the punch?”) and smoke lots of different things, including trying cheese on one or two occasions.

Junior Patey used to love trouting, but he was never really find of the trout, so he’d freeze a lot for his family, but one day he tried the smoked ones Eric and I made, and he loved them, and whats not to love? Its like fish bacon!  Anyway, over the next few weeks he emptied his freezer of trout and smoked them all!

I know Eric still smokes stuff now, and I do too, tho for me its smoking bought stuff as there’s not many trouting holes here in the city (plus I have no idea if half these weird fish up here are fit to eat anyway, I liked that we had trout and only trout back home).  Eric sent me up some jerky he made last year, and I think it lasted all of 20 minutes, cause I was sparing it along!

Anyway, keep yer fish lit, and have a smoky ole day!

February 16, 2014 by Uncategorized 4

Random Memories

Just recalling some old stories and memories from back in the day… not long enough for a blog post on their own, but some may remember them

  • The Bank of Barry – It seemed in the early 90’s almost everyone on the upper end of the island owed Barry money, me included on occasion.  Wonder if he ever got paid it all!
  • Driving with Eric in his father’s old yellow station wagon (with wood paneling), picking up Boyd Rideout, and after coming around the tunnel, him saying that we were going so fast he could see the tail lights out the side window as the car bent!
  • Eric and I driving to Hants Harbour planning to call dad, cause he was always saying we’d be over there if there was a bridge across! Unfortunately we couldn’t find a pay phone there (was a Sunday when stores were still closed on Sundays).  We did call him from Whitbourne though! (Also, the number of amazing looking girls out walking in the small town of Cavendish that Sunday was unreal!).
  • Taking the ferry to Quebec and calling Lindy collect.
  • Three words “Oh shit, diesel!” the rest of the story and the participant will be left nameless to protect the less than innocent.
  • Tipping Dad’s atv over backwards on top of Eric and I when we first got it
  • “You tried that Dennis!” When Stan had been hit in the nether regions for the umpteenth time when playing road or ice hockey with whatever we were using for a puck
  • Playing hockey in the big ditch area by Gunther Krom’s.
  • Lorrie and Julie playing on the springing caterpillars or whatever they were in the Shoal Harbour playground at about 2am after leaving the playhouse.
  • “Peter, doors open, lights on” – We were stopped at a roadblock one night, and being nervous, I asked the cop if she wanted the light on when searching the car. That was Junior’s response.  She was laughing her butt off, of course that may have been partially cause Eric and Junior has been commenting on her butt.
  • Convincing Kendall that the white wrapped hay we saw on the farms was in fact marshmallows and that they grew that way and had to be sent away to be cut and packaged.
  • The Mr. Bean car Derek bought off Stephen, we drove that everywhere, up across banks and ditches and gardens.
  • Chevy Van!
  • Derek bought another car off Joe Baker. Had an accident in it near Ivan’s old place.  I think the story was he hit black ice in July, but knowing Derek he probably fell asleep.  The funny part though was Joe coming and seeing it and saying “She wasn’t like that when I had her”
  • Getting a speeding ticket in the old Corisca the day of David’s and Celeste’s wedding when Eric and Derek and Leanne had me drove nuts about the motor being gone.
January 30, 2014 by Uncategorized 3

Sweet Leaves, Frankum, and Spruce Buds

Sweet Gale

The other night I had a memory of being on the grass on Celie Burt’s garden in Elliott’s Cove, with Tony Burt I believe, but that part of the memory is foggy.  Its my most vivid memory of eating something we all ate as kids I’m sure; sweet leaves.  Eric and I were trying to figure out what they officially are named earlier, and thought they might be Sweet Gale, but that grows up to a meter high and that doesn’t sound right, but maybe so.

We used to chew them up and they had a delicious sweet taste, that I do remember, and we spent a lot of time pulling them out and getting that sweet juice.

Another thing I’ve had occasionally, and came back to me with the same memory, and I’m sure others have had even more frequently is the soft new growth that pops out from the spruce buds in the spring of the year.  I’ve read it’s good in salads, and can be brewed into spruce beer.  I’ve had both (the growth and the beer) and while one may be derived from the other, I’m not sure what I had was, as the beer was disgusting, while the buds weren’t that bad!

Lastly there’s frankum.  I doubt many of the young people now have had it, or even heard of it, but the older generation used it like chewing gum.  Its the hardened resin from a spruce tree, and Dad used to cut it off and trim off the bark, and start chewing it.  Its a bit hard to get going, and tastes a bit barky till you get it going, but its not that bad!  The worst part is if you didn’t get a nice hard piece, you ended up putting raw sticky resin in your mouth, not a pleasant experience!

January 24, 2014 by Uncategorized 0

Keepin’ Yer Feets and Hands Warm!

Yesterday I posted about the old loom, and it reminded me of another staple past-time/skill of the older generation of ladies; knitting.  I bet nearly all my generations Moms knit, and perhaps many younger still do.  We all had ugly cardigans and fisherman’s knit sweaters, and the ugliest of all the Christmas one with the deer and snowflakes (thank god I never had one of those!).  But the best thing of all, and something we often got at Christmas were our vamps and double mitts!

Darning Needle

I know from experience if you tell someone from outside Newfoundland that you’re wearing vamps they won’t have a clue what you are talking about.  But I still wear them to this day to keep my feet warm on the basement floor here. What are they?  Well they are over-sized socks, not like store bought wool socks which are a finer stitch, but more like a sweater for your feet.  Often well worn, and holes darned up with the old darning needle, making them a patchwork of multiple colors, but like comfort food, they are something that just makes you feel cozy.

Another staple we wore back in the day was what we called a double mitt.  Rather than the traditional mitt, with a thumb and larger section for your fingers, these had a thumb, index finger and then the larger space.  There’s probably a reason why, but darned if I know what it is.  These were almost always (except in my picture of course) had a different square pattern on the back of the hand from the rest of the mitt.  If anyone has a picture, I’d love a copy!

Besides keeping yoru hands warm, though these often had another use, and maybe that was the reason for the index finger.  If you think back on watching the older fisherman in their stage at the slitting table, you’ll likely recall at least some of them wearing a double mitt on one hand, to better get a grip on the slippery fish!

For whatever reason, likely nostalgia, these in my memory seemed to keep our hands warmer than anything store bought.  I can remember now, coming inside with balls of snow stuck to them from making forts and tunnels, throwing them in the warmer, or on the oven door of the old wood stove, and hauling on a dry pair of vamps after a day outside.

January 19, 2014 by Uncategorized 2

The Loom looms….

Yes it does, the loom looms over the whole room! There, that’s my attempt at poetry for today.

As a kid, I never gave much thought to it, but so many people back home had looms, and wove all kinds of things, (well I assume there were all kinds of things, the only real one that comes to mind now is place mats). Like everything in rural Newfoundland, I am sure it served a much greater purpose than just a craft for enjoyment, our fathers and mothers were more practical, not by choice but by need.

But now that I’m older, I sometimes wonder what that purpose was.  I know so little about the loom, just how big and complicated it looked, and watching Aunt Vick, amongst others, sliding the shuttles back and forth and pulling the weave tight.  But I wonder what did our forefathers use the woven material for? Clothing? Table cloths? Bags? Bed clothes?  I really have no idea!

I think all our foremothers knit as well, and I’ll write a piece about the old double mitts and vamps soon, but I’m curious now as to the use of the loom!

January 18, 2014 by Uncategorized 1

Oh that Dogberry Wine

In rural Newfoundland, store bought anything in earlier days was rare. People fended for themselves, and their neighbours, and as I’ve mentioned before, trades of things were common.

Store bought alcohol was as well rarer than now.  People made their own home brewed beer with their own recipes, not the kits like we used. I remember even hearing of potatoes and raisins in the mix.  Lemon Gin was popular, though it may or may not have had any lemons or juniper berries for that matter though they do grow back home.  Wine was also common, usually from blueberries which are plentiful.  I’ve heard some made some from apples and other berries as well. And I’ve even heard tell of people making dandelion wine, though I can’t say its something I’d ever want to experience.

But the granddaddy of them all had to be dogberry wine.  Dogberries are plentiful most falls back home, people would often use them as a portent of winter.  More berries meant a longer winter. Being so plentiful, people used them as another source for wine, and one year Eric and I decided we had to try it.

Finding a recipe for it from either mom, or a book, I forget, we followed it, and fermented the berries into wine and bottled it into, whatever bottles we had on hand.  And of course we tried some.

Well lets just say the results were less than spectacular in the way paint thinner is a little unlike champagne. It has to be pretty bad when we couldn’t even manage to drink any of it.  Other than a taste here and there to remind ourselves how bad it was.

That said though, we did manage to get rid of it.  To this day I’ll never understand how he could drink it, but one day Eric, Junior and I (and likely more) planned to meet and head off ice fishing and atv/skidooing.  I remember we went to round pond and L pond, and on the path between them there was an old one room cabin.  We went in there and lit a fire, warmed ourselves for a while, and had a drink, and watched and laughed as Junior was somehow able to manage to drink a whole bottle of the stuff.  As for me, I’d rather have drunk a bottle of varsol!

Good times with good friends.  Those are the things we miss most.

 

For anyone foolhardy enough, here’s a recipe from Downhome Recipes: Downhomelife.com
Dogberry Wine (Beverages)
Ingredients:
• 2 quarts dogberries
• 1 doz. apples
• 4 quarts water
• 8 cups sugar
• Yeast
Directions:
Cook berries and apples in water. Strain. Add sugar in a large crock. When lukewarm, add 1 pkg.
yeast. Store in a warm place until all bubbles have gone. Strain again and bottle.

December 15, 2013 by Uncategorized 6

If you can’t steal from your friends…

The winter and spring before I moved to Nova Scotia was the first and only time I drew EI. I had left the hotel/accounting business and was looking for something different, and eventually decided to go back to school, and then, then and then…. well that’s a whole long time ago, and a different story.

While I was off, I was lucky to get to spend a lot of time with a good group of friends from back home on Random Island.  Eric, Derek, Lorrie, Julie, Corey, Barry, Bernard, Jim, Trina, and I’m sure I missed someone.  Don’t feel insulted, I’m old and forgetful 🙂

We spent many a day ice fishing, trouting, barbecuing, playing cards and up to general no good.  One of our up to no good plans started before that year, and was a staple pastime of Eric and I for quite a while.  And that, as the picture indicates, was making home brew.

Everyone told us we were nuts, because it wasn’t fit to drink, and I’ll admit some of the brews (John Bull) out there that people used weren’t.  But Eric and I read up, visited the brew shop, asked questions and decided to try Coopers Lager.  We took our time, followed instructions, bought some gear, racked the brew, let it settle, re-racked it.  Bottled it, let it sit…. and when we were done, well we had something that tasted very like Canadian Lite.  Say what you will about that, it was a popular beer back then, and for a home brew we were pretty happy.  I remember Randy being especially skeptical, but he enjoyed it when he tasted it.

Hmm, off topic here, I wonder whatever became of the home brew Rod Smith put away for years and years in his basement, will have to ask him….

Over time we tried more varieties, ales, stouts, and some were good, some less so, but for a while, we always had about 15 dozen beer on hand in my basement.  Like all Newfoundlanders, when a case of beer is open, you offer your friends one, and we shared the home brew as well.

But sharing has its limits! One night, as I was nearly asleep in my room, one friend, who shall remain nameless (cough Lorrie), with some gentle persuasion, (she didn’t need much) from someone else (Eric) walked into the basement, bold as you like, and made off with some home brew!

What a bunch of crooks I have for friends!

December 6, 2013 by Uncategorized 2

Gotta keep em cool!
All that remains

All that remains (courtesy Eric Cooper)

Growing up back home, nearly everyone had a vegetable garden. It wasn’t always large enough to get enough, and some people had no luck growing certain things (I remember we could not get carrots to grow (not that that bothered me a whole lot!)), but nearly everyone tried to grow some potatoes at least to supplement the store bought.

But of course growing them meant having somewhere to keep them, and vegetables need to be kept cool. We had a pound made in the back of the basement, nice and cool and dark, and while the potatoes would get some sprouts, they generally kept all winter and were still good in spring.  Some people also kept things in cool sheds, or as they were more commonly known stores.

But others had the more traditional method of storing them, and a common site to see growing back home was a door in the side of a hill, whether natural or artificial.  People would dig out the hills, and wall them up inside, or make a walled shell and cover it with dirt that then became a hill, but whichever method you used, what you got was a root cellar.  I guess the name came from the fact that they were used to store root vegetables, but who really knows!

All I know was as a kid, they seemed kinda spooky, dark, earthy, almost like something you’d read in a book about Merlin and Arthur, and I was fascinated by them!  The picture on the left is the remains of the old cellar Uncle Hay had out on the garden.  Time and Hurricane Igor has taken its toll it seems.

They aren’t as prevalent as they once were, but still lots have them, and I even remember an article I read recently about Elliston being the root cellar capital!

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November 24, 2013 by Uncategorized 3

Time to see the Butche…er I mean Barber!
My Kindergarten School Picture.

My Kindergarten School Picture.

When I was growing up, haircuts weren’t like they are now, or at least not around home. Till I got a little older, most haircuts were done at home with scissors and an old electric clipper.  The only other real option those days wasn’t a salon, it was a barber.

The only barber that I know of back how was Power’s Barber shop in the old Shopping Center back in Clarenville.  Was just over from the CO-OP if I remember correctly, and unfortunately had a big glass window so you were on display and doubly unfortunately was next to the bulletin board so there were always people stopping and though not necessarily looking in, making a self conscious boy feel like they were.

Like many doctors, dentists, butchers, and barbers in those days, gentle was not a word in their vocabulary.  Going to Power’s meant having your head yanked every which way, clippers and scissors wielded by someone who could have been Freddy Kreuger’s Great Uncle.

Later on, a salon opened in back of the old drug store in the same shopping center. Though that was really the “new” drug store.  The old drug store was down near the fork where memorial and marine drives split.  Not far from the old police station.  But that’s another story.

One of the stylists there was Carol-Ann something, she opened her own place in the old Pop Shoppe building later on.  I forget the other ones name, tho I preferred to visit her for as long as she was active and I needed a hair cut.

But for the longest time, we only had Power’s or our own wiles. Usually a professional cut was only done for special occasions when I was really young, though, as you can see by the picture, a professional cut may as well have been a butchers cut as a barbers.  I can’t say that I ever felt Power had any talent for cutting hair.  I remember mom saying he nearly butchered me! Even had my ears nicked and bleeding.

Maybe it was a rite of passage?  I don’t know, but luckily its now past!

November 17, 2013 by Uncategorized 3

I will Remember

As a boy, I used to sell poppies door to door for Uncle Eph (Eaphraim) Cooper.  Well I guess it was for the Legion, of which he was a member, but I always called it for him.

As such I learned what they were all about, and gained a great deal of pride in my Newfoundland and family heritage, learning about such things as the Battle of Beaumont Hamel, Vimy Ridge etc.

Uncle Eph was a veteran of WWI, and I will always remember what he and his companions did and scarified for us, and I will always wear the poppy.

I have no objection to those who want to protest war, my wearing of the poppy doesn’t signify a glorification of war.  I do believe sometimes wars are necessary, or have been. Sometimes freedom IS at stake.  And for those who are free to protest war, think about what your freedom cost.

Do I believe some of the actions or government takes now are for freedom? No, I do believe many are for profit.  And to me that’s just another sign of the deterioration of our so called democracy, not a reflection on our soldiers.

Remember those who are lost, those who didn’t come home, those who sacrificed all.  Remember that we are free, free to argue, free to not wear a badge, a number, free from incarceration without cause.

“Blind faith in your leaders, or in anything,
will get you killed.”

Bruce Springsteen.

Don’t take our freedom for granted.  Honor those who have fallen, but remember what they fought for, and lets make sure we don’t lose it from the inside.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young.
Straight of limb, true of eyes, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England’s foam

One of the most poignant remembrance day images comes from the comedy show Black Adder.  Have a watch.  Probably the toughest TV scene I’ve ever watched, if you can make it through without tears, well you’re doing better than me.

November 10, 2013 by Uncategorized 4

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