Random Island

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

Senses

I’m no poet, but for what its worth, this came to me last night.  Hope you like it.

Partridgeberry jam by the spoonful from the jam dish: You can taste it.
Wood smoke drifts from chimneys in the frosty morn : you can smell it.
Dew kissed fence palings on your path : you can feel it.
Vapor rising from the glass like sound : you can see it.
An echoing put put from down the arm : you can hear it

Home, it fills up your senses, never to be forgotten.

… Me …

December 5, 2013 by Uncategorized 0

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

Bonfire Night

Tuesday is Bonfire Night! Guy Fawkes night for some, though I can’t remember ever, as a kid, knowing what bonfire night represented except a good time!  I don’t think the tradition is as strong as it once was.  When I was a teen, we’d have been cutting trees for months, I remember one year starting in August!

We’d gather them, and anything else we could burn, boats, driftwood, garbage, pretty much anything.   Come supper time on the 5th, we’d light it up, keeping much off to one side to keep it going all night. Many times we’d have enough fuel to restart it from its coals the next night and do it all again.  Old tires had to be a favorite to burn for sure, they’d burn and pop, and stink everything up, and turn us all black with soot, but we had a ball.  Off to one side we’d have smaller camp fires to roast potatoes, wieners, marshmallows, and maybe some less traditional roasting foods, like kippers!

I remember many if not most of our fires were on the beach.  I remember one year in particular it being down on McGrath’s Cove below Colin Miller’s house, and us getting up on the bank to watch. I think i remember Rick throwing a bag full of aerosol cans in that one, for our own form of fireworks.  The beach was covered in shaving cream!

As we grew up, most of us stopped the smaller community fires and many of us would gather and help at the one on Randall’s garden in Snook’s Harbour.  I remember the huge piles of brush and tires. It was also fun to look up and down the sound in the night and see the fires in Georges Brook, Harcourt and Monroe.

I think though the best memory has to be the time there was an empty propane tank on the fire, and Gar Whelan risked life and limb to run into the fire and yank it out before it exploded!

Many “beverages” were consumed, and often the police were there too, though they never interfered, or stopped us from having our “beverages” in public.  I do think they got too close one year and the paint on the door melted a bit!  Though perhaps that was someone else’s car, memories run together as you get old.

The link below is to a video on Memorial University’s site.  Have a watch, and feel the memories flood back.

Bonfire Celebration in Brigus, Newfoundland

Hope you all have a great bonfire night!

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November 3, 2013 by Uncategorized 0

Trick or Treat, Smell My Feet

Give me something good to eat

Not too big
Not too small
Just the size of Montreal

I remember chanting this old rhyme in school, but I’d never think of actually saying it at the door! I don’t think the old timers back home would have been very amused!

But Halloween was and still is a highlight I’m sure.  Nowadays kids get their parents to take them to the best neighbourhoods in cars, and almost treat shop.  In my old fogey days, we just went around our own community, and maybe the next one.  My community at the time consisted of about 65 people, so you’d expect that I didn’t get quite the haul of kids today.

But that’s not true, with a lot less kids, and everyone knowing everyone I still hauled home a huge bag of loot! Of course there were always a few dreaded apples (I mean I had an apple tree, why’d I want store apples?) But lots of great candy too.

Rockets, chips, and even those molasses candy that you could chew for days (I actually like those), salt water taffy, peppermint knobs, spearmint leaves.

Costumes were often just a mask, because the best we were likely to see was a paper store bought ones, and to be honest they didn’t fit well over a parka or ski-doo suit.  I remember one Halloween night walking down Ralph’s driveway and the snow blowing sideways, sticking to the fence palings.

I also remember my most favorite idea I ever had, being the geek that I am, I tried to dress as the half black half white charatcers from the Star Trek episode Let That be Your Last Battle Field.

Anyway, I hope you got lots of ghosts and goblins last night and that everyones kids had a great time.  I know the kid in me did 🙂

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November 1, 2013 by Uncategorized 0

Ew… Goulash Day!

When the “new” school opened up on Random Island, it had a cafeteria for hot lunches.  For those of us who had bussed it to Shoal Harbour before this was something new, we had only had the lunch can before that.  Those who had gone to school in their local one rooms, in all likelihood, went home to lunch most days, so was new to them too, though hot lunches may not have been.

Hot lunches in the school system didn’t last too many years, a victim of budget cuts I assume, and the cafeteria at school now likely just takes up space except for special events, but back then Nina March and Gladys Marsh cooked up food for the kids at a nominal price every day.  We had chicken and chips, fish sticks and chips, amongst other things, and it was all yummy and filling; well except the dreaded goulash…

Now to be fair, the dreaded goulash is just my opinion, lots bought it every week or second week or whenever it came up, but to me it was (and is) disgusting!  Back then we called it Hungarian Goulash, and it was something at the time I had never heard of.  So I was kind of excited in my 10 year old way to try some.  Well lets just say its not an experience I want to repeat, I’ve never been fond of any ground beef dish that’s not been “formed”, e.g.: meatloaf and burgers, so once I saw what it was and tasted, I think that may have been a lunch-less day. To this day I am still not fond of hamburger helper, sloppy joes, or any other dish of that ilk.

But while that memory stands out, there were a great many days when there was chicken and fish and other things I did enjoy, and I remember the line-ups being really long any day we had chips (fries).  I especially loved the fish sticks, it doesn’t seem the ones you get nowadays taste the same.

Its too bad kids of today can’t get those hot lunches, but I’m glad we did, and look fondly back on them.  Thanks Nine and Glad!

October 18, 2013 by Uncategorized 2

Fish n Brewis

Purity Hard and Sweet Bread

I guess every culture/region has some of its own “weird” foods, and Newfoundland is no exception.  I guess being reliant so much on fish as a locale (and by fish I mean cod, to Newfoundlanders any other fish has a name), we came up with or borrowed many unique methods of preparation.  One of these is Fish n Brewis. The link provided is wrong in my opinion though.  It says that fish n brewis uses salt cod and fisherman’s brewis uses fresh.  I’ve always known it to be the opposite; we always use fresh, and I personally don’t care for the salt fish variety.

Even in the fresh there are different methods of serving, but first… what is it?  Well its basically hard tack (hard bread) soaked in water to soften, and boiled fish.  Sound appetizing right?  Well it is delicious! Even better when served with rendered pork fat and scruncheons drizzled over it!  Some people prefer to keep the bread and fish separate, I’ve actually never tried it that way, I prefer it mashed together, drizzled with pork, and blackened with pepper, mmmmm.

Some people serve it with drawn or drawing butter, another thing I’ve never been fond of, though all it is is butter, onion and flour thickened as a sauce.

I’m not really sure the origin of fish and brewis, but I like to think its probably from the offshore fishery or navy, where non-perishable foods like hard tack were prominent, and cooks needed to improvise meals as best they can.

In any event, today’s supper was a memory of home.  Hope you get to enjoy some soon!

October 14, 2013 by Uncategorized 5

Happy Thanksgiving!

At least here in Canada. Maybe its because winter comes earlier to us than to the majority of our southern neighbours, but we celebrate thanksgiving the 2nd Monday in October.  Like them its a shopping holi…. no wait, wait sorry, it isn’t!

While we don’t have any history of pilgrims and sharing with the native Indians, and our thanksgiving history is all over the map (celebrated in April at one point! See the link above) it, at least now, is a celebration of the harvest, thankfulness for what we have, and of course family and friends.

Newfoundland Blue - courtesy Melissa Wiseman

Newfoundland Blue – courtesy Melissa Wiseman

It is also known in our lighter way as Turkey Day, and turkey is the traditional meal cooked for some on the Sunday or other the actual Monday holiday.  In my family, and I think for most Newfoundlanders, we ate thanksgiving dinner at Newfoundland dinner time (lunch) on Sunday, and it consisted of Jiggs dinner with all the fixings, dressing, peas pudding, etc.  One thing I want to mention though is something I really haven’t seen since I moved away. We, in Newfoundland, had what I thought was a common blue potato, but I don’t see them up here.  All blue potatoes I see here have flesh that is completely blue, not like the blue we had back home, and pictured.  These have bluish/purplish skin and white flesh with blue veins.

Also with dinner there were likely to be puddings!

Now the problem with pudding is… what kind?  My dad used to make a flour and baking powder pudding that is similar in taste to a tea biscuit, and its served with the dinner.  My buddy Bernard calls it a gravy biscuit.  There’s also pudding, or duff, that is, well I honestly don’t know what its made from, but its boiled in the boiler with the dinner usually, and served for dessert traditionally with molasses cody.

Apsey Brook United Thanksgiving

Apsey Brook United Thanksgiving

Besides the traditional gathering of family and friends, and belly bursting food, Thanksgiving was also traditionally a time to share the bounty.  We would always have a special thanksgiving church service, and people would bring vegetables, meats, fish, preserves and other purchased staples to the church, which would be gathered and shared with the more needy after the fact.  I’m sure there was also a little “showing off” involved, as it was always nice to have pride in how good a crop of potatoes or carrots or whatever you had.  It also often led to trading.  Often times people back home traded what they had for what they didn’t, and this worked in reverse in other years.  For example, if you were lucky enough to kill a moose, or own a cow, you might trade a quarter of beef or moose for potatoes or vegetables, etc.

I hope you and yours have a great thanksgiving from me and mine.  Loosen your belt, laugh with family, eat some duff, splurge on the gravy, and remember to hold everyone dear close.  Happy Thanksgiving!

October 8, 2013 by Uncategorized 2

Cold Packing Time

When I was a boy, I heard of people canning fish and meat for winter, and I always wondered how they did it.  Always wondered how a person at home sealed a tin can.   For some reason I never associated our cold packing in bottles with canning.  I always thought that canning involved, well cans.

While I’m sure there is some method of doing just that, I since realized that canning is generally referred to bottling or putting up or preserves.  This being the hunting and harvesting season, is when we’d generally start to see cold packing happening.  Moose, rabbit, apples, damsons, and who knows what else would be prepared for canning.

Electricity came to Random Island the year I was born, or at least to my part of it, 1965.  Before that to keep food for winter, vegetables were kept in a root cellar, and fish was generally salted.  Fruit, berries, and meats though were usually cold packed, and that continues today, more so because we like them that way than because we need to.  Besides that we’d also make some pickles.  Not pickled cucumber, but more like what we see in stores now as chow chow.  There were many kinds, rhubarb (ew), and my favorite green tomato and apple.

But cold packing was a big thing.  Everyone had a huge boiler that they’d scald the bottles in to sterilize them.  Meats would be cut into small pieces, and added to the bottles with some fat back pork.  Berries and fruits were generally put in the bottles whole, tho sometimes cut smaller to aid cooking times.  The bottles would then be placed back in the boiler to cook the food, with a rubber sealed lid placed on lightly.  Once cooked, the bottles would be placed on a rack to cool, and the contraction/cooling process would create a vacuum with the lid, sealing the bottle.  A screw top ring would be added to keep it tight.

These bottles would then be used as meals throughout the winter, though in my time, they became more of a dessert or in the case of meats, something to augment the traditional Sunday evening cold plate.

Now I’m hungry, anyone got a bottle of moose to send me for supper?

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October 6, 2013 by Uncategorized 2

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