Random Island

SummerBlast 95

Prologue

Like most people of my generation, house parties were a normal thing to attend, but I’d never held one, mostly because my folks were pretty stay at home, and didn’t go out a lot for extended times for me to actually have a location. There was always a crowd at my house, people liked my mom and dad, and the feeling was mutual, but never a party per se.

When my sister graduated high school, she moved to Halifax to study.  Much younger than me, she was the apple of all our eyes and of course we missed her like crazy.  In the summer of 1995, Mom, Dad, and Keith made their first ever trip outside the province, and took a vacation in Halifax to visit her.

And so it began…

Prelude

SummerBlast 95 Sign

The Promo Sign

I believe it was a Satrurday (Though maybe it was Friday?) morning in August, I was on vacation from my job at the Radisson/Delta, when I drove the family to the airport in St. John’s to see them off on their trip.  I got back to Random Island about noonish, and what did I see at the turn off in Elliott’s Cove?  Well the sign on the left of course, created by the culprits pictured.

I quickly removed it, a little paranoid that the police might see it, and I didn’t want to give them any reason to come over to our little deserted part of the world.  I may have been a little prophetic in that regard, because around supper time that evening a fire started at the dump, and while I’m not sure, I think police were called down over the island to it.

In the meantime, I tidied up the house some, and at some point picked up Bernard, and some beer and headed back to the house to wait.  and wait. and wait.  I was expecting a few people to show up early, but it was more like a few batches.  I think around 8pm we got the first wave, and then….. it became legend.

The Party

Nothing to see here, move along.

Nothing to see here, move along.

I was only expecting maybe 20 or so people, the close group that always hung together, and they were amongst the first to show up.  Full of devilment as always with our group, ideas sprang to mind.  On the right you’ll see an outline of, I believe, Kendall Pitcher, as at a crime scene, with a squirt of ketchup for effect.  Then Steven Patey rode his trike up to it flat out, and slammed on his brakes to make some skid marks.

That was an indication of the kind of night it was going to be.

Bernard wearing mom's .... whatever it is

Bernard wearing mom’s …. whatever it is

Luckily we had a fairly big house, with a finished or semi-finished basement, and that it was also a beautiful night.  Why? Well at one point Bernard and I counted over 100 people there we knew, and there were more we didn’t!  What was awesome about the whole thing was that it never got out of hand, there were no fights, and nothing was broken.  Well except one plastic stool that someone sat on.  I’m looking at you Jim Bailey.  But there were good times galore, people got into everything, not maliciously, but in fun.  As you can see here, Bernard decided to try on one of mom’s…. whatever it is.

Some highlights:

  • Julie and Lorrie decided that mom’s salt and pepper shakers should go in the trees because, well they were shaped like owls and owls belong in trees.
  • Barry decided he was going to claim a place to sleep, so he put a sign on one of the beds.  Of course, god knows where he slept because that became the only bed that didn’t get used!
  • Kendall passed out in the bathroom, we had to drag him out by the ankles, I think he slept in the hallway all night.
  • A married man, who I will leave nameless, was frightened to death his wife was going to see pictures of girls sitting on his lap, which was why, of course, they did it in the first place!  I believe it may have been Naomi who instigated that, but I could be wrong.
  • Craig Baker came up stairs and told me there was a weasel in the basement!  Well that turned out to be a nickname we had for someone, who I’ll also leave nameless.  But was quite funny as I expected that person to be one to complain about the party rather than show up!

Things finally started winding down around 2 am I believe, with if I remember correctly, 18 people sleeping or passed out in the house, plus I think Jim Marsh sleeping in his truck outside.  Things get muddled after 18 years, but I think it was Randy Baker I found asleep in the stairs, that couldn’t have been comfortable. I was told at one point cars were lining the road from Roy Smith’s house to Uncle Hay’s house on both sides of the road, a distance of likely a kilometer.

Epilogue

Well with varying degrees of success we got up the next morning and got our day started.  Luckily my friends were and are good friends, and many if not all of those 18 people were up mopping floors, picking up bottles and garbage, cleaning and washing dishes.  Of course some devilment had to be had, so Eric put the teaspoons in the Random Island shaped souvenir spoon rack Dad had made, and put those in the cupboard with the forks and knives.  The plates of course, went in the cutlery drawers.  And as happenstance would have it, a few hours after everything was cleaned, the well went dry!

As I said nothing was broken other than that one stool, but for months afterwards, one of Dad’s pairs of pajamas were missing.  For some reason, some one had hung these up in the closet on a hanger under something else!

The party itself took on a legendary status with people I didn’t know, mentioning to me that they had heard about it.  I remember one time especially the worker at the driving range in Clarenville telling me about it!

In total I gathered 30 dozen beer bottles from around the house, as well as 15 liquor bottles.  God knows how many were never found thrown through the woods or in Alice’s garden, or how many were taken with the people when they left.  I’m glad I found that many though, as I was broke, and I used the cash from those bottles to pay Anthony Avery to steam clean the carpets for me! Yes, there was a little mess 🙂

I’d love for anyone who was there to share there memories in the comments as I’m sure I’ve forgotten lots of things!

August 1, 2013 by Uncategorized 9

Going nuts!

Beaked Hazelnut

Near Andy Marshall’s house, by Apsey Brook before Hurricane Igor pretty much wiped out the brook area, there were a few beaked hazelnut trees. We didn’t really gather them for anything, but come late summer, when their spiny husk started to dry and the brown of the shell started to show through the husk, we’d always like to go get a few for a treat.

Across the road from Random Island Academy there was also a field that we used for sports and activities, at least until the brook shifted and washed a lot of the field away.  There were many many of these trees there near the brook as well, and early in the school year we’d often go across at recess and lunch to get some.  But to be fair we mostly threw them at each other then rather than eating them.

They were much more abundant before the great squirrel invasion.  For those that don’t know, or are too young to remember, squirrels aren’t native to Newfoundland, and are only a recent comer.  I don’t think I ever saw one before my teens, maybe later.  Wikipedia says they were introduced in 1963, but if so it took a while before they became the overpopulated nuisance they are now.  In any event, most of these wild nuts seem to be consumed by them before we ever got a chance to get any.

Would make ya go nuts wouldn’t it?

July 30, 2013 by Uncategorized 2

Bakeapple Led

Back home, when someone went astray, or got disoriented, the old folks would say they were fairy led. As in led astray by the fairies.  Well there were no fairies involved in this story, but we were definitely astray!

Bakeapples, or as they are known in some parts, cloud berries, are a favorite back home.  They are very sweet, with a sticky consistency, that’s great for jams and to top other things with.  Mom has been known to make a bakeapple tart in the same manner as people make partridge berry tarts.

I was never a big fan of them myself, I do like them, but find them overwhelmingly sweet, and don’t want a lot of them.  But for some reason, one summer, around the same time as now, prior to me moving away to Nova Scotia, Bernard and I decided to go bakeapple picking.

On the upper end of Random Island, there is a big big barren where bakeapples grow.  One thing about bakeapples though is that they grow one berry per plant, nearly on the ground, and the plants are often 6 inches to several feet apart.  We went through the woods at the tv tower, and walked through the short bit of woods till we got in on the barren.  We then walked till we found some berries and got down to picking.

The big issue though is that once you’re in the middle of a barren, with your head down, when you look up all the directions look pretty much the same.  We picked and picked till we were both tired and later evening was coming on, and then decided to make our way out of the woods.  Well of course when we looked up, nothing looked much different than anything else.  Luckily the barren was up on a rise, and we could see water, but unluckily, Random Island is an island, and water was visible in many directions.  Also unfortunately trees blocked some of the view, so we could only see water in the distance, and not see the bar bridge.

Well there was nothing for it, but to pick a direction and start walking and so we did, for what seemed like hours till we got to the edge of the barren and found a path.  We decided to follow it, with no better plan, and it shortly intersected with a much larger path, which turned out to be the road that someone whose name now escapes me had at the upper edge of the island for their mill.

We finally made it back to the road, and started our hike back to the car which was about 2 or 3 miles back at the old tv tower.  Not much traffic on the island, so we were resigned to walking the whole way, when finally a car came by, and who did it turn out to be?  Dad and Mom!  So of course the picked us up and carried us back to the car, from where we finally made our way home after being …… bakeapple led.

July 25, 2013 by Uncategorized 0

If the lightning doesn’t get them!

The oldfolks would say, there’ll be lots of bakeapples if the lightning don’t get em!  July, whether there’s any truth to it or not, or just superstition or coincidence, is an important month in determining the yield of some berries.  Obviously a late frost is likely to kill the young forming berries, but we also used to say a lightning storm would kill the bakeapples (a topic for another post) before they could ripen.  Whether there’s any scientific basis for this, or why it seems to be true I don’t know.

One thing that did seem to be true though was that the yield of dewberries, also known as plumboys, seemed to be an indicator of how many bakeapples you’d get.

That was kind of irrelevant to the kid me, and possibly still would be to the adult me if I were anywhere to get some of these!  These wonderful little berries used to grow around our fence, and on the side of the old school garden path. While we never picked them to make a jam or jelly, I’ve spent many an hour hunting them out and staining my hands with their delicious red juice.  Looking similar to a raspberry, with a little seed in each nodule, they were more translucent in coloring, and would darken to a deep wine color with a ton of juice for their size.

Rubus arciicus - Dewberry

Rubus arciicus – Dewberry

They too seemed to have some sort of reverse affinity with lightning though.  If there happened to be a local lightning storm when they were ripening, the yield always seemed lower.  Again for whatever reason, even if it was just the power of suggestion in out minds, I can’t say.

In any event, I hope the lightning doesn’t get them, and someone mails me up a few hundred thousand!

July 8, 2013 by Uncategorized 2

They’d be Savage!

Its pissing down here now, has been all day, but earlier in the week, Keith mowed the lawn and got it in nice shape again, a never ending job.  But whenever I see the neat and well kept lawns nowadays, and even more so back home, I can’t help but hear Uncle Luther grumbling with me and all kids to keep out of the grass.  Not because it was neat and well tended, but because he didn’t want it trampled, and wanted it to grow to make hay for the horses.

I wasn’t all that old when he passed away, nor did people tend to keep horses much beyond my early teens as ski-doos and atv’s became more practical, but back then it was a summer chore of mine to turn the hay, and rake it in the evenings. Many days of back breaking labor were involved in cutting it down with a scythe.  Those things were a chore in and of themselves as dad always had to keep a stone in his back pocket to keep it sharp.  Dad may have been a bit of a perfectionist with it anyway, as he kept his sharp enough to shave the hair on his arm.  Was always a worry when in the barn to not accidentally touch it.

Old Hay Prong (Eric Cooper Picture)

Joe Baker with an old Hay Prong (Eric Cooper Picture)

On sunny days we’d spread the hay on the field to dry, and then turn it with the old prong  (still seems funny to me how something with two large tines so far spread was used on something so slight as hay)about half way through the afternoon.  Then rake it again into a stack in the evening and cover it with a bren (essentially bren bags taken apart and sewed into a larger tarp) weighted at the corners by rocks.  Once it was dry, I can see dad in my minds eye now loading up a huge bren with hay and walking across the garden, and up the ramp to the loft over the stable.  I can’t even begin to tell you how big it was, but it dwarfed him.  I know hay didn’t weigh a lot, but holy god so much had to.

The hay was used to feed the horses in the winter of course, and I can still remember the smell of hay all over me as we played in the stable loft, heedless of the millions of sneezes that it caused to erupt from me.

With all the need we had for hay back in those days, I can hear them grumbling about lawn mowing now… they’d be savage!

June 29, 2013 by Uncategorized 2

Rolling on the beach

Caplin-1280Its not the Adele song, its the caplin spawn! About this time of year we start to see caplin coming ashore on the beaches to spawn.  Back when I was younger they’d come further up the sound than now, and we’d see tons of them up in Apsey Brook.  Didn’t see that as often at least up until I moved away.

I think that’s mainly because when I was a lad, there was really no commercial use for them.  People caught them for food and that was about it, but later on, their roe became popular with the Japanese market, and a large commercial fishery took off.

These small smelt like fish would teem near shore and we’d go down and pick them up in dip nets, five gallon buckets, and cast nets, getting tons and tons.

Cast Net

 

Some we’d eat fresh, though I was never fond of them this way, but the majority we’d salt and sun dry or smoke.  A common site was to see caplin racks like those pictured all over the island, caplin hung on them, pierced through the eye, to dry. For me, one of my favorite things to eat is a dried smoked caplin, its almost like fish jerky!  Or dare I say it, fish bacon! So delicious!

Commercially, they were also a good way for us younger folks to make a few extra dollars, as the plants would pay us to pick the males from the females. Males were used for fish meal, food, or what have you, while the females were milked for the roe.

Not sure the caplin racks are very common anymore now, or how many we see rolling on the beach, but I’m sure people still call the damp foggy days in late June caplin weather.

I think now I’m going to have to head out and find some caplin, still see some smoked ones from Golden Shell fisheries in the stores here sometimes!

June 22, 2013 by Uncategorized 6

Happy Father’s Day

This was tough to write…

Dad was a bear of a man, him, Uncle Hay and Uncle Lindo all were. Possibly uncle Herven and Lawrence too, but they lived away for most of my memory. (Well St. John’s is not so far away in Uncle Lawrence’s case, but what I mean was I never saw them in their Random Island living days). By bear I mean they were strong as bears, I remember stories told to me by third parties of feats of strength by both Uncle Hay and Dad. I’m sure they probably got exaggerated over the years, but I know from my own memory they were strong as hell.

But they grew up in a time of manual labour, working in the lumber woods, cutting cords of wood a day with a bucksaw.  Living away for months in rough camps to earn a living.  And then coming back to work the land and sea for their own food, as well as maintain their own houses.  Everyone was a plumber, a carpenter, an electrician.

But as strong as Dad was, he was a gentle soul, with a huge soft spot.  I remember when squirrels were new to Newfoundland, Dad had found one injured and brought it home to care for it.  He was also the devil incarnate at times, mischievous as all get out, and quick with a quip.  He taught us pride and humility, respect, and most of all love and joy.

Dad was taken in 1998, and while I can’t claim to be very religious, I do feel him, hear him, and most of all see him in the eyes and love of my little niece.  He would have doted on her just like he doted on my sister.  She’d be Poppy’s girl for sure.  Of course I can’t say I’m immune to that doting either.  And there is no jealousy in what I say of my sister, I doted on her too, and still do.

Dad was loved by many, known by more than seems possible, and missed terribly by us.  The memories are great ones, and will cherish them.  Miss you Dad, I see you now in my minds eye in by Fox Pond when I towed you in there on the ATV. We spoke then that it was likely your last time, and last trip, gout having made getting around difficult. We had many good times before and after that, but that was a special day to me, we shared a quiet time, words weren’t necessary.

Happy Father’s Day everyone.

June 16, 2013 by Uncategorized 1

When the Horses Ran Free

I guess it was a simpler time, and a simpler place.  Growing up in the 70’s in a town with a population of 65, and nearest large town about 20 minutes away, and that only having a population of a couple thousand, things were quieter.  You didn’t lock your doors, you often left your key in the car.  If you visited someone you almost always did, so that people could move them as necessary, or just take the most outside one.

A lot of people kept some sort of livestock, and a lot more kept a work horse, though for many, and my dad for sure, as much a pet as a work animal.  In those days you kept your horses and livestock on your land in winter, available for use, and often let them roam free in summer.

Seeing a group of horses walking down the road as they roamed the island over the summer was a common thing, and we often knew which to avoid as there were always a few saucy ones.  It was also not so uncommon to accidentally step in some stinky sheep manure, especially in patches of grass where you couldn’t see it.  Sheep were especially annoying as if they saw a fence, they just had to try and get behind it, and of course, when they did, not being the brightest of animals, were nearly incapable of finding the open gate when you tried to herd them out.

Horse manure wasn’t as bad, being quite a bit larger.  I can often remember in winter we’d use a frozen road apple as a hockey puck in our games of hockey.  Dad had a horse, and I guess the name he gave her, Pet, showed that he thought as much of her as pet as a work animal.  She had some Smith traits too.  Stubborn for one, she could not pass one water hole when pulling wood in winter without getting a drink, no matter how often she had passed it, and no amount of coaxing got her to go till she was ready.

Pet was large for a horse back home too, larger than most of the others.  I really have no idea if she was a Newfoundland pony or not, but was larger than most of the males.  I assume this is why she never had a foal till she was very nearly 20 years old, nearly ancient for a horses, or at least those I knew.  But this one summer, we had heard someone say she had one.  We tracked down the herd near the brickyard near Snook’s Harbour, and sure enough there was a little black foal with her.  We named him Frisky as he was a handful.  We eventually sold or gave him away, he didn’t have the best of temperaments to my memory. But still the sight of a herd of horses, roaming free for the summer, stopping traffic on times, was a memory of growing up that I’ll always cherish.

June 15, 2013 by Uncategorized 5

Magna Berries

Yesterday’s post reminded me of berries and the many different kinds we had growing up back home.  One of the lesser known, were what we, at least, called magna berries.  I’ve mentioned them to others over the years, but I don’t recall most having a different or in fact any name for them.

That’s likely because the creeping snowberry as its truly known are not harvested much.  And that’s likely because the berries are tiny, so small we often called them ant’s eggs, because they resembled, well ant’s eggs.  They also usually were underneath their vines and hard to see at all.

There was an old slide path near my house, what we called the school garden path, that joined on to the “old road” forming a fork encircling the old garden.  On the slide path, hugging the tops of the bank were many of these vines.

They have a distinct wintergreen smell and flavor, and I once tried to pick some hoping to persuade mom to make some jelly or jam from them.  But, after what felt like forever, I only had a teacup full, and I gave it up for a bad job.  Just too tiny and not abundant enough.

That said, it was always a tasty treat when walking out from trouting to try and get a few of these little mints!

June 9, 2013 by Uncategorized 8

The Tournament

In the summer of 95 I believe it was, there was a softball tournament at the Lion’s Park at Elliott’s Cove Pond. And a good time was had by all.  The end.

Well that’s a kinda lame story, so will add a couple events.  Hopefully I can be forgiven if I’ve mixed multiple events into one.

For some reason I was umpiring that tournament or a lot of it anyway, not because I was necessarily any good, but more because no one else wanted to do it.  Umpires of our softball games generally have to make all the calls for all the bases, and outfield as well, so sometimes the point of view can be difficult.  That said, I really from that day to this cannot be sure I made the right call, just that I made a call.  I can’t even remember specifics now, but for some reason I had called Craig Baker out at first, whether for being thrown out, or for being off the bag or whatever, I don’t recall.  What I do recall though was something was said or done, and I threw Craig out of the game.  I probably wasn’t amused at the time, but I know everyone else was laughing and I can only laugh now too as Craig took the bag and walked up the road and threw it out in the woods!

The second incident, may or may not have been during the tournament, and since I don’t know the people involved well anymore, will not mention their names, but I’m sure most will remember.  Somehow an argument happened between two people around 2nd base.  All I can remember, and to this day laugh my ass off was the exchange “Ah, go f$%k a caribou!” and the response “Well you go screw a moose!”

That tournament was also unfortunately the site of an injury when Lisa Critch got her leg broken at 2nd base.  Scary play, and so happy she recovered well.

Summer days, where would the be without softball?

June 1, 2013 by Uncategorized 0

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