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Nothing was wasted in Depression era
T
hat day, my sister Audrey was taken out of school. Because I was much younger and refused to go to school without her, I too was allowed to stay home. Audrey was needed in the kitchen, as it was the day Mr. Briscoe would arrive with his circular saw mounted on a flat-bottom sleigh for a day of cutting wood. The gang of neighbours who would arrive early in the morning, in cutters or sleighs, would have to be fed their dinner. They were sometimes 15 to 20 men with big appetites and Mother needed all the help she could get. It would have taken many weeks for Father to bring the cut trees out of the bush and stack them in the barn yard. The neighbours would start to arrive early and get right to the job at hand. It was one of my most favourite days: I would plant myself in the kitchen window on a chair, making sure I had cleared a spot of frost from the middle pane, so
MARY COOK Mary Cook’s Memories that I could watch the men at work. It took several men to feed the logs into the circular saw, another few to catch the flying wood, and still another few to throw them onto our waiting sleigh or stone boat, whichever was handy. The cut pieces were hauled to the back door of the shed, and tossed in a heap. It would be my brothers’ chore, over several Saturdays, to stack the cut wood into neat and high rows in the shed. The wood was then close at hand to the kitchen wood box, which I had to keep filled for the Findlay Oval cook stove, a job I hated with a passion. The bake table would be full of pies, mostly raisin or apple. Mother would have
been up late the night before baking them to free the oven for the dinner the next day. Early in the morning, into the Findlay Oval would go a roast of pork or beef, enough to fill the largest roast pan we owned. Sitting in big aluminum pots would be enough potatoes to feed half of Renfrew County and pots of turnips and carrots would be cooked and ready for mashing just before the men came in for their meal. Of course, white porcelain pots would be simmering with green tea on the back of the stove. It was my job to set the kitchen table and another small table that usually held baking pans and extra cutlery. The red-checked oilcloth had to be wiped and
dried and the big white cups and saucers, the ones we got free in bags of puffed wheat, set beside each plate. While the men filed into the kitchen, my sister Audrey would already be filling bowls with potatoes and vegetables, and big platters of sliced meat would be put at the ends of the tables. By the time the last man had washed up in one of the two
didn’t take long for the men to wipe their plates clean with slices of home-made bread. The pies were cut in four and without benefit of clean plates, the men slid a whopping piece onto their dinner plates and it wasn’t unusual for second helpings all around. Most of the day would be spent by the time the last log was fed into the circular saw
Long before recycling and reusing were common phrases, the sawdust was carried over to the ice house, covering the blocks brought up from the frozen Bonnechere weeks before. It was an era when nothing was wasted. basins of hot soapy water on the bench at the back door, the water was black. There wasn’t much thought given to germs back then. Rich brown gravy was poured from milk jugs, and it
and it was time for the men to head back to their own farms for the evening chores. Wood sawing day continued up and down the Northcote Side Road until every farm had been tended to. It
was the neighbourly thing to do back in those Depression years. Then my three brothers would be home from school, and after getting out of their school clothes and into their work clothes, they headed right for the barn and the chores. Father’s overalls would be covered with sawdust and splinters of wood, but there was no changing for him until he was finished in the barns. It always amazed me how he could sit right down at the supper table and pile his plate high with whatever was left over from the noon meal, just like he hadn’t eaten in days. The next day I would wander over to where the sawing had taken place and wade through the pile of sawdust that had been left behind. Long before recycling and reusing were common phrases, the sawdust was carried over to the ice house and added to the sleighloads brought from the saw mill, covering the blocks brought up from the frozen Bonnechere weeks before. It was an era when nothing was wasted.
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16 Nepean-Barrhaven EMC - Thursday, January 17, 2013
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