Cape Breton's Magazine

Aunt Annie MacLeod, Wreck Cove This article is edited from four visits with Annie MacDermid MacLeod. Her nephew, Dannie MacDermid, and niece, Annie Mae MacDermid MacLeod, participated in the first visit. Roslyn MacLeod, her grandniece, was there for the third. All four visits took place at the home of Anna (Annie's daughter) and Reg Walsh, in Sydney. (You were saying that you don't think there's any use in your bothering reading-- a big waste of time.) Oh yes, I like read? ing. Oh, I love reading. But. Just like that--I kind of think it's a waste of time. At my age. But if I was younger, I think that it'd be very good for me to read, and know more about what's going on. (What was it you said?--you don't know what you're going to do with all that knowledge.) Well, when I'm knitting or quilting or doing something like that, I find it's going to be useful. But my reading is not going to be useful to anyone, as far as I know. (But don't you think you're entitled to just pleasure--just to have a good time?) Oh, yes, I know. I was always fond of read? ing. After I got married, I remember that: that used to interfere with my work. And I don't approve of that now. For a person to be so interested in reading. But I never-- like some people, now, they'd start a book, and they'd read all night till they fin? ished the book. I never did that in my life. I'd just read for awhile. I guess I knew I'd be too lazy getting up in the morning! (The business of work, though, the idea of the book interfering with your work. Were your days that full, right after you were married? Did you have so much work to do?) Yes. When we went to live in our own place down there (at Wreck Cove), it interfered with my work. I was supposed to do some? thing one day. Allister had fallen asleep in my lap, and I stayed--I had a book, and I was reading. And George came in, and he was working at something. And I thought, "Now isn't this ridiculous? I'm sitting down here reading, wasting my time, and he has so much work to do." I made up my mind. And you know, like somebody--alcoholic or something--! stopped reading. For years and years. And I wasn't even interested. Isn't that strange? I just got over it. (And you weren't interested in reading?) I wasn't interested in reading at all. Just like that. Well, you'd think, after all, I was so interested in reading, I'd like to read some. But no, I wasn't. Didn't bother me that I didn't read. Oh well, I had a pretty good life, really, when you think of it. (It seems to me, from our talks, that you spent your youth kind 35