Cape Breton's Magazine

So I was in bed for probably a year. At home, all home treatment, there was noth? ing they could do about it. They would lift me--I wasn't very heavy--they would lift me and carry me out to the kitchen or carry me to the window to see something or anything like that. I could sit on a chair. My hands were unaffected • From the waist down, pretty bad. And somehow I learned to crawl. One morn? ing I got out of bed, and I would say it was with the strength of my arms, I dragged myself out to the kitchen. Gradual? ly, little by little, T learned to stand with a chair, by a chair. I'd be pretty wobbly. They'd encourage me all the time. Otherwise I would probably never have come thipough it. Didn't embarrass them one bit. And it seems that it didn't embarrass me at the time. Even if people were in, I'd crawl out. But it was just the fact that I couldn't do anything but be in somebody's way up to that. There were 9 of us in the family, you know. Mother wasn't needing the help from me, or anything like that. Also, my father away from home. My father was a schoolteacher at that time, teaching for $200 a year. And 9 children. He would have to move from anywhere from Scotsville to Bay St.. Lawrence. He'd go alone; the fam? ily would be home. Couldn't afford to move them. But my mother was a great big strong woman, and she was the boss. We kept a few cattle and sheep and two horses--she had to do all that with the aid of the boys, and see that it was done. They were able to do enough farming to get our own vegeta? bles and meat and stuff like that. But there were times when things were pretty rough, but we managed tp come through it okay. So she didn't have too much time. But eve? ry minute she could, she would devote it to me, to try and rub, massage the legs, and all that sort of thing. But even at that, she was working like a slave to do that. And after I started to school, then I used crutches. Until I was 18 years old, and they got enough money together to send me for one year to St.F.X. But I couldn't continue, we didn't have enough money. And a fellow from Newfoundland had broken his leg. His leg cured, and he had a cane. He was rooming next to me at St.F.X. And he got trying me with a cane. The first thing I knew, I could walk with a cane. And I dropped the crutches, And from that until 1954, I never used anything but a cane. And in 1954 I fell and dislocated my hip. So there's only one thing to do, is put a brace--a caliper, they called it--on that, and try it with that. So that's how I got along since 1954. But I drove a car since I was 17. (On a day-to-day basis, when you were a child, your whole world is only two feet high.) That's allv Even to this day, I still think of the springtime. The winter- cRtiie coopetMca' f' Insurance Services For All Your Personal Coverage, Call: SYDNEY 539-6315 (toll free) NORTH SYDNEY 794-4788 GLACE BAY 849-4547 MABOU 945-2514 NEW WATERFORD 862-3350 LOUISDALE 345-2199 PORT HAWKESBURY 625-0640 CHETICAMP 224-3204 HOBBY HUT The Knitting & Craft Siiop 204 Commercial St., North Sydney, N. S. Tel. 794-7774 Pure Wool & Synthetic Yarns Knitting Needles & Patterns Smocking Supplies Locally Made Ceramics Artists' Boards Sewing Notions Knitted Items Wide Range of Craft Supplies A COMPREHENSIVE FARM PACKAGE IS AVAILABLE (71)