Page 33 - Starting with Our Cover Photograph" A Visit with Mary and William Crowdis

ISSUE : Issue 30

Published by Ronald Caplan on 1981/12/1

They raised a lot of vegetables. William: Loads and loads and loads--they built a green cellar, too--a place for to keep them where they wouldn't freeze. Mary: And • my mother and-father went back up there to work when they opened that farm. The com? pany built a little house up there--! sup? pose it's down now. And they had three big barns there. William: Well, you think what it would take to keep a hundred horses. Mary: The old barn was still up there--but they had to do a lot of repairs to it. Then they built two other barns. Then they had a harness room and everything right there--had a man from Whycocomagh, he was a harness maker. (We've sort of lost that direct connection, between St. Ann's and Margaree, because we think of the road today, which is so long around. We forget that on top of the moun? tain, people weren't that far apart.) Mary: No, they used to go right in through St. Ann's and down to North River and Baddeck and those places. They had four horse teams. (And the road was pretty good then?) Wil? liam: Well, put it the other way. They were pretty bad. They were mud and water and everything. I drove four-horse team there. Ernest Fraser did, too. And the lead horses, the ones that would be ahead, they'd be soaking wet with mud and water. You had to go in the barn and wash those horses down when you got into St. Ann's. Mary: Wintertime was the only time the road was really good. William: But it was really a bad road. It wasn't a good road. Today they have a good road. When I started there first, we toted with two wheels and a drag. The front wheels--they were truck wagon. Then there were poles put on the bunk--and this is what they put the stuff on, on the rack. (Poles right on the ground.) Yes, "tail drag," they called it. (And by "stuff"--what were you toting?) Well, hay, oats, potatoes, flour, pork, every damn thing. Mary: Everything went in from this end. William: There were barrels of lard and barrels of flour. Scarcity of nothing. Axes, iron, tools, saws, clothes-- anything. This is what we toted in. Horse? shoes, bolts and coal and everything for the blacksmith shops in there. And a saw? mill in there, too. Used to make some of the stuff for making sleighs--big heavy sleighs--some were tail drag and some were two sleighs, you know, bobsleighs, they CONTINUED NEXT PAGE Claymore Motel p. 0. Box 1720, Antigonish, N. S. B2G 2M5 Phone 863-1050 - Telex 019-36567 Ask About Our Ski Package - Winter Weekend Specials - 52 Modern Rooms - Licensed Dining Room and ENTERTAINMENT CENTRE OF CAPE BRETON Joe's V ferehouse The Food Emporium Cape Breton's Newest and Largest Restaurant SPECIALIZING IN AGED PRIME CUTS OF ROAST BEEF & STEAKS & ONE OF THE MOST UNIQUE SALAD BARS IN THE MARITIMES! & Smooth Herman's Lounge You will be surrounded by a collection of some of Cape Breton's finest antiques. Live Entertainment Nightly| 424 Charlotte Street 539-6686 539-0408 RESTAURANT LOUNGE BANQUET FACILITIES ARE AVAILABLE r 1 Helping Keep li Ij the Old Hova Scotia I jbf Hem Hova Scotjans. |

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