Page 1 - Travels with Johnny "Butch" MacDonald

ISSUE : Issue 36

Published by Ronald Caplan on 1984/6/1

Travels with Johnny Butch' MacDonald **'i About half of this interview was made rid? ing in Johnny MacDonald's truck", visiting farms in Cape Breton County, I wasn't the first fellow to carry a cow in a truck, but I'm sure I was the second. I think Jack Munro was a little ahead of me. He was a competitor from Whycocomagh. Before 1929, I had a Model T truck. You can call it a truck. The box on the back of it was no bigger than the inside of this cab. You couldn't haul anything in it. You might take one calf in it if you tied his legs, you know. Take one or two calves. But at that time, you know, all the boats are running up the Lakes, And you'd go up with this Model T, you travelled around the country ever5rwhere. You were in every? body's gate. "Anything you're parting with? Any cattle or calves to put out?" Maybe they'd have something, and maybe they wouldn't. If they wouldn't, they'd tell you they'd have something next week or next month. Maybe they made a little, maybe I made a little. It was no gold mine, by any means. And whatever you would buy, the farmer'd put it onto the lakeboat, And the boat would come into Sydney, Oh yeah, you were going around then just buying the stuff. You didn't have to fight with it and wrestle it. You'd be travelling around now like up in Middle River there, in the fall of the CAPE BRETON'S MAGAZINE, NUMBER THIRTY-SIX WRECK COVE, CAPE BRETON, NOVA SCOTIA SECOND CLASS MAIL -- REGISTRATION NUMBER 3014 (1)

Cape Breton's Magazine