Page 20 - A Visit with Nan Morrison, Baddeck

ISSUE : Issue 47

Published by Ronald Caplan on 1988/1/1

weddings. And parties--they'd have parties any time--which wasn't very often--but house parties, we were dancing. I started to dance one morning at 10 o'clock. There was a marriage. I danced 23 square sets that day, between that day and that night. We got home about daylight. We went to bed for a couple of hours, and left for Sydney. The four of us--Janie D. B. and Angus Matheson and Alex and I. Boy, we were tough then. We could stay up all night and go all day. It was great. (So, you're ready to take up with another fellow as long as he can dance.) Everybody around here knows that. That'll be no news to them. Perhaps I'll have a dozen men come looking for me if that ever gets in the book! You know, I don't try to be anybody that I'm not. Every? body around here knows me. I go to dances, I go to card games, I go out and have a good time, I take a drink. And I'm not scared who knows it. Because, half the clergy in the country are taking drinks now. Right? (How different are you from your mother?) Well, I'll tell you. My mother was a very good woman. And there was a man down there. He had an awful lot of respect for my mother. And he used to drink a lot. And my mother would never take a drink. But he'd say, "Annie, it won't hurt you to have a hot toddy with me. Just for friendship's sake." And she'd have the hot toddy. But that was probably once in a great while that she'd do that. He thought the world of her. She wasn't af? raid that people would hear that she took a hot toddy with him. She wasn't afraid of it. But she just didn't like to get into it. My father liked his drink. Although he didn't go overboard with it. Nobody could drink in those days and bring up a big fam? ily. There were 12 of us. I had a great life. I did have a good life. (Sounds to me like you're not quite through with it. either.) No, not if I met a man tomorrow that I wanted to marry--I'd marry him right away.... Men that want to sit around, lounge around all day, they don't want to go anywhere--I don't care for that kind of a life. If I got a man that would like to go for walks, and to go out and dance, and to go out and eat once in awhile, and drive--if my husband had lived till he was 65, boy, we could have had the best time. He loved to get in that car and go, go, go, go. '''??P'' ''rV'j' ''''''m'''M'i, ''iiPb''' ''''''''''''''d'flj (r>''.,4#~ '*''~ i''jMlr ' tH Ir'Piii tti tt ' • %?? 1 m - i iim M-i'" -bMH Nan Morrison and_frd'n4s_'at_ajnini'' Summer IMZ.

Cape Breton's Magazine