Page 74 - With Dan Angus Beaton, Blackstone: Farm Life, Dredging on the Great Lakes, and Tales

ISSUE : Issue 47

Published by Ronald Caplan on 1988/1/1

|Rock brought off the bottom. Be- Tugboat Sachem: "the one... which sank without any reason." Below: Dipper Dredge Empire loading a scow. money. A person that was making $18 a week in Boston was--big money. It was as good a money as you could get anywhere. The best carpenters there were only making $20 a week. (And you were getting $18 to put the eraser on the end of a pencil!) That's right, that's right. Wages were very, very even, you know; there was no up or down. Everybody was getting about the same. I didn't care for that job. Well, my broth? er had gone to Detroit. He had gone with my uncle. By golly, they were following the dredges. Digging the rivers deeper, you know. Deepening the harbours. See, the Great Lakes were going down, down, down at that time. Water was getting lower, lower, lower, lower all the time. But the water was pure in the Great Lakes then. You could go out to Lake Erie, and after you were out 4 or 5 miles you could drink all the water you wanted. Fish were in every corner of it. The same in Lake Ontario. You could go out anywhere in Lake Ontario and drink the water as soon as you'd go out. That's the water we were drinking. Just throw your mug overboard and drink all you wanted. I went scowing. You're taking the dirt, what was dug (up off the bottom)--that was put in those big scows and hauled out and dumped out in deeper water. See, the big dredge would dig it and put it in big scows. Those scows would hold 500 and some of them 1000 yards. Of anything you'd put in them. (Whatever you took off the bot? tom.) Right. Whether it was rock or whether it vfas clay, or whatever. (When you took it out to deeper water, how did you get it off the scow?) Oh, the doors would open out like that, it would drop '''VtSs' DOMU ( OPEN 24 HOURS - 7 DAYS A WEEK ) 69 Townsend Street Sydney (562-8085) 1058 Kings Road Sydney River (539-3930) 413 Weiton Street Prince Street Sydney (562-5033) Sydney Shopping Centre (539-4287) Sterling IVIall 106 King Street Glace Bay (849-0988) North Sydney (794-8337) "Always fresh because you keep eating theml" i/tMHf (74)'

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