Page 11 - "The Time We Had for One Another": The Curtis Family & Songs

ISSUE : Issue 55

Published by Ronald Caplan on 1990/8/1

O'Brien." That was an Irish ditty. (That would wake you up!) ...Wake us up is right! A friend of mine named Pat O'Brlan, aboard a Broadway car did ride, To Halen Square where he'd reside, when his daily work was done. The reason why he had to ride, he couldn't walk, for he had tied A pick and shovel by his side and a turkey he had won. • from Pat O'Brlan ("Babes of America," you know, is such a heavy song, to put the kids to sleep. But I noticed that among Gaelic speakers--their songs, the ones used for lullabies, are of? ten very gory and very sad.) Rose: Now that "No man is an island, entire of itself..? (John Donne, 1572 - 1631) Today's global marketplace enlarges our opportunities. And our challenges. The spirit of teamwork has never been more important. At Enterprise Cape Breton and Enterprise Cape Breton Corporation we work with business-minded people to build for the future. We're here to counsel, support and encourage men and women whose vision and determination is creating jobs and an improved economic climate. Miracles.'' Not likely. But solid achievement and, over time, a better way of life in Eastern Nova Scotia.-* YES. We firmly believe in that. Working with ACOA; working with governments at every level, working with people who can make things happen, we're here to help. ;r ?? r p lit' tnterpfise Cape Breton • MMw Enterprise Cape Breton Corporation P.O. Box 2001, Commerce Tower, 15 Dorchester Street, Sydney, Nova Scotia B1P6K7 564-3614 iw Part of the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency song--(my sister) Monica is quite a bit younger than I am--and I used to rock her in the evenings. That was the thing, you know, this rocking bit. I used to rock her, and she'd ask me to sing "The Babes of America." I'd only get a few verses of it sung when she'd start to cry. She'd cry and she'd cry. Then, I quit the song, of course. The next evening, probably, she'd crawl up again in my arms: "Sing 'The Babes of America.'" Be the same go again. The same thing all over. She wanted to hear it, and yet, you know, it used to make her so sad, she'd cry and cry.... (Then there were songs that you learned, I Rose, that are not what you'd call Jimmy Curtis or Helen Curtis songs.) No, no-- the songs that we learned growing up were not--they were mostly radio songs. Hank Snow's. (What about "Way Down Upon Dixie's Isle?") Oh, I learned "Way Down upon Dixie's Isle" from the MacAskill girl. Annie MacAskill. (I wonder where she got it.) She learned it from a MacInnis- -Gordon Maclnnis. Where he learned it, I don't know. (But) the songs that we sang were all songs that we learned from ra? dio. You know, the Hank Snow songs, and Wilf Carter. Those are the songs that we sang all through the years. In concerts and whatnot. (But not that one--"Way Down upon Dixie's Isle"--that was more like one of the old songs.) Yes, that was an old song. And, the "Handful of Maple Leaves," of course I sang that through the years. And "The Old-Fashioned Couple," I

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