Page 12 - Alma MacDonald - A War Bride in West Mabou

ISSUE : Issue 73

Published by Ronald Caplan on 1998/6/1

him. He couldn't write many letters or any? thing- -he would use his two middle fingers --but his work, he could do that. My mother's parents moved to the United States; they had a newspaper business in Montana. My mother was left in England, and was looked after by her aunts, my grand-uncles; she had a good life. At age nineteen she got married. Tough life after she got married, seven kids: six girls and one boy. Bessy (born 1913), Emily, Lilly, Philip, Charlotte, Nancy, and I, of course. I was born in 1923, the third youngest. Nancy, Emily, and Philip are dead now. My mother was like the rest of us, she was a housekeeper, she had chil? dren, looked after us all well. That was my mother's life. My father worked all the time through the Depression, luckier than most of the people around. We never went hungry, we al? ways had food, al? ways had clothes on our back. We lived out in the country an hour and a half from town in West Roddymoor, Crook, County Durham. We had a good life. I didn't finish school because my mother died when I was thirteen and I had to stay home. Well, Lilly was home first, but she took diphtheria, so then I had to quit school to take over. She was in the hospital for quite a while. I got Form Three, an? other year and I would have been finished school pretty well. We had a very nice teach? er, very strict: punishment came out often. (Laughter.) Then your name went in the book, and no one wanted their name in the punish? ment book. It was an awful thing to have your name in that. People were first like the way they were over here (in Cape Breton) at that time. We didn't have elec? tricity at first: we had outside toi? lets. We called it a lavatory, or a netty. The road ran through between your houses and your toilets....

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