Page 45 - Mail and Snow and Roads and Mud

ISSUE : Issue 16

Published by Ronald Caplan on 1977/6/1

Eddie Gordon, Sydney: I took the mail be? tween Sydney and Irish Cove • it was a 35 mile run. I started away with an automobile* At that time the mail had to go through. If a snowstorm came you took the horse and sleigh and went with it. I had to keep horses. They were used very little* The first winter was the worst, I think, and that would probably be 1931. I had a horse in Sydney and a horse in Big Pond and a horse in Irish Cove • and I'd leave here and go to Big Pond and meet another driver, Mickey MacNeil, who left in the morning from Irish Cove. He'd turn his horse around and go back to Irish Cove and I'd put my horse in the barn, take the other horse and come back to Sydney. It gave me a 50 mile drive. I spent a month with the horse and sleigh; then I had a month with the car; then I got the mud in the spring and I was 19 days with a horse and a wagon. You couldn't get a car through the road with the mudo And this was the main highway. It was under construction--they were building it. I'd use a horse and wagon through the mud and I'd do that in a day • and I never trotted a horse to speak of, very little. We made sure they were good walkers • they could all walk 5 miles in an hour* But those 19 days with the mud: I had 3 horses and one horse got sick, was hurt. And I had to use two horses. A horse went up to Irish Cove, stayed overnight, came back the next day. I did that for 19 days. I thought it was awfully hard but condi? tions were so that I had to do it. And this was mud, not snow. I had a little chestnut mare • a little stinking thing--she was cross and balky and she'd kick you as quick as look at you • but once she found out what she had to do she'd do it* Now that little mare would leave Sydney River at what we'd call a dogtrot and that's the way she'd go to Irish Cove. I'd meet Mickey MacNeil in the Ben Eion woods • and we'd talk to one another when we got in hearing distance un? til we got out of hearing distance • but the horses didn't stop. You just stepped off of one rig and on to the other* We wouldn't turn around. And the next day we'd meet a- gain and I'd bring that horse back to Syd? ney and put her in the barn and give her a bucketful of oats and all the hay I could pile in front of her • go to the barn and check her in half an hour and she'd be laying down eating, she was that tired* Next day she'd do it again* But the next year I think there was only a day or two we had to use the horses* One year I had 4 horses and only one horse worked part of one day • the rest of the time the horses were eating their heads off in the barn. In the middle thirties we had a very severe winter • 41 days that went to zero or below according to my re- Ladies and Children's Wear lit 314 Charlotte Street SYDNEY Phone (902> 794-7251 Cable BRENNANS Telex 019-35149 Night & Holiday 736-8479 794-3178 maiiit ''''' Brennans f'' Travel Agency PURVES STREET, NORTH SYDNEY STEAMSHIP • AIRLINE • RAIL AND HOTEL AOCOMMODAflONS For the Finest Imported Clothing from on Elizabeth" abot Trail.

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