Page 40 - Hector Carmichael and Alexander Kerr

ISSUE : Issue 24

Published by Ronald Caplan on 1979/12/1

what he was going to do with the eels, and in the meantime he happened to look out the door when he was telling the black? smith about stealing Peter's eels, and who was coming to the forge door but old Peter. So Willy just real quick buried them in the coal. And Peter came in, and he was taking a leak in the coal, telling them about somebody stealing his eels. Hector; Did he ever tell you the time he sent the lambs over? You know, everybody had sheep then, and they used to have lambs in the spring of the year. And this morning Willy went to the barn and there was two dead lambs there • it was an awful cold morning. So that night he took the two lambs over and put them in Peter's sheep stable. So next morning when Peter went out to the stable, there was two fro? zen lambs there. Come in and was telling his wife about the frozen lambs, and he couldn't figiire out • he was trying to fig? ure out • what sheep had them. He wanted his wife to go over to the barn and try and find out, could she tell what sheep had had them. (The trouble they would go through to pull a joke.) Alex; Well, I'm telling you. Spend all night at it to put somebody through misery. Who was it now, Hector, that tightened the sulky wheels on Allister when he was going to Baddeck? Hector: That was Murdoch Ban and John J. They put a washer on the nuts, you know, and tightened them up, and Allister was going to Baddeck. And my gosh, started off and the wheels wouldn't tiorn around at all. Used to be a lot of tricks. They played another trick on him one night. He had a little flat-roofed shed with the barn there, and they put this sulky up on the roof of the shed. Well, I don't know which one of them went there early in the morn? ing, start telling them about the gale of wind last night, that he never heard such wind in his life, you know. Then he says, "Look where the wind must have put the sulky, look where yovoo sulky is." And the fellow turned around to his wife, "Aw, look • look where the wind put the sulky last night." Norman Carmichael; And do you remember the fellow, when his brother died, he went o- ver to North Sydney to get a suit for him. So he went into this place and they asked him what size he wanted, and he said, "Well, about my size." "Well," they said, "I've got a suit here that'll fit you, but the legs are a way too long." "Oh," he said, "that's nothing. He can roll them up." Hector; That same fellow came into John J.??s and he was looking for boards to make a box for a casket. He came in and he said to John J. • the old fellow was dead two or three days now • he said, "The old fellow wants to know if you would give him any lumber." Alex; And at wakes. I saw two fellows put- Ting a clothespin on a woman's nose one night • she was asleep in the armchair a- bout 3 o'clock in the morning. It was at a wake, and the noise she let out nearly woke the dead fellow up. She fell asleep and these two fellows went out to the clothesline and got a clothespin and snapped it on her nose. Hector; I'll tell you about iqyself. I had a vessel one time and she capsized. A schooner, a sailing vessel. We left Sydney in the morning. There was a big mill up at South Haven, and I was mostly hauling lum? ber from that fellow all summer. So coming back • this was the first trip in the spring • I had three or four truckloads of stuff we dumped in the hold before we left over there • hay and oats and stuff • most of it for this fellow that had the mill over here. But coming off Cape Dauphin, you know • nice little sailing breeze • there was something awful happened. And I don't know and I'll never know what it was. I heard awful queer noise, and I couldn't understand what it was. It was to windward. And the first thing I knew, it tipped the vessel. It hit the foresail first and it went through the foresail, the foresail went in ribbons. And she capsized. She leaned over so fast everything went over on her side and she filled full of water on her beam end. The boat was on the dav? its and she was head first down in the wa? ter and we couldn't get it clear. She floated, but there was so little of her up. Two fishermen came out from the shore with their motorboat and they took us ashore. I sent for a towboat from North Sydney. He came next morning, and she had drifted out with the tide pretty near off Breton Gove. It took him two days to take her in. Took her in along side the old plaster pier • it was still up. But when we'd raise her up, she'd go down underwater. But we hauled her in at high tide one morning with tack? les and everything we could get on her, as

Cape Breton's Magazine