Emma

From January 5, 2004

Editor:  This is one wonderful old time story coming up:

Donald Crooks wrote:

Dear Editor:
We in Drum Head, back in the good old days had several institutions that the poor Seal Harbour fellers were bereft of.

The one of which I now speak was Emma Burke’s.

Emma was an elderly lady (when I was a boy) whose home (and place of business) was located on the road to Ai's Point. Still standing, it is currently used as a cottage; maybe (seeing, as I am living by the Tar Ponds, I should call it a bungalow?) by her grand-niece Mona Recker and her husband, Dave. I visit there on occasion and the little house is haunted by poignant memories. Emma had a nice flower garden in front surrounded by an unpainted picket fence. She must have had a green thumb, because her garden was lush, and among the other flowers braving the sea fog driven in across Drum Head Island by the sou'westers, were several rose bushes, a lilac tree and a snow ball tree (still standing and blooming every summer).

Emma ran a grocery store in what was intended to be the living room of her house. Canned goods, bulk foods, old fashioned cheese (cheddar) crackers, dry cereals, such as corn flakes and Fluffs (there wasn't the proliferation of cereals back that exists in today's world) sugar, flour and all the rest of the staples needed to support a family through the winter in conjunction with half a moose, a deer, a barrel of herring, fifty or so rabbits a hundred pounds of dried fish (cod or pollock) a barrel of fox berries in water, a crate of strawberries, bought from John Clyburne, and bottled back in the summer, plus any number of ducks, killed when ever the opportunity presented itself.

In the winters, once "haddocking" was finished around Christmas or New Year, there wouldn't be a lot of cash around, and Emma's cash register reflected this fact. It consisted of an Edgeworth tobacco tin on the kitchen table, holding change, plus a few small bills. She kept a cash box in her bed room, but most of the commerce was done from the Edgeworth can. Just about all her customers ran on credit over the winter months and her account books were Hilroy scribblers.

Emma's kitchen was small and sparsely furnished with a wooden table, a leatherette covered chaise, four wooden chairs, one of which sat at the end of the table, just beside the living room/store door, one occupied the space between the end of the chaise and the tables side, while the other two sat one by the bedroom door and the other beside the door that entered the post office------yes this little white haired entrepreneur was the village post mistress as well as a store keeper.

The office was a cubical about six by six feet and was extremely cluttered with money order pads, post mark stamps and all the other paraphernalia needed to get the kings mail in and out. The wicket faced the porch, which was and still is configured in the shape of an ell and lighted by a small window and/or a forty watt bulb on a drop cord. Beneath this window ran a bench with hinged lift up covers for storage. Maybe it could have been called a love seat.
The mail was driven to the village by a gentleman from Goldboro by the name of Ed Rhude and in later years by Irene Sutherland. Arrival time was around four in the afternoon if things were on schedule and in the winter the porch would be so packed with bodies that one would be hard
pressed to raise their hands, and the kitchen would be filled as well, with eager mail recipients.

Eager helpers would grab the outgoing mail bags when the driver arrived and take them out to the roadside, there to exchange them for the incoming lot. Emma would unlock them and dump the contents on the floor and begin sorting and passing it out through the wicket piece by piece,
shouting the recipients name as she did so. The nearest person to the wicket would grab the letter, paper or whatever, examine it closely and pass it on in the general direction of the addressee or their assigns; for neighbors would carry each others mail, sometimes the mail for two or three families. "Ted Greencorn! " Emma would shout, and the passer would say " Letter for 'corn, looks like his returns from Cornman & Baggs" (this would denote a cheque for a shipment of fish to this New York based fish wholesaler. It would finally, after a lot of inspections reach the hands of Sadie Hodgson (Bezanger) whose parents boarded the fish plant operator, Ted Greencorn.

This was a social event each and every day excepting Sunday, amd with the the pack 'em in as tight together as you can get, it is no wonder that the whooping cough, measles , mumps, quinzy throat, influenza and some illnesses yet to be ID'ed; spread through the village with such astonishing rapidity.

Amounts of mail varied from day to day and from season to season. As far as second class was concerned, The Family Herald, I believe came on Wednesdays, while the Winnipeg Free Press Weekly came on Thursday or Friday and the Halifax Herald was daily except Sunday. Christmas of course brought an increase with all the cards, and parcels. Fall and spring would be another increase as families would be ordering the appropriate clothing for the season, although some times their orders were shipped from the mail order companies ( Simpson’s or Eaton’s ) by "boat." and handed over by the freight agent, Emery Strople.

Saturday night was a special event at Emma's. She sold the Star Weekly, the week end edition of the Toronto Daily Star, and for a dime one got a picture section, a novelette, and a comics section. Saturday evening people would stop by to pick up their copy and socialize for a bit. Clearance Burke kind of had tenure at Emma’s and could generally be found occupying the chair at the foot of the chaise, expounding his views on capitalism versus a Utopian socialist state, while a half dozen other conversations were running about on how the hens were laying, (if at all) to how many loads of wood Tom Strople had hauled from Square Hill that week. Heavy snowfalls would kind of put a crimp on mail delivery, sometimes for days, until "the road was broke," and it was probably tougher to go without the Star Weekly than letters and such.

Emma's store was open at odd hours; an avid reader she often burned the midnight oil while sitting at the end of her kitchen table reading. I can recall arriving back in the village after a trek to "the harbour" in the small hours of the morning, and being near starvation we would knock on her door; she would come out in her long flannel nightdress, admit us to the store, admonish us as to our nocturnal habits and after we had made and eaten our purchases of sardines or whatever, she would return to bed and we would wend our way homeward to finish what was left of the night listening to Lee Moore's mid-week jamboree on WWVA Wheeling, West Virginia.
These wake up calls were reciprocated by us by keeping  her wood box filled, as well as the water carried from the well. and any other errands that needed doing.

Emma passed away in 1953 and I for one miss her still.