Harold and Nellie

Let us go back for one more trip down memory lane. Let us head up the road to a house in Drum Head where happiness was a fact of life; a part of the day to day mosaic of the hard scrabble ‘‘do with what you’ve got’’ life that most people lived in our coastal villages back fifty or sixty years ago. Let us go and spend an evening at Harold and Nellie’s.

Harold and Nellie had a larger family by Drum Head standards, three boys and three girls, Dean, Maynard and Wendell; Phyllis, Madeleine and Berniece. Times were tough back then, and it wasn’’t always easy to put grub on the table for a crew like that, but Harold was, as my mother would say; “A good forager”providing  for his family from what he could harvest from land and sea.

Harold fished hard; upwards of four hundred traps for lobster fishing and a lot of them in ‘‘deep’’ water, Rudder Shoal; around the Tom Cod, down back of Middle Ground, out in the big tide, where, when the tide was running, the wooden buoys would be boring deep, and the boats would have to lay by waiting for the tide to slack. Harold fished these waters and hauled by hand, standing forward of his faithful 6.5HP Acadia jump spark engine that he bought when a very young man, an engine that seen him through to his death, albeit, it had three new cylinders in it’s life span.

When fall came Harold was ready for the woods. He had a small log hunting camp on the northern side of Square Hill, only a short distance from where the Stave Hill starts to make it’’s elevation, and it was there that he made his headquarters when hunting moose, deer, or rabbits. His kids, both boys and girls would accompany him to this camp on occasion, and became quite adept at the art of setting rabbit snares and in the making of a great stew, for Harold was a very good cook.

When the larder was filled to capacity, with salted cod or pollock , Salted herring and mackerel, deer and moose meat in cans and Mason jars, on shelves, flanked by every kind of wild berries, preserved as jam or whole fruit, the vegetable bins filled to the top with potatoes, carrots, parsnips, turnips and cabbage from Capt. George White’s trading schooner, and the next years wood was piled in the yard, then it was time to kick back and relax.

The kitchen at Harold and Nellie’s was for all intents and purposes, the family room, as was the kitchens of many other houses in our villages in that era. It was were we lived; and their kitchen would fill on the winter evening with young people enjoying the genuine hospitality, offered by this congenial couple.

Crokinole; how many Cansobreezers have played Crokinole? I suspect that a goodly number of you have played and know for a certainty who played in DH and SH, in the 50’s who played or didn’t is lost in time now; but that game was played evening after evening at Harold’s kitchen table, Harold loved to play this game, and was a very good player. We played with cues, so it became a cross between bumper pool and the original game. I liked to play, and played a lot at Barney’s with some good partners, and some who were mediocre. ( There’ll be lot’s of flack about this, I allow) I got to be a fair player using the cue; snicking? Forget it. I could never get a game with Nora-Jim, and in more recent times, at the home of Eric and Delores McDonald I got skunked game after game, and was surely wishing for my cue to appear from out of the past, but I’ve got to hand it to the purists, they can snick real good!

Most evenings Harold would have a huge boiler of rabbit and rice soup, served up with lot’s of home made white bread. Some shockin’good!! No one ever left Harold and Nellie’s hungry, regardless of the hour. My kids talk about Nellie’s fox berry tarts to this day; they’d scour the barrens of Hudson’s Hill, after school, trying to get enough for one more batch of tarts.

I had the loan of Clarence Baker’s lobster boat (Liscomb) in 1969. I had a lot of lieu day’s built up, and decided I would do a little hand-lining. Harold had been pronounced terminal at that point, with cancer, but he called me up to his place and asked me if he could go with me. I certainly agreed, so he had the pleasure of doing what he loved one more time, before the sun finally set for him. On one particularly bad day I asked if he wanted to go in (home) “No,” he replied, “I would rather die out here than in the hospital.” I had fished and hunted with Harold and was then and am yet happy that I was able to accommodate him that last summer of his life.

The house don’t look much now like it did then, what with new windows, large deck, etc., but when I look across the cove, I can still see it as it was then……………….a good place to go.

Don