As the old folks would say
Page 1
As the
Old Folks
Would Say
Stories, Tall Tales, and Truths
of Newfoundland and Labrador
Hubert
Furey
Flanker Press Limited
St. John’s
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Furey, Hubert, 1939-, author
As the old folks would say : stories, tall tales, and truths
of Newfoundland and Labrador / Hubert Furey.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-77117-609-5 (softcover).--ISBN 978-1-77117-610-1 (EPUB).--
ISBN 978-1-77117-611-8 (Kindle).--ISBN 978-1-77117-612-5 (PDF)
1. Newfoundland and Labrador--Social life and customs. 2. Newfoundland
and Labrador--Biography. 3. Newfoundland and Labrador--Rural conditions.
I. Title.
FC2168.F87 2017 971.8 C2017-901021-2.
C2017-901022-0
—————————————————————————————— ——————————————————
© 2017 by Hubert Furey
All Rights Reserved. No part of the work covered by the copyright hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means—graphic, electronic or mechanical—without the written permission of the publisher. Any request for photocopying, recording, taping, or information storage and retrieval systems of any part of this book shall be directed to Access Copyright, The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency, 1 Yonge Street, Suite 800, Toronto, ON M5E 1E5. This applies to classroom use as well.
Printed in Canada
Cover design by Graham Blair
Flanker Press Ltd.
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St. John’s, NL
Canada
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We acknowledge the [financial] support of the Government of Canada. Nous reconnaissons l’appui [financier] du gouvernement du Canada. We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country. Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien. L’an dernier, le Conseil a investi 153 millions de dollars pour mettre de l’art dans la vie des Canadiennes et des Canadiens de tout le pays. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, Department of Tourism, Culture and Recreation for our publishing activities.
CONTENTS
The Great Chuckley Pear Debate
A Minor Problem
An Unlikely Hero
In the Woods
Outport Stakeout
The Art of Self-Defence
Thoughts on Resettlement
The Girl on the Veranda
Mrs. Maginity’s Slapper
Men of Steel
Me and Sam
Revenge of the Fairies
A Social Visit
The Law of the Ocean
Feathers in the Soup
Tomorrow the Giller
He was a Miner
Across the Chasm
A “Noble” Spruce
One Small Book
Acknowledgements
THE GREAT CHUCKLEY PEAR DEBATE
It had all the ingredients for a lively, engaging, conversational evening, everything planned to perfection.
How could it be otherwise, when one is enjoying a delectably prepared meal with one’s loving partner of thirty-five years, in the company of a gracious hostess and two lifelong friends, in a charming old two-storey house overlooking one of the most enchanting parts of Conception Bay? What could go wrong, you ask, in a setting veritably oozing with nostalgia and tranquility?
Well, something did go wrong, terribly wrong.
I can’t remember precisely, but things took a negative turn somewhere between the freshly picked native Newfoundland garden salad delightfully seasoned with imported Coursada’s lemon oil mist and the main course of baked Italian chicken and Catalan scalloped potato, sprinkled with just a hint of minced parsley. By the time the deliciously tempting Bo Taung Hoi lemon dessert arrived, the evening had thoroughly degenerated into something resembling raucous confrontation.
All because somebody mentioned “chuckley pears.”
You wouldn’t think anybody would be gauche enough to mention “chuckley pears” in such an idyllic setting, amid glasses of Cabernet Sauvignon 1972 and crumbs of LaTell de Souce Artan French Bread! At home, in the confines of one’s own indisputable bower—even in the arms of one’s loving companion—one can talk about things like chuckley pears at length. But in front of an acclaimed academic! In front of people from another outport!
Well, somebody did, and the evening went from bad to worse. I mean, we could have talked about blueberries, for instance. There would have been absolutely no dispute about blueberries; no cold, darting, threatening looks, no violent arm-swinging in debate, no pounding of the table to jostle the crumbs of the LaTell de Souce Artan French bread.
No sir, there would be none of that about blueberries. Blueberries are easily discernible, easily identifiable. Blueberries could be our provincial symbol. Their bushes are unmistakably low, their berries unmistakably round and unmistakably blue.
You never hear people argue about blueberries.
By the time the dessert was finished, the party had definitely soured. I mean, how can you eat delicious lemon-flavoured Bo Taung Hoi dessert and mention chuckley pears in the same breath? Well, the lady formerly from Savage Point who now lived in Little Cove could, and she was very assertive about her position—which women are supposed to be now that they are free.
“I’m telling you chuckley pears are small and round and black and fuzzy.”
“Fuzzy,” I affirmed.
I was on her side. Chuckley pears were small and round and black and fuzzy. Everybody in Savage Point knew chuckley pears were small and round and black and fuzzy.
“Fuzzy!” retorted her husband, a tall man from Little Cove who sat with his arms folded and didn’t like the tea.
“Yes, fuzzy,” his wife and I fired back in unison.
“Not fuzzy,” interjected my wife. She was portraying disgust. Fuzzy reminded her of bears. She didn’t like bears. She suddenly became very contemplative. “No, not fuzzy. . . . Bears are fuzzy,” she added as an afterthought.
“But bears are much bigger,” I protested.
“That’s true. Bears are much bigger,” affirmed my wife, now very contemplative.
“The definitive answer is right in here,” interjected our hostess, holding the Dictionary of Newfoundland English over her head, enjoining us all, by that demonstrative action, to look in her direction.
“. . . chuckley . . . a Cp various astringent in OED and DAE . . .”
“There, that should resolve it,” she declared triumphantly, as she thumped the book on the table.
It was only her second glass of Cabernet Sauvignon 1972, but you could see she was definitely formulating a clear path to our enlightenment.
“. . . choke cherry . . . choke plum . . . choke pear . . .” our hostess continued.
“Well, which one are they?” demanded the tall man from Little Cove impatiently.
“Which one is they?” corrected my wife, who is an English
teacher.
“All right, then, is they,” replied the tall man, smouldering.
He used to be an English teacher, too, but deferred to my wife, who hadn’t retired yet.
“Well, it has to be one of them, doesn’t it,” replied our hostess, putting her fingers to her lips with a puzzled expression.
“Well, I’m telling you that a chuckley pear is bigger and pear-shaped and purple. I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said my wife menacingly in my direction, “but it’s not a chuckley pear.”
My wife had suddenly vaulted from contemplative to combative, and I felt a shudder down my spine. I’m sorry, up my spine. I was getting very confused by this time.
“Aha!” shouted the hostess triumphantly, smacking page 96 of the Dictionary of Newfoundland English hard with her index finger. “Purple! . . . among the former were the purple chuckley pears. There. That proves it. Chuckley pears are purple. You’re absolutely right.” Indicating my wife.
“Definitely. Chuckley pears are purple,” said the tall man, glowering at his wife.
“Purple? How can chuckley pears be purple?” queried his wife in return, formerly from Savage Point now living in Little Cove. Her face had taken on a look of total consternation.
“Oh, most certainly, chuckley pears are purple,” stated my wife agreeably. “Everybody knows chuckley pears are purple.”
She had turned to look stonily in my direction. My shuddering became an uncontrollable vibration.
“Black,” I whispered. I was trying to rally, but it was all I could muster.
“Most definitely black,” agreed the tall man’s wife, formerly from Savage Point.
“Definitely not black,” enjoined my wife coldly, with that if-you-like-her-better-than-you-like-me look . . .
“Why does it have to be purple,” I implored.
“Well, it is,” asserted the tall man from Little Cove, a strident tone to his voice.
The hostess still held her finger firmly implanted on page 96, her eyes darting from one couple to the other. Chuckley pears weren’t supposed to break up marriages. They were small and round and fuzzy and . . .
“Purple!” exclaimed my wife, eerily reading her thoughts.
“Black!” I murmured, barely audible. The tall man’s wife, formerly from Savage Point, nodded her head affirmatively in my direction, then sat erect, her arms folded defiantly in the direction of her husband.
“Purple!” grimaced the tall man from Little Cove, totally supportive of my wife.
Silence fell over the room. The hostess, feeling impelled to pour oil on troubled bushes, continued to read from the Dictionary of Newfoundland English.
“‘Chuckley pears appeal most to the palate in the autumn, but it is in the spring when they are most beautiful . . .’”
Sullen silence greeted her cheery efforts. We weren’t going to be put off that easily.
“. . . when they are purple,” glared my wife.
“Black!” hissed the tall man’s wife, formerly from Savage Point.
“Purple!” snarled the tall man from Little Cove.
“Black!” I replied hoarsely.
Our hostess kept staring at the Dictionary of Newfoundland English.
She was secretly ecstatic. There was a new school of Newfoundland philosophic thought definitely emerging here. After all, Socrates had his hemlock. Silence reigned around the room. Something had to be done, and I had to do it. A brilliant idea suddenly appeared before me, a Newton’s apple, a definite stroke of genius, a way to diffuse, a way to bring the conversation to another, more sociable level.
“Is a hert a blueberry?” I asked, my eyes brightening with a new-found enthusiasm.
Blueberries were as safe as the weather.
“A hert is bigger,” glowered the tall man.
“No, it’s smaller,” glowered the tall man’s wife.
“Definitely bigger,” averred my wife in my direction. “And they’re a darker blue . . .”
“But I thought . . .”
I didn’t finish.
We talk about cloning now. Since they did that sheep thing in Scotland. It’s perfectly safe.
A MINOR PROBLEM
Uncle Charlie Merrigan had a problem.
Well, Uncle Charlie Merrigan had several problems; what with the trap season turning out as poor as it did, the capelin being late, the cutworm doing the job on a lot of his cabbage plants. . . . Then, to top it all off, his only horse developing the “heeves” when the capelin did come, and he had the devil’s own job getting a few capelin for the hay and the gardens.
But none of them could touch his latest problem, and it was a problem you wouldn’t expect in the outport Newfoundland of the ’40s.
The piano in the parlour played at the oddest times of the night.
There they would be, sound asleep, himself and Aunt Nora, when a thunk-thunk-thunk, slightly raised in crescendo with each note, would bring them to instant wakefulness, and they would lie there, alert to the sound, while the mystery player went the whole length of the keys.
Well, you might ask, and rightly so, what’s wrong with a piano being played in the night, at odd or even times? And I reply, a lot, when you’re sound asleep in bed and the doors are barred tight and you’re the only ones in the house.
But before you ask why a piano in the parlour would be playing at the oddest times of the night, you might want to ask why there was a piano in the parlour at all at that time in our outport history, no doubt your mind being filled with all that rubbish about how poor and stund we were, and how we didn’t have anything worthwhile to call our own and couldn’t read and stuff like that.
Well, people in those times did play pianos and organs and fiddles and accordions and all sorts of things. Crippled Tim Wilson played the tin whistle like you’d never believe, and if you went to the right places, you could even hear a mandolin at a dance. And Uncle Charlie did have a piano in his parlour. Neither he nor Aunt Nora played, but he did have a piano in his parlour.
He had gotten the piano during the Depression.
John Thomas Maloney had bought the piano for his little girl Maria when he came from the States in the ’20s—he had made a big bunch of money on the steel in New York—but when she died of consumption and he fell on hard times in the ’30s, he couldn’t bear the sight of the piano—it reminded him so much of his little Maria—and he wanted it out of the house. So he swapped it with Uncle Charlie for a calf because Uncle Charlie had a granddaughter, Sheila, who was taking lessons from the nuns and had no place to practise.
The piano stood against the wall across from the window and little Sheila would come in every day on her way from school to do her piano lesson. Uncle Charlie and Aunt Nora, when they could spare time from their chores, would sit proudly and listen as the little girl practised scales and attempted chords, all with a genuine child’s enthusiasm.
Sometimes, on special occasions, like Christmas and St. Patrick’s, the little girl would come just after supper, and neighbours would come in and she would play a piece she had learned, and everybody would clap and compliment her, and then she would go home before it got too dark.
Which explains the playing of the piano in the daytime.
Nobody could explain why the piano was being played at night, when, as I say, the doors were locked and everybody was in bed and nobody should have been playing the piano in the first place.
And not only played, but played, as I have already indicated, in a most peculiar manner.
It wasn’t at all like Sister Mary Ignatius played at the nuns’ concert, with that nice way she had of sweeping her hands up and down the piano, touching the keys ever so gently when she wanted a nice soft sound, or smacking both hands down hard to make a big crashing sound as a signal for everybody on the stage to bow before b
eginning the opening chorus.
No, there was none of that, to suggest that the piano was being played by somebody who actually knew how to play a piano.
There weren’t even simple little melodies like “Mary had a Little Lamb” or “Row, row, row your boat.” It was like, as Uncle Charlie would say whenever he met somebody on the way to the post office, “somebody was being tarmentin’ with it.”
Every night, with only slight variation, was an almost exact repeat performance of the night before.
The sound would begin on one end of the piano with a very slow thunk, thunk, thunk, then move very fast, the sound changing with each successive key, until it reached a tink-tink-tink at the other end of the keyboard. The last tink would be followed by a dead silence, sometimes lasting for an hour or more, then the playing would resume. This time the player would begin at the upper end of the piano, the slow tink-tink-tink increasing in tempo until the final thunk would again be followed by complete silence, a silence that would continue until the performance—if you could call it that—would be repeated the very next night.
* * * *
The first time it happened, Uncle Charlie came out of bed like a dolphin out of the water, and, confused as he was by the sudden interruption in his sleep, wondered why “the little one” was doing her practice at such an ungodly hour of the night. Aunt Nora, more alert at that hour in the morning, was quick to straighten out his mind and his senses on that point.
“For Heaven’s sake, man, have a grain. What’s the child doin’ on the go at three o’clock in the mornin’. . . . Ye knows she’s sound asleep in bed. . . . ’N ye knows every door in the house is barred tight . . .”
Because they had a big clock on the bureau that you could see if you looked right close and it was three o’clock in the morning and every door in the house was indeed barred tight.
They lay there side by side, listening intently as the crescendo finished, trying to make sense out of what, to them, was a very unnatural occurrence.
Not that they were terrified by silly superstition.
Sure, they were good Irish Newfoundland Catholics of the old sort who believed in people coming back after death and that sort of thing, but that wasn’t particularly upsetting to their way of thinking. Such occurrences were, if you will, perfectly natural.