by Robert Hunt
Older cousins like Cyril and Kevin Barry from Placentia also boarded with us while they were going to school at the old Memorial University on Parade Street. Cyril was absolutely brilliant. He was studying to become an aeronautics major. This type of course was virtually unheard of then. When he graduated, he was at the top of his class and became one of the youngest satellite workers in eastern Canada. You could give Cyril any algebra problem, and he would have the answer for you in about two seconds. He never worked it out on paper. We always went to him when we were given a mathematics problem that we needed solved. Kevin was also very smart. Both cousins were polite, poised, and very intelligent. They seemed to have it all.
One thing Cyril had that we enjoyed, especially our parents, was a brand new car. He would always trade in his car after keeping it for only a year. From the early 1960s on, when he stayed with us he owned a different car every year. His was the sharpest vehicle on the street! He always seemed to be working and studying; by then he was working at the new satellite station located in Pouch Cove. I can still see his shiny, new 1958 Ford parked in front of our house. I can’t tell you how many rides my brothers and I took in it!
At our house, phone call after phone call came for Cyril from satellite stations around the Atlantic provinces and all across Canada. People would phone to ask him questions. We lost track of how many times the phone rang in a week. We would make fun of the callers and mimic them talking to Cyril. Because of these calls, he would always pay the phone bill for Dad every month. Our phone was constantly ringing.
Cyril’s brother Kevin was the classiest dresser I have ever seen. We all envied the clothes he wore. He always dressed immaculately, with a perfect crease in his pants. They were pressed, and his shoes were shined to a gleam. The eyes of many ladies followed Kevin whenever we were with him. He looked like a movie star.
When he came into town, he would take one or two of us shopping with him on Water Street, which was a treat in itself. We had to spend the whole day with him while he found the clothes and shoes he was looking for, but the wait was worth it. He would always take us for something to eat in one of the fancier restaurants, like Marty’s Restaurants or the Captain’s Cabin at the Bowring Brothers building, or to Woolworth’s cafeteria, all located on Water Street. Sometimes he would buy us something for school. He once bought me a new shirt that I loved. I kept it clean and wore it for years. It cost two dollars. I was so proud of it, I wore it at least twice a week.
Another of our favourite cousins, Anna Dicks (Greene), Isabel’s sister, came to live with us for two months during a summer in the early 1960s. Here is how Anna described her first time in the city.
“I arrived in St. John’s by taxi from my home in Rushoon. It was my first time in the big city. I was amazed by all the streets and large houses so close to the streets. Where I was from, in Rushoon, I was living by a big meadow on a piece of land in the outports. It was all so very exciting. I rang the doorbell and was greeted by my aunt Carmel (my mother) and Uncle Ned (my father) and my five little boy cousins. I immediately became their big sister. Two years later, I again went to St. John’s to work and stayed with my relatives for almost a year.”
It was an adventure for people to come to the “big city” of St. John’s. One can imagine the culture shock the first time they came in via the old Kenmount or Topsail Road routes. Anna was about twenty years old at the time and found it amazing how huge the city was compared to where she had come from. Of course, there is no place like home when you live around the bay, and a lot of people became homesick after only a few weeks in St. John’s.
Isabel’s boyfriend, Charlie Norman, also from Rushoon, always boarded on Brazil Square. He didn’t stay in the same house as Isabel. It was a sign of the times. Having been raised Catholic, we all abided by the rules set down by the Roman Catholic Church generations ago.
Charlie was a great guy, tough as nails. At that time, he was working as a linesman for Newfoundland Light and Power. He was about five foot ten, very broad, with thick, wavy black hair always neatly combed. He was as strong as an ox and tough as any NHL hockey player we had heard of. He had a strong, handsome, rugged face and always wore a black suit, white shirt, and black tie with a white raglan. My brothers and I never saw him without it. He was a gentleman, and he courted his lady in such a manner.
My brothers and I would joke with him about taking him on in a fight. Charlie would just look at us all, then laugh and ask, “What, you or the five of you together?” He was about ten years older than us. We were all in our early teens. But we believed that he could indeed take all five of us in a scrap. He would come to the house at night, and he and Isabel would go for a walk, to a movie, or just stay outside and talk as young lovers did.
Isabel was a beautiful young lady. She was about five foot four and as pretty as a leading lady. My brothers and I loved her humour and soft-spoken way. We would go to the store on messages for her and her summer school friends any time they wanted something done. She was a true beauty with an easy disposition. Her friends Marion Augot and Betty Baker were like her sisters, and all three were usually giggling in their room whenever they were carrying on. Marion and Betty were not too bad in the looks department, either, and of course we were always at their command. Of course, young boys in adolescence are always giddy for a pretty face.
Charlie Norman and Isabel Dicks married in June 1967, and they had four children: Charlie Jr., Deirdre, Charlene, and Rodney. At the time of this writing, they are still living in Rushoon. Anna Dicks married Ray Greene, and they had two children: Ray Jr. and Yvonne. They are all still alive and well and living in Freshwater, Placentia Bay.
My Family Living on Brazil Street
Dad never drove a car in his life. He didn’t have a licence and had no desire to get one. To afford a car, you had to make good money, and we certainly didn’t live in the lap of luxury. In the late 1950s, a car, even a used one, could cost a person between three to five hundred dollars. Dad made just enough money to support his family and pay the bills. Even if he could afford to buy one, he had never been taught to drive. So, walking or taking a bus were our usual modes of transportation.
The first time I rode in a car was when I had my tonsils taken out at St. Clare’s Hospital. A neighbour or a taxi took me, Mom, and Dad to the hospital. I was six years old. The next time I set foot in a car was when I was about nine. The father of a friend from school took us on a camping trip with a group of other boys to a campsite somewhere up toward the Southern Shore. It was a black Chevrolet or Pontiac. In those days, nearly all cars were black.
Dad was a fair man. He had grown up without a lot of things in life, so he didn’t need much to make him happy. He enjoyed his family and his work as a porter with Canadian National Railways. He helped people to board the train and took their luggage on board and into their berth or sleeping compartment. He was not a drinker, like so many men of the day were, and he always tried to do what was best for his family. The only vice he had was that he was a heavy smoker, and it eventually killed him. He passed away from emphysema on July 13, 1990.
I had five brothers. The oldest was Edward Jr., I was second, Calvin was third, then Hubert, and finally Angus. It was believed among the family that we’d had a sister in between the two youngest boys, but it wasn’t spoken about. The rumour was that Mom had lost her in childbirth. It would have been nice to have a sister to complement five boys and to chat with Mom and keep us in order. If there were a girl and she had lived, I’d have pitied anyone who ever put a hand on her. We never found out from Mom or Dad if the story was true. It could have been a story started by a gossiping neighbour or relative.
Our home at 40 Brazil Street was old when we moved into it in 1955. I believe it was built in the 1920s. Dad said that it was once owned by a Captain Lewellyn Lush and his wife who had lived there for years. One will never know what kind of captain he was, but Dad once said that a C
aptain Lush knew Captain Bill Dicks, from Rushoon, who was married to Mom’s sister, our aunt Violet, and they worked together on the coastal boats. We guessed Captain Bill had something to do with helping Dad with the sale of the house from Captain Lush.
Our house always leaned a bit to one side. When you walked through the door, you were met by a flight of stairs that led to the second floor. To the left of the stairway was a hallway that led into a smaller living room and from there into our kitchen. At the top of the landing and to the right was a washroom. Off to the far left was Mom and Dad’s room, and next to it was the eldest child’s room, my brother Edward’s.
On the top flat, in the attic, were my other brothers’ rooms, occupied by Calvin, Hubert, and Angus. My room, the coldest in the house during the winter, was also in the attic and next to theirs, with an adjoining door that separated us. We had no oil furnace. The only source of heat was a wood- and coal-burning stove that heated up the house through the floors. Our rooms were always cold, and we needed a large company of blankets to keep us from freezing to death. During the winter months, it took us forever to get warm when we went to bed.
Coal was the main source of heat, and warmth was generated by “stoking it” and never allowing the stove to die out. As kids we were not allowed to stoke the fire, so Mom, particularly when Dad was away working, had to keep adding coal and wood to keep the house heated and to keep “a lively fire going” when she was ready to cook. It was not until we got older that we were we allowed to tend to the fire alone.
When coal was delivered by Coady’s Coal and Oil, it was shovelled down a coal “chute” from the street into the basement, and the delivery man usually dropped enough of the black stuff to do us until next time. It was usually about a quarter of a ton, and it did us for a few weeks or so, or when Dad could afford more. A quarter-ton of coal then cost about ten dollars.
My brothers and I had chores to do, and one of them involved hauling coal up from the basement to keep the fire going in that old cast-iron stove. When it was hot, you could hardly go near it. We spent many a cold day just standing next to it. The basement, where the coal was stored, was a small and dreary place. It was always cold, even in the summer, and we hated going down there to get our bucket of coal. We all had to perform this duty. Arguments ensued as to whose turn it was to get it. Then a shout from Dad would make us realize whose turn it was, and he made sure none of us escaped that chore.
Finally, in the early 1960s, Dad purchased an oil stove that, to us, didn’t seem to give off any more heat than the old one. During those freezing cold winter months, we would put our heavy blankets next to the stove to heat them and then bring them upstairs to bed. Hot water bottles also helped keep our feet warm. But the task of supplying fuel to the stove became worse, then, as the oil was stored in a large oil drum in the back garden. In winter, we had to dress warmly before going to the barrel to fill the small one- or two-gallon oval container.
When it was filled, we went inside and turned it upside down on a small, white pedestal stand. This supplied oil to the stove through a copper line connected underneath. Dad put a lock on the oil tank outside to protect it from theft. Sometimes the lock would freeze, and we would have to boil hot water to thaw it out.
When we bathed, which usually happened on Saturday nights, there was never enough hot water. Mom boiled the water in a large, oval pan, and transferred it to a metal pail and kettle, which Dad then brought upstairs to throw in the bathtub. We didn’t have a hot water boiler when we were kids. Dad bought a small one later, but it didn’t hold enough water to bathe us all.
These metal pails had to be filled twice, and sometimes a third and fourth if Mom and Dad were to bathe. Dad bought a forty-gallon boiler when he was finally able to afford it in 1962 or 1963. Only then did we have enough water for all of us to get a full cleaning. I was working part-time, and I gave Dad some of my earnings to help with the bills.
We owned a cat that was mostly white, with a spot of black on the top half of her head, and her feet were entirely black. My brother Calvin brought her home, and she became the household pet. Because of her black feet, he named her Socks. We had her for years.
We had games to occupy us. Sometimes, on school nights, we were allowed outside for half an hour after we did our homework, and we stayed out until the call for bed. One game we liked was “Boggers,” where you had to follow and do what the person ahead of you was doing. This sometimes led to awkward positions that became dangerous for the follower. I once fell off a fence and skinned my side on a few nails on the way down while following Dickie in doing a bogger.
Another game was “Red Rover,” where two groups of boys and girls, as many as five or six on each side, would link together hand in hand to form two rows across from one another about twenty feet apart. One group would call out the name of a kid in the opposite group, and that person would approach and try to break through their link. The call went out to the other side, “Red Rover, Red Rover, send Tommy (or Mary) on over,” and the child in question would rush across the gap and try to crash through. This continued until the wall of knotted hands was broken.
Most of the time, only the boys played “Leap the Frog.” One boy would lean over in a 6:15 clock position. Another boy would then run from about fifteen feet away and jump over his back, linking up ahead of the first boy. Four or five more boys would follow, lengthening the chain. The last boy running had to jump from the first boy to the last without falling over.
We also liked playing “Spotlight,” where one person used a flashlight to try and find the others, who were hiding. The one with the light would cover his eyes while the others hid in different places. The goal for the others was to make it back, without getting caught, to the flashlight carrier’s point of origin..
During the winter, sliding was always a passion for us. Our slides, when our parents could afford them, had slotted boards mounted on slide runners, with a long piece of board on the front that was bolted horizontally in the middle and acted as a guide to turn the sled. We couldn’t slide down Brazil Street—it was too steep, and it merged into Casey Street, which had lots of oncoming traffic—but we slid down Haggerty Street, just off John Street, which had a steep enough hill for us to attempt. The bottom of it was level for about a hundred feet and had little or no traffic. Haggerty Street is long gone now. It’s now part of where the Delta Hotel stands.
We would sometimes play games with the girls. Whatever they came up with was fine with us, as long as it didn’t include kissing. It was not uncommon to see us play hopscotch or other games with them until we found something else to do. Most of the time they didn’t want us to play, because we were too rough.
Our neighbours were pretty good when we played by their homes, as long as we stayed out of trouble. Mrs. Bursey, a very nice lady who lived across the street from us with her mother, always spoke to us and gave us cookies as treats. Our neighbours up the street—the Hearns, Barrons, Bishops, Murphys, Laceys, and others—were also lenient toward us. My brothers and I usually had our own separate groups of friends to play with, so we interacted with each other only when those friends were not around to play.
Most people my age remember where they were the day John F. Kennedy was killed in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963. They also remember where they were when the Challenger exploded after leaving the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center on January 28, 1986, the same way most people recall where they were when 9/11 happened. One day I will always remember is July 27, 1967. It changed my life forever: it was the day that my mom passed away. I was only eighteen years old at the time. Our next-door neighbour, Mary White—Dickie’s mom—always said that my mother was a saint.
Mom was born in Port Royal, Placentia Bay (Long Island), on August 5, 1916. Port Royal is in Harbour Buffett, just a few miles by boat from Merasheen Island. It’s a small island, roughly eight or nine miles long and about three or four miles wi
de. The island was resettled years ago, when Joey Smallwood relocated people from hard-to-reach communities to more densely populated areas.
My father worked on the Canadian National Railways coastal boats in the late 1930s, and one of his ports of call was Port Royal, where, in his words, he met and fell madly in love with my mother. After many visits to the area, a few years later my father finally got the courage to ask her to marry him and move to St. John’s. They moved to St. John’s in 1945 and were married on July 16, 1946. A year later, she was pregnant with my brother Edward Jr.
Dad and Mom were very religious. Dad would never miss church on Sunday. When we were young, he would walk us over to St. Patrick’s Church, and he still made sure we all went as we got older. My father lived his life for his family. He idolized Mom and lived to do what he could for her. They had twenty-one years of happiness before she passed away. Mom was a gentle person. She taught my brothers and me to always be good to people.
One time in the early 1960s, Mom asked me what I wanted for Christmas. There was only one thing I wanted, and that was the new Beatles boots that were the craze of the day. The Beatles, a rock and roll band, had come over from England, which heralded Beatlemania. In 1963, they were sweeping the nation and the music scene. I wanted those boots so badly that I swore I would do anything for them, but they were expensive and I knew that Mom and Dad didn’t have the seven or eight dollars to buy them. At Christmastime, we usually received a few small, inexpensive gifts, but now these were all I wanted.
I remember looking at the boots in a store catalogue for months, wishing and praying to the Man Above that I would somehow get them for Christmas. Doug Gruchy, a childhood friend who lived on Pleasant Street, had a pair of these amazing boots, and that just made it worse. The same year the boots came on the market, I found them under the Christmas tree. It was the best Christmas of my young life! I was sure that Mom and Dad had given up something they wanted so I could have them. I had resigned myself to the knowledge that I wasn’t going to get them, but my parents made sure that I did. I found out later that they had given up on buying a new winter coat for Mom and snow boots for Dad so that my brothers and I could have what we wanted. God love them!