Page 2

One of my favorite things to do as a young child, was to ride my bike on the sidewalk from our house down to the Pavilion through the heart of the Pines, and back. At that time, the sidewalk was visible and usable from the "windmill house", (Marconi's now) to the Pavilion.  Most of it still is now, but some of it has been changed.  That portion of sidewalk that lays from Meldrums,(just west of Kathy Shannon's) to Matt Kelly's, was on the south side of the main road. It crossed the road just passed Kathy's house. There were also trees between the sidewalk and the road.  Big ones too!  I remember the road being narrow there.

When I mentioned earlier about the road flooding in the spring at where the Community Building is now, I also mentioned a row boat. The row boat was left there for people to get through that section of road.  If you happened to be the unfortunate person to come behind someone that used it to get through or passed that section, of course the row boat was on the wrong side and you had to figure out your best way to navigate that spot without getting wet.  It wasn't easy.

All of us kids loved to go sucker fishing when they were in the creeks during the spring.  We would hunt for the right gear to wear and we would beg, borrow and steal to get rubber knee boots, hip boots, or waders so as not to get wet.  We always assured our mother that we wouldn't get wet, but I remember one time she walked down to see how we were doing, and we were SWIMMING in the creek!!  She never got mad at us for getting wet, but she never understood why we always went through the trouble of finding all this gear and invariably we would come home at least half soaked.

Going to school here was cool too!  At least I thought it was.  I was the shy one, and didn't like doing stuff in front of the class, but we always managed to put on a great Christmas Program each year.  Don't ask me how all of us kids and all of the parents and friends of the island fit into that tiny room all at once, but we did! There was no indoor plumbing or electricity during my first couple of years of school.  We had a big oil burner stove off to one side of the room for heat, and outhouses out behind the school, (a girls stall and a boys stall).  Once, as a kindergartener, I remember asking to use the outhouse and was permitted to go. I knew the door of the girls stall would rub the floor if you shut it all the way, and I shut it a little too hard.  Upon trying to exit, I couldn't get the door open. I remember thinking that no one would remember that I was in there and started screaming and yelling for help.  No one came!!!  It seemed like I'd been in there for days, when finally the teacher, (Su VanVoorhees) came out to see what was taking me so long, and rescued me!

We played a lot of games outside at recess.  Games that you never hear of kids playing today, in fact, they have no idea what games you are talking about if you mention them.  We played, Red Rover Red Rover, Eeeny Anny Over, Red Light-Green Light, Mother May I, Look Out for the Bear, and many more.  One time we were playing Look Out for the Bear which uses the basket ball.  The ball was thrown and by accident it went into the girls stall of the outhouses and went down into the hole.  It was the only basket ball we had and we knew we had to retrieve it.  Well, with several attempts from some of the bigger kids, it was decided that they couldn't reach it or stand the wonderful aroma that comes from down inside of that hole. So I remember a couple of the bigger kids taking the smallest of the boys, (one of my cousins, and I won't mention his name) by his ankles and lowering him head first into the hole.  They convinced him that it would be quick!  "We'll lower you in. You grab the ball real quick, and then we'll pull you back out"  It worked.....however.....when they pulled him back out, he neither looked nor sounded too good!! The teacher found out and we had to throw the ball away into the dump.

Halloween was always a fun time.  It was cold, but fun.  The school teacher would take it upon his/herself to take us all.  We would usually get Peggy Gibbons to drive her truck, as it wasn't one of those held together with wire or binder twine.  Us kids would all pile into the back of it and she would take us from one end of the island to the other.  We had several blankets with us to try to keep warm during the ride, but it was usually never enough.  After getting in and out of that truck all night and then trying to cover with the blankets, most of our costumes got ripped or ruined, but we always managed to endure the entire trip and were rewarded with tons of candy.

I remember back in the 50's they would hold square dances quite often at the Pines Hotel and my grandfather would call.  Ina Juntenun owned it then and she had a daughter my age.  We were too young to be included in the dances, as were some of the other kids then, but we'd go off into a section of the room and have our own dance.  I loved to watch the square dancers and more so loved to listen to the music. I didn't learn to square dance until I was 14 years old.  Oh I knew how to do it, I'd watched it enough, but I was too shy to get up there in front of people to do it.  But one time my dad forced me and the chair that I was holding on to for dear life, out into the middle of the dance floor. It was either be embarrassed sitting there in the middle of the floor or be embarrassed at a couple of mistakes dancing........I chose the latter and haven't regretted it since.  I've even been known to call for a couple of dances in my much later years.

We got electricity a lot sooner than we got telephones.  Telephones came in during the late 60's, early 70's.  Before we got them, we all had a CB radio and we all stood by on the same channel. We communicated with each other over here and several people on the mainland.  That was definitely a time when everybody knew everybody's business.  You knew what kind of food they were ordering from town; what kind of "pop" they were ordering; who was invited to whose for dinner!  If we were to receive emergency or important information from someone on the mainland, they knew what number to call there and those people had a CB radio, whom would in turn call us and relay the messages back and forth.  When we finally got our first telephone, us kids would sit to wait for it to ring, and when it did, there were 6 kids shoving, pushing, and elbowing to be the first one there to answer it.

Going off the island was a real treat for us kids, as it was too expensive for my folks to take us all at one time.  But there were times during the transition period when the boat wasn’t running and the ice was either making or breaking, that we got to go by  airplane.  As we didn’t have telephones then, it was a bit tough to make the necessary arrangements to schedule a flight.  I remember going out to the airport to either wait for our flight, or waiting for one to come in that was bringing company to our house.  We would sit in the airport “terminal”, dad would start a fire in the little wood stove that used to be in there, and we would wait.  Sometimes for hours, due to the pilot being too busy to fly in, or having some sort of trouble, and no way to get a hold of us to let us know.  Sometimes the wait would be long enough that I would lay down on one of the benches there and fall asleep.

Most people think it is so quiet and peaceful here now, and it is, but back then most of the summer residents didn’t start coming up until late June, or early July, and they were all gone by September.  We always had rifle hunters here in November, but for the most part, it was only the full time islanders that were here from September until June of the following year. Most of us all lived in the Pines area, with the exception of Mrs. Bible on the West End, and Richardson’s, (where the Boathouse is now).  The main road was only plowed between the airport and the tavern.

I remember one spring that my dad helped my older sister and 2 older brothers tap maple trees out behind our house. They collected enough sap to start boiling in a big galvanized wash tub.  They started a fire just outside our big kitchen window.  They were still boiling way after dark, and I remember watching out that window wishing I was grown up like them, so that I could be out there too.  I was probably only 4 or 5 years old.  It seemed like they were out there all night, and I had to go to bed before they came in.  Mom finished it on the stove the next morning, and we ended up with about a half a quart in a mason jar.

Winters were not my favorite time of the year when I was young.  We were never dressed warm enough.  They didn’t make the warm boots and mitts that you can get today.  I remember always being cold and chafed skin where my little rubber boats would rub my legs raw.  But alas, as time went on, winter clothes got warmer and snowmobiles had evolved!!!  Now it’s my favorite time of year on the island.  

Everyone should come here once during the winter and experience the real meaning of the island’s peaceful, serine, quiet, and the extreme bright, white snow.

Actually there are so many more things that I like to remember about my childhood here, but they are just too numerous to mention.  It’s always been my home and there is nothing that I regret about living here.   My mother was born and raised here and moved off for a couple of years with her first 2 kids and came back. I was raised here and moved off for a few years, and came back.  I raised my son here and he moved off for a couple of years, and now he’s back too.   There’s that special bond with the island that always draws you back.  It’s my paradise, my home, my everything.

Clover