... all the electricity came from Trenton. We had no utilities here because we didn't have no gas, no electric company.

... but in the meantime of-course there was not water, no sewer, no lights, no nothing yet, but this house was wired but it was never hooked up to the hydro because they didn't have no domestic lines coming along here.

He said well we don't use the basement but he said it goes through to all the stores and the other people use it. Well we went right through and we had the same trouble there. We didn't have no flashlights in them days. Well, I said, "I better not strike a match," well anyway he lit the match and we fell over and as he got under the other place the pockets up in between the rafters had got a lot of gas ...

All I did was when she called me and asked me to come and help her with a (inc) or-something-like-this you-see she had. I didn't have no- nothing to do as far as the house was concerned. Getting the meals ready or-anything-like-that.

A few chickens see. That helped us out when we were- no work you-know? We worked the land and hewed the garden. Sold our produce in the Belleville-Market at that time. That was back in the dirty thirties as we called it. From thirty-one on. Thirty-four or five.

Must've had writer's-block occasionally. Interesting. And from there in the dirty-thirties his mother died, and he had ah ah an un-- a brother also working for the-star in the circulation department in Vancouver

And they used to roll their own during the dirty-thirties. There all kids of machines you could roll your own in and ah Ogden.

So in the middle of the dirty-thirties father came back and where he got the love for antiquity I do not know but he roamed the roads in Belleville and environs and collected all the stuff that other people had thrown out as the world became modernized and opened his own antique shop.

Then she'd phone and ask me to come and do it but I said I never had ah- I never had anything to do with personal in their lives, you know, so- I knew Doctor-Fellows quite well because I doctored with his father when he was growing up as a kid.

Yeah totally gone yeah mm-hm. There's a- there's a drive-in locally that's out- out towards I-think it's on County-road-four. Ah Mus-- I think it's called the Mustang-Drive-In. So w-- every-now-and-then ah Lynn and I go there and- and- and watch a double bill or-something-like-that yeah and- but it just doesn't seem to have the same um feel that the ah the Belleville-Drive-In- I think because basically ah you- you went to a drive-in mostly because all your buddies were gonna be there and it was just kind-of a party.

And this is what ah the way she looked, you-know-what-I-mean? Cripes, you'd meet her down street and she'd be a- she'd have a long hou-- she'd have a house coat on and all paint and fastened up and her face would be all paint and she'd never even bother washing before she came

Speaker 1: But that's they had the Holloway-Street Church and Bridge-Street Church. Speaker 2: And the little one down street.

I played shortstop. The final game was against Galt and Guelph. In those early times, they used to close- close the town up for the baseball, ever played baseball, everything closed down street, stores and everything else to go to the ball game.

But you- you do hear that a lot. Ah one thing I used to hear is- like this is old Belleville people, and I- I'm not really old Belleville 'cause I just grew up here but people who- you-know generations you-know- I see my wife's here cleaning off the walk, that's nice. Um, what was I gonna say, oh down street. If they're gonna go downtown they say, "I'm gonna go down street."

Oh our parents must have been able to dredge up enough pennies to get them for us because Mary- Mary of course was much richer than I, and she had many many books, we both read being only children.

You-know I'm not sure whether it did later or not. I just remember going there when I was a little girl with my mother and a friend of hers, because they used to give away dishes and dresser-sets.

And ah they were yellow with gold. I can still see them. And then they gave away those dresser-sets um I still have a few pieces of them with the sort-of (inc) tops.

Interviewer: Did you ever celebrate Christmas in Belleville? Speaker: Yes, the Christmas of nineteen-twenty-nine, there was such a snow storm before that the drifts were so high that you could hardly see over them to get 'round the corner of Bridge and Dufferin. I remember the house.

In this tragedy of young people today, Sunday-school has taken a back seat hasn't it. We had several hundred children in Sunday-school and it was a real family affair. There are two many snow-mobiles and skiing trips in the winter and summer camps in the summer, and to be frank about it, I have come to the conclusion myself that, the family pew has come more important than the Sunday-school.

Interviewer: I understand a lot of the carriage manufacturers were, in Ontario, very small businesses, family businesses. Do you know of any large manufacturers that were sort of province-wide? Speaker: Yes. As you say many carriage plants, well they hardly deserve the name plant, well they were family affairs such as ours. My father, my grandfather, and myself, were all involved in this in turn.