Interviewer: Two men to cut down a tree? Speaker: Well one to hold up the outer end of the blade and the other one with the engine so- Interviewer: Huh! Now a lot of people have told me that there is a real skill to felling a tree. Is that true? Speaker: Yes you don't just decide to cut it down and let it fall wherever it wants. You got to cat- cut a notchin it, and wherever possible, you should put the notch below your cut if you're wanting a log out ...

Cut them and then when we had a- what they call an old flat pan. They're like those out of stone- out a piece from the house and they- they put the flat pan on it was opened up, you-know, and this- and then you put the sap in there and you sit there and you- boils up.

So I'm flipping through, and I'm always looking for stuff.

It came in on the phone lines and it blew the flipping phone completely off the wall and then w-- wet the ground under the old cistern pump.

We- we had a good vegetable garden. Oh yes. Ah, and ah, Mother'd put a lot of it away too, like she'd can the beans and can the tomatoes. Make tomato juice, make lots of pickles and- and-that that she ah, made good use of the vegetables. And we- we'd ah, have enough potatoes ah, like for to last a long time.

Well people worked in factories and they worked times, like we had ah- lots of factories here in Almonte, they went night and day pretty near. And you worked lo-- it was for to make a war effort, eh

I wrote "Lachlan-Moyles". And I- about as good as I could, eh? And I thought- told them, I said "See the- we had- our teachers- see that writing? It followed us right down all our life." You-know on the- for to write your name.

Speaker: Oh they were good times, they were long hours. We had twenty-four years of it so you know that ah- Interviewer: Now, you said it was very interesting, what are some of the interesting- Speaker: Oh well- Interviewer: Things you remember? Speaker: Just the people. Interviewer: Yeah. Speaker: You have to enjoy people for to ah run a place like that. Interviewer: Yeah. Speaker: And I enjoy people.

Yeah, it was a gas on and generator I believe it was, and it would put out enough for- not for to run- we didn't use li-- ah, refrigeration or anything like that but just for- basically for television and lights.

Ah they had a- I forget what they called them? Uh, there was ladles and ah a wooden thing there to- for to fit your pound of butter. Then you put your butter all in there with a plunger in the bottom of it.

Bob-Oma, he was one of the last ah log drive foremans and Bob's not that long dead he died in two-thousand-six so I don't know how old Bob was when he was doing that maybe seventeen eighteen maybe-

But they- but- but that- by the time night came, you were so frigging tired.

You-know, like, walking from frigging east coast to Kingston to get into a scrap with the Americans, I-mean, that is unheard of- in the wintertime.

We went all over the frigging country cutting gardens.

The spouts are still in those frigging trees!

And I can remember as well as anything the first time that we heard a jet plane going over, my mother had went down to the- went down to that spring to get something and it went over and it went overlo-- and it li-- you-know it was sh-- that frigging shriek that they had to them.

They did say- my one fellow say after a big meal he'd say to his wife "I- do you want anymore to eat? I'm full as a tick." Interviewer: Full as a tick, yeah. Speaker: I know that he called ah um like I said my- my if I've sunburned, I'd say "I'm burnt like a tomato." Like those are sayings- the other guy was talking about a- used to call a creek, he'd call it a crick. Interviewer: Yeah. Speaker: The old people. "You go down to the crick," instead of saying the creek, you-know, they'd say a crick.

But, ah, I always remember lunchtime or dinner the- the older chaps were always full of piss and vinegar and raring to go. But the old guys, they'd (inc) and they'd come outside and they'd just lay down on the lawn under the shade of the tree, throw their hat over their face, and the thing like was in two minutes, everybody was sleeping.

Speaker: And, ah, "He was full of piss-and-vinegar!" I haven't heard that one for- well, it's all right. That's not a bad word. Interviewer: These are all expressions that were common.

When I was a little gaffer, I could hear mom saying- oh I was- I-guess I must have been a holy terror or-something. Anyway, they had a baby-sitter for us one day over at the cousin the mom's. Over there and one day Rory disappeared.