A lot of people- a lot of old teachers are getting sued and-what-not 'cause abuse- she'd strap for anything. She just loved the strap. And I remember this one day we couldn't answer a math question, the whole c-- nobody in the class could answer it. She was so angry, she was so mad, she made everybody stand up and she strapped everybody, the whole thirty-five students.

Anyway, I got the- y-- at that time, they had- all the nuns had straps on their hand. And there was one nun that they took the strap away from. But I got slapped for something. At- it- I- but- In the morning, I had three- probably got three slaps on each hand, or which one- very gentle slaps. Anyway I went home and told my mother. Well, that didn't- that didn't- go very well! 'Cause I got punished at home!

Interviewer: Yeah. So why'd you like that one teacher so much? Speaker: She was kind, gentle, ah just somebody you- you had to look up, she was so nice. Her manner, the way she did things, the way she talked, the way she- she could be discip-- disciplinary but she did it in such a way that, you-know, rather than shouting and screaming and whacking you with a- oh we got the strap too, when I was going to school.

Interviewer: Did you ever get the strap? Speaker: Oh yeah. Interviewer: For what? What'd you do? Speaker: ... maybe fighting in the yard or-something-like-that. But boy, when you got that- have you ever seen one? ... It's- it's a- a belt about two inches wide and maybe about two feet long and when they wind up, you put your hand out, and they wind up and its full steam ahead, bang! on you your hand. That hurts. And of course you couldn't cry, you wouldn't dare, eh? Because, you-know, that was man thing to do, no crying. But it hurt like hell.

Speaker: Ah, the- and then discipline was strict in those days too. ... corporal punishment was still in and so you got the strap for being bad. Interviewer: Did you ever get the strap? Speaker: I did. (laughs)... But it- but it was a badge of courage actually because, ah, if you- if you got it you were one of the- in with one of the guys and you-know a part of the group and-whatever so- I don't recall what it was, maybe throwing erasers around or something. ... it was just one of those little kid's pranks that- that you got, ah, the strap for.

Interviewer: Did you ever get the strap? Speaker: I got the strap pretty every day. Interviewer: Oh yeah, what did you do? Speaker: Well, somewhat of the teachers, if you got- if you didn't have- got three words wrong in spelling or-something, you got the strap. ... Oh yeah, that- it worked. They were supposed to be nuns, but they were- they were nones all right. They didn't have no brains.

... the supply-teachers, the- you-know, the kids never listened at all, and they just went r-- unruly, and couldn't manage it at all, but usually the teachers tha-- that we had, they were more- very strict, and of course, they had the strap ... some kids would go down to the principal and they'd come back, and they were so proud like, you-know, they were tough guys, and they'd bring their hands back, and they would be all red, because of being strapped on the hands.

Or there was one teacher that- in math that um, he- he would make us, ah, all of a sudden go up to the board and, you-know, "Give me the answer to such-and-such a question." And if I didn't know the answer, I felt so dumb standing up there and trying to- "Okay, I'm supposed to kn-- write the answer down," and all the other people seemed to know what they were doing.

Speaker: She tried to get her, and, ah, then she- she got- get- got back to me, and she says, "You realize how many, ah, such-and-such gr- (inc) names are in the phonebooks?"" Interviewer: Yeah. Speaker: She says, "There's, ah, maybe about two-and-a-half pages under the same name. How am I going to pick that name out?" "Oh," I said, "I didn't know that."

Speaker 2: Okay, I think a lot of- a lot of um families, they had summer kitchens. Speaker: Yes. That's the way they did it. Because there was no way of heating a- a room without making it too hot in the summer. So they had the summer kitchens that they could get their fires going to cook things.

So most- most of these farmhouses had what, ah- what's called a summer kitchen. And the summer kitchen wasn't as well insulated or it wasn't insulated at all. It was more comfortable in the w-- in the summer because it was cooler, ah, and they made all their meals in the summer kitchen so it wouldn't heat up the main house because it made it more difficult to sleep in the upstairs of course and the heat rises and it was- made- made more sense to have an external building or a building that didn't have- was not- wasn't, ah, transferring as much heat into the- the main- the main house. But I remember our s-- our summer kitchen. Ah, you could see through the walls because the- you-know, they weren't necessarily built to, ah, ah- they were, you-know, they were crude- crude additions to your house. But this- this particular room symbolizes, ah, the- the summer kitchen concept.

Speaker: Yeah. See there's a little house and then a little kitchen there. Interviewer: Is that the summer kitchen? Speaker: Yeah. ... And a living room and a kitchen in the house here and then the kitchen- summer kitchen here.

Yeah. And we had- this was a summer kitchen. ... It was just a summer kitchen. We had everything there.

... at that time it was eighty-five ninety degrees outside. We cooked on- on a cook stove. And we had a summer kitchen. We never cooked in our house in the summertime, we cooked in a sep-- separate building in the summer kitchen.

Right. And the kitchen. You guys had the summer kitchen didn't you? Which is the she-- Like the- where you keep your wood? ... Okay, I think a lot of- a lot of um families, they had summer kitchens.

Well the one comes here in the morning, goes to school, and comes back after school 'til supper time, then he goes home, eh?

... that they couldn't work out in the field, then they'd come and make a big supper. ... Potatoes and all-that-stuff, eh? So mostly your- the- the nights were very short, because you weren't in the house, eh? And by the time you'd g-- do the dishes, it was time for to go to bed.

So she will come in and sell us bunches of asparagus. And so I get as many as I can and then I share with my family. (laughs) But when I have an abundance, you-know, you get to the point where you're eating it, like, breakfast lunch and supper, just about. And then you say "Okay, I've- I've had my quote of it- quota of it." You try to do something else with it. And that's where then pickling it is just so easy, I found.

(coughs) I know that, ah, there- there was myself and two other sisters, and we generally got to do the dishes after supper. Ah, washing and drying and someone would sweep the floor. And then there was a bit of a rotation. Sometimes there were conflicts, and the dishes didn't get washed properly. And they were on the drying-rack to be dried.

Um, but yeah, so we had the- the chores after supper, ah, Saturday was a particularly, ah, ah- a day that was devoted to the h-- to maintaining the house, like, we would have to- we would dust or we would sweep or vacuum, and- total tidy-up time, Saturday morning, generally ...