Speaker: And everybody worked together and so the mot-- then and the women had to make dinner then and supper for all the men and there'd be like twelve, fifteen men every time- Speaker 2: Three day- it might take three days at each farm to thresh it and it be six wagons.

Ah, we used to love to go to Brechin, which is just up the road here and the Catholic church used to run dances in their rec hall there which is right beside the church and the bar- beverage room, beer parlour was right across the road. So everybody over there and get tanked up.

Speaker: ... the surprise visits from the health inspectors were always interesting, you-know? ... And um, you-know, a-- b-- tea towels, I remember they- you-know, the tea towel h-- was moved because it was in the wrong spot or-something inside- Interviewer: Wow (laughs), oh like to pass to. Speaker: What does that have to- no we- we never once failed. Interviewer: No no no I mean like that particular- the tea towel place test- Speaker: Well I- I-think it was a matter of it may have been a finger towel- ... And- and was maybe where- somewhere over where they did toast or-something. I don't even remember. I just remember that towel being scooped out of there.

And, ah, they pushed the desks back, and they had a dance and the ladies all brought lunch and they had a- like a community shower for them. Which was, ah- if it was a girl- ... Then they would have a regular shower, where, well all the women brought tea-towels or-anything, like, along the line that they were going to need to set-up house- ... And if it was a guy, somebody would go around and take-up a collection and ah, they'd buy them something.

And you always got the itch, 'cause- same things goes on now but nobody seemed to- we just kind-of ignored it but- back in those days.

... that's a wonderful thing and I- and I think he- he's a- he inherited- he's like poor Kathleen-Wynne she in-- inherited a- a hornet's nest. A terrible thing. She's- she's a good woman- ... Ah and um, the way George-Bush left the States, ah, poor Obama, he ah-- inherited a h-- a bore's nest too. It's- but I think he- ah- I think that's a wonderful thing for America that they have a black- black president.

The Mellon's were a banking company and they date back, way back in the States. In fact he told his sons only idiots join the army during the civil war so he kept his kids out of a- ... War. And they're still huge- huge.

We've covered Canada from coast to coast. And um, then down to California and over to, uh, Florida, so we've covered a fair amount of the States, too. And then ah from there on we travelled n-- when we're- went to Australia, we took uh six weeks travel time to go there.

Speaker: That- no there's not- not nearly the amount of snow we used to have. ... I think Toronto getting more snow sometimes- Interviewer: Really? Speaker: Than- than we did. And l-- and the States last year, they had a lot more snow than we did. Interviewer: That's odd.

Speaker: They were born, yes, in Canada. Actually no, my mother was born in the States. ... And my dad was born in Canada. Interviewer: Whereabouts in the States was your mom born? Speaker: Youngstown, around Youngstown, New-York.

Speaker: And we went to a lot of their performances if they weren't too far away. Interviewer: Yeah. Speaker: If they were- they even went down in the States to Florida one time and they sang different places on the way down and back.

You- you-know that's the next step, post-secondary- if you haven't got post-secondary, you're not going to be able to get a job either. ... So- but I'm sure it must be the same in the States isn't it? ... Yeah like there's- there's a lot of people that- you know what I'm referring to when I'm talking about unemployable people. People that- ... Haven't got the mental capacity to get an education.

it took forever to p-- it seems to plough a field of fourteen or fifteen acres. And w-- when you ah- hear the little hummingbird. And when you ah harvested the crop, it was cut with a binder and it was put in stooks in the field and you had a threshing machine. Then you put the s-- sheaves on the wagon and you haul 'em into the barn and- and then you had a big threshing-bee and the neighbours came and you threshed the grain

Um, everything was fixed, made do, he had the oldest working binder that I ever knew. He had a neig-- Well, the neighbour had a threshing machine that worked as good as any I ever saw before or since and they still used it until I was probably sixteen, seventeen years old? They were still using it.

Um, yeah, I've had the threshing machine, I worked the threshing machine, throwing the sheaves. Worked- did all the farm work, same as he did, worked, helped him ploughed and-so-on, all summer long.

No, it- no, it run the thresh machine. There's a pulley on it and you attach that to the pulley on the threshing machine and pulley on that and you attach the- the belt, the big long, it's a hundred foot belt so it would be like fifty, sixty feet away from the thresh machine

There's a pulley on it and you attach that to the pulley on the threshing machine and pulley on that and you attach the- the belt, the big long, it's a hundred foot belt so it would be like fifty, sixty feet away from the thresh machine

And this- and this- it was the steam. Into threshing machine and this ran the threshing machine. Speaker 13: It went around all the farms. They went- they had threshing- threshing beams that all the farmers around the- local farmers all cam

Speaker: Very good. Just well stock shelves and waited on people. Sometimes we would on the till and- Interviewer: Yeah. Speaker: Lot of time we worked in the back like we used to get th-- we used to get the tea was loose and we parcelled it up into little packages

Interviewer: Yeah. Were you ah- were you a good student in school? Speaker: I think so. Interviewer: Yeah? Speaker: (Laughs) Interviewer: So were- would you ah tutor the younger kids? Speaker: Oh I have helped a bit, yeah. I have helped a bit. Never did get the strap so that must have (laughs)- Interviewer: (Laughs) Speaker: Yeah. Either- either I was good or I never got caught (laughs).