In conversation with Sam Carter and Wilfred Carter, 1994

During the past year Ivy (White) Tong photographed a number of houses in Greenspond as part of the Historic Properties of Greenspond project of The Greenspond Letter. In a conversation with Sam Carter and Wilfred Carter in Sam’s kitchen in his house on Ship Island on October 8, 1994, I showed these photographs to them in order to get a history of the houses. This conversation led to other topics. Here follows a conversation on a variety of topics from “poverty paint” to “the songs of Billy Barrow”. Both Sam and Wilfred have wonderful memories and their stories will bring back memories for many people. Sam is the son of Edward Carter and Gertrude (Burry) Carter. Wilfred is the son of Robert Carter and Minnie (Osmond) Carter. Wilfred is married to Susie (Hoddinott) Carter and they too live on Ship Island.

Tell me about these houses. This one here is the Kirby house. Who lived in that first? Was it the Cutlers?

Sam Carter: The Granters lived there first. Neddy and Jane Granter lived there and it was their daughter, Sadie, who married Robert Cutler and it became known as Cutler’s House. It’s on the road, faces the road. It’s what they call Soup Lane. Yes. That’s what it says in the phone book. “Bob Crocker, Soup Lane.”

Where did that come from?

Sam Carter: I don’t know. The first time I ever heard that was when your mother died. I had a card from Mrs. Kirby. She said that she never had a chance to see me when she was down last year. Not the same she said since “we moved up in Soup Lane”.

Wilfred Carter: I never heard of it ’till I see it in the phone book.

Sam Carter: Yes, it’s in the phone book. All down there, they used to call that Smith’s Gulch.

Wilfred Carter: Yes, Smith’s Gulch. That’s what we still calls it.

Neddy and Jane Granter lived there and their daughter, Sadie, married Bob Cutler and they lived there. Who lived there after that?

Sam Carter: The Kirbys.

Ivy and I were in there one day and Stella showed us these lovely hooked mats. They were Sadie’s, I think.

Sam Carter: Oh yes, that was Sadie’s.

There was a lovely front door. They said they brought it over from Newell’s Island. It had coloured glass in the window, you know, all along the edge.

Sam Carter:   I don’t know. Not Ship Island, is it?

I thought she said Newell’s Island.

Sam Carter: That could be, that could very well be. Could be someone took that house over and they bought the door.

Wilfred Carter:  How about Harry Burry’s house? They had coloured glass in their front door.

Sam Carter: Like the one in our house. Our door got coloured glass. I was wondering if it come from Henry Hunt’s house. That was a big house and he had one of them big coloured doors.  Perhaps, though, it came from Newell’s Island.

Can you remember Neddy and Jane Granter? When did they live there?

Sam Carter:   I don’t know when they went there but he lived over here first, Neddy Granter did, down in that house, Wheelers, Bob Crocker lived in there afterwards. Uncle Mosey Hoskins. Yes. I suppose it was in the 20s when Neddy Granter went up there to live.

And the Kirby house was there then?

Sam Carter:   Oh my, yes.

Wilfred Carter: I suppose that’s the oldest house in the harbour.

Sam Carter:   I suppose old Granter or someone owned it. Stella told me the other year that it was a hundred and forty when they bought it, a hundred and forty or forty one. And that’s several years now. Must be eight or ten year now since they bought it. If it’s not the oldest it is one of the oldest.

Now how about Pash Stanford’s house? Who had that one first?

Sam Carter: Bill White.

Did he build that?

Sam Carter: I don’t know, maid. I suppose he had it built. I suppose the Whites had it built there.

Who were they? Did the Stanfords buy it from them?

Sam Carter: No. No. Clark lived in it. The man that run Baird’s business over there. He died there. He run the business here for James Baird Limited.

Wilfred Carter: Where was he from?

Sam Carter: From Bay Roberts. Yes, he died over there. And then Richards, Constable Richards lived there. And then Stanfords.

So he came over here and run the business for Baird’s. Was he married?

Sam Carter: Yes. He had a wife. But they had a girl live with them. Marjorie Rowe. I think she was somehow related to Mrs. Clark. But she was not the daughter, no.

Where did she come from?

Sam Carter: Well up there somewhere. She was a young woman when they went away, left here. She was a lot older that what I was, I know that. Yes.

And then the Constable?

Sam Carter: Constable Richards.

Somebody was telling me about working with him.

Sam Carter: I know who was with him. Annie Mullett. She come from Wesleyville. She died there this spring. She was what they called “in service”.

And after Richards?

Sam Carter: Stanfords. Herb Stanford bought it. Herb and Pash lived there. Herbie’s daughter, Mildred, owns it now, I guess. Mildred’s mother wasn’t Pash. What was her name? I don’t know. She was Markie Parsons sister, I know. What was her name, Mary or Clara? I don’t know.

Ivy was telling me that someone out in Corner Brook was telling her about “poverty paint”. Have you ever heard of that?

Sam Carter: Yes, yes. That was Pearce Carter that told Ivy about that. Yes, used to go up on the Island and get the poverty paint. Yes, remember that, I suppose I can. It was clay, see. It was soft clay. You go up, you go up there towards the United cemetery and you turn off there to the right, near Meadus’s garden there. And you dig down there and the clay was two or three colours. One kind was kinda grey and the other was like buff. And you mix it up with cod oil. People put it on their stores. I suppose they put it on their houses and everything.

Wilfred Carter: I remember being up there and father getting some. I don’t know what they ever done with it.

Sam Carter: I think they put it on old stores. Some fellas put it on their houses and everything.

Wilfred Carter: Yes. It was all right until it rained.

What a state!

Sam Carter: Yes, and the smell too. Cod oil. That’s what it was. It was like pug. Some people used to call it pug paint but more called it poverty paint. Yes, and that was right in the poverty days, too. Right in the early 30s.

Wilfred Carter: Yes. How many times did I see that? Poverty paint.

Sam Carter: That’s what it was. There was different colours. Sometimes you’d strike a vein and it was like it was dark grey and then by and by you’d dig away and the next vein was like buff, what they called buff, dory buff. You mix it up with cod oil.

Wilfred Carter: I don’t remember right where it was.

Sam Carter: No. I can’t go up and say that this was where it was to, I knows that I was up there one time. You went up around Wheelers, that way. And then up around Gus Briffetts, what they call Gus Briffett’s spring and then turn across towards your right. Go across towards Meadus’s gardens, there.

Wilfred Carter: I suppose it’s all growed over now.

Sam Carter: All growed over now, yes. That was fifty, sixty year ago now.

Wilfred Carter: I can remember being up there with father. I wasn’t very old. I can just remember.

Sam Carter: I know it was right in the Depression times.

You can’t remember your father using it?

Sam Carter: No, no. I can’t remember father using it. That’s what they’d do with the houses years ago. They’d lime them. Some people used to call it white wash but it was lime. And then they’d mix up ochre and oil to go on the facings. Yes. Red ochre and oil, cod oil.

Is that what’s on the stores? The red stores?

Sam Carter: Yes, ochre and oil. I suppose you can’t buy ochre now. No, I don’t think.

Where did they buy ochre then? From the stores?

Sam Carter: Yes, buy it loose. You could buy it by the pound.

Wilfred Carter: You got some there in the store now, haven’t you?

Sam Carter: I believe there’s a little bit there. Yes, I gave you a bit there last year. To put in the chalk line. Red ochre, that’s what the Indians used to use. There was yellow ochre too. Some fellas had their punts done with that. Yellow ochre. It would come off, yes. That’s what they did years ago, tar them on the bottom and put red ochre up to the risings.

Wilfred Carter: And you’d put ochre on your sails too. Father used to put oil and ochre on his sails, yes.

Sam Carter: And a little bit of pickle and salt. They’d shine then. No matter how hard it rained the sails would be just as dry. Never get wet. No.

They’d put the ochre and oil right on the canvas.

Wilfred Carter: Flower sacks.

You never had real canvas?

Sam Carter: No, not for punt sails. No. Flower sacks. Sew them all together.

Who’d do that work? Grandfather?

Sam Carter: No, mother used to do it.

Wilfred Carter: I made one for my boat. I believe there was nine square yards. I sewed it all together with my own sewing machine. Yes. I believe a flower sack was a square yard.

Sam Carter: Yes, I suppose it was, Wilfred. It was square I know. Some people would mix it up. Ochre and oil and pickle. You’d put it on with a brush. Spread it out on a rock and put it on with a brush. And let it dry.

Wilfred Carter: Yes I remember that old black punt with the main sail coated red.

The sails would be red and the boat black. That must have looked some pretty, though.

Sam Carter: The red ochre only came up to the risings. If you had a bit of paint you’d put it on top of that.

You wouldn’t get in that with your good clothes on.

Sam Carter: You’d burn it off first. You’d make a torch out of birch rind. Light the torch and go over the punt and burn it off. That was the first coat. You’d get a stick and split it. Then you’d get a lot of birch rind and fold it up and put in there and nip it in the stick. Then you turn the punt bottom up, light the rind and go over it, all over the seams, and the tar would heat up and run in the seams. That was her first coat. Then later on you’d give her another coat In April or March, that’s what they’d do with it.
Now for a fence, then, everybody had a picket fence. Nobody had palings then.

What’s the difference between a picket fence and palings?

Sam Carter: Well, palings is flat board. A picket is like a rod, like a small tree. Well it was as big around as a small cup, some of them down to the butt. It would get smaller as it go up. There was no money to get nails. So you’d get old telegraph wire and cut it off, about two inches long or three Inches, and nail on the fences with the wire.

Wilfred Carter: So you don’t have to wonder why our generation can do anything.

Sam Carter: When we came down here in this house this house wasn’t fenced. So next year father got the stuff and Charlie and Lockyer, father put up the poles and Charlie and Lockyer put up the pickets. That was in 1934 or 1935. That was in 1935. You might be able to scrape a few cents and got the nails but that was not the point. You’d want that for something else. That was the going on then. Yes.

Did you always live in your house, Wilfred?

Wilfred Carter: All me life. I was born there.

Sam Carter: There was lots of contrivances then for saving. Well it was not saving cause you didn’t have it to save. Well, that’s like getting things to eat. If the old people they had herring, and you go over touch the butter, they’d give you a crack across the head. Butter and herring. No, there was enough grease in herring. If you had hard bread or soft bread or potatoes or what you’d dare not touch that. That’s the same with raisin bread. You dare not put butter on raisin bread. No, sir.  And something else. The last one I did see do it, before she died, and that was Aunt Bertha, Violet’s [Knee] mother. The old women would sit down with their big apron on, big white apron, cause she had aprons big as that table. And put the plate on the table and take the bun of bread in their lap, what they calls their lap. They’d butter the slice on the bun and scrape it off, and then cut off the slice of bread. The last one I see do that was Aunt Bertha. Only a few years before she went away, that’s what they all used to do then.

Wilfred Carter: Yes, butter and scrape.

Sam Carter: Cause, you see, if everyone was digging into the butter, it would be gone. It was butter then too, not margarine.

Wilfred Carter: If you ever hears of butter and scrape that’s what it is. That’s the same with jam.

Sam Carter: No, dare not butter on your bread if you had jam, no. That was a waste, see. That was it, see, that’s how people had to do it. If they had no baking soda or baking powder, they’d take the wood ashes out of the stove and make lye and make dumplings out of lye.

Wilfred Carter; Yes, it worked but it was a bit green.

Sam Carter: They was green looking but they’d rise. Yes, ashes is all lye. They’s steep it out, they’d put it in hot water.

Wilfred Carter: I’ve seen it done but I don’t know how they’d do it. I know I’ve eat the duff that it was made of. It had to be wood ashes, the fine stuff, not the cinders. The first time I ever seen that done was up the bay. Arthur Burry, Artie Burry, you know. We was up there a week, rainy weather and got out of food, and the only thing we had left was sugar, no baking powder, a bit of flour, and what else, something else. And Sunday morning Arthur got out and got the bit of flour and took the ashes out of the stove and made up the duff. That’s what we had. They was a bit green. But they was good.

Sam Carter: I heard father say they used to be up the bay with Uncle Bob. He used to go up when he was a boy. He was up in September and he was up there one time and they only had flour and he said boys that’s all right you got the flour. He got the ashes and he made the duff. Yes, the last one I ever see do that was Aunt Bertha, butter and scrape. With the big apron on and the plate on the table and the bun in her lap and the butter there. Put it on and scrape it off and scrape it off and then cut off the slice and put on the plate. That with a naggin of goat’s milk.

Naggin? What’s a naggin?

Sam Carter: Half a pint.

Where did that come from?

Sam Carter: English, I suppose, English measurement, I suppose.

Wilfred Carter: That’s the way you used to buy milk, a naggin of milk.

Sam Carter: We’d go down and ask Sophie Hoskins. We used to have goats. But sometimes we’d have to go down ask Sophie Hoskins for milk. Two cents.

What’s goat milk like?

Sam Carter: The best. Better than cow’s milk.

Wilfred Carter: It was blue.

Sam Carter: Blue-looking. Richer than cow’s milk

Wilfred Carter: Lots of times I used to go over the shop for Aunt Sophie Hoskins or go over and get a turn of water. She give me a glass of goat’s milk. Yes. You wouldn’t get neither cent. No.

Sam Carter: Mother used to make custard, and mange, or whatever she used to call it.

Yes, blancmange that’s what they call it.

Sam Carter: With a few prunes. Prunes and custard.

Yes, the English always eat that, prunes and custard.

Wilfred Carter: There was some smell in that prune box.

Sam Carter: Yes, them white boxes.

You’d get a box of prunes?

Sam Carter: Yes, twenty-five pounds. Only a dollar twenty, sure. $1.20 for twenty-five pounds.

You wouldn’t get a package now.

Sam Carter: No. I had one last year. It was about two dollars.

Where did they get this? Would they order it?

Sam Carter: No, they’d get it in St. John’s. On schooners. You see, prunes used to go by numbers. The big ones would be a few cents darer, you know. The 80-90s, that was the small ones, the 50-60s and the 40-50s that was the big ones they were 15 or 20 cents more on a box. Apples sure, they used to retail them out over here for a cent each, in the stores, the two cents were as big as grapefruit. But, see, you never had two cents.

Wilfred Carter: You talk about now, I remember when you’d go to school, say you had a apple, well you wouldn’t have a apple every day, but say you had a apple, well there would be somebody chasing you around for to get the stump. Yes, that’s a fact.

Sam Carter: Yes that’s right. There wouldn’t be much left. Hard bread. That’s what you’d have, you’d nibble on that all day.

Wilfred Carter: Yes, a good bit of that would come in from the ice. (Sealers would return home with hard bread that they had while out to the seal hunt)

Sam Carter: Yes, when they come in from the ice they’d always have hard bread.

Wilfred Carter; Yes, you could still smell the seal grease off of it.

Sam Carter: Yes, you’d smell it. When they go on the ice they’d have their knap sacks packed, full of hard bread and raisins one old stuff and another. And now when they come aboard, if they never eat it, they’d put it in their box what they had with them. You know now what that was like.
And you know something else people use to do? They used to have pea soup Saturday and that’s when they’d bring out the dust bread, the small bread, and put it on the table. There was no such thing as bowls, you had a big soup plate.

And what’s dust bread?

Sam Carter: It was small bread. When they’d get down the bottom of the bag, all the small stuff be down there, about the size of your thumb. Hard bread, what they called dust. It would be in brin bags. See that’s what they’d use then for hooking mats. Brin bags. What they called half bags was fifty pounds. Hundred pounds was a full bag, that was for a big mat.
That was good brin, what they called close brin. The brin that was in potato sacks and cabbage sacks was what they called open brin, it was loose.

Do you have any mats left? All gone? I have that one Mom made with your name in it.

Sam Carter: We used to have two of them frames for hooking mats. I don’t know what happened to them.

Wilfred Carter: We had one that was hooked for Arthur Monroe, Lizzie Hoskins hooked it. Oh, it would have covered this kitchen. When I was up in Burin Arthur Monroe told me money couldn’t buy that one now. They still had it. I don’t know now if it’s still on the floor if they got it hung up on the wall. They told me they still had that one. They used to send down the rags to make rags. It was all new material that went into it. And the pattern that was in it was an Eskimo on a sled or a komatik. Oh it was beautiful.

Do you have any mats now, Wilfred?

Wilfred Carter: No, they’re all gone, sorry to say.

Sam Carter: See, you didn’t value that back then. That was a big thing then in the spring of the year, hooking mats.

Did just the women do it? Did the men hook mats?

Sam Carter: Well, I tell you what the men did. They cut up the mat rags. Yes, they cut it up in strips. Old coats, dresses, old clothes. It depended on what pattern they were hooking. And they would ravel out brin. Some people would bark it. Bark brin.

What would that be?

Sam Carter: Well, they would ravel out the brin bag and hook that in. They used to have then what they called magenta dye. Blood red. They bought it in the stores, two cents for a pack of dye. They’d boil that on the stoves in two or three iron pot.
See, people would go in the house then and help one another. Perhaps two or three women together. That’s the song Billy Barrow made up. About the time that Freddie Green’s wife, Mary Ann. She used to live with the Dowdens and she wasn’t married then and Aunt Rennie Pond who lived on the hill, that was her aunt and they used to go down there hooking mats. Neddy Dowden would be away. That was in the song:

No strange news in here afloat

And no one dressing up the goat

No mats on frame in this man’s land;

and no one helping Mary Ann.

Neddy Dowden had goats and at Christmas Barrow and they went down one night and got the goats and dressed them up and got the clothes off the line and then put them in the porch and let them in the house. They all went into the house. And that’s what was in the song. “No strange news in here afloat” that means in Grand Falls and “No one dressing up the goats”

Can you remember that?

Wilfred Carter: Oh yes, yes. That wasn’t the same song as when Aunt Leah had the new hat. Was that the same song?

Sam Carter: Yes, that was the same song. “It’s Rennie this and Rennie that; And Rennie how you like my hat? Oh Leah I think it’s swell; you’ll wear it to Gus Briffitt’s well”

Who made up the songs? Where would they recite them?

Wilfred Carter: They are all over in the school now. Mike Bragg that’s who typed them all off. I don’t know if they are all there now but they were over in the new school.

Sam Carter: Do you know that song? It’s in the book by Jack Feltham, Bonavista Bay Revisited, it goes:

It was just before the first of March
That an outcry came from Downer,
‘Oh come on Gussie, come on quick
My cow she’s in the cellar.’

Four men were pulling on her tail
Eg Hoddinott and Gus Carter
And I myself was on the line
With my good friend, Alfred Butler.

Soon Downer, he was heard to say
Those frosty spuds will kill her
Don’t let her slew, boys, for God’s sake
Or she’ll jam across the cellar.

To get beneath that animal
It made us all to shudder,
A risky business boy it was
He bumped into her udder.

We pulled a little on her tail
Then hauled a little stronger
The cow, she backed out through the door,
But her tail was inches longer.

Success is due to our cow-boy.
On cows he is a stunner.
If you see him in charge of a cattle ship
He’ll have a bull for scunner.

Wilfred Carter: See that was your television in those days. That was your entertainment.

Sam Carter: Yes, You had no television. You had no radio. People had to make their own sport,

Wilfred Carter: That’s the reason they say the good old days. There was lots of fun.

Sam Carter: That’s right, Wilfred. Everyone seemed to be happy.

Wilfred Carter: There was lots of jokes played.

Sam Carter: Yes. Everyone was on the go. The churches and lodges. Most people went because there was somewhere to go. There was some people who had a meeting every night for the week. Monday right to Friday. See in those days regardless what the night was like you’d be out. Especially in the spring when the ships were out to the ice, out to the seal fishery. That was the only way you’d get the news then. That was first when the radios came here. Jesse Boorne had one up there and George King and David Burry had one up Pond Head. They had radios with wet cell batteries. About ten thirty or eleven o’clock in the night they’d get the sealing news and they’d mark it down and come out and tell the people. Boornes had it in their shop window on a big blackboard. What every ship had, what they had killed and what they had aboard.

Wilfred Carter: And you’d go over the post office and the book was there and you could go in and read the news every day. Public news.

Sam Carter: It didn’t make no difference how cold it was or how rough, anyone who had someone out to the seal fishery they would go over there and find out what they done that day, what seals they caught.

Wilfred Carter: Usually the news was that the ships were jammed. Usually jammed five or six miles from a large patch of seals. “All crews on board and well”. That was usually on the tail end of it.

Sam Carter: Yes, that’s what they said: “All crews on board and well”.