My earliest childhood memories are of growing up in Port Rexton and for as long as I can remember, we had electricity. Most homes had a back-up if we ever lost the power, usually a kerosene lamp. Power outages seemed to happen frequently back then, especially during a storm.
It wasn't a long walk to her house from ours, and I was always glad to see my grandmother, wearing her long white bibbed apron and standing outside the back door waiting for me to come down the road when I went to visit. I remember how happy I was to see her, and the sense of comfort and security I felt when I walked through the white gate and closed it behind me. She would give me a big hug as I followed her into the house, first through the dimly lit back porch , and then into a cozy middle porch. There was a table there, under a window, and I often climbed onto a chair to watch my grandmother roll out pastries for buns and fruit-filled tarts. Of course, I always got a pinch of dough. To the right of the table, there was a rolled-back couch where my grandfather would sometimes nap, to get out of the heat of the kitchen. On the opposite side of the room, there was a small dark pantry under the stairs.
The heat from the wood stove struck you when you opened the kitchen door. It felt so good and penetrated your very soul. To the left of the door immediately inside the kitchen there was an old brown wooden chair, which I now proudly display in my home. I think the only person I ever saw sit there back then was Uncle Ralph when he would drop in to see his brother, my grandfather. Uncle Ralph was a quiet, rather shy man, who was always well dressed. I knew it was him coming in by the way he gently opened the door. He would sit on that chair, remove his hat and hang it on his right knee for the duration of his visit. I don't know how he kept it from falling off his knee, but it never did. Above the chair there was a small framed mirror. My grandmother would turn it over during a thunder storm so lightening wouldn't bounce off it.
My grandfather loved trout fishing. I would stand by the small window in the corner of the kitchen when he was due back from the pond, watching for the tip of the bamboo fishing rod to bob over the top of the hill, just before he did. Then I would run outside, stand on the fence and wait for him to walk up the path around the corner of the house. He always stopped outside the white-washed picket fence and opened his fishing basket to show me the trout he had caught. He would count them, hold up the biggest one, and then I would run to open the gate. On one occasion, I saw the tip of the bamboo bob over the hill, before I saw my grandfather, and ran outside to meet him. I was so disappointed to find out it was my friend's grandmother coming back from her fishing trip, and not my grandfather, but he wasn't far behind.
Above the table, there was a very small shelf that held a radio, and near it, a beautiful kerosene lamp resting on a black ornate iron bracket that also supported a delicate reflector at the back. It was mounted on the wall and although cleaned regularly, it was mainly used during a power outage. My grandmother would sometimes turn off the kitchen light and we would just sit in the light from the lamp. It was magical and made the whole room feel warm and cozy.
On hockey night, my grandfather would stand with one foot on the floor and sit on the edge of the table under the lamp to listen to the game on the radio. He smoked a pipe, but not during the game. He first scraped out the old tobacco, and then knocked the remaining ash into the wood stove. I can still remember the distinct sound when he scraped out his pipe. He would stand in his favorite spot, half standing and half sitting, for the whole game. He took a plug (block) of tobacco and shaved pieces off it with his pocket knife, then rubbed the tobacco between his hands for what seemed like an eternity before packing it tightly into his pipe. He sat there with the unlit pipe in his mouth, and prepared enough tobacco to fill a small leather pouch. Everyone was quiet during the game.
The kitchen was usually a busy place. It was filled with love and meant the world to me. In the afternoon, my grandmother would take a break and sit on the couch in the kitchen. I would stand on the couch beside her, with her hand on my back, to look out at the brook that flowed into a pond nearby and then on into the bay. Sometimes the neighbor would walk his horse down the narrow path to the brook. Every time she saw him, my grandmother would say he was walking his "hoss" down for a drink.
The old wooden rocking chair next to the couch was covered with a beautiful padded back and seat cushion with large floral print. There was a folded towel over top of the back cushion to prevent it from getting soiled. I liked to curl up in the rocking chair, but couldn't when there was a fire in the wood stove, in case hot ashes (flankers) would fly off the burning wood and shoot through the side vents. In the winter, my grandmother sometimes opened the oven door. It was without a doubt the best place to dry mittens. When the dishes were washed and dried after each meal, the tea towels were hung to dry on a string stretched between two nails behind the stove.
When I stayed overnight, I would come downstairs in the morning and my grandmother would lift me up onto a chair at the end of the stove to wash my face and hands before breakfast. She had a comb that was about six inches long and two inches wide and would sometimes spend an hour trying to form ringlets in my waist-length hair, by very gently winding it around her fingers. She could never make the curls like my mom, but she always tried very hard to get them just right. In the evening, my grandfather would sit on that same chair to cut shavings on the end of wooden splits, to get them ready to start the fire in the morning.
It warms me to this very day when I sit and think about those times. I still have the old pantry table and the kerosene lamp, along with many beautiful memories of growing up and spending precious moments with my grandparents.
