By Millie (Carlson) Bruce – Matheson Island, Man.
I can’t help but think that people in the 1930s and ’40s must have been happy to find humour whenever and wherever they could in such hard times. At very least, those of us from the outskirts anyway. With no stores, no doctors, and so on, life was hard for many.
I recall a saying: “…in hard times you either learn to laugh or you cry.” It seems to me they simply didn’t have time to cry back then. I can remember, as tired as dad and mom must have been from their long work days, they still found time for us.
Saturday afternoons was for scrubbing and waxing the floors in the house. If we could be finished by 3 p.m., when the French station came on the radio with its wonderful old-time music, dad would teach us all to dance.
It was usually siblings Edna, Allie, and Vernie who did most of the work, but we all got to dance. To wax the floor, we’d drip candle wax to begin with and later on it was a store-bought solid floor wax. I remember pulling my brother Joe around behind the dancers, on a wool blanket. That helped to spread the wax. Our floors at that time were just boards.
It was bath night later on, so we’d have to carry water from the lake and heat it up on the wood stove. Poor dad would always be the last to bath. In the summers, we’d all head for the lake with soap and towels as often as we had time.
