Ray's Corner

Well when I first remember this old maid she was about oh 42 years old and she lived alone in her parents house and her parents died when she was born and she was brought up by and aunt until she was old enough to go and live in her own house. And when I first saw her she was a very plain woman and she was a woman about six feet tall and she weighted about a hundred pounds she looked like an aluminum ladder with a coat thrown over it, she had the longest legs on her of any woman I’d ever seen, and her legs was so long that the women folk around there used to say that when she went to bed at night she used to have to wind them up on a spool to get ‘em under the blankets. I wouldn’t know about that because I wasn’t there. But anyways she was a very plain woman in fact she was so plain that every time she went into the kitchen the clock put his hands up over his face, couldn’t stand the sight of her. She had the longest nose of any woman I ever seen I had seen them that long before but they were always ??? in the middle, hers was in one straight piece and every time she went from one room to another she had to back up twice to line her nose up with the doorway. One morning, it was frosty in the wintertime, she was going to the mail, she ////down the neighbour and he said Good morning Mae, how do you like this cold? And she said Oh, I don’t like it my nose gets so cold what can I do to keep it warm? So he said well, rub snow on it as far as you can reach and snowball the rest of it. She didn’t think very much of him after that. She never had a boyfriend in her life, not even one to walk across the road with her; I will admit the boys in our territory was tough but they wasn’t that tough. Well she puttered around she had a little flower garden, she had a little vegetable garden, and in the summer she puttered around in those gardens and in the wintertime she’d do a little sewing and do a little knitting, fancywork, she didn’t have to work for a living, her father left her enough money to get along on, he was a sea captain and I always thought by the look of he she was something he brought back from the jungle. She was horrible! Well it wen ton until she got about 48 years old and when sh go to be about 48 she complained about being sick all the time, and she’d go to bed and stay a couple a days and get up a couple a days and while she was in bed the women in the community they had to go to work and go in and look after her. So this went on for some time and then one day one of the women said to her May, did you ever have a doctor? And she said no. Well I’m gonna call a doctor and find out whats wrong with you and if you’re sick we’ll look after you but if your not sick you should get up out of that bed and get around because we got enough to do lookin after our own families without coming here looking after you, and May said all right. So this lady got my older brother to go out and use the telephone, which was about 2 miles and a half away and call the Doctor. The nearest doctor was about 10 miles away in Bear river so he went and called the old doctor and the old doctor came up that afternoon with the horse and Wagon because we didn’t have any cars in them days He give her a complete overhaul, I guess he even checked the oil in her base and the water in her radiator. Well, he said he could’t find anything wrong with her so he told her Mae, there isn’t anything wrong with you you are a healthy woman so git up outta that bed and git agoin! He said what you need is a man to take the kinks out of ya.

Well, she got up and the next day, there was a paper in our country then called the Family Hearld and Weekly Star it was published out of Toronto and it was an agriculture paper and there was a couple pages that provide advice to the lovelorn ???????? and correspondence with anybody throughout Canada and if you wanted to meet one you could have a pen pal or if you wanted to meet one and ask him or her to marry you well you could do that  ????She grabbed the paper the next morning and she looked it over and she found a man out in Winnipeg, so she started writing letter to him, about 2 to 3 letters a week and my older brother was going to mail at the time and he said that every letter he tool to the post office that that old maid wrote to that man well there was blue smoke coming out of the envelope. I guess she was pretty desperate. Well this went on for about six weeks when she marched in one day and she asked my brother if he would take the oxen and go to Clementsport station and meet the train that her man was coming this certain day and was bringing everything with him from Winnipeg, and was gonna come down and marry her and was gonna live happily ever after.

So my brother said yes and he asked me if I’d go and help him load the trunks and boxes on the wagon, so I said OK so the day arrived and we took off ????and we got in there before the train arrived and when the train came there why it stopped they started in dropping of boxes and stuff??? And we started putting them on the wagon. Father down the line on the passenger car this one man gets off and he hollered at us hey what ar you doin’ with mu things? We said we’re putting them on the wagon to take ‘em out to Mae.

He said how do you know I’m the man? We said Oh, we know you’re the man all right because if any more than one person gets off of this train at one time they declare it a public holiday!  We said you got to be the man!” He said What’s she like? What’s she like? We said You’ll see, you’ll see! So we finished loading the wagon, he got on and we headed for home. And on the way home he said this was his first time traveling and he did’t know Canada was such a big place and he said he was five days and five nights on that train gettin’ here.  My brother said well why didn’t you take an airplane, you’d have made it in a couple of days. He said No sir. You don’t get me on any airplane. He said I’m scared to death of em and there ain’t enough money???in the world to get me on an airplane. I said they’re safe enough, he said I ani’t getting on one. We stopped along when we got to her house and when we got home we stopped the oxen along side the door and she come out to meet us and he looked up at her and he turned green and he turned white and the next morning he caught the next airfight back to Winnipeg. I guess he was more scared of her than he was the airplane.

Well after that she didn’t start to advertise for any more men she started goin back to bed again staying a little longer every time, a little longer every time; The women folks had to come in and look after her and she stayed alone at nigh and she wouldn’t let them lock the door; she said there might be a stranger come in at night and see her and want to marry her. Well, he’d have to be a stranger and he’d have to be from another planet. She was horrible. So this went along until she was about 74, 75 and one night there was an young feller in our neighbourhood and back in those days everybody used to make old cider, we had lots of apples, this young feller went down one night to his neighbours, he had to go past Mae’s house, and he got tanked up on old cider, so he went back by at about half past 10 or 11 and he knew the old maid lived alone in the house but he had enough old cider that it gave him some false courage, that had he been sober he’d have gone by ther running cause he was scared to death of her, but this cider gave him some false courage so he went in the house and he went up to the old maids romm and he took advantage of her and when he was done he jumped up and he ran down the stairs and out the house and down the road. And the old maid jumped up out of bed and took after him and he said when he was going down the road he looked over his shoulder to see how close she was behind and there she was standing at the gate becoming for him to come back.  Well the next morning she got up bright and early and she walked 15 miles and got a job in the lumbering woods with the ?? Davis lumber company cuttin’ pulpwood. She cut two cord a day, hand peeled it and piled it and whistled while she worked, and found sll of her own salt?????, chewed two plugs of tobacco a day and done all of her own spittin’. Well she stayed there until she was 90 and when she was 90 she decided to retire so she went home and she puttered around in her flower gardens and done some fancywork and things and this went along until she got to be 101. WQell when she got to be 101 she decided that the chances of getting a man then was pretty slim so shed do away with herself. Well she ate all the bug dope and rat poison there was in the neighbourhood and it never phased her one bit, in fact she gained 10 lbs, So one afternoon she was out in the field working along the road in the garden and the young feller was going by, sneaking by on the other side of the road because everybody was scared of her, and she called him over across the road to the other side of the ditch. She told him shed give him 5dollars if he’d bump her off with a rifle sometime   when she didn’t know anything about. Well he jumped at the chance for the going price around there at that time for bumpin’ a guy off was 50 cents. He thought he was rich! Well, this went along for a little while and he saw his chance one night, she was out weedin’ in the garden, so he loaded up this old LeEnfield rifle with hard nose bullets, he sneaked over along the fence in the long grass to get up close so he wouldn’t miss her and he said he put three of thiose hard nosed bullets through her head and never knocked her off her feet. She did complain about a slight headache after that, she said the wind whistling through the holes in her head gave her a headache. Well, the leading men in the community they saw they had to do something with her to get rid of her because she wouldn’t die on her own, so they went to work and they sharpened her like a fence post and they drover her in the swamp across the road from the house and the spot where they drover her into the swamp it killed the grass for 100 yards around. Well the young feller that took advantage of her he has a car now and he says every night he drives buy that spot there she is standin’ down there in the swamp in her nightgown beconing for him to come down. I guess she never ??? gut him afterall!  Well that shows you just how har the old maids are in our country.

Now this next one I’m a goin’ to tell you is about an old woman used to run around home when I was 9 or 10 years old and she was a preachin’ the gospel. And all she was doin was running around house to house bummin’ a livin, she never worked at anything else and  she was’t any more religious than I am and that’s useless???. She was 55 years old, she was about 4 foot 6 high, she’d hod dress at about 325 pounds, and she didn’t wslk she waddled. Well she used to make her trips about every two weeks, she’d get to our place of about 4.30 quarter to 5 just in time for supper – we always had our supper about 5 - 5.30 – and she was so big she always had to set in two chairs; when she set in one she run down over the edge like a loaf of bread that ran down over the pan, so Mother always gave her two chairs to set in. Well she was always hollaring’ and yellin’ and prayin’ and preachin’ and saying this world was coming to an end on August 23, 1927 ??? at 3 oclock in the evening We didn’t pay any attention to her at our house, all the preaching and prayin she’d done at our house was hanging up in the attic on the rafters like cobwebs and I use to have to go up every two weeks with a broom and sweep em down. cause we knew what she was doing she was just bummin’ her livin’. She didn’t stay at our place nights as we didn’t have no room for her so she had to go to the next door neighbours and stay there nights as she had to have about 4 beds to sleep in or else she had to bunk on the floor she was so big.  So this went along until the day come that she said the world was supposed to come to an end that night 7 o’clock; she arrived at our place about half past 4 and she was yellin’ and hollarin’ for us fellers to get ready the world was comin’ to an end and she was goin’ at heaven and the Lord and ???? we didn’t pay attention to her, we just laughed at her,. So we got supper ready, Mother was getting supper when she arrived there and she give her two chairs and she sat down at the table. Well, that old thing said, she said  Well I suspect I’ll have to eat a big supper, I don’t know how long its gonna take the Lord and I to get to heaven and I might get hungry before I get there. Well she et more than the two hogs we had in the barn cause I know, I fed em their supper. Well she cleaned up everything there was on the table and after much gruntin’ and groanin’ she got up out of the chair and she said she had to go out and find a good place to wait for the Lord; she didn’t want him to miss her when he came and my older brother said “Why he couldn’t miss you if you were hidin’ under a rock!” he said, : there’d be some of you stickin out. She said You’re kinda smart for a young feller” So she went outside the door and out by the barn there was a stack of hay we had for beddin’ for the cattle; it was about 16 feet high and about 30 feet over the bottom, so she went in and asked my father if she could climb up on the stack and weight for the Lord. He said, Ya, he didn’t care as long as she didn’t taske the stack of hay with her. So he told my two older brothers to get the ladder and put it up against the stack of hay so that she could get up on the stack of hay. Well they took the ladder and put it up against the stack of hay and that old thing started climbing up that ladder and she looked like a big porcupine going up a hemlock stub. She got up about half way she was groanin and gruntin and we were standing at the foot of the ladder to keep it from slippin’ and when she got up half way we started in to laugh; we could’t help it cause I’ll tell you why. In those days the women folk made their underwear out of flour bags, cotton flour bags, well in those days flour came in 100 lb bags and the women would take the bags and bleach the letters out and bleach  the pictures and every company that made flour they had their own brand name on it and they always had a picture of some kind representing  it??. There was Cream of Wheat, there was Red Rose, there was Daily Bread, and Robin Hood. Well the womenfolk would bleach the pictures and the letters out and the material was very soft and my mother used to make the underclothes for her and the girls out of them. And they’d wear like iron. So this old lady had a pair on that was goin’ up this ladder that was made out of Robin Hood flour bags. Well, she never bleached the flour bags and the pants leg came down to the top of her knees and on the back end of it she had a picture [just a minute Cope is comin’ I have to shut her off …well now that he’s gone I can finish it.]  Well, anyway this old maid had this pair of pants on with this sign of Robin Hood on the back of em, she was about 4 foot 6 across her rear end and there was lots of room there for Robin Hood…it didn’t crank?? Him in one bit. Anyway as she was going up there we looked and there was Robin Hood and he had the arrow in his bow and he had the bow pulled back and he had that arrow pointin’, well you know where! Well we couldn’t help but laugh and after much gruntin’ and groanin’ she arrived up on top of this stack of hay and she crawled off the ladder and got on the stack of hay and she told us to take the ladder down she said she wouldn’t need it any more but from then on she’d be always goin’ up, she wouldn’t be goin’ down again.

My brother said that’s what she thinks, I’ve got a surprise for her. So we went in the barn and we watched her out of a window in the barn and she set there lookin around and after about 5 or ten minutes her head started to nod she et so much she got sleepy and her head kept noddin and by and by she flopped over on the stack of hay and began a snorin’. Well she snored so loud that she woke uip all the cattle in the barn and woke up the hens, they was going to bed, and she woke up the ???.  Well Walton my older brother he went out and he took a match and he touched it to that stack of hay. Well the flames shot up woof over that stack of hay. When they were goin’ in the air about 8 to 10 feet it woke her up. She jumped up and threw her hands up over her head and she started hollarin “Hell at last, no more than I expected!”  About that time she lost her balance and went down of that stack of hay backwards, end over end, went down through the orchard and she lit up against the but of an apple tree, she laid ther Oh about 5 or 10 seconds and by and by she scrambled to he feet and she took off down through the orchard to the main road and we never saw her after that. She never came back again.