WE WERE HAPPY

WE WERE HAPPY

I am seventy-one years old and as I sit here all alone I think back over the years I enjoyed with my dear husband. We worked hard together and raised a family of six.

In 1921 I married the widower known by all as Joey Butt. He had a twelve year old son and a ten year old daughter. We lived in East St. Modeste about ten miles from Pinware.

My husband fished alone 'til the boys got big enough to help him. He had only one trawl and had to row out to it because he had no motor boat then. He got enough fish to pay his bill and get some food but not enough to get through the winter. He had to go on the dole...$10.00 a month and he had to take an oath to get that. We salted away cod tongues, sounds, breeches (spawn), just about every part of the fish (cod) that was good to eat. We had a small garden from which we got cabbages, potatoes, carrots and turnips. We picked berries, sold some and had lots for jam for ourselves. Our oldest daughter hooked mats and knit socks for the Grenfell Mission. My husband's son, Eben, moved to Pinware so he built a winter house alongside him. There we were able to get lots of birds and rabbits and lots of company too.

No one ever went by our door if my husband saw them. He'd call them in for a cup of tea even if we only had bread and jam to offer them. In the spring time when people would come in the river to cut logs to saw for lumber they would stay with us for a week or longer at a time. It was too cold to stay in the cabins. We cooked for them and sometimes we cooked as much as six pots of meal for their dogs. The nurses, ministers, Rangers and all stopped in to see Joey. Sometimes he took them from there to Red Bay and back to Forteau on the team of dogs. He never charged them anything. The nurse would give him clothes for the children from the Mission clothing store. He often had cold dirty weather on those trips. I couldn't hear from him until he got back. No phones or radios like today but I knew when it was going to be dirty weather. I had a weather glass made from a pickle bottle half full of water with a sweet oil bottle stuck upside down in it. When the weather was going to be dirty the water would rise up about an inch in the neck of the sweet oil bottle. If he didn't get home when I expected him I knew it was too dirty for him to come.

Bella Brown, now living in Happy Valley, brought her father his first battery radio for his birthday when she come home one summer. Then we could get messages from the nurse in Forteau. The nurse there had a radio phone so that she could call the Doctor at St. Anthony hospital whenever she wanted help or advice. She also sent messages to people along the coast.

We kept on moving back and forth from Pinware to East St. Modeste because the fishing was good and crowds of people came across the Straits of Belle Isle from Newfoundland. Those people stayed most of the summer in old houses or camps. They kept me on the go, baking bread for them. Sometimes I'd bake as many as twenty loaves a day. When they would return the next summer they would bring me two or three laying hens and perhaps some fresh cows butter.

In 1959 the relocation people come. My husband didn't want to move but the other three families was moving so we did too. Eben and we lived on the east side of Pinware River and now we had to move across the river. Eben liked it because 'twas easier for his kids to go to school. My husband didn't like it. I think he got lonesome for the rocks at East St. Modeste. It was all sand in Pinware. He always wanted to move back but there was nothing to move back to. The house was tumbling down, not fit to live in. With a little help from the government we scraped up enough money to build a house.

The going was hard in spots when we were rearing the children but we had a happy life together. We took life as it come. The family got their own homes now, all but one, he's not married yet. My husband lived to see his 87th birthday. He had little sickness in his day. The last year of his life he was living in the past. He had many faithful friends who came to see him to the end.

BELLE BUTT
PINWARE

THEM DAYS VOL. 1.3