The Rural Voice, 1978-04, Page 36but two complete strangers.
But if he was surprised, the men were more so. Seeing his
uniform they immediately surrendered and only then did Joe
know what had fallen into his lap. He called the police in
Homestead and the Mounties, OPP and Kelly all descended on
his little village.
Homestead felt cheated of its glory, but did recover a little face
when the CBC National News that night told briefly of the
capture and said it took place in Homestead, but took the edge
off the townpeople's pride by describing the town as "100 miles
north-west of Toronto".
The incident was almost forgotten when children playing near
the fair grounds found the little parcel wrapped in brown paper
more than two weeks later. It was Mackenzie's daughter Peggy
that found it. At age eight she was known around town as a
tomboy and in truth she was playing with two boys at the time -
Brian McGintee, Kelly McGintee's nine-year old boy and
Michael Townshend, the local bank manager's son.
' Although she played with the boys. Peggy could not be said to
be a bosom pal of either. They never forgot that she was "a girl"
and the way they said those two words seemed to infer that she
was the carrier of some dreaded plague.
So when she called the boys they didn't seem at all interested
in her find and kept on throwing stones at the bullfrogs that
habituated the creek. So, Peggy slipped the package into her
jacket pocket for further reference and picked up a handful of
stones to join the game.
It wasn't until after the boys had tricked her into playing hide
and go seek and then disappeared \hat Peggy thought of the
package again. She was walking home and she took it out of her
pocket to look it over. She broke the string that held the brown
paper on Ind unwrapped it. Under the paper she found it was
wrapped again in plastic, then covered by a cloth bag. After she
opened the bag she found two blocks of wood with a heavy metal
plate on one side. They were wrapped in tissue paper.
To the ordinary child, indeed the ordinary adult, these blocks
might have been a mystery, but not to Peggy. She was the
daughter of Mac MacKenzie who ran the only printing shop in
town. It wasn't because she had been hanging around her
father's shop that she knew that these were printing plates
though. Mac MacKenzie had inherited his shop from his father
and intended the business to stay in the family when he
passed on. To this end he had given his son Peter, an old,
hand -operated printing press which had been hanging around
the shop, getting in the way. This he had installed in the
basement of the MacKenzie home.
Mac was happy with the results. Even at 10 Peter was
fascinated with the machine. Not only that, but Peggy was his
habitual companion in the little basement print shop. Peter was
forever printing something. He even showed good business
sense by printing business cards for some of the area
businessmen.
However Mac MacKenzie was also a Scotsman and a good
businessman so Peter's printing scope was limited to a few old
plates and some ancient hand -set type, whatever he could
scrounge from his father's shop. Printing plates were too
expensive to be thrown around.
So when Peggy came running home to the little basement shop
with her treasure, she found a ready listener. When she proudly
showed Peter the plates he touched them with the excited hands
of a 10 year old. He didn't know what was on the plates but it
didn't really matter. Here was an opportunity to print something
other than the rejects from his father's shop.
He spread ink on the plate, spread paper over the top, pressed
the two together with a roller and pulled the paper away. His
eyes grew wide as he looked at the paper. He handed it to Peggy
without a word. She stared at it. She had hardly ever seen a 20_,
dollar bill before in her short life but there was one, perfectly on
the paper. It wasn't the right colour and she knew it wasn't real
money but it DID look like it. "Play money?" she asked.
"Sure." Peter said, he didn't really know if it was or not. 1t
didn't look like any play money he had ev:r seen. Then he
PG. 36. THE RURAL VOICE/APRIL 1978.
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