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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Seaforth News, 1961-04-06, Page 3rp • House Foundations, Made Of (ranite The neighborhood in which Aunt Harriet and Ullele Pearl lived was appropriately called the Granite Neighborhood, It was here in the days before the Civil 'War that the Doors tone Quarry turned out door - rocks by the hundred, In our childhood, the quarry was no longer in opera" tion, though there were relics of the days of its activity, the granite boarding house, the chip - strewn road leading to the quarry hole, and Uncle Pearl's huge barn, which had once housed the Doorstone oxen and the galamanders, The nearby Blue Hill Granite Company and the White Com- pany were concerns that did bus- Mess in the late nineteenth cen- tury and into early decades of the twentieth, The cutting sheds of the former were in sight of Aunt Harriet's house so that she heard the beat of the hammers on the cutting chisels as she went about her work. The White works at the foot of Clay's Hill employed the men of the Friend's. Corner Neighbor- hood in the months from March to November. My brothers and I took pride in' the fact that Fa- ther and Uncle Pearl were "boss cutters," and that Uncle Arthur had the reputation of being the fastest cutter on the job, Otis and Ben and my+cousin Austin served as tool and water boys when they were in their teens, but the decline of granite -cutting and the closing of the Granite Neighborhood works defeated the boys' ambition to be master cutters, We children had listened to the conversation of our granite - cutting elders so that the jargon of the trade was familiar to us Ashlar, roomy stock, curbing, six cut work, grout, and galam- ander were all terms that we understood and used with accur- acy. We recognized the shrill whistle of the Blue Hill Quarry and the more robust blast of the White whistle as signals that twice a day, at seven o'clock and at twelve, summoned the men to work, and, at eleven, gave the signal for the workers to knock off for dinner. The four o'clock whistle meant the end of the day when the cut- ters brushed of their stones, fold- ed their aprons, and placed their peen hammers, their hand ham- mers, and their chalk and line in their tool boxes. The black- smiths banked their fires and the teamsters unhitched the work horses from the curiiber- some galamanders. The engi- neers left the engine house and the quarrymen climbed up the ladders from the quarry hole. The horses that had been stabled in makeshift hovels while their owners worked in shop or quarry or engine house raised their heads and neighed as though as to say, "Good, this day's work is done, Let's hurry home to my stall and feedbox of oats." Granite cut at White's yard was taken to Atlantic coast ports by white -sailed schooners and ships. One of the schooners was the Herald of the Morning, a craft in which we took great in- terest because Father and Uncle Arthur owned a two -sixty-fourth interest in her, Granite was not the Herald's only cargo, She brought pineapples from Carib- • bean ports to Baltimore, doe from Baltimore to Maine, and -now and then cargoes of ice, a Maine product that for a few decades brought great. prosperity to the Kennebec Valley, writes Esther E. Wood in the Christian Science Monitor. The school ' in our Friend's Corner Neighborhood was called 'the Granite School. It sat on a granite -crowned hill and was guarded by a great gray boulder that served equally well as a goal, a fort, or a lighthouse. In the vicinity of the schoolhouse THouGHt uL - New York's aubway, long the target for eima'teur artists, Is going along with the pag In oarder, to pro- knot other elgnboards, special trosters have been set up 'for. oe mustache -drawers to pros, their art upon. were shallow quarry holes tram which in the pre -Civil -War days stock had been taken to make paving for the. Mississippi River levees and for city streets. ,One of the holes, the Manning Qarry, was a favorite play ground, which we called the "Refuting Gardens of Babylon." :Since the two levels of the 'abandoned quarry `were covered ,only by crisp lichens and stunted seedlings, our designation was a highly imaginative one. But we Friend's Corner children were never short when it came to im- agination. A second quarry hole was our Comstock Lode and a third a dungeon in the Bastille. Not ail the granite went into paving and ashlar and curbing, Every Friend's Corner Home had a granite foundation and, in the case of our modest farm house, there was a double underpinning of blocks. Every house had a granite door -rock and a granite hitching post, where the horse of an afternoon caller was, in the warm months, hitched while the owner went inside for a visit. Uncle Pearl' and Father had a friendly rivalry over the use of granite on their homesteads. Father cut a well -curb for our backyard well; Uncle Pearl made corner blocks on which he placed the rain barrels; Father cut a granite urn which was set under the parlor windows and in which Mother planted red geraniums. But Uncle won the "battle of granite" when he laid,a sidewalk of cut stone 'from his back -door to the barn, a walk which we children found ideal for bounc- ing balls and rolling marbles. At the time when Father and Uncle were busy making granite conveniences for their homes, we children became interested in collecting stone chips, a hobby which Father encouraged by suggesting that we strew the chips along the foundation of the house, a space where the grass at best grew sparsely. Dan 'and Uncle Arthur were so much im- pressed by the neatness of the margin that they engaged us to make a similar fringe of chips along the foundation of their homes, Today no paving is quarried at Friend's Corner; no granite is cut in the Granite Neighborhood; the whistles are stilled; the granite -laden Herald of the Morning no longer sails down the bay. But we still have re- minders of the days of granite prosperity - o u r foundation blocks, our door - rocks, our hitching posts, now so seldom used, and our chip margins which are as gray and as neat as they were forty years ago when we children were for a brief time workers with granite. Those Sig Trucks Score Again The lobby for operators of big trucks has scored again, this time in the Arkansas Senate. Un- der rules that require 18 votes, the lobby lined up 19. Arkansas has had a maximum load limit of 28 tons. The state has invested about 800 million dollars of tax money in high- ways, one of the largest invest- ments of any type within its borders. During the hearings on the proposal for heavier truck loads there was an extraordinary in- cident in which the . Highway - Department staff' . presented , a written 'statement attempting to' protect this' investment. • They said 'only a few miles have been designed for proposed loads. They said most . of the present surfaces are rebuilt on subgrades of the days of lighter trucks. These surfaces 'do very well under automobile traffic and the ordinary size of trucks. On nationwide figures only about five per cent of the vehicles are the heaviest trucks' that endan- ger highway investments. In Arkansas less than 3,000 vehicles hold licenses for the heaviest loads. But such considerations are of small moment to operators of big trucks. The lobby that found its way through the Tennessee Legislature barricades in 1959 has, now prevailed upon the Arkansas Senate to allow five more tons of payload. -Commercial Appeal (Memphis), 1 liked his speech, It pleased me, vastly - Especially when He said: "And lastly-" Up:adedilwn to Prevent Peeking OrIi]r1 rariEri ©©© ©© : nnoFiE71©©nMEM ClEifirill .n©too k7 1L ii]C7©dC�Ca® r i Erin© mann. (waft MEM C1[tJ! ©C' wnlM® MCI ©riEi 1-1©glEEMPI ��a 1L I 1�11'a n DOCi� c E•In�©e�. VIV1F21hl E © B V G913 V D CARROT TOP - Nataiina Petraroa, 4, a Roman miss, sits atop what she believes to be rabbit heaven - a mountain of car- rots, She is, of course, munching on one. TilL L&RN FRONT There has been "some evi- dence of improvement in quali- ty" of Canadian hogs since the government instituted its hog premium policy last October, Ralph K. Bennett, Canada De- partment of Agriculture states in a review of the 1960 hog industry in Canada. The new policy provides for a $3 premium on Grade A hogs. The total number of Grade A hogs marketed in November and December 1960 equalled 31.1 per cent compared with 20.2 per cent for the corresponding period in 1959. However, Mr. Bennett felt itis "too early to forecast any direct results of the change in hog premium policy." * * * There was a huge drop in the number of hogs in Canada dur-. ing 1960. The 1960 total was al- most 6.8 million head, 'compared with 8.6 million head the pre- vious year. The figures repre- sent a decrease of 21 per cent during the year. Domestic disappearance av- eraged 125,398 head weekly, a reduction of about 8.400 head per week or about 6 per cent less than the preceding year. * * e There was also a considerable drop in export of pork and hams to the United States in 1960. Shipments to the U.S. during the year totalled almost 45 mil- lion pounds, some 8 million pounds less than the preceding year. Total exports of pork and hams to all countries during 1960 amounted to about 65 mil- lion pounds. The number of hogs on Cana- dian farms at the end of De- cember 1960 was estimated at 55.5 million' head, a reduction of 14 per cent from the 6.4 million at the same time the preceding year. * * * The average price for the year was almost the same as for 1959 but the range of prices was much wider. Prices ranged from a low of• $19 at Toronto for Grade A's last March, to a high of over $30 in December. The cumulative national weighted average de- livered price,' per hundredweight for Grade A hogs, was almost $24. * * * Quality, a major problem in the hog industry, did not show any marked change during the year. The percentage of Grade ISSUE 13 - 1961 A increased by one per cent, and of Grade C by one-half of one per cent, This gain, how- ever, was offset by a decrease of nearly two per cent in Grade B hogs. "Since the ban on United States' imports was lifted in February, 1960," Mr. Bennett re- ported, "the Canadian hog pro- ducer has been in the same po- sition as the cattleman has been in for some time - his prices are tied directly to price levels in the United States." * * * More Canadians are reaching for canned fruit than ever be- fore. Basing their calculations '. on published statistics and about 1,000 replies to questionnaires sent to Ontario orchardists, the economists come up with some figures of Canada -wide interest. Ontario in 1956 had 83 per cent of the country's peach trees, 66 per cent of the pear trees, 75 per cent of cherry trees and 53 per cent of the "other" tree fruits, most of them plums and prunes. Twenty-nine of Can- ada's 48 fruit canning plants were in Ontario •in 1958. 4, * * Not only has a striking in- crease in Canadian consumption of canned fruits taken place but it is likely to continue, according to the economists. While the population of Can- ada only doubled in the last 32 years, the home market for can- ned fruit increased by almost six times. On the basis of average disappearance for the past five years, they concluded that there appears to be a market for 7.9 million pounds of canned cher- ries, 62.5 million pounds of can- ned peaches, 31.2 million pounds of canned pears and 10.1 million pounds of canned plums. 4' * * Average per capita use of the four•fluits canned was steady at seven pounds in the period 1954- 58 compared with 2.4 pounds in the 1929.33 period. The relative stability in use now reached may be due to the growing consumption of frozen fruits - from 24,1 million pounds in 1953 to 36.6 million pounds in 1958. This was a jump of 52 per cent, more than three times the rate of population increase in that time, * , *- More than half of the peaches, pears and cherries harvested on 883 Ontario farms surveyed by questionnaire were sold for pro- cessing, mostly under contract.. Miens were sold half for pro- cessing and half for fresh use. * The investigators noted that approximately 52 per cent of the Canadian production of the four fruits was used fresh In the five years ended 1958. Two per cent was exported and the remainder processed. Imports of fresh fruits were mostly consumed fresh, not processed. Per capita consumption of the fresh fruits totals 12 pounds at which point It has been fairly stable for the last five years. 1' Better buy a spare can -opener? An Eskimo's View Of His Homeland From the writer's point of view, the Arctic has no favour- able qualities, unless its severity be counted as such. It is a bar- ren, empty land, largely comfort- less and desolate. The endless tundra stretching from sea to horizon has an austere, monoton- ous oharm, a certain cold, clean- edged beauty. 'Yet throughout it is hard on man. To the Eskimo, however, it is home, the earth's most favoured c have place. They av no desire to go elsewhere; they are content with this country which contains enough walrus and seal to satis- fy most of their needs. In its topography, the eastern Canadian Arctic ranges from great glistening, coloured cliffs to flatlands, that roll away, mile after empty mile, featureless and undifferentiated, save for quiet inland pools that blue -spangle its monotonous expanse. The fleeting weeks between the passing of one winter and the coming of another witness temperate and even warm wea- ther. Snow melts, flowers bloom, birds flock from the south. The land becomes sombre brown, not colourless, but dead in colour, save for the brilliant orange of lichen -covered rocks. Aivilik men are keen geo- graphers when describing their immediate surroundings. B u t once they venture to tell of the outer world, geography gives way to cosmography. I asked a number of them to describe the world. The earth, they replied, is merely several weeks journey in extent from their home, Most agreed that it is both flat and circular, with Southampton Is- land as its centre. The sun, fol- lowing an irregular course, travels about it, lighting first the upper and then the under side, At the end of 'the earth stand four great pillars which support the sky dome. Here are the stars which burn so brightly in the heavens on clear nights - From "Eskimo," by Edmuns Carpen- ter, Frederick Varley and Robert Flaherty. UNDAY ISSON01 By Rev, It, Barclay Warren. 11,A., B.D. Christ, Our Living Lord John 20: 11.22, Memory Selection: Jesus said unto then) again, Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you. John 20:21. The rising of Jesus Christ from the dead was • the climax of the wonders that accompanied His coming in the likeness of man. The apostles, after Pentecost, took full advantage of this in pressing upon their hearens the claims of the Gospel. Here are some typical expressions from their preaching as recorded in Acts, "Him, , , ,ye have taken, and by wicked hands have cruci- fied and slain: whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death: because it was net possible that he should be holden of it," (2:23). "God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ" (2:36). "Ye. . , , killed the Prince of life, whom God bath raised from the dead; whereof we are witnesses." (3:14,15), In comparison with the apostles we are much too calm about the glory of the resurrection, We accept it but we fail to grasp the wonder of it, Jesus was seen after His res- urrection over a period of 40 days by people, singly, and in groups as large as 500, After Pentecost, 120 of these became the nucleus of a witnessing Church. They emphasized the resurrection of Jesus Christ as proof that Jesus was the Christ and therefore the people should repent of their sins and believe in Him. They saw multitudes converted to faith in Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savi our. And still the work goes on, though not as fast as it should. The church is too much caught up in the spirit of the age to give the witness it should, Paul said in his letter to the Philippians, (3:18.10), For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: whose end is destruc- tion, whose God is 'their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things." Fleshly appetites rule' in many lives, today,,And, what glorying there is- n the things of which we should be ashamed, Many (4, • the best selling booksand 'most popular movies exploit all sorts of sex ''perversions. Earthly things have our attention far too mitch. May God help us to re - ,pent and return to the simplicity of:the Gospel as set forth by the early Church. o CROSSWORD PUZZLE ACROSS 68. Neat 1. Prates DOWN 8. Curtsy 1. Needlefleh 8. Nipa palm 8, A president's 12. Instigate nickname 18. Bead of a suit 8, suited 14. Ancient 4. Broken up stringed 5.Iniurioue instreme t 6. Great bodies 18. Preserved an of water account of 7. Cotter ream 17. Persia key 18. Coln of Macao 18. Large lizard 1. Several Id. wind flowers 26. Rather than 27. Twice (music) 58. tip to the time of U. Ruthenium symbol 11. Answer theFlock or birds . Slippery . Answer the 88. purpose cockatoo 88, Wapiti 36. Energy (slang) 87. Gigantic 29, Watchfulness 40. Subsequent to 41. Branch of the sea 42. A roast (Fr.) 44, Dauntless 48, Dillsecd 48. English letter CO. City in 7ndiana it. Marries 52. Dutch commune 8. Divorcee's allowance 35. Gained by s. Despot labor 88, Coddle 88. Grasp en y 84. Winged 10. Macaw 11. write 16. languagx dap t 50. Ina frenzy 89. Moved to kill furtively Si, Glacial fragment 22. City in Bolivia 8. Help 4 Identical 77 4. Kind of duck 46. Pagoda 6. ncline ornament Exalt one's 46. Biblical cert character 0. Benefits 47.,Worked hard 1. Not healthy oolloq.) 41. Land measure 42. Crude • Answer elsewhree on this page FISHING FOR TROUBLE -Ice fishermen on Lake Winnebago, Fond du Lao, Wis,, received a surprise 'when they stepped from their shanties. The ice had drifted Into the lake. A makeshift bridge was used to gat them, their cars and shanties back.