Village Squire, 1978-06, Page 23on the grounds was in some way related even if he or she was as
remote as a twenty third cousin. You knew who you were, and no
mistake about it. The rich pioneer blood of the Corners and
Camerons on one side flowed through your veins and on the
other the Valentynes and the Hunters and you were the sum of
all these mighty folk of old who tames the virgin forests of Upper
Canada and turned them into the Garden of Eden ww now enjoy.
Food, there never was such food with each one of those
marvelous cooks of the 20's vying with each other to produce the
flakiest piecrust, the fruitiest of cakes and the most. delicious of
sandwiches. There were boxes and baskets of food, mountains of
every good thing one could dream of and to top it off f the late
picnics threw in a corn roast. We kids must have had a stomachs
of Grade "A" para rubber to have had them expand to hold all
we put down without bursting. Sandwiches were sandwiches
then, and not enemic slivers that you swallow today and wopder
after if they really existed. All were of good thick homemade
bread and filled to capacity. Yes, there was pop if you were fool
enough to go down to the booth and spend a nickel, but who
would. with gallons of lemonade for the young and tea for the
parents.
Contests to no end. Regular races, three legged races and
even four legged races. Pie eating contests. Crackers to chew
down and then whistle. Potato -sack races. Three legged races
with boy and girl cousins. Ball games where a bad bounce could
drop a long drive into a woodchuck hole. There was something
for everyone and the prizes? Well as cash, they didn't amount to
much. for a first in the races brought the winner but twenty five
cents and ten cents for a second, but no one complained. It was
the fun of the thing.
There was a lake and changing booths at the lower part of the
grounds near the icecream booth and there were boats to rent
too. I recall one summer when another cousin and I who fancied
ourselves as canoists watched with fiendish delight, four of our
clan take off into the wind in a small canoe. Each time a roller
struck we braced ourselves for the delight of seeing a spill, but
by some quirk of luck the greenhorns managed to stay rightside
up and after a time we turned away in disgust.
There was always a great exchange of gossip and whispers
about Jim Corner, the black sheep of the family who never dared
show his face at a gathering. "Was he currently in jail or was he
out? Wasn't it a miracle that his poor father Jerry had not been
brought with white hair to the grave?" Old Jerry's hair did
indeed turn white and 1 rather think some of us young fry looked
at him a bit in trembling and wondered if he might not just fall
dead before our very eyes.
It was a day of comparing and commenting on who looked like
mother or dad, or great uncle Paul. One big ample bossomed
woman, I recall bearing down on me one sunny day. She spun me
around exclaiming, "G.P. junior or I miss my guess. Your old
dad will never be dead as long as you are alive. Used to pull my
pigtails when we went to school on the sixth. I could spot you in
Australia." As my father was fifty-six, to my ten years, it was
quite a job to imagine he ever looked like the skinny kid I used to
see in the mirror on bath nights.
There was Indian wrestling and what my mother used to refer
to as squabbles, but,..1 never remember any blood being spilled
save when Bill Valentyne crashed into his own brother Henry on
third.
Then as one ripened into adolescence and began to be aware of
girls there was the wonder and amazement that that rather
scrawny Susie Hunter with the scraped boney knees and a rash
of freckles was turning into a prim young lady with real female
curves. Of course marriage was a thousand light years in the
future, but just in case, somehow, you wished that this new
Susan was not a relative.
What an event it would be if we kids of those good days could
reassemble with'our kids and even our grandkids and compare
noses and ears and chins and best of all feel that wonderful glow
of clan spirit flow over us once more. We have lost something in
shelving the family picnic for •which there is no modern
substitute.
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VILLAGE SQUIRE/JUNE 1978. PG. 21.