The Memory Store: Huge, built like a motorboat…

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[Image of Don Johnson and Terra Barrett standing in front of a hillside root cellar]

[Don Johnson standing outside of a hillside root cellar] 

Don Johnson: Well the root cellar, built of local materials, with stone, turf, sod, these are the construction materials, very basic. This big is the porch stone, a huge stone that forms the archway into the building.

These, a lot of these, in the cellars around, of the hundred and some odd cellars around Elliston, a lot of them had these huge stones, bigger than this, put in place by this legendary strongman, Jimmy Chant. 

Huge, built like a motorboat, great arms, all upper body strength and he’s legendary to this area, like a Paul Bunyan of Newfoundland and though he was killed, they say killed himself. He was lugging a cast iron stove from Bonavista to Elliston and it killed – actually, it was the second time he did, he brought one stove it was the wrong type so he had to carry it back, and on his way back with the second stove he did some internal injury to himself and died. It seemed like it was a genetic thing because his kids after, were all big strong men with huge upper bodies like wrestlers. 

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