Frank Talks about Christmas Dinner

See, I can only refer to Parker’s Cove. In Parker’s Cove, just about everybody had sheep and in the spring of the year the sheep would have lambs, OK, if a person with sheep had say four rams, well they’d say, we’re going to kill two for Christmas. Anybody who say will want a leg of mutton for Christmas, tell that person, see.  This is what they did, you’d always look forward because just about all the men  at that time in Parker’s Cove at that time were in Lunenburg, that’s where they used to go fishing, most of them were in Lunenburg and the rest of them say would go to the lumberwoods. When they’d come home and when Christmas would come

I can remember right now t’was one particular Christmas that daddy came up from down to Mr. Peter’s … “Lil” he said “Did you order either bit of mutton for Christmas?”. “My God, Jack” she said “I forgot all about it”.  This was getting real close to Christmas. Now you know if you didn’t get a bit of mutton you had nothing; there was no turkeys or hens or nothing.

So, we were short on wood. I’ll never forget this.  And Daddy, prior to going to Lunenberg, he had wood cut down over across the arm in what we called Cooper’s Cove.  So Daddy and Alec and me went over to Cooper’s Cove to get a doryload of wood.  So when we gets up to where he had the wood to, there was  a bit of snow that night and there were footprints of rabbits there. Rabbits were awful scarce back in them days, too.  So Daddy went down to dory and got sud line [Strong grade of line used to attach fish hooks to trawl line] that the fishermen haves for their lines, for their  trawl lines, daddy went down  and he got two pieces of sud line and he came up and he put out 2 or 3 snares.  The next day was a  fine day and I think it was pretty close to Christmas Eve.  We left and went across the arm because we had to pitch the wood down and the first day we pitched it so far we were going to pitch the rest down and put it into the dory.  Daddy said “you and Alec try and get  the wood down to the dory and I’m going to go check the snares”. When he came back he had two rabbits …  that’s all we wanted for Christmas, that’s what we had for that year was the two rabbits. and they were at that time some good because that’s all you had. Yes, that’s what happened to our house.