Paddy’s Day Concert

Interviewer: So tell me about the Paddy’s Day Concert …  the first time you were in the Paddy’s Day concert, what kinds of things you did.

Mary: The first time I was in one was when I lived in Placentia. We used to have them over there and so I got used to being in the concerts over there and wasn’t a bit shy or anything. [I was in the concert] until I came home and then started to get in the Paddy’s Day concerts here. Which was so different because what we did over there and what we did home was no comparison whatsoever.  What they would do, is they’d all come and meet, get a skit, go home, everybody practiced their own and came back and had the concert. But here, when we started in ’91, we just went and met and everybody got their skits and everybody went every night, some nights you were there until 2 o’clock in the morning, trying to get everything together, and what have you and we probably kept that up for about a month, could be six weeks before we’d have the concert.

Elizabeth: Kind of like what Cyril says, they’d have one concert for the public and seventeen concerts for themselves.

Mary: We had a concert every night when we started and back then it was so much different than what it is now. There was no rush. Even though the people that were in the concert were working and everybody had small children and everything like that. Matter of fact we had women in the concert pregnant and had small ones home but there was nobody in a rush. You came and you stayed and you just OK, so I don’t do mine til 11 o’clock. So that’s fine … But now, you’re rushing in “Come on now, boys let’s get this on the go” and everybody got somewhere to be at the next day and all this sort of thing.

Interviewer: So what kinds of things did you do in the concert?

Mary: Anything, pretty much anything that had to be done, things like nobody else would never think of doing like taking out your teeth on stage and letting everybody see you.

Interviewer: I remember you did one about the apples, one year I was up there.

Mary: Yes, myself and Hannah did that one, Hannah Emberly and another year we did the one about the eggs. Where Buddy was buying [selling] the eggs. He came to the old lady’s door to sell her the eggs. So anyway, when he’d get so many counted out, that’s one, two, three “Ah, what number, now, do you think so and so lives at?” And she’d probably say, “I think he’s at number 16”.  OK, 16, 17, 18, 19. And he kept on doing that. And in the end,  she wanted three dozen eggs and she had about a dozen and a half because he was after fooling her.

Interviewer: Do you remember you were telling me about a recitation that you did in the concert once?

Mary: I did “Me Mudder” Oh my God, we had so much fun doing that.

Mrs. Ann: Do you know it now?

Mary: Who set me on the ice cold pot and made me pee when I could not? Me mother. That one. Anyway we had so much fun doing it, so much laughing, we nearly used to crack up every night. Well there was nights I’d go on stage and couldn’t do it, because the rest of them would be doing that much laughing, because I had this costume, and I had no teeth in and I had a red dress on. And that night when I came out and did the recitation on the stage, not a chuckle, not one chuckle from the audience. And we couldn’t figure it out. My God, they said, “What’s wrong with them? Have they got no sense of humour at all?” And we found out afterwards, the reason wasn’t because they didn’t find it funny, it was because they were listening, to see what it was that I had to say.

Interviewer: So you were in concerts as a little child, too? A youngster, in school.

Mary: Oh, my God yes. Them times the teachers had certain people who they would give the big parts to.  Maybe because I wasn’t the smartest student was in the class or something, but I never did get a big part.

Interviewer: Did you do the little recitations?

Mary: Yes, I always did the little recitations and the dances, if there was a dance, we would take part in the dance and sing. Brother Tom always tells about one that he was in. He had two lines to learn. Six weeks it took him, to learn the two lines. “The next stop is Benny. Benny is the next station.” And the train was coming in and that was his part in it, to hold up this sign and say “The next stop is Benny. Benny is the next station” and he says it took him six weeks to learn off that much because the teacher always used to say to him, “You’re not saying it right”. He didn’t know why he wasn’t saying it right.

Interviewer: Well, there’s no trains here so  it didn’t make much sense to him.

Mary: Funny how he ended up with CP Rail after.

Interviewer: Yes, he spent a long time dealing with trains after that. He shouldn’t have said “Benny is the next stop” …

Mary: He shouldn’t have said it at all.

Interviewer: So you used to dance in the concert. Like step dance.

Mary: Oh yes, but now, Gladys was usually the dancer in the concerts. I never did except if it were with a group then we did. And we did the square dance,  a couple of years or four or five years. We did the square dance in the concert, but we weren’t the dancers. We still have a good time doing the concerts and getting ready and everything, but now like it’s not the same humour is it, that it used to be? It’s  good, it’s great, but it’s not Paddy’s Day.