Dancing In a Jar (10 page)

As ever,
Donald

St. Lawrence, Newfoundland

May 7, 1934

Dear Mother and Daddy, Ivah, and Dorothy,

I’m thinking that you are all together on Sunday night, so I’m writing to all of you. By now you will have my letter with the baby news and now we have the further excitement of our own house.

We gave up waiting for Siebert to build us one and we are renting one only a few doors away. Its windows look right over the Cape and the view of the water could stop your heart. We are both so happy.

The house is divided through the center so that two families can live fairly privately. We have a large kitchen, storeroom, and living room on the first floor and a light, airy bedroom on the second.

Each room has been newly painted and papered. The storeroom off the kitchen has green woodwork and a cute paper of green blocks with a trim little orange flower in each block. The kitchen is painted in white with paper of white background and bright blue brush strokes. The living room has a rose-flowered paper and white woodwork. The bedroom has cream paper with small nosegays in blue, yellow, and deep pink pastel shades. I hope this is giving you a good picture!

There is a big dandy entryway off the kitchen where Don can leave his boots and hang all his heavy coats, finally getting them out of our bedroom.

There’s a small open-range stove for the living room, an antique spool bed, and eight chairs that come with the house. The rest we will have to provide. Our rent is five dollars a month. See if you can beat that!

I am so excited about the garden. I have already sent to Burpee’s for seeds: lettuce, tomatoes, onions, cabbage, corn, beans, peas, cosmos, marigolds, and zinnias. Don says he will dig the garden after he wires the house because he knows I would focus on the garden first.

Sorry to babble on like this, but I can’t just invite you over to see so easily can I? Spring is here and I am so excited at the prospect of house keeping for ourselves.

We are having fresh salmon tonight. Some boys brought a very big one to the back door and we are indulging.

Hope your Sunday dinner will be tasty too.

Lots of love,
Urla

245 Hillside Avenue
Nutley, New Jersey

May 10, 1934

Dear Urla,

Your Mother and I have discussed arrangements for the birth with the Poynters. All are agreed that you will be coming home to have the baby. We simply cannot take the chance with the level of medical care available to you in such an isolated spot.

Old Dr. Lee is very pleased to hear your news and will be happy to take care of you. Mother and I will be happy to have you here with us too.

I hope that settles this, darling, and I’m sure Donald will be in agreement with us.

I hope this finds you in good health and full bloom.

As always,
Dad

St. Lawrence, Newfoundland

May 10, 1934

Dorothy darling,

I know you have heard my news by now and that misery loves company! Mother says you’re quite tired and will be happy to get the little tyke out. I am so thrilled you will be going through this before me and able to calm all my fears and provide expert advice. I also love that we will have little ones who will know each other in a way that we missed. Here everyone has a multitude of cousins, aunts and uncles and I feel we really missed out when I watch what comfort that intimacy brings. Oh well, we are starting a new generation of Crammonds and let’s hope they go forth and multiply.

I have asked Mother to send baby wool so I can turn my newfound skill into producing luxurious garments for our babies. I also requested seed packets so I can get our garden started at the new house.

I’m so excited about it, Sis—finally a place of our own where I can be the chatelaine. The house is starting to feel like our home and we never get tired of the view. You get the full sweep from Cape Chapeau Rouge to the other side of the harbor and can watch schooners come and go or simply imagine all kinds of possibilities.

I’m looking forward to your big news any day now and Don and I both send our love to you both.

Love,
Urla

St. Lawrence Corporation Ltd.
St. Lawrence, Newfoundland

May 15, 1934

Dear Walter,

Good to receive your upbeat letter that arrived in yesterday’s mail. Fred Foote had already written to say he would be coming so it was good to get clarification on his official intentions. I didn’t think he is coming just to see the scenery. His brother Gordon played football with me at Bucknell so I knew that Fred had become quite a high flier in the mining sector. Sounds like there will be four to five in his entourage.

I would like to suggest you delay bringing the group until mid July so they see the mine in the best light. Right now we are shut down waiting for pumps and equipment to handle the water. We spent two weeks pumping out only to be flooded out again in one day. We have all we can do to handle the surface water here in dry times let alone when the flow increases to the size of the Third River in Nutley.

I went to the Caterpillar dealer in St. John’s and they have provided me with quotes for larger pumps, compressors, and generators. This is essential if we are to support the new mill and fill orders. We are simply drawing too much electricity now to rely on the hydro power from Little St. Lawrence. I’m expecting a visit any day now to let me know that we are consuming too much of the available electricity for the town and region.

Congratulations on finding potential buyers for the mine. Let me know if you can revise your travel plans for mid July.

Best regards,
Don

St. Lawrence, Newfoundland

May 25, 1934

Dear Mom and Pop, Howard, Edith, and King,

I have to give King special mention as I thought about him so much today.

It is a beautiful spring day and I walked out to Blue Beach with some friends and then back around the harbor with them to the church to light a candle for someone sick in the community.

The town feels like a different place as the warm air teases people out of their homes and onto the front porch, into their gardens, or down to the landwash. Children are everywhere as the possibility of summer finally hits our little town. There is a place where everyone goes to play soccer, a sport that delights players and fans alike, and it has sprung alive with the warmer weather.

It would’ve been a perfect day to take King on his lead to prance about the place in his princely way. Trouble is he would be alone as there’re almost no dogs here. Having a pet would be such an afterthought in a place where everyone is struggling. That’s not to
say there aren’t animals. There are cows on every path, pigs along my usual walk, oxen, goats and chickens that all seem to know where they belong as it gets dark.

There’s also a peculiar breed of pony, like a Shetland, that is put to good use about the place. It stands about four hands high and is a tough and strong little beast. They seem to require much less food and care so they fit in perfectly.

Our seed flats are coming along nicely although we’ve been warned not to plant anything outside until the risk of frost is over. We have a swell garden space and right alongside of it runs a little brook. Don and I can smell that mint growing already.

The ice is off the ponds and the kids in town are out after the trout like cats after mice. The number of trout caught is counted in dozens and it is nothing to have a young fellow come to the door and offer us twelve dozen brook trout for ten cents. They also have land locked salmon, which Don loves. The kids just land them with their poles and Don is so intrigued he has borrowed a pole from the priest and plans to go fishing next Sunday with the boys.

So please tell King I miss him terribly, and you all too of course. Don teases me that when you next see me I will be jolly fat and unrecognizable. We will see about that.

Love to you all,
Urla

St. Lawrence, Newfoundland

May 26, 1934

Dear Mom and Pop,

My first letter out in a while as we have been working hard to get another order on the wharf, this time destined for Phila. It ought to make Siebert cheerful and hopefully more benevolent. We are now
getting $16 a ton, and the shipment will be over 1,000 tons.

Every letter from Siebert asks for more ore now. Since the fluorspar business is an indicator of the steel business I figured this meant the worst of the Depression is behind you. I’m sorry to hear, Pop, that is has not translated into the lamp business. I understand the decision to sell
Scout
, although it’s a heart breaker for me. That’s the boat that made me fall in love with sailing and I can’t imagine that she won’t be there for me always. But I understand that protecting the house comes first.

In mid-summer we will have a group from the States to look over Siebert’s property. You might remember Fred Foote who grew up near Greenwood. He has a group interested in buying the operation and I intend to push for every nickel I can get if they want me to stay on. So I hope that no one makes an offer on
Scout
until I can afford to buy it myself.

In the meantime, have Howard go over it and clean it up so that it shines. Make sure the bilges are clean and the engine in good working order. Any speed tests should be done without the dink as she performs better that way.

Spring is here and the levels are free of snow but all the hills are still capped with ice and snow. We are having the annual easterly winds and believe me, they are winds. It has blown for two weeks from the east, bringing everything from snow, fog, rain and sunshine. When it does deal up a clear day it sure is beautiful. In the evenings we get a long soulful sunset and the whole place takes on a purple glow, bending the pink from the granite against the blue from the sea.

All the fishermen in town are getting their gear and fishnets in order and lots of them have reserved their berths on the Bankers already. You can smell tar, pitch, and oakum all over the place and after the long winter everything has sprung to life. Fences are being fixed up, nets mended, gardens dug, and wells cleaned.

The house is shaping up well and Urla is the happiest I’ve ever seen her. It’s quite a change from being spoiled at the boarding house and quite a change from what she must have imagined. Believe me, keeping house here is not all skittles and beer. Urla makes all our own bread, and everything else that we eat. We carry our own water and wood like all the rest.

Right now the harbor is flooded with small trading schooners that come in with everything your heart could desire. We just bought half a cord of dry wood for a dollar and a half. We have to wait for the bigger boats to get vegetables but fresh meat is available any time someone butchers. We had veal the other day at fourteen cents a pound. All meat is the same price, and there is no such thing as ordering a steak or rib roast. You get the meat, and if you’re lucky you get steaks and if you’re not you get a chewing good time.

Of course there’s plenty of fresh fish, especially flounder. They spear them with pitchforks right in front of our house and they are not a popular dish here so I have all I could want. Here the only fish is the mighty cod.

On Saturday night we went to a party and what a party it was. Nothing starts here until ten o’clock at night and winds up the same hour the next morning. This was a birthday party for a neighbor and I think they spent the last two months making cake for it. We played games and danced, and I got everyone into Simon Says and Thumbs-Up—games never heard of in this part of the world.

The party started off with French liqueurs. Then came games followed by round dances, and more games followed by square dances, then cake and coffee (real coffee too). The dances and games were eventually followed by ice cream and more cake, before all hands gathered round the piano and sang the old favorites. It all ended with “God Save the King” and we started for home. We had such a long walk that we didn’t get home until 5 a.m. (the party was next door).

It was a lot of fun and we both feel that if the rest of this world would return to the simple easy times of games and dances we would all be
better off. I don’t think anyone here has ever heard of a nervous breakdown or kindred ills.

That’s it for now I’m afraid. I have to go get more kelp for the box we keep the lobsters in. At ten cents apiece I wouldn’t want any of them to die.

Love to you all,
Donald

St. Lawrence, Newfoundland

June 12, 1934

Dear Mother and Dad,

Thank you so much for the seed packets. I will start them right after I plant out our first crop of seedlings. I am committed to forcing what I can from this rocky soil. There are very few if any planted flowers around town, so the zinnias and petunias should draw crowds. Right now there isn’t much of anything as it is still cool and the fog is relentless. Here it is called “capelin weather,” after these small fish that roll in on the rocky beaches to spawn.

Don and I noticed groups walking past our house, headed out to Blue Beach, with buckets and containers of all kinds. I thought they were harvesting kelp for their gardens as they tend to do here but back they would come with buckets overflowing with tiny fish. If the wind was southerly you could smell them before you saw them through the fog!

Once we found out they were good for the garden, Don and I joined in the fun. At first, the site of all these fish struggling on the rocks was a little unsettling but then I discovered that females were laying their eggs in the rocks where they become fertilized by the males and die anyway. Kids are squealing and gathering them for their parents, some are even eating the eggs straight out of the females, but most bring them home to fry up and to fertilize their gardens.
Most importantly, it is a sign that the codfish will follow and summer is coming.