Cousin Agam Fhein

When Mattie had his store (for about 100 years) there was something unique to Inverness that took place in it. He had a soda fountain, a beautiful butterscotch-coloured top on a green base and behind that were all the wonders of the soda fountain for making milkshakes.

There was a mine manager who lived in Inverness long before my time whose name was Tom Chew. He was a regular visitor to Mattie’s and he had a special request for the fountain. All he wanted Mattie to do was squirt chocolate into a glass of milk and mix it up, and he would gulp it down. It was a near daily ritual, and caught the interest of other patrons, and since it was cheaper than a milkshake it had economic appeal.

People began coming into Mattie’s store and asking for a Tom Chew.

When I was very young, and Mr. Chew had already departed Inverness, Wesley Ferguson and I would occasionally come into the store and order a Tom Chew (6 cents). It was cold and delicious and today children would call it chocolate milk.

However, the story continues beyond the boundaries of our town because it is no longer possible to count the number of people who left Inverness to look for work elsewhere in North America who didn’t return for a summer and relate the ignorance of the rest of the world:

“I walked into a drug store in Toronto and ordered a Tom Chew and they didn’t know what the hell I was talking about.”