Cousin Agam Fhein

by Hughie Ferguson
(recorded in Dearborn, Michigan, February 2007)

Hughie, talking about his parents’ home in Inverness: The only job that I ever did, and it would be kind of a crazy job [today] — see, there were sixty-five windows in the house. And there was I forget how many storm windows.

Dave: Sixty-five storm windows!

Hughie: But imagine going up on a ladder. And I did all that.

Dave: This would be like a wood-framed window, as large as the house window.

Bruce: With one big sheet of glass.

Dave: Or it might have grids in it. Probably it did back then. There’d be the panes and you’d have to put them in with glazing compound. But the thing would be the size of the regular window, so it would weigh a ton.

You remember the Brothers’ place in Alfred? We had those kinds of windows, and at the hardware store you’d get a set of nails with a big wide head. And every two nails would have the same number on them, like “17″ or “18.” And you’d put one nail on the window, and one nail on the storm window, because sometimes it wouldn’t fit…. I remember that because this was a real old place.

(The window in the photo is an example of the old-fashioned storm window.)

Hughie: It was a hell of a job one time. We used to take the storm windows down and put them in the garage. My brother John, he went in and he had a target, he put it over there, and he broke twelve.

Bruce: What was he shooting?

Hughie: He was just trying to practice with a rifle. I had to get six panes [of glass] from Cheticamp, from L.D.’s.

Bruce: All the glass that they had! One summer, didn’t you fix windows at home? Like buy a gallon of glazing compound and replace all the glazing in the windows, especially on the side?

Hughie: Yeah, oh, yeah. It was easier on the front, because of the roof on the little verandah. The other ones there, you’d have to get the ladder, the double ladder.

Dave: And the window would be heavy!

Hughie: Ohhhh, yeah.

Bruce: I wouldn’t want to do that.

Hughie: After a while, we started letting a window or two stay up there. That was just as good, because the goddamned place was cold anyway. Even if we had windows and storm windows on every window, it was still cold.

There was Duncan MacNeil, right across the street from us, he came over. Duncan had kind of a queer limp, you know. Going up on the ladder, and my father came home and saw that. He gave me a going over, “Don’t let that man go up that ladder!”

Dave: When did they move into that house?

Hughie: Our house? Wait now… I was about 12 years old.

Dave: So, 1925 or so.

Hughie: Yeah, ‘24 was when they moved down there.

Dave: You said one time you didn’t think of that as your house, but wherever they lived before. Where were you before?

Hughie: Oh, where did we live? Do you know where my dad’s store was? Well, right down that row of houses. We lived in one of them. You wondered how in hell they could ever — with my grandmother, somebody else, and a maid, and all those goddamned kids…

Dave: That was MacIsaac Street, was it?

Hughie: No, no. On the other side, right across the street [across Central Avenue]. My grandmother, after my grandfather died, she came back down. She didn’t go to church, you know. She was Catholic, of course. My grandfather, Hughie, he was the Protestant, like my dad.

My grandmother was with us, and we had a maid, and at least seven kids. You’d wonder where in the hell they would all fit.

Just think in the wintertime when you had to go…they had a coal house, and a shithouse. And that’s where you’d go. And every time I think of — Pa would be taking the toilet paper from the store.

One woman wrote to Eaton’s wanting to get toilet paper. And they wrote her back and they said get the catalog and get the number and everything. So she wrote back and said “If I had the catalog, I wouldn’t need it.”

Dave: Was there central heat in the new house?

Hughie: According to what room you where in. Holy Christ, they had a little stove, and out in the kitchen the stove. They didn’t have a furnace, there wasn’t a furnace at that time.

Bruce: That big house wouldn’t have a furnace?

Hughie: We had to get a new one right away — you’d get more heat with a match. With all those windows and no insulation.

I often wondered, tried to figure out after my grandfather died — Grandma came down to live with us. I think it was either six or seven, six kids, and my grandmother, and a maid — in a two bedroom house.

Dave: The maid probably slept in the kitchen.

Hughie: God only knows. I’ll never forget when my grandfather died. My grandmother came out and she stood at the casket, you now, and said the rosary. I don’t think she said it from the time she got married because Grandpa was a real Protestant. And Grandma with no reading or writing. She could talk English and talk Gaelic but that was all.

I don’t know, before we went to sleep they must have given us something so we’d sleep and hung us up on hooks. I don’t know in the name of God — think there were three bedrooms, three small bedrooms.

Dave: So you and Dannie and Roddie and Johnnie…

Hughie: There was myself, and Johnnie, and Danny… and then the girls were Cassie, Mary, Sadie, they were home in the Red Rows.

They must have hung us up on a hook or something. There was nothing but I think it was three bedrooms and a hallway.

My father, he bought that house, the one with all the windows in it, four thousand dollars. Everybody in Inverness thought Pa was a millionaire to pay four thousand dollars for a home.

• Dave, Bruce: two of Hughie Ferguson’s sons
• Hughie Ferguson’s parents: Mattie Ferguson and Sadie MacDougall
• The Brothers’ place: a school in Alfred, Maine, run by the Brothers of Christian Instruction
• “My grandfather, Hughie”: Hugh Ferguson (1856 - 1926), father of Mattie Ferguson
• My grandmother: Catherine MacIsaac (died 1936, aged 90)
• The Red Rows were rows of small, duplex houses in Inverness, most of them originally owned by the coal mine, and most painted red. I was nearly an adult before I learned it was “Red Rows” and not “Red Rose” like the tea. — Dave

by Dave Ferguson

For several years I worked for Amtrak, the U.S. rail passenger company. Our offices were at 400 North Capitol Street in Washington DC, just a short walk from the U.S. Capitol.

One day I had a phone call. The caller was very… enthusiastic.

“Hello, Dave! This is Fred Sidecar!”

That wasn’t his name, but that won’t matter much to the story, except that “Fred Sidecar” didn’t mean anything to me.

“Your wife and my wife have worked together for years, and I’ve heard very positive things about you.”

“Nancy Sidecar” (also not her real name) rang the faintest of bells. Finally I recalled that she and my wife had taught CCD classes together at the parish we belonged to. I might have been able to recognize Nancy, but I wouldn’t have wanted to stake a lot of money on it.

That didn’t matter. Fred was off and running. He’d heard I was a successful, respected, and ambitious guy, and just knew I would want to hear about the great opportunity he wanted to tell me about.

Which to me meant only one thing: he was selling Amway products.

He didn’t exactly say that. He asked where I worked (which made me wonder how he got my number) and asked if he could stop by to see me the next day, because it just so happened he’d be in the neighborhood.

I was pretty sure I knew what the pitch would be like, but it was a slow week, so I suggested we meet for lunch at the Dubliner, an Irish pub and restaurant just a block from my office.

And so we did.

The food was good, as it usually was at the Dubliner. The pitch from Fred Sidecar was pretty much a mystery. There was a lot of swamp gas about what a talented guy I was and how he was sure I had many dreams I wanted to accomplish, and how he wanted to share with me an opportunity to help other people accomplish their dreams while I accomplished my own.

This went on in a highly motivational way for at least half an hour.

Finally I said, “Fred, I understand you see me doing all these great things and making a financial success. But it seems to me at some point some goods or services are moving in one direction” — I made a motion with my hands — “and money is moving in the other direction.”

I was pretty sure the money was coming from all these people I’d be “helping,” but I wasn’t sure what they’d be getting for that money.

Fred seemed almost miffed that I would ask, and said that it involved a catalog of “some of the finest merchandise available.” Like microwave ovens and crock pots and hair dryers.

So, it wasn’t exactly Amway, but as I suspected, I’d end up wanting (or needing) to recruit other people to help yet other people achieve their goals (meaning, to sell stuff to others), and somehow I’d get a cut of the action.

I took five minutes or so to try and convince Fred that I really was a person with very little ambition, content to let my family stay in the impoverished state I was condemning them to.

He was pretty disappointed in me.

About that time the waitress brought the check, which she set on the side of the table, close to me and far from Fred. I took out my credit card and put it on top of the check.

Fred made some gesture to pick it up, but I waved him off. It wasn’t that big a deal, and this way I knew I’d clearly be ending the meal and getting out of there.

He made one more effort to convince me to accept the opportunity, but I just kept saying, “I’m sorry, I really don’t think I’m the kind of guy you’re looking for.”

The check came back. I signed the credit card form and peeled off my copy, then started toward the exit.

I looked back to see Fred standing at the table. He’d taken the restaurant check (not the credit card slip) and was tearing off the receipt portion.

In other words, his current business opportunities were so good, he was going to save a receipt from a meal he hadn’t paid for.

That told me all I needed to know about Fred Sidecar and his wonderful opportunities. On the other hand, the lunch probably didn’t come to $20, and I’ve had fun for years telling this story.

by David Ferguson

I moved from Detroit to Washington DC in 1977. For many years afterward my parents would visit us from time to time.

During one trip, in 1983, Dad said one day that he’d like to go into Washington with me (I was going into work part of the time while they were visiting). He said he wanted to do some sightseeing.

I thought this was a bit odd, because I never thought of him as much of a sightseer. I asked if there was anything in particular he wanted to see. He said yes: the Canadian embassy.

That wouldn’t have been my first choice, but it was fine with me. At that time, the embassy was on a part of Massachusetts Avenue that the tour guides call “Embassy Row.” I gave him some directions as well as the address and phone number of my office near Union Station. Cabs in D.C. are fairly inexpensive, so I told him that he could flag down a cab to 400 North Capitol Street any time he felt like it.

As I remember, I dropped him off at St. Matthew’s Cathedral, just off Dupont Circle and not that far from the embassy:

Here’s what I found out later about his sightseeing:

He did walk from the cathedral up to the Embassy. When he got there, he went up to the Mountie on duty. (At American embassies, security is provided by the United States Marines. At Canadian embassies, it’s the Mounted Police.) The Mountie asked if he could help him. Dad said yes, that the Mountie could tell him his regimental number.

(As I understand it, the first Mountie ever would have had a regimental number of 1.)

The man told him the number, which was somewhere around 49,000 or so, and asked why Dad wanted to know.

“Well, my regimental number is 12375.”

The Mountie was impressed — a number that low meant someone who’d been in the force well before 1939. (Dad joined in 1934.) He excused himself and made a phone call.

Within twenty minutes, the Mounties had taken Dad inside the embassy, into their own offices, where he spent the morning having tea and telling stories. In other words, he felt right at home.

They offered to arrange a tour to the FBI, and would not hear of him taking a taxi to come meet me for lunch. Instead, they drove him in an embassy car, and gave him an LP of music from the RCMP band.

I visited Mom and Dad this past July. One of the things he showed me was this notice clipped from the RCMP Quarterly magazine. The date is spring or summer of 1983.

Here’s the text in case you find the image hard to read:

Veterans’ Affairs: Among the recent visitors to the RCMP Liaison Office at the Canadian Embassy in Washington, was Reg. No. 12375, ex-Cst. Hugh J. Ferguson, who dropped in on February 28, 1938, to say hello during a visit to this area. Born on April 1, 1913, ex-Cst. Ferguson joined the Force in 1934, took his training in Regina and his discharge in 1935. Reenlisting in 1941, he served in Halifax until leaving the force in 1946. After two years as Chief of Police at Inverness, Nova Scotia, Hugh worked for Inverness Coal Mines until settling in Detroit, Michigan, in 1951. He retired from Chrysler Corporation in 1976 and resides with his wife and two of their five children in Detroit. His many travels during retirement include trips to three of his children throughout the United States.

• Mom and Dad: Greet Macdonald and Hughie Ferguson, Dave’s parents

by Bruce Ferguson

One of the things I remember about Inverness was the times we spent on vacation there. Mom and Dad would farm out the five kids to various relatives so that we wouldn’t be such a burden to one family. John would stay with uncle Danny, Art would stay with uncle Roddie, Dave would stay with someone else(?) and Anne Marie would stay with aunt Billie. I spilt my time between aunt Billie’s with mom or with dad at Grandma and Grandpa’s.

As a young child, I was fascinated with the idea that the hot water heater was connected with the stove. Aunt Sadie would be up early to fire up the stove for breakfast. After breakfast, there would be enough hot water to do the dishes, do the laundry and begin to prepare for supper. She would roll out the wringer washer and do the laundry in the kitchen. She would utilize her time during loads to bake the world’s greatest sugar cookies! The laundry would then be hung out on the line. (It was summertime and it wouldn’t take long to dry. During the winter it would be hung in the attic.)

After supper, which would include vegetables, gravy, meat, rolls, and etc., the entire kitchen would be cleaned up and everything put away. Then the hot water would be turned off. Dinner would consist of biscuits, cookies, fruit, cheese and whatever happened to left over.

As a kid, not having to take a bath at the end of a long summer day was something I was not used to.

• Mom and Dad: Hughie Ferguson and Greet Macdonald
• John, Art, Dave, Anne Marie: Hughie and Greet’s kids
• Aunt Billie: Greet’s sister
• Aunt Sadie: Hughie’s sister
  
• Uncle Danny: Hughie’s brother
• Uncle Roddy: Hughie’s brother
• Grandma and Grandpa: Hughie’s parents, Mattie Ferguson and Sadie MacDougall

by David Ferguson

I bought my first new car in 1974. I was torn between the VW Rabbit, a new model that year, and the Plymouth Valiant.

The Rabbit was different, but it was also a new model that year. Consumer Reports liked the car overall, but of course had no information on how well it would hold up.

I figured I wasn’t going to be able to buy another new car anytime soon, and so I didn’t like the idea of helping to try out a new model. So I went with the Valiant instead.

This wasn’t a cool choice. It seemed that most Valiant owners were little old ladies with blue hair. On the other hand, the car did have a long — a very long — history, and while it wasn’t the best car ever built, it was about the best car within my price range.

Not that that range was very crowded.

I kept the Valiant for about ten years, by which time I’d moved from Detroit to the suburbs of Washington DC. My family had gone from one child to three, and the hot summers convinced me I needed something better than the Valiant’s vinyl seats. I even went so far as to buy a car with air conditioning.

Not to say that the Valiant was low-end, but my kids noticed immediately that the new car had carpet on the floor, not some kind of thick rubber.

The Valiant was getting weary from commuting and from long car trips back to Detroit, and had had a series of increasingly expensive repairs. The tipping point was when the guy at the garage said I might need engine work, but he’d have to take a look at the cylinder heads to be sure. That was a multi-hundred-dollar operation, so I decided to simply run an ad:

For sale: 1974 Plymouth Valiant. 113,000 miles. Engine needs work.

I don’t remember if I put a price in, but I thought I’d be lucky to get $200. I certainly didn’t expect that the first phone call about the car would come in at eight in the morning the first day the ad ran. We probably had fifteen calls by the time I got home that evening — to find two men arguing about who had called first.

Neither of them living in the same county as I did. In fact, neither lived in the same state. One had driven about 30 miles from the far side of the District of Columbia, and the other hand come from a similar distance away in Maryland.

The shorter man, with a strong Indian accident, complained that he had called first, though he didn’t know the time. The taller man wasn’t impressed by this at all. The shorter man said, “I spent a lot of gas to get here!”

So the taller man took out his wallet and offered the guy $10. Which he took.

With that, the short guy left, and the tall guy offered me $200 for the car.

I hadn’t had time to get the title out of the safe-deposit box, which annoyed him greatly. I’m sure he thought I was a rank amateur in the world of car sales, which was the correct way for him to think.

Probably, considering how willingly he paid the $200 for the car, I could have gotten more, but I kept telling myself I wasn’t trying to put anything over on anyone.

With the money from selling the car, we bought a new set of pots and pans, a couple of which I still have.  So they’ve gotten good mileage.

by Rose Ferguson

I remember that one year my parents took us to Detroit for Thanksgiving.  It was supposed to be a surprise for my grandparents, that all their children and grandchildren would be home for Thanksgiving.

I had sprained my wrist on the playground at school, and I had some sort of soft cast on my arm.  We drove up in my dad’s tiny hatchback car instead of renting a car, I’m not sure why.  I got to sit on the end the entire time, never having to sit in the dreaded middle seat, because of my injury.

My dad had us practice saying “Ciamar a tha?” all the way up to Detroit, to say to my Grandpa when he saw us.

I don’t remember how the “surprise” went off, I was only 9.  I do remember sitting at my grandmother’s table for Thanksgiving dinner, and Grandma cut all my food up in tiny bites for me.  I had to eat left-handed because of my arm.

I can remember going up, but I don’t remember the trip home.  Like all trips to Detroit, the best part was getting and being there, not going home.  Playing the license plate game with Kevin and hearing Dad sing “Are we there yet? (no it’s just a stop sign) Are we there yet? (you’re driving me out of my mind)” which I am still not sure if that is a real song or not.

My grandparents: Hughie Ferguson and Greet Macdonald
My dad: Dave Ferguson, Hughie and Greet’s son
Kevin: Rose’s brother

by David Ferguson

I think it was the summer of 1966. I was sixteen, and as usual I was visiting Inverness with my family.

“With my family” isn’t exactly right. Once we grew out of toddlerhood, when we went down home my parents would farm us out to different relatives. My brother John usually stayed with Danny and Olive. My brother Art usually stayed with Billie. I spent a lot of time at Roddie and Pat’s.

I’m sure we must have seen my parents from time to time — we always managed to be in the car on the way back to Detroit — but I don’t remember much of that.

What I do remember, along with other things from this visit, was being at Billie’s house on MacIsaac Street one day. I noticed an old man at the place next door. As I remember it, he was doing something on the roof of the porch, like repairing shingles.

It wasn’t a very steep roof, but he wasn’t particularly young, either. In my mind’s eye, he looks like he’s in good shape for age 70 or so.

I said something to BillIe about the old guy up on the porch next door. She laughed and told me that was Dan Kennedy.

It seems this was the house he’d grown up in. As the Kennedy children got older, they moved away, started families of their own, and I suppose their parents stayed in the house on MacIsaac Street.

Eventually Dan’s own family grew up, and I guess his wife died. However it happened, he ended up moving back into his childhood home, the place where I saw him repairing the porch roof.

Billie told me that the same thing had happened to a couple of Dan’s brothers and sisters, and that a few of them were now in the house together, just as they had when they were children. I think she called the place “the pensionage.”

And I was right, she told me. Dan Kennedy was in good shape for his age. I was just wrong about the age.

Dan had been born in 1864. The man fixing the porch was 102 years old–or, to put it another way, he was three years older than Canada.

David is the son of Greet Macdonald and Hughie Ferguson.
Billie: Billie Macdonald, Greet’s sister
Danny and Olive: Danny Ferguson (Hughie’s brother) and his wife, Olive Duffitt
Roddie and Pat: Roddie Ferguson (Hughie’s brother) and his wife, Patricia Dunn

by Greet Macdonald as told to David Ferguson

When Dad left [Inverness], it was February of ‘52. and he stayed for our anniversary, but I don’t know when after that he left, shortly after. We had a bad winter. We were snowed in; they had to shovel us out one time.

I was there two or three months, and I used to worry about the stove, because we had a big stove in the living room. It was called a Warm Morning; that’s what it was called. And Freddie used to say, now, bank it at night so it won’t go out. And every day I used to call him. “How do I bank it?” And you would put coal in, but then you put ashes in on top of the coal, from below the stove.

I was always so worried about that. I was so afraid. I would lie in bed at night and think, if there’s going to be a fire, now I could put the kids out on the — there was a porch in front, you know, from your bedroom, I could put the kids on top of the porch. This is what I used to plan at night.

Anyway, the time came, Freddie had no housekeeper for the three kids. And I had to sell that house anyway, before I’d leave. So he talked me into selling the house and moving over there [with him]. And I did that. Sold the house for eighteen hundred dollars. That’s what we paid for it, can you believe it?

And we moved over there, stored some of my furniture at Pa’s and took a little bit with me. I suppose I took the bed, I don’t know.

But anyway, we moved in. We had six kids. I don’t think Frankie was seven yet. Three in diapers — you, and Jackie, and Art. But the kids got along great.

If you remember, Freddie’s street was the next street to the main street. This was Campbell Street. And the back yard of Freddie’s was at the back yard of this restaurant, the Greek’s restaurant. Harry the Greek’s.

And you would go down there — you were kind of a loner. You would go down there and go in. You made great friends with the truckers; they’d be in there. You must have been — I think you were two and a half, maybe, but you could talk like a lawyer.

And these truckers would give you money. And you would buy candy, and you never waited for change. You’d take the bag of candy and you’d come home and you’d treat all our little kids — you were generous, you’d treat them all with the candy. And you did that over and over and over again.

And sometimes you’d go down and there wouldn’t be truckers there, you know. But the girl in the restaurant had a glass, and she would put your change in the glass when you didn’t wait for it. So you could go in and order candy, and she’d take the money out of the glass pay for it.

And you’d bring it — oh, you did that so many times, and you’d bring it home and treat the kids.

Just wander down there by your self. But you know, at that time in Inverness, you didn’t worry. You couldn’t get lost. Everybody knew everybody’s kids.

One day you didn’t come home, and I got worried. And we started looking, and we couldn’t find you. We looked, oh god, we even looked down by the mine. Going crazy. And coming back, I walked up the side of — I don’t know if it was Harry the Greek’s place or the next building — and there you were, asleep on the grass.

You got tired and you laid down.

Dad: Hughie Ferguson, Greet’s husband
Freddie: Freddie Macdonald, Greet’s brother; a widower with three children
Pa: Jack D Macdonald, father of Greet and Freddie