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 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 Janice Ferguson as told to Frank Macdonald

The first airplane to land in Inverness was not for a joyous occasion.

On March 13, 1948, Johnny Ferguson, age 33, died suddenly of diphtheria. There was a terrible snow storm raging and no cars were getting through to Inverness.

Johnny’s brother, Roddie, was attending St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish and was desperately trying to get home for his brother’s funeral. The train would not arrive until 7 p.m. and the funeral was at 3 p.m.

Roddie called a priest friend who located an airplane belonging to Eastern Airlines, a private club with a small field in New Glasgow. The pilot was willing to fly Roddie and his cousin-in-law, Leo LeFort through the storm.

They boarded the three-seater prop plane at St. Martha’s Hospital in Antigonish. A short time (35-40 minutes) later, the ski plane landed on a frozen MacIsaac’s Pond. The ice was cracking under the plane but held up for both the landing and the later lift-off.

A picture of the plane was taken by Sarah Beaton who was among the large number of people who turned out to witness the arrival of the first plane in the town.

Roddie and Leo arrived in time to attend the funeral of Johnny Ferguson.

Johnny Ferguson: father of Janice Ferguson
Mina MacFarlane: Johnny’s wife and Janice’s mother
Roddie Ferguson: Johnny’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 Hughie Ferguson and Greet Macdonald as told to David Ferguson

Greet: When Roddie was really sick, we made a point of going. We always stopped to see them anyway as we drove down and back. But the last year we were going to stay two or three days in Antigonish.

And we were going to stay in a motel because Roddie was sick at home. But Pat wouldn’t hear tell of it. She said, “You’re going to stay here.”

So we stayed two or three days. And Pat and I would be in bed early. Hughie and Roddie would be up talking. And Roddie was — I nearly died when I saw him, he had failed so, you know.

And then when we were leaving, Roddie was kind of sad. And I said, “You know, Roddie, before we go back, Hughie’ll come back and spend another couple of days.”

Because we were going to Berwick, because I knew Cyril Sampson would take Hughie down to Antigonish.

And they were so grateful for that. The days that we were there, Pat said, he was so much better — he got up and he got dressed and he ate all his meals with us, you know, and was enjoying it.

Hughie: On that trip, when I was going out with the suitcases to the car, Roddie said to Pat, “I’ll bet you that fella will say, ‘That Roddie’ll be sleeping out soon.’”

That was the expression down home — if you were in the graveyard, you’re sleeping out.

Roddie: Hughie Ferguson’s brother
Pat: Patricia Dunn, Roddie’s wife