Cousin Agam Fhein

by Frank Macdonald

The first time I visited Detriot was the summer of 1963 if I recall correctly, when Greet and Hughie bundled me amid all the other children in the station wagon and set off from Cape Breton. This was an adventure for me, including one of my boyhood’s most memorable moments. I was a fierce baseball fan and rooted then, as today, for the Cleveland Indians.

One day while I was in Detroit the Indians were in the city to face the Tigers in a doubleheader. I was given enough for a fare and directions on the bus (the city was that safe then) and found my way to Tiger Stadium where I watched Rocky Colavito and Al Kaline change place in centerfield in the slow ballet that is baseball.

But another sports event stands out as well. When I left Cape Breton as a green teen for the streets of Detroit I couldn’t imagine what summer heat actually was. It was terrible, day and night of unrelenting 90 to 100 degrees.

A street away from Cherrylawn I discovered a bowling alley, my first experience with air conditioning. I would go there almost daily and roll balls down the lane. Before this, I had never been in a bowling alley or picked up a ball.

As the days passed with me bowling against myself (all the Ferguson kids seemed to have jobs) I imagined I was getting pretty good at the game.

One day, when I was the only bowler, a taxi driver came in, guiding a man on his arm. He spoke with the manager who then came down to talk to me. The taxi passenger was a blind man who wanted to bowl but needed to bowl with someone who could tell him the story of the pins after each throw. Would I mind if he bowled with me?

I said yes, but was already embarrassed for this poor handicapped man and decided that no matter how many gutter balls he threw I would tell him they were strikes.
He sat beside me then , opening a sports bag from which he pulled a bunch of aluminum pipes and connected them one to each until he had built a rail. He asked me to set it up in the middle of the gutter line and from there he picked up a ball and gauging his distance from there to his chosen place on the lane fired a ball.

I told him it was a strike because it was.

I told him what pins formed what splits as we played and at the end of our first game he had beaten me by 100 points. It didn’t get any easier after that although I nobly refused to lie when he hit a strike by telling him his ball went in the gutter.

The blind bowler never returned while I was there that summer, but he left a lasting impression that I still try to evoke when meeting with or dealing with other people with disabilities.

Greet: Greet Macdonald, Frank’s aunt
Hughie: Greet’s husband, Hughie Ferguson

by Frank Macdonald

In the spring of 1967 I arrived in Detriot, a hungry relative who had failed to find work in Vancouver, barely worked in Sudbury and had the idea that I would make my way to Boston. I only had enough money to get to Detroit but I had this aunt and uncle, eh?

So I welcomed into Hughie and Greet’s, offered a bed and since I was looking for work to earn my fare to Boston Hughie offered to put me to work painting his house. We agreed on a price and I undertook the contract.

Unfortunately for Hughie, I also discovered that summer all-night television, so most nights I was sneaking off to bed just as he was rising to go to work. Several hours later, Greet would wake me with, “Hughie will home in half an hour,” and I would scurry to the garage, get the ladder and paint and be high on the side of the house by the time he got home.

The flaw in my deception was that I would be high on the same wall of the house just about every day, and Hughie would count the singles that had been freshly painted. Five or six.

The spring moved along and after two or three weeks one side of the house was almost finished. Eventually, probably fearing that I was there for the winter, Hughie presented me with an air ticket to Boston and a few dollars to feed myself when I got there. I might even have promised to come back and finish the house, but I think he asked me to promise that I would not come back to finish the house because he wanted it painted, all four sides in the same decade.

This was just one of a number of trips I made to Detroit as guest of Hughie and Greet, but on none of those other trips was I ever asked to take up a task.

Hughie: Hughie Ferguson
Greet: Greet Macdonald, Hughie’s wife

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

by Frank Macdonald

Reading John’s story about getting Greet to peel the grapes reminded me of a Christmas in my early 20s when I was home in Trenton [Nova Scotia] for a visit. I was watching television with my father, Freddie, and reached over to the coffee table and took some gumdrops out of a bowls and began eating them.

Dad looked at me funny then asked, “Can you eat gumdrops?” and when I said yes, went on to tell me the following story.

He had come home from work one afternoon in Inverness and walked into the kitchen in our house on Campbell Street. I was sitting in a high chair and my mother, Kit, was sitting in a chair in front of me with a scowl on her face shoving gumdrops into my mouth one after another.

When dad asked what was going on she told him that she had been trying to bake a gumdrop cake and had given me a gumdrop to chew on to keep me quiet. Big mistake because my first tooth was a sweet tooth. I began crying for more, and got another one, and then cried some more and got another one until she finally became so fed up with me that she sat with the bowl of gumdrops feeding them to me, telling my father, “When he finishes this bowl he’ll never want another one!”

My father had assumed until that night that my mother was right and gumdrops would be off my life’s menu. How wrong she was! I’m not too fond of gumdrop cake, though, which is probably is rooted in childhood guilt acquired while seated in a high chair.

Freddie: Freddie Macdonald, Frank’s dad
Kit: Catherine Gillies, Freddie’s wife and Frank’s mother

by Joanne Macdonald

My Mom and Dad, Veronica “Eoin” and Charlie “Jack D.” always attended the concerts in the [Port Hawkesbury / Inverness] area. As everyone knows Mom and Dad brought a lunch…more like a supper to feed any and all of the relatives.

Once I moved home from Edmonton, I decided to keep up the tradition but not as much a supper as Mom and Dad did but a lunch.

Biscuits, homemade cheese, “real” turkey (as my Mother used to say), ham, potato salad, homemade strawberry jam, rolls, bread, and sweets, tea, water and pop and especially Pepsi for Frank was the lunch I brought and would feed anyone who was hungry from far and near.

This one Sunday before I left for the Broad Cove concert, my brother, Kevin, came over and asked if I would stop at the Strathlorne grave yard and get the dates from the headstone of Jack D. Of course, I said yes and I would have no problem stopping there and getting that information for him.

I got to the graveyard and proceeded to look for my grandfather’s headstone. I looked and I looked, up and down the rows and no sign of the stone. I knew that was the graveyard but could not imagive why I could not find the headstone. I left and thought I’ll got to Frankie’s and he would help me.

On to Inverness at to Frankie’s, explained my dilemma to him and he said that he would take me to the graveyard but first we had to have a cup of tea. I had the trunk full of food so of course, sweets go great with a cup of tea and we had both.

Frankie and I head to Strathlorne to go the the grave and get the dates. Frankie gets out of the car, goes directly to the headstone.

I had passed this one a couple of times. I looked down and saw John David Macdonald, my grandfather.

I had been looking for a headstone with the name of “Jack D.” on it as that was the name I had always heard him called.

Charlie Macdonald: son of Jack D Macdonald and Annie Belle Rankin
Veronica MacDonald: maiden name of Charlie Macdonald’s wife.
Joanne: daughter of Charlie and Veronica Macdonald.
As Joanne says, “I am a double Macdonald.”

February 27, 2006

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.”