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

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

Janice Ferguson, daughter of Johnny and Mina (MacFarlane) Ferguson, has been collecting souvenir spoons for more than 30 years and her collection now stands at 1050.

The collecting began, Janice explains, in 1975 when her grandmother, Mrs. Mattie Ferguson, gave her a collection of spoons depicting the 12 apostles. One of the spoons had been lost by her grandmother, so it was 11 Janice received, and since then she has lost another so the apostles have been whittled down to 10.

In addition to the apostles, her grandmother gave her a spoon celebrating the 50th anniversary of the United Church of Canada, and from there a passion was born that has filled walls of Janice’s home.

Janice has documented every spoon in her collection, knowing exactly where each comes from, who gave it to her. While the spoons commemorate places and events from all over the world, Janice herself hasn’t had to travel far to gather her collection. It has become so well known in Inverness that few people leave for places beyond without returning with a souvenir spoon for the collection.

The tiny spoons are from avross the province, the country, the world. They feature crests, Christmas, Mother’s Day, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Unification of Germany, the eruption of Mt. St. Helen’s, Halley’s Comet, Canada’s prime ministers, scores of other people and places.

The spoons are made of sterling silver, pewter, copper, brass, wood, plastic, bone and moose antler. Her oldest spoon, a family heirloom, dates back to 1905.

Janice averages adding about 60 spoons a year to her collection.

Janice Ferguson: daughter of Johnny Ferguson and Mina MacFarlane
Mrs. Mattie: Sarah MacDougall, wife of Matthew Ferguson, Johnny’s father

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

[This] 1935 photo of Jack D and Annabel is Jack D.’s railroad pass with his wife’s photo on it so that she could travel free as well, along with the children.

The story that photo reminds me of is one my father told me. He was in grade 10 and on a beautiful spring day as he was walking home from school he heard the train getting ready to leave the station.

He gave his books to someone, Greet possibly, and ran to jump on the train and ride it out to the trestle, a mile or so outside of town, and walk back, a not uncommon boyhood activity here. I even did it myself once.

The difference was that my father jumped the train to the trestle and came home two or three years later.

It was the Depression and he spent a lot of time hoboing through northern Ontario and Quebec, “riding the rods” as they called, hanging on the bottom of a train if a boxcar couldn’t be opened. He ran into people from home who were scattered across the country looking for work like himself and they often travelled together.

He remembered it was damned cold a lot of the time riding the trains, and the advantage he had over those he was travelling with was that he had a railroad pass in his pocket because his father worked for the railroad but was too proud to use it.

Eventually he came back home and went back to school in the same class as Greet and they graduated together.

My father: Freddie Macdonald
Greet: Greet Macdonald, Freddie’s sister
Jack D: Jack D Macdonald, Freddie and Greet’s father
Annabel: Annie Belle Rankin, Jack D’s wife

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

During World War II “Rugged” MacDonald enlisted in the Seaforth Highlanders out of Vancouver as a soldier and piper. My father (Freddie), was turned down by the air force because of a busted ear drum and joined the Merchant Marines for a time.

At some point, probably 1943-44, Dad was in England. In what he described as a time of misunderstanding and confusion he tried to locate Rugged. There was a pub where Canadians in England frequented, and they had a blackboard there where Canadians could write their names and how to contact them in case “somebody from home” happened into the same bar.

Dad and Rugged may have found each other far sooner except for Cape Breton’s odd association with names and nicknames. Because they were in the service they had to use their birth names. Well Freddie Macdonald’s name was actually Donald Angus, and Rugged MacDonald’s name was Francis, so even though both names were scribbled on the blackboard neither of these old friends from back home recognized the other.

Eventually, though, Dad learned where Rugged’s outfit was training and took a train to there and went to visit him. He described to me that once he got on the base and followed directions, he found Rugged sitting on a hill in his uniform playing his chanter. They spent a couple of days together before Dad had to get back to his ship and before Rugged shipped out for…even he didn’t know where.

As they parted, they decided to swap souvenirs. Rugged took off his army belt and Dad took out his wallet. “I’ll get this back to you after the war,” Rugged told Dad.

What happened next was that the Seaforth Highlanders took part in the invasion of Sicily and Rugged was killed by a sniper while playing the pipes. This took place after the battle, I was told, and when the soldiers thought the area was secure.

Dad left the Merchant Marines and went to Montreal where he met my mother (Catherine, called Kit Gillies). This period in their lives is a story in itself, but the outcome was that they decided to marry and made their way back to Inverness.

Shortly after returning, Angus Gillies, my mother’s father, died suddenly. My parents had bought a small bungalow on Campbell Street and were building a house around it. (It is now 33 Campbell Street.)

One day, the station master arrived at their house with a trunk. It was addressed to Angus Gillies but since he was no longer living the station master brought it to my mother.

My father told me that one of the most haunted moments of his life was standing in the kitchen watching my mother open the trunk and seeing, sitting on the very top of the contents, his leather wallet.

What had never come up in their conversations was that Rugged, one of my father’s best friends, was a first cousin to my mother, and as his ‘next of kin’ he had written Angus Gillies when he enlisted.

As a boy, the wallet and the belt were always around the house. Unfortunately, in the many moves (and lack of understanding and respect for these items) they became lost. The wallet accidently went through the washing machine and became stiff and useless. I have sent it to my nephew, Michael, in Calgary because if it can be rehabilitated at all, he’s the person who can do it.

This is a story I remember my father telling me, although lots of the details have been forgotten so I’m posting what remains before that, too, becomes lost.

Kind of spooky, huh?

After his retirement from the Canadian National Railway (CNR) Jack D. went on a trip around the continent. He had a railway pass for the CNR and at that time railway companies in both the United States and Canada honoured the brotherhood of railroad men so the pass meant travelling free in the US as well as Canada.

I’m sure that on his way across Canada he probably stopped at Drumheller in Alberta where I believe Bernie and Edith Coady were living at the time, Edith being his daughter. Then he journied on to California to visit a cousin in Hollywood. (I have no idea who this cousin was but it was clearly someone from the Mira River side of the family).

One afternoon he walked into a drugstore in Hollywood and was rotating a rack of postcards for something to send home when this woman reached across and pulled one from the rack.

“If you’ll send this one I’ll sign it,” she said. The postcard was of Betty Grable, the woman with the million dollar legs for whom whole Second World War armies lusted in their trenches overseas. She was wearing sunglasses and a kerchief and they had coffee together. Afterwards, Jack D. mailed the card home.

When his trip ended and he did come home, Billie wanted to know if he really did meet Betty Grable to which Jack D. replied, “Yes. Who was that woman?”

The postcard with Jack D.’s message and Betty Grable’s autograph was around the house for a long time but became lost sometime around when Billie moved to Boston, I believe.

And what is easier to believe is that Jack D. wouldn’t have had a clue who he was having a tea or coffee with. But I wonder what her thoughts were about this stern man who seemed utterly unmoved by her fame and stardom? Probably found it refreshing.

Received February 10, 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.”

In the early 1970s some friends and I received a grant to collect history and folklore in Inverness County. It would have been a much better project if we had known anything about what we were doing but our motives were pure and the ghosts and the stories were many, as were the still living who remembered when the mines opened, etc.

But our budget was small. We had one tape recorder, would interview someone, take the tape back to the office and transcribe it, then ERASE IT! God, what was lost.

Anyway, I approached the family of Angus Y. MacLellan about his Gaelic poetry and his wife gave me a box of his writings. I had enough sense to know that we should transcribe and return and everything did go back to the family with a single exception.

Among the writings was a pencilled verse on both sides of a long envelope. It was in the Gaelic of which I knew nothing, but I could decipher the Gaelic for Matthew Ferguson, so I brought the envelope down to your grandfather, wanting him to translate it for me.

We sat at the kitchen table and I told him why I was there and what I had brought and he took it and read it. He became quite emotional and misty-eyed and told me it was a song about his store and how if you ever needed a friend you would find one there.

I don’t recall much more of what passed between us except that I was aware that Angus Y. was dead, that Jack D. was dead, and that the poem or song probably made him lonely, clearly made him lonely, so I left and I left the envelope with him.

Later, reading Angus Y.’s song (in translation) about Mattie’s store [see Mattie's Store is the Best] I detect a sense of fun in it, and I believe it was also a fairly well known song at the time.

The song I brought to your grandfather was unfamiliar to him from what I could see and I have wondered since then if there was a second song. The first tells of the products and the quality of service, etc, but from what Mattie said about the song, and he only told me what it was about, not a line by line translation, this was a different, more personal celebration of their friendship.

These were not emotionally expressive men in my memory, and probably the song I took to Mattie was one Angus Y. never sang for them or anyone. I don’t know that he ever sang for them ever, although they were close friends who would get together when Angus Y. was away from the lighthouse, and I know one of the projects they tackled or challenged each other with was the making of new words to encompass the changing world around them.

My father told me this, that they would come with English words for new gadgets or inventions and the task would be to find a root word in the Gaelic upon which they could incorporate the modern world as they experienced it. No record was ever kept of that ‘game’ that I am aware of.

…The song itself I am afraid no longer exists unless it is stored in whatever papers still linger from Mattie’s time because my crime was not returning it to the Angus Y.’s and deciding to leave it with Mattie instead.