gastronomical reaction and a persistent tummy ache.

We lived on top of a high hill overlooking the little town (20,000), at the corner of Stewart and Dublin Streets.  In winter we could sleigh ride “belly flopper” on individual sleighs down East on Dublin but the favorite ride was the much longer one down Stewart.  This was the main road out to the country and the police often chased us off for our own safety but we always managed to avoid the actual clutches of Constable McGinty, a real Irishman that could run like a deer.  We had rides for 6 at a time, too on a “bob sled” two sleds, with a board between.

McGinty nearly enmeshed some of us in the net of the law one Halloween night.  A larger unthoughtful boy encouraged some of us smaller fry to roll a cart, loaded with ashes, down a steep hill a few blocks away.  It got out of control and went hurtling into the ditch.  McGinty suddenly appeared and fortunately took after the main instigator who

 dodged him while we little culprits scurried for cover like young partridges.

Everybody skated on the canal near the big lift locks, once highest in the world, and the pet project of our mother’s brother, long a member of parliament in Toronto of happy memories.  He lived to be over ninety. 

Hydraulic Lift Lock Peterborough Ontario.

Christmas was a grand and glorious day at our house.  We had a big tree, presents galore but not large, and candy in abundance that should have lasted a month but it disappeared in two days and left an aftermath of headaches.  Mother’s dreadful cure was senna leaves brewed into a most abhorrent concoction that made us loathe to admit we felt squeamish.

As the youngest I was thoroughly spoiled by Bill and Walter.  When I was just learning to read I was happy to receive for Christmas a lovely big book by Dickens with pictures and stories for children.  Bruce (4 years older) and I slept in a high backed wooden bed.

Christmas morning I was up early for we had hung our stockings that year at the big open hearth in the sitting room. I couldn’t find my little trousers and grew impatient in hunting for them.  Finally I went around behind the head of the bed.  Walter and Bill had made a bag of them buttoning them up and trying the bottoms of the little legs.  This bag they had stuffed with little presents, nuts and an orange.  How they laughed when I found my trousers, and that was typical of their jokes, plenty of good cheer mixed with mischief.

When snowy winter gave way to spring showers our scratchy woolen underwear (how I abhorred it) was discarded and we made long hikes in search of early flowers, May flowers (Hepaticas), trailing arbutus, trilliums both white and red, blue, yellow and white violets and many other treasures found in Jackson’s woods.

Two miles down the C.P.R. tracks, which to my small feet seemed like half-way to Toronto, we knew a place where we could gather wintergreen leaves to chew and even found berries, too.

Education was funneled into our young heads by very strict but capable teachers at the West Ward School, Central School and in Bruce’s case at North Ward, too.  Bruce passed first out of that school, the star student.

When I was in kindergarten at Central School, Walter was in high school next door and on the lower side of the hill, separated only by a high wall.  He and Bill came to the kindergarten barred window to greet me.  I was making a little chair out of toothpicks and soaked peas while they were wrestling with algebra and ancient history.

Across the road was a big park where the band played martial music in the summer time and made the blood stir in our spines.  Teacher took us wee things out there for a picnic.  I remember the day Queen Victoria had her diamond jubilee and when she died.  We got a half-holiday.

Walter was heavyset and as healthy as an Arabian gazelle.  He was not built for racing but won five pounds of mixed candies in the sports (Field Day) and we all helped him to celebrate the honor.  He came in third in a foot race, but he came in first in many, many other events of his life!

Summer was the time of greatest enjoyment.  Before and after father shipped us off to the island at Soney Lake a hundred pleasures awaited us.  By night all the boys of our area