In my early days, if you were hungry, you ate at home or, if you were taking a short trip, mother would pack a lunch and on your journey you would stop at a friend’s house and have a hot drink (usually tea) with your lunch.  If your visit was planned, you would have a meal with them.  There was always room at the table for one more.

By the way, my mother was born on Westchester Mountain, where the TransCanada Highway goes near the Toll Booth (Cobequid Pass).  My mother was from a family of nine and there was also nine in our family.  Two were stillborn and a boy, Sheldon, died of pneumonia at six months.  I have one brother, Winston, who is 92 and living in Alberta and still working in his own business.  He and I are the only two left.

There was a spring behind the house where I was born where we got our water.  To keep the water from freezing, especially at night, my parents would leave the tap open so the water would drip into the sink.  I remember one morning mother found ice all over the floor and a dead mouse!

If father was away working and late getting home, mother would take the kids to the barn with her while she milked the cows.  There were no milking machines in those days.

Mother told me when they got new shoes, they would walk barefoot to school or church and put their shoes on before entering.  When my mother was expecting my brother Wendell, her third child, she was home alone.  Father was away in Oxford, and we had no telephone.  My parents lived in Millvale at the time, two miles from the Jobb family home, when she began to have labour pains.  My brother, Lloyd, was four years old at the time, and my sister Irene, was two.  It was evening and dark, so she lit the lantern and tied it with a belt to Lloyd and sent him two miles, in the dark, to get Aunt Tillie.

My sister Irene told me this story.  She said after sending Lloyd off, she worried about him.  After two hours had passed, Aunt Tillie arrived with Lloyd, carrying the lit lantern.  Father never got home until morning and our family was now three.

My mother passed away suddenly in church at 73 years of age.

 

This story was written Rev. Leslie Jobb