| I was born in Boston in 1892 and worked in the coal mines
in the Minto area for about 50 years. When I first worked
in the mines, we had no electricity so we had to use pails
to bail the water out. In the old days, we used to wear
oilskin coats, just like the fishermen. At first, we
didn't have fans to clear out the dead air, but there wasn't
a lot of coal dust like in Nova Scotia.
I worked in the mine most of the time and I did various
jobs in the mine. At last, I got to be boss of somebody
else looking after the cutting crew. I didn't want to
boss anybody around, so I went back behind the machine,
timbering.
I raised some chickens and had some hens, too. I kept
horses and I kept cows. During the Depression, Minto was
the only place in New Brunswick with a dollar. The rest
of it - there was no money. Here in Minto, I've seen
lots of times in the summer when we had a day or two of
work a week. And if you had some cows and a little garden,
it helped some. In the winter, I used to get a lot of moose and deer meat.
I used to live in one of the company houses around the
mines. There's still company houses in Minto but they're
now remodeled and owned by the people who live in them.
|
