The Chronicles of Uncle Mose

The CHRONICLES of UNCLE MOSE

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Russell, Ted, 1904-1977.

The chronicles of Uncle Mose / Ted Russell ; edited by Elizabeth Miller.

Originally published: Portugal Cove, N.L. : Breakwater Books, 1975. ISBN 1-894463-88-9

1. Fishers--Newfoundland and Labrador--Fiction.

2. Newfoundland and Labrador--Fiction. I. Miller, Elizabeth Russell II. Title.

PS8535.U86C4 2006     C813'.54     C2006-900997-X

Copyright © 2006 by Elizabeth Miller

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We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) for our publishing activities; the Canada Council for the Arts which last year invested $20.1 million in writing and publishing throughout Canada; the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, Department of Tourism, Culture and Recreation.

The CHRONICLES of UNCLE MOSE

Ted Russell

Edited by Elizabeth Miller

To Naomi and Tamsyn –

with love from Betty-bat

CONTENTS

Preface

PIGEON INLET

ALGEBRA SLIPPERS

THE DISTRICT NURSE

TV

AUNT SOPHY

RABBITS

JETHRO NODDY

KING DAVID

DOGS

AIRPLANES

MAKIN’ A SHOW OF OURSELVES

OPERATIONS

EELSKINS

SAFETY

GRAMPA’S ONLY SICKNESS

UNCLE SOL NODDY AND THE LAW

LOGGIN’

MY SUSPICIONS OF SKIPPER JOE

TAKIN’ ADVANTAGE OF KINDNESS

MULDOON’S COVE

ROBINSON CRUSOE

PADDY MULDOON

BRAVERY

STEALIN’ THE HOLES

MY BROTHER KI

OLD-FASHIONED GAMES

AUNT SOPHY’S RETURN

POTATOES

FOOTBALL

JOHN CABOT

ARGUMENTS

GEESE

EDUCATION

TRAFFIC IN PIGEON INLET

SANTA CLAUS

KING DAVID’S WINTER OUTFIT

AUNT SOPHY ON THE OUTS

NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS

GRAMPA AND THE HOCKEY GAME

DRESSMAKIN’

AUNT JEMIMA AND THE UNITED BUS

AUNT SOPHY’S PREDICAMENT

VITAMINS

CONTRARINESS

BABYSITTIN’

BLOOD PRESSURE

COLD WEATHER

DICTIONARIES

TOUTENS

THE VALUE OF KING DAVID

THE SHOW-OFF

UNDER THE MISTLETOE

TEACHERS

THE DRAMA FESTIVAL

AUNT SOPHY AND KING DAVID

MORE TROUBLE OVER KING DAVID

ELECTIONS

SETTLIN’ AN ARGUMENT

SKIPPER JONAS TACKER

GHOSTS

KING DAVID’S AFFLICTION

ON THE HALVES

CRIME WAVE IN PIGEON INLET

GOIN’ HOME

SALMON AND TROUT

LUKEY’S LABELS

BERRY JUICE

MEN’S RIGHTS

WHORTS

THE BULL MOOSE

POPPIN’ THE QUESTION

THE CYNIC

JONAH AND THE WHALE

ROMANCIN’

SMOKEROOM ON THE KYLE

Acknowledgements

PREFACE

The Chronicles of Uncle Mose debuted in Newfoundland on CBC Radio in November 1953. Created and narrated by Ted Russell (1904–1977), each story comprised a segment of approximately six minutes on The Fishermen’s Broadcast. Continuing uninterrupted until 1961, the monologues aired initially once, later twice a week. In 1958, Russell rewrote some of the episodes for a national program, Come All Ye Round, a fact that explains the existence of several of the stories in two versions.

Each episode began with what quickly became a familiar phrase – And now the Chronicles of Uncle Mose, spoken by CBC announcer Harry Brown – followed by a short excerpt from The Sealer’s Ball played on the organ by Bob MacLeod. Ted Russell would then speak to the radio audience as Uncle Mose. He did not cultivate a special voice for this purpose, but read his scripts in the slow, deliberate pace with a slight Conception Bay accent that was part of his normal speech pattern. Reading in what appeared to be spontaneous conversation (though the scripts were actually carefully constructed and timed to fit the slot allotted by CBC), he succeeded in establishing a bond of familiarity and intimacy with his listeners.

An initial objective of the Chronicles was to provide a means of communicating relevant information to fishermen living in isolated communities along hundreds of miles of coastline. Uncle Mose would keep fishermen up-to-date on the latest news of interest: current fish prices, new government regulations, local problems, and general matters of policy. But the series soon became much more. Drawing on his nearly fifty years of experience as a teacher and a magistrate living and working in outport Newfoundland, Ted Russell brought to his stories a wealth of insight into the nature of rural life. Before long, many of the characters – Grampa Walcott, Grandma, Skipper Joe, Aunt Sophy, Jethro Noddy, and King David – took on a life of their own and became household names.

One can find in these stories the many attributes that mark Ted Russell as one of Newfoundland’s great writers: a mastery of the art of storytelling, a profound understanding of human nature, and a deep respect for the dignity of the traditional way of life. The most enduring appeal of these tales lies in Russell’s sense of humour. Perhaps most popular are the tall tales, an integral part of Newfoundland’s oral tradition. Most of these were stories that Ted Russell himself had heard during the forty years he spent in the outports. Though he was fully aware of the hardships of outport life (after all, he served as a magistrate during the dark days of the 1930s), his essential vision of life was comic. Usually whimsical, though at times satirical, Ted Russell successfully captures the incongruities of life in an isolated community confronting the effects of change.

The Chronicles of Uncle Mose were set in the 1950s in Pigeon Inlet, a fictitious community that was beginning to experience change yet still adhered to the traditional way of life and its concomitant values. A composite of the many communities with which Russell was familiar (notably Coley’s Point, Pass Island, Harbour Breton, and Fogo), Pigeon Inlet was typical of hundreds of outports scattered along the rugged coastline of Newfoundland and Labrador and dependent almost entirely for their existence on the inshore cod-fishery. This fishery, with its economic uncertainties, its reliance on the unpredictable ocean, and its demand for hard work, helped to mould the characters of the outporters. Isolation from the outside world also fostered close ties and a meaningful interdependence.

The first appearance of the Chronicles in print came in the late 1960s in the Newfoundland Quarterly. Then in the 1970s, Breakwater Books issued two collections of the stories: The Chronicles of Uncle Mose (1975) and Tales from Pigeon Inlet (1977). These, along with several smaller collections issued during the 1990s by Harry Cuff Publications, have long since been out of print. Meanwhile, Kelly Russell has released several of the stories on various media: LP recordings, cassette tapes, and CDs.

In preparing this present collection, I have engaged in some light editing. Using where possible the invaluable Dictionary of Newfoundland English, I have provided glosses for several words and phrases that are likely to be unfamiliar to many early-twenty-first-century ears. I have also clarified a few topical references. However, I have not made a single substantive change, not even with respect to occasional remarks about women that might by today’s standards seem somewhat belittling. In such cases, fidelity to the text and its historical/cultural validity has trumped political correctness.

Elizabeth Miller

Toronto

March 2006

PIGEON INLET

I SUPPOSE BEFORE I BEGIN tellin’ you about the people who live here in Pigeon Inlet, I ought to say somethin’ about the place itself. Well, there’s not much to tell. Even though you’ve never seen it, you must have seen dozens of places just like it. We’re all fishermen here and, apart from our gardens and Levi Bartle’s sawmill, there’s nothin’ except fish. We’ve got as good a harbour as you’d care to see, deep water, good holdin’ ground. And if anybody ever wants to build a fish plant, we’ve got the perfect place for it, right at the mouth of Bartle’s Brook.

We’re right in the middle of a stretch of coast about forty or fifty miles long, with five or six smaller places spread out along the shore on each side of us. The people from these places might possibly move into Pigeon Inlet if ever we get one of those fish plants we hear so much about these days. One of these places is a goodish-sized place almost as big as Pigeon Inlet. The name of that place is Hartley’s Harbour. It’s about six miles from here and the Hartley’s Harbour people think there’s no place like theirs. I bet that if ever a fish plant comes to this shore, they’ll want it in Hartley’s Harbour. They think they’re the capital of the shore. They’ve already got the District Nurse stationed there, which they would never have had except for skulduggery. Anyway, they’re goin’ to be unreasonable enough to want the fish plant, but you watch out. They won’t get it. We will. That is, if one comes.

Now to get back to the people of Pigeon Inlet. I’m goin’ to tell you about the Executive of our Fishermen’s Local. Skipper Joe Irwin is our President and Bill Prior is Vice President. I’m the Secretary and Sam Bartle is Treasurer. Grampa Walcott is our Honorary President. We had to give Grampa some kind of a title or it’d break his heart. I’ll tell you about him first.

Grampa Walcott is the oldest man in Pigeon Inlet. He’s eighty-two years old, but smart as a cricket and wants to be into everything. He’s only a handful and you’d think the wind’d blow him away, but no matter how stormy the night, he can get to the Lodge* meetin’ or a local meetin’ as well as any of us. He went fishin’ when he was seven or eight years old and hasn’t had a summer ashore since. That’s seventy-five summers fishin’.

Of course he doesn’t do much fishin’ now. But he always supervises the drawin’ for our salmon and net berths every spring in April. We always give him Number One berth, the one right at the mouth of the Inlet, the one easiest to get to, and he always fires the gun at twelve o’clock every May the tenth when the rest of us claim our berths. He’s quite a character. He couldn’t read or write until ten years ago when the Adult Education teacher was here. He always used to say he expected to live to ninety, but since he learned to read he says he’s goin’ to reach the hundred mark. He says he’s got more to live for now.

There’s not much to tell about Sam Bartle. He’s in his thirties, the youngest of the five of us. He’s able to turn his hand to almost anything and could give up the fishery tomorrow if he wanted to. But he doesn’t want to unless he’s got to. In fact, he worked in St. John’s winter before last and could have got a steady all-year-round job, but he turned it down and came back to Pigeon Inlet to continue fishin’ in the spring. The way Sam explained it was that he couldn’t get a place for his family to live. He could get two or three rooms but he wants room enough for his young children to kick around in and he couldn’t find that in St. John’s for love nor money. So he came back to his fine big house and his fishin’. Besides, fishin’ is in his blood and he doesn’t intend to give it up unless he’s goin’ to be starved out of it.

Bill Prior is about the same, only a few years older, and a bit more tied down to the fishery. Bill is the ablest man on the shore. There’s a crossbeam down in Levi Bartle’s fish store where you’re allowed to write your name in lead pencil, provided you’ve got a fifty-six-pound weight hooked onto your little finger while you’re doin’ it. There are three names on that beam and Bill’s name is the highest of the lot.

As for me, Mose Mitchell, I’m not really a Pigeon Inletter at all. I’m from the Sou’west Coast. Went Bank fishin’ when I was sixteen and got a bellyful after thirty-four years of it. I had neither chick nor child. So I jacked up and came to St. John’s. Couldn’t stand the dust and smoke and noise and used to get heartsick whenever I looked out the Narrows. Then one day I met this fellow, Joe Irwin. He was shorthanded, carryin’ a load of freight north to Pigeon Inlet, so I shipped with him and came here and I’ve been here ever since. Not married yet, but there’s still time. Only in the prime of life yet. Guess I’ll end my days here – especially if we get that fish plant!

Our President is Skipper Joe Irwin, the man who brought me here three and a half years ago. Joe is about my age, fifty. The prime of life, like I said. He’s as good a man as ever water wet. His schooner is the only one in the place. She’s lyin’ up all the year, except when he takes a load of dry fish or lumber to St. John’s each fall and brings back a load of supplies. He used to go to Labrador fishin’ in her till he had to give it up. It got so that the more fish he’d catch, the more money he’d lose. Like he said in our Executive meeting one night, Boys, he said, I was like a mouse tryin’ to chew his way through a twelve-inch partition. The harder I’d gnaw, the further I’d go in the hole. Another time when he was takin’ out his last load of Labrador fish and a round-tripper from the Kyle** asked him what made it so thin and squat-lookin’, Skipper Joe nearly lost his temper. He said, Ma’ am, if you’d been in the hold of my schooner for the past two months with twelve hundred quintals of fish on top of you, you’d be thin and squat-lookin’, too. Anyway, he’s finished with the Labrador fishery and he’s settled down to shore fishin’ like the rest of us.

ALGEBRA SLIPPERS

IF THERE’S ONE SURE PROOF that times are gettin’ more civilized than they used to be, it’s the way business is carried on nowadays. Years ago, accordin’ to Grampa Walcott, ’twas somethin’ awful, and to prove his point, a thing which Grampa is always ready and willin’ to do, he tells this story about how he got the pair of swile*-skin slippers that he’s been wearin’ now for nigh on thirty years (of course he’s had three new pair of soles and two new pair of uppers in ’em during that time, but they’re the same pair of slippers). He likes to treasure ’em because, he says, they remind him of the one and only time he ever got the better of old Josiah Bartle, who was the merchant here thirty years ago.

And even then, he said, he’d never have got ’em only for a thing called Algebra. When I asked him what in the world Algebra was, he said he didn’t know, but it must be a wonderful fine thing to help a poor man like him get the better of a shrewd old bird like Josiah Bartle.

’Twas along about the middle of April 1931, says Grampa, when Liz, his missus, told him the molasses keg was empty and he’d better go down to Josiah’s store and get some. Grampa wondered how he’d pay for it, because ’twas too early in the spring to get credit on next summer’s account, and he certainly didn’t want to disturb the bit of gold he had in the sock. ’Twas then Liz reminded him of his two swile-skins. True, one of ’em had some shotholes in it, but the other was perfect and between ’em they ought to fetch enough molasses to tide ’em over till credit time. So, takin’ his empty molasses keg and the two swile-skins, off he went.

Skipper Josiah the merchant was glad to see him, business bein’ what it was that time of year, and told Grampa how lassy was current price – a dollar a gallon. Likewise, swile-skins was current price – a dollar a skin. Grampa asked him what about shotholes, and Josiah told him they was current price too – ten cents off for every shothole. Grampa had no trouble figgerin’ he’d get one gallon for the good skin and part of a gallon for the shotholey one. When Josiah came back from inside where he kept his swile-skins, lassy, and things like that, he said right friendly like, Here you are, Ben. Here’s your keg, with your half gallon of lassy. Grampa was took aback and said it ought to be more than that.

Josiah rubbed his hands friendlier than ever and said, No. Half a gallon is exactly right. You see, he said, two swile-skins at a dollar each is two dollars. Then fifteen shot-holes in one of ’em at ten cents a shothole, that’s a dollar fifty. Take that off the two dollars and you have fifty cents left, and with lassy a dollar a gallon, here is your half gallon.

Grampa knowed there was somethin’ wrong. He said there was nar shothole at all in one of ’em and he asked Josiah to give him a gallon for that one and give him back the holey one. But Josiah explained how he couldn’t do that, because the two skins went together in what he called in business a package deal, where the good points of one had offset the bad points in the other. Then Grampa wanted to call the whole thing off and go home again with his two skins and his empty keg, but Josiah said no. Business was business, and what was done couldn’t be undone, or the business world’d never know where it stood. Then Grampa made a remark, but Josiah threatened the law on him for it. So all that was left for him to do was to go home.

When Liz, his missus (Grandma she is now), tipped up the keg that night to full the molasses dish, she noticed there wasn’t much in it, so she wormed the story out of Grampa and give him twenty-four hours to go back to Josiah and get his rights or else she’d do it. Of course, a thing like that’d disgrace Grampa completely. So he spent nearly all that night layin’ awake thinkin’ up a scheme. Next mornin’ he had it, and went over to Uncle Phineas Prior to get his help in carryin’ it out. Uncle Phin was only too glad to do it.

And so late that evenin’, Grampa visited Josiah’s store. Phin Prior with two or three more had just started an argument about the big profits merchants made. They asked Grampa’s opinion, and he went even further than the rest and said that merchants often sold things for ten times what they paid for ’em. Josiah got mad and poked his snout right into the trap. He told Grampa he’d been glad to sell him anything he had for ten times what he’d paid for it. All right then, said Grampa, Sell me back that swile-skin that got the fifteen shotholes in it.

Well, what a hullaballoo. Everybody wanted the particulars and they all agreed Josiah hadn’t paid nothin’ for it. So bein’ as how ten times nothin’ was nothin’, Josiah was bound by his word to give it back to Grampa for nothin’. If Josiah had given it right then he’d have been better off, but he couldn’t bear to get the worst of it. So he said he wouldn’t be guided by people with less book-learnin’ than he had. Then who should come in but the schoolmaster, and they put the thing square up to him. And, said Grampa, ’twas the schoolmaster that brought up this business about Algebra.

Accordin’ to Algebra, said the schoolmaster, Josiah hadn’t just paid nothin’ for the swile-skin with the holes, he’d paid fifty cents less than nothin’, because he’d took fifty cents off the good one on account of it. Algebra called that a minus fifty cents, and ten times that was minus five dollars, which again (accordin’ to Algebra) meant that Josiah had to give Grampa back the skin and five dollars besides, and Grampa went home happy.

Liz wasn’t so happy though. She said if that was Algebra, ’twas no better than Bingo, and she made Grampa give the five dollars to the Church Organ Fund. But she let him keep the swile-skin, and that’s what he made the pair of slippers out of that he wears to this very day. He calls ’em his Algebra slippers and says that, whatever Algebra is, there’s no doubt ’tis a true friend to the poor man.

THE DISTRICT NURSE

NOW I’M GOIN’ TO TELL YOU how the District Nurse came to be stationed at Hartley’s Harbour instead of here in Pigeon Inlet where she ought to be.

We wanted her here and Hartley’s Harbour people were unreasonable enough to want her there. The Government couldn’t please everybody, so they told her to spend her first three months in Hartley’s Harbour and the next three months with us. Then she could decide for herself, and they’d build her dispensary in whatever place she picked.

We in Pigeon Inlet figgered out we couldn’t lose – for three good reasons. First, a nurse’d want a nice clean store to do her shoppin’. We had that. Levi Bartle’s store in Pigeon Inlet is away ahead of Lige Grimes’s old place in Hartley’s Harbour. Second, she’d want a good boardin’ house, and we had that. Aunt Sophy Watkinson’s boardin’ house was famous all along the coast, while in Hartley’s Harbour she’d be lucky if she didn’t starve to death at Aunt Sarah Skimple’s. Third, and most important of all, she’d probably want some nice company her own age, and that was our strongest point. The Hartley’s Harbour boys are all right in their own way, but not to be compared with young Lloyd Walcott, a handsome, strappin’ young fellow, just like myself thirty years ago. What more could a nurse want? Well, in November she came down on the boat to Hartley’s Harbour and we saw her on the deck of the steamer. Just out from England she was. Pretty little thing, but awful skinny. Anyway, if she didn’t starve in the next three months, we’d fatten her up when we got her up in the Inlet in February. We were so sure of gettin’ her now that we began to pick a place to build the dispensary.

We wouldn’t have been so sure if we’d known that Lige Grimes had just given up chewin’ tobacco. He had cleaned up his store and put up a big notice. It read: No Smoking or Spitting Allowed. By Order of the Hartley’s Harbour Nurse’s Committee. The hypocrite! But we didn’t know that till ’twas too late.

At last, one day in February the nurse moved in by dog team, bag and baggage, to start her three months with us. She looked thinner than ever, but Aunt Sophy was ready with a big supper for her and young Lloyd Walcott dropped in accidentally during the evenin’.

Our Committee had a lot of meetings from then on and Grampa Walcott always had somethin’ good to report. Nurse’s appetite was good and she was gettin’ fatter every day. She liked Aunt