TILTS IN THE HARBOUR
   by Ernie Walsh

Dickey Pittman and Gerald were also good buddies and they nearly always let me tag along with them. Most of our time spent with Dick I remember building small tilts or camps mostly up under the Scrape or on the motor road outside of Mr. Charlie Pittman's garden area. The tilts were made from whatever we could find or get away with - such as old boards, clapboard, cardboard boxes and pieces of canvas or felt. The roof was always covered with sods. We'd have a small steel drum for a stove, and if we didn't have stove piping, we would put together bean and fruit cans. When the bunks were finished, we'd rush to get stuff for a boil up such as a head of cabbage from this garden and a turnip from somewhere else, carrots from some other garden and so on: and maybe on a good day, a box of lemon creams, cream crackers, jam jams, a dried fish to roast and maybe a few bottles of coke. We usually had to enjoy our boil up the same day we built the tilt because experience had taught us that no matter how strong we built our tilt, someone was sure to burn it down or beat it up that night once they found it. What goes round comes back around, and as a result, none of the tilts built anywhere around the harbour remained standing for very long.