LIFE'S EPISODES
   by John Tobias Pearson

I remember when Father Fyme used to celebrate Mass and also Benediction over in the little chapel in his house. I remember well, one evening the choir was going full tilt and as usual I was singing along. (The chapel being so small - the people in the pews were very close to the altar). The next thing I knew
Father Fyme had left the altar, came down- caught ‘me by the ear and marched me up to the choir. He said, ‘If you want to sing in church, here is where you'll do it’.

Several young people went to evening service quite regularly. It wasn't that they were so religious, it was a way to get out after dark. My Aunt Kathleen, directed by my Grandmother, would drag me off to church with her, usually the excuse was ‘to go to confession’. Little Merasheen young people were not allowed above the cross (past the church) after dark. However, fairly often after confession on winter nights we would head off to the harbour ice out in front of Charlie Pittman‘s property.

My favourite teacher was my Grade VII teacher Marie Counsel from Red Island. On Friday when we'd have our spelling test she would drag out the pronunciation of a word in order to make it easier for us to spell. One such word I remember was tomatoes. Also where other classes had Art and story period
on Friday afternoon, we had singing. We had the songs ‘The Ballad of Davey Crocket and In the Jail House Now“ worn out.

In the spring and summer on Saturday a bunch of us boys - Ernie Walsh, Freddy Best, Michael Ennis, Edward Hennessey and myself would go up on the ‘Big Hill’ take off our shoes and socks and run barefooted through the ‘mud suckers’ (a patch of warm, damp, sticky turf). We usually spent an hour or so at this.

I remember the year I passed Grade IX. That day in August Ernie and I were down in the Jigging Cove catching sheep to shear when someone came down and told us we had passed.

Nish Cochrane and Paul Wilson were classmates of mine. One afternoon they came to school direct from the Co-Op store. They said they had some chicklets. Any other day they would have kept that fact to themselves. However, this particular day they gave them to the Grade II class. Thinking they were chicklets the children chewed them. In reality what they were chewing was Trulax (forerunner of Exlax -no pun intended). So you can imagine the outcome. At that time our toilet was an outdoor structure and quite a ways from the classroom.

I remember my first school concert. A bunch of us were put on the stage as a group. We were dressed up as Negro children (our faces blackened with burnt cork and woolen socks on our feet). We sang some of the songs of Stephen Foster. Some of the songs were Way Down Upon the Swanee River, Old Black Joe and Massa in the Cold, Cold Ground.