Human Snowplows

Do you remember much about the weather when you were growing up?  What were the winters like?

In the winters, we had a lot of snow.  But then, the men had to shovel the snow by hand--there was no snowplows, that was never heard tell of.  They had to shovel.  They'd go...the Drum Head men went so far, up toward Goldboro, and the Goldboro crowd would meet them.  And the, the Seal Harbour ones...I don't know just how far.  They would go so far towards Coddles' Harbour.  And from there the men would meet them there, you see.  They'd shovel their way up to where they'd meet the Seal Harbour.  

And the doctor, if anyone needed the doctor, he came down what we called the swamp.  He left the road in Drum Head and come down, there's a... you know where Claire Fanning's house is?  Do you remember seeing a little building there like a store, in Drum Head?  Claire's house, and Lorne's, was the one above that.  Well, this swamp was below their place, over that way.  And the doctor would travel down that way.  And there was a road coming up from that, and you'd get on the main--they didn't shovel all the road down to the village--but he would go that way.  Lots of time it was horseback, if you'd go to call.

Where did the doctor live?

Goldboro.  And he went as far as New Harbour; he had patients in New Harbour.

That would be a long way to go.

Yeah.  Well, and then, after another doctor came, there'd always be a bad spot in the road over there, a place they called the green woods.  It just was a stretch of woods on either side of the road.  And the frost would be coming out, and that...you just couldn't get over that.  A car couldn't think to get through it.  But he would go as far as that, and walk across, and somebody else met him, and took him.