TRANSCRIPT

MD - Marjorie (Bell) Dawson, interviewee; JA - June (Bell) Anderson, interviewee; GB - George Bell, interviewee / LR - Lyn Royce, interviewer

MD: You remember we used to fight with the neighbours sometimes.

LR: Mhmm?

MD: My mother was, would go out there and she would talk nice to them but she would come back in and [indecipherable]. We never could understand it, because well, you know, she kept everything quiet, 'n... But my mother and father were, we had behave; we fortunate to have good mothers and fathers.

JA: Yeah, 'cause she...

GB: Yeah...

JA: ...said, 'Always do unto others as you'd have them do unto you. You don't want anybody do that to you - don't do it to them.'

GB: Yeah, I got kicked out of school for 3 days because they had a poem called 'As Red Men Die;' this said 'Is there a Hell to him like this' and I didn't say that word, I said 'Is there an 'H' to him like this.' And they thought I was bein' smart so he threw me out. [chuckles] My mother had to go down t'the inspector; I was back in there the next afternoon. But I, I never swore. Kids used to say, 'We'll give you some money if you'll say the Lord's name in vain.' I wouldn't say it, 'cause that's not what I learned from my mother. You didn't take the Lord's name in vain... I did once. And I can remember it. I walked outside to say something, and I got mad and I went out there and I used the Lord's name in vain... I was shocked. I looked up in heaven and I said, 'Oh Lord, forgive me.' Never did it again. You know. But I can't say I never swore because that's what I did that one time.

LR: Yeah, yeah.

GB: I can count on my fingers how many times I swore; 'cause THAT'S what I learned from my mother. You don't do that.

JA: But Marjorie said that my mother used to leave them with matches and they would...

MD: Yeah...

JA: ...they would play 'Pick up Sticks' and they never thought about lighting them.

MD: Yeah; makin' houses and, you know, they'd go someplace, make little houses with the matches, and we never once thought about strikin' them, you know, like that.

JA: And we used to have those cereal with initials, you remember those the...

GB & LR: Alpha-Bits?

JA: Yeah, Alpha-Bits...

LR: Alpha-Bits! Okay...

JA: We used to, kids used to entertain theirselves [sic] sittin' there, you know, doin' that.

GB: And playin' the Game of Nations. I knew every nation! [chuckles]

MD: We never, ever, touched that ...

GB: No...

LR: What's that?

GB: Well, Nations, there's a card game of Nations.

LR: Unhunh...

GB: And I didn't know I was gettin' edumacated [sic] at the time [WM chuckles in background]. But she, she did; had that game of Nations and I got 'A'-sia... Africa...A...A...A... all the way down; all these different places.

LR: Ah, okay.

GB: You could tell them to say, you know...

MD: We never talked back to our parents.

GB: No, no.

MD: I can remember, I can't remember every saying anything bad to my aunts, my uncles, my grandma; you know, and now kids don't care, they just say anything they want to.

GB: Yeah; then say...

MD: It makes me feel bad, because I know, you know, why should they do these things? I don't know.

JA: Do you remember, we used to have that margarine that had that little...

GB: Oh! the little button...

JA: ...thinkin' the little orange button in the middle and we, you hadda push it and you had't mix it like this...

GB: Yeah...

JA: ...And then we used to have a ration. And we'd go up, get so much sugar with...

LR: Right...

JA: ...with coupons, you know. And with tea and sugar. And then they used to pay, we used to have to pay for a radio license. And...

GB: Yeah.

JA: ...and the, ye'd get, man'd come around, Mum'd say, 'Turn the radio down, turn the radio down!' So he can't hear. But then when she'd, she hated it when Joe Lewis was boxing. And I don't know if you could hear it, everybody's got their radios on, and I don't know, my mother's walkin' from the house up to the corner, but everybody got the radio on, she still could hear it! You know what I mean? Aw, she couldn't stand that, you know? But there's a lot of things like that now: internet and all that...

GB: We had colour television because we had the black and white television, but we put strips of paper on it - here's part green, that red part... [general laughter] Yeah, there's got a colour television!

JA: But you know it was, it was good growin' up with a lot of people in your house.

GB: Yeah.

JA: It was good. And we had fun and the children, all the kids on the street, we'd go out and we'd play tag and hide and seek and parents' had't call us in the house, 'cause we're out there playin' all the time.

GB: They used to, when I was there, they used to say, 'The lights are on [streetlights]!' and everybody'd run home.