Interviewer: Genevieve KeenInterviewee: Chester KeenDate: November 2004Introduction: I am Genevieve Keen and I am interviewing my father Chester Keen.Question: Dad, where were you born?Answer: In DigbyQuestion: When were you born?Answer: My grandfather's place.Question: When were you born?Answer: April 14, 1913Question: Where in Digby did you live?Answer: Question: You were born in your grandfather's house?Answer: Yeah.Question: You didn't go to the hospital in those days to have your babies.Answer: There wasn't any hospital.Question: There weren't any hospitals in thoses days! I guess we're spoiled now-a-days.Answer: Question: Where exactually did your grandfather live?Answer: Carleton Street. I don't remember the number.Question: It was the corner of Carleton and ah...Answer: The corner of Carleton and King.Question: The corner of Carleton and King Street. And then didn't your father own a house right in back of that?Answer: He built one. He built the house the next year after I was born.Question: He built the house the next year, and that is the house right in back of your grandfather's.Answer: It was further up.Question: And which street was your father's house on?Answer: On King Street.Question: So your father's house is on King Street.Answer: Yeah.Question: And your grandfather's house was on the corner of King and Carleton.Answer: Well close to it.Question: Close to it and your father's house was right above it?Answer: Question: With Christmas coming on, what did you do for Christmas? Did you have trees and celebrate the way we do?Answer: Oh yes, yes we did have Christmas trees. We had very little it was depression time, we had very little gifts. Question: Did your mother make her own?Answer: Most of them, yes.Question: Did you have turkey for Christmas dinner?Answer: I think so.Question: Did you raise your own?Answer: No.Question: You bought them?Answer: We liked to have had......Question: You probably had hens?Answer: Yeah, because we kept hens.Questions: Oh, so rather than have a turkey you would have had hen?Answer: Yeah.Question: Did your father have animals as well? Besides the hens?Answer: Yes, we had a cow or two and sometimes a young steer, and then later years we had the ox.Question: Oh, you had an ox?Answer: Yeah. Question: What did you use the ox for?Answer: Hauling wood and hauling manure from the barn basement to the garden.Question: Did you ever put in a large garden?Answer: Yes, quite big, yeah.Question: Did you grow a lot of your owns vegetables?Answer: Most of them, especially potatoes.Question: Did your mother can or how did she preserve the vegetables for the winter?Answer: They were stored in the basement. Question: In the basement?Answer: Yeah.Question: Did they keep all winter?Answer: Oh yes, they would keep. We had beets and carrotts and eh pototes, and we had raspberries which would be preserved.Question: Into jams?Answer: Yeah.Question: What did you use the cows for?Answer: Milk.Question: Where did you pasture the cows during the day?Answer: In the summer they would pasture out at Letteny's pasture that's back on Victoria Street.Question: Back on Victoria Street there was a pasture?Answer: Yeah.Question: Were there several people who had cows that would pasture there?Answer: Yes, some I think would tie them out.Question: Rather than putting them in the pasture?Answer: Yeah.Question: Did you have to go and get the cows at night?Answer: Oh yes, to milk them. Sure.Question: Did your dad ever slaughter the cows for food?Answer: No!Question: No, you just had them for milk cows?Answer: We slaughtered the pig.Question: So you had pigs too?Answer: Yes, we had one.....and we slaughtered the pig.Unable to hear this section!!!Question: Did many people in Digby raise cvattle at that time?Answer: Oh, there were farms they were just indepentant.Question: Just for your own benefit?Answer: Our own ues, yes.Question: Can you think of any traditions you had in your family. Outing, vacations, things like that that you did?Answer: We didn't do much of that. We didn't have the money to travel.Question: You didn't travel an awful lot?Answer: No. I used to suppliment our meat with... get a bucket of clams, and I used to do that quite often on Saturday morning of when the tide was down. Question: Where would you get the clams from?Answer: Down at the Racquette.Question: You soled some I think didn't you?Answer: Oh yes, I would dig two buckets, sell one for a quarter and keep the other one.Question: Dad, you told me about your skiing experience. Tell me about that again.Answer: Well to begin with I made the skiies myself, then we used to go skiing on some hill we had that was nearby, and eh, the last one was down on eh, Mount Street, I believe. I came down, made a jump and landed on my back on Queen Street. So that was my last jump!Question: That was your experience with skiing, down hill skiing? You made your own skies?Answer: Yup, out of ash.Question: You made them out of ash? Answer: Yeah.Question: Did many people ski in town?Answer: Oh, quite a few. Question: Did you.Answer: Actually, young people. Question: Where would you ski mostly, what part?Answer: Any pasrt, as long as there is snow.Question: As long as you could find a hill?Answer: Yeah.Question: So you didn't travel very far for your skiing like we do now days?Answer: Oh no!Question: No?Answer: They weren't made then.Question: Did your mother make her own butter?Answer: Yes, quite a bit.Question: Cheese or just butter?Answer: Just butter.Question: She churned her own butter?Answer: Yeah.Question: What was the tipical meal like in your family?Answer: Very good, cause we were hungry in those days. Question: Would she have the meat and pototoes?Answer: Yes, we had a roast of beef every Saturday and the rest of the time it would be fish or clams or something like that.Question: Did you have a lot of salads back in those days?Answer: A lot of what?Question: Salads or mostly cooked fish?Answer: No, salads was for cows!Question: (LAUGHTER) Salads was for cows, (LAUGHTER) ok.Question: Anything else you can think of about growing up in Digby? What was school like when you went to school?Answer: Well I enjoyed school life, just had behave yourself that's allQuestion: What was the disaplin like?Answer: Well, the teacher could punish you with the strap or their hand or whatever.Question: Were you ever expelled from school, or they didn't do that for punishment?Answer: No! No!Question: What time would you start school in the morning?Answer: 9:00 o'clockQuestion: What time would you finish?Answer: 3Question: Did you have an hour lunchAnswer: Yeah.Question: Did you go home for lunch?Answer: Yes, usually we did.Question: What was your favourite subject?Answer: Well, it wasn't English that's for sure. I umm, I used to be quite a scrapper earlier, and they said that I scrapped with the fellows that were going to home to eat dinner and then I scraped with the fellows coming back to school.Question: Did a lot of kids scrap together at that time?Answer: Oh no! Not too many.Question: When did you leave Digby? Actuall how long did you live in Digby itself?Answer: Until I was twenty something, twenty I believe.Question: Is that when you got married?Answer: Yeah, shortly after that.Question: Okay, and then you moved to ...Answer: Marshalltown. We had moved out there to board. We were doing a survey for the highways,a nd the engineer stayed at the same place I did which was Marshall's, Ralph Marshall's. Their daughter was a school teacher and she was away. When she came home well we started dating and ehh, and that's how I married her.Question: How long did you life in Marshalltown?Answer: Until the War started. Question: Then you went to work on the Base didn't you? When the War started?Answer: Yeah. Question: You weren't doing surveying then were you?Answer: No I was doing some.Question: You were doing some?Answer: That's what I was hired for.Question: For surveying?Anwer: Yeah.Question: Where did you move to after that?Answer: Well first we had a place in Marshalltown, we lived there for several years. Question: After the War?Answer: No before the War. Then we moved up near the Base because my father-in-law was working there too so we rented up there and after the War I stayed there for.... I worked at Cornwallis until '45 when the War was over and then I got back on the highway and I worked there until I was 60. Question: Then you had to move away didn't you, with the Highways?Answer: Oh yes, yeah. When I was working with them I had to.Question: Cause I remember going to the one-room school in Marshalltown when I was a little girl. Starting there. Answer: Yeah.Question: And I can remember moving to Sandy Cove and then it just semed to be moving from then on every two or three years. Answer: Every year. And I sold our place in Marshalltown after awhile. Question: And you owned the Wagoner house up on the eh... Not to far from the church in Marshalltown . The St. Paul's church up on hill.Answer: Yeah.Question: You were what, one, two, three houses down going from the St. Paul's Church.Answer: I sold it to Clarence Wagoner, I believe his name is. Question: Or no, that would be his son, it would be the dad I think you sold it to. Nevens, Nevens Wagoner.Answer: Yeah, yeah that's right.Question: Then I can remember coming back home and staying on weekends and holidays staying with my grandparents, Ralph and Geneva MarshallAnswer: Yeah.Question: Have you, you must have noticed quite a bit of change in Digby in the last few years? Or the last number of years.Answer: Yes, the old people, lot of them had cows and they had their gardens and things, but now they do. Very few do that now. Question: Out along the Range they used to have a lot of farms. Most of those are gone now.Answer: Yeah. John Roope is probably the last of the old farmers and most of the fellers down by the eh...where Alice used to life.Question: Oh, uhhh, I know who you mean. I'm drawing a total blank here right now. Ummm, Bruce, Bruce, are you talking about Bruce.Answer: Yeah! Bruce what... Question: Cause he's farmingAnswer: Yeah, well he took up apart Josie Nicholas farm. Question: He took over quite a bit of that area. Answer: Yeah!Question: Bruce Gillis. Bruce and Arth Gillis.Answer: Yeah, that's right.Question: Are you happy with the changes that are taking place in Digby, the growth of the town and that?Answer: Oh, I think so, people life better. We lived there during the Depression times and we had to work or starve, and eh...Then I belonged to the Scout Troop there for quite a number of years.Question: Did they have an active scout troop there when you were a boy?Answer: Oh yeah, yeah.Question: Do you remamber who the scout troop was at that time?Answer: Oswell, Oswell Wright. Osee Wright. Question: He was the Scout leader?Answer: Yeah, Question: And then you became a lea....Answer: Then Jabez Appleby, he was the feller on the...he kept the books. In other words he was the secretary.Question: Then you joined Masons in the area didn't you?Answer: Yeah, but that was during the War.Question: That was during the War that you joined the Masonic Lodge?Answer: In '43.Question: In '43. So you joined the Lodge in Bear River. Answer: Yeah.Question; Did they have a Lodge in Digby at that time?Answer: Yes. We were living in Annapolis County at that time.Question: Okay. Answer: And there was three, two other fellers who went through that I knew so the three of use went together.Question: Okay. Did they have a rink in Digby when you were a boy?Answer: A rink? Yeah, oh Yeah! Question: They did?Answer: The rink burned later on. And they had a good Hockey Team too. Question: In Digby?Answer: Yeah. Question; Would they travell to play? Would they go over to St. John or anything, or?Answer: They travelled around Nova Scotia. Yeah, I don't think they ever went over to St. John.Question: Where did you do most of your shopping? Like where did your mother do most of here shopping?Answer: Well, we didn't have to go out for, for eh.. meat of any kind because they delivered it right to the door in those days, and most of the time we dealt with Melbury Store down in the Racquette.Question: What did they sell?Answer: Groceries Question: Groceries! Where would your mom get her clothing.Answer: I don't know! Question: Did she make a lot of her own?Answer: Yeah! Yeah, that's how she, she.... how dad met he. She worked at Muise's. And Muise's used to make the clothing in thoses days. Question: And your mother was working with Muise?Answer: Yeah.Question; She was the seamstress?Answer: Yeah.Question: And your mother was Demetrie Gaudet?Answer: Yeah.Question: So she was French Acadian?Answer: That's right.Question: Good Acadian heritage here. What was your dads name?Answer: George.Question: George KeenAnswer: Yeah.Question: What did your dad do?Answer: Well he was carpenter by trade but during the Depression there wasn't much work then, and ehh, so it was pretty hard. Question: So there is a long tradition in your family with your father. Your grandfather, was he a carpenter as well?Answer: Yeah, and great-grandfather too.Question: Yeah, and the original fellow who came to Nova Scotia, the Loyalist he was a carpenter? Answer: Yeah.Question: Jesse Keen.Answer: I don't know where he fits in there, I never seen the family tree.Question: Oh, he's back there a few greats! A few great-grandfathers.Answer: Yeah.Question: Anything else you can think of about Digby? That you can remember that is sort of different then now a-days.Answer: No, customs has changed alot you know. We don't have a rink, oh...yes we do have a rink, yeah.Question: Yeah, we have a rink.Answer: Yeah, and we have a new school now. We had the old eight room school when I was going to school, and eh.... What's next?Question: Well, I think that's it dad. Unless there's anything else we can think of.Answer: