“Fond memory brings the light / Of other days around me.”
-Thomas Moore
Excerpts from a Personal Life History
...And in the summer the carnival came. I never cared for the rides or spending money on eating. I didn’t have any money anyway. I used to just enjoy walking around watching everybody on the rides.
The one thing that people loved to watch was the candy floss being made – cotton candy. It was fascinating. Little did I know that I would be making it for the next 20 years. But that’s another story. So I was standing there watching along with the rest of the kids. If the temperature is okay, you can put the candy floss up on display, but if it’s the slightest bit damp it drips. It was a nice night and this gentleman had them all up on display and kids were coming by and snatching a bit and running with it. He was getting pretty mad at them. He had what I thought was a butcher knife in his hand. It was really a spatula but I thought it was a knife. He was slapping it on the counter. I was only about eight, and I ran home and told Mom there was a man down there trying to cut the kids’ hands off because they were taking his candy floss. I swore I would never forget what that man looked like.
Many years later, when I started going with Roy Green, he took me home to meet his parents. His dad had his back to me and Roy said “Dad, I’d like you to meet June.” And his dad turned around and it was him, the candy floss man. I couldn’t believe it. I told Roy when we got outside, about the man who was trying to cut the kids’ hands off. He just killed himself laughing.
The first plane we saw, we had a ball you know, it was 1922. I was just six years old. We laughed so much at my Aunt Louie. It was my mother’s birthday in April and we put down the lovely white linen cloth on the kitchen table and my family came down from the harbour and they brought the birthday cake. We had the dinner cooked on the stove and for dessert, the birthday cake. After dinner they cleared everything away from the table and took off the white linen cloth. Then we heard a plane going over by our door and my aunt said, “Oh my, Aunt Rose, that’s a plane. What kind of a plane is that?” “I don’t know, Aunt Louie”, my mother said. So we all ran out by the porch door and there it was, going over and my aunt waved the white tablecloth. She said “The pilot saw me, the pilot saw me!” And my mother said “No, he couldn’t see you, he was too far up.” And my cousin, she was laughing so hard she nearly fell on the floor. It was so comical, the fun we had that day.
