A Stones Cove snowball

 

To maintain my own sanity in the current world insanity, I've been tackling jobs that I've been procrastinating on.

One of these jobs is scanning and dealing with hundreds of old photos.

One set of these photos was in an album my Mom made for me back in the 90s. She made an album for each of her three sons that contained photos of us as well as photos from before our births.

She added captions she typed on her portable typewriter.

I was lucky enough to get a copy of this shot.

This is my mother, Jeanette, in 1942 or 1943, before her family left Stone's Cove, Newfoundland.

(The family moved to Grand Bank in the spring of 1943.)

Mom and I looked over these photos recently and when this one popped up, she said: "I worked hard saving up that snow!" 

You'll notice that although young Jeanette was holding up a snowball and wearing a coat, the coat was not that heavy, she has no mittens on and there is no snow on the ground. I'm guessing it was April, maybe May.

"How?" I asked. "You didn't have a fridge."

She snorted. "Of course not. There was no electricity in Stone's Cove."

"Did you keep it in an icebox?"

She snorted again. "We didn't have iceboxes. We had a hole with a cover in the hill behind the house. The men would get blocks of ice in the winter. Food would stay cold through the summer."

"And what did you do with the snowball"

"I threw it at my brother Bert."

"Did you hit him?"

"Yes, of course. He went running to Mom. 'You leave poor Bertie alone!' she always said. Hee, hee, she would say that to me a dozen times a day. He was always running after Norma and me."

More on Stone's Cove

Stones Cove was a tiny outport on the Burin Peninsula. Home to about 22 families. Almost all of the men were fishers. Stone's Cove was closed down in the early 50s when the Newfoundland government closed down settlements that could not be reached by road.

Mom remembers seeing some homes brought from Stone's Cove to Grand Bank on huge rafts.