Building the log house

This must be 1975. I am not cutting pulp as you may have thought - these are the first logs on the house. I say it is 1975 because I am clean shaven. I did that when I began looking for a job. I interviewed in Halifax for a job on a community crime prevention project and "came in second". Brian Smith (now a parole officer here on PEI) came in first. He was strongly recommended by FR. Andy Hogan who was the member of the provincial legislature at the time. I of course had no political connections. I also interviewed in Truro for a legal job but never heard back. Again this has to be 1975 because I began working at UCCB (then called St. Francis Xavier University extention) in the fall of 1976. When I went off to Sydney to work, we had already begun living in the house. I would go up on a Monday morning and stay with Christie Margaret, daughter of Donnie MacLeod and his wife (name escapes me) who was the daughter of Malcolm and Esther. I would then come home for Wednesday and go back up for Thurs and Fri. And so this was the year before. Logs had been cut and were waiting and holes dug. Malcolm MacLeod used a post hole digger on the back of his tractor. The post were left over pieces of the wharf at Larchevec (sp?) that I scavinged.

If my memory is correct, that picture or the next on the role had Joe in it. I think that just his left shoulder is showing. I guess at some point he got cut out or there is another picture.

So, I was not cutting pulp at that time. Or at least not in that picture. There is another picture of me wearing a red plaid jacket where I was on my way home from the woods. But that was earlier. I cut pulp for the guy who was the county counsellor Martel I think from 1973 to 75 off and on. By this time I was painting Malcolm and Mary's house and finishing the basement for the people across the road from Malcolm and Mary.

I have just now finished uploading the picture and I hope that it will be showing up in the blog shortly.

Building the log house was a real experience. The fact that it is still standing is a miracle in its own right given how little I knew about building. However, I think it would have been even better if we had not moved to Sydney. Then, I would hve been maintaining it and keeping it from piling up the little things which have caused it to go down hill so much.

This was a fun time also becasue we all got to work on it. You and Joe and Kate were busy collecting rocks for backfilling and moss for between the logs. Friends visited to help - Jim Martin, George Mcvey and the Goode brothers, Jaime and Bobby, of course, Dan and John Ferguson and occasionally Willy although he was close to the end then.

The logs that you see in the picture were the two longest logs in the house. All the others were notched into a upright beam. Dan Ferguson helped drag the logs out of the wood with his horse. Archie MacLeod also did a lot of dragging with the tractor but that was a problem when a nail in my bridge over the swampy part of the path to the place where I had cut the logs cut the side of the tractor tire and we had to go to Part Hawksbury to get the tire repaired and then refilled with the calcium (I think) which they used to give the tries weight. Another adventure in the Grand River Saga.

Harmonica Bob

Harmonica Bob... What can I say... Kate and Bert's house. Not long before we moved across the road because the table is on the far wall and that happened when we opened the wall into the little room behind the formal parlor...oh wait, it must have been earlier because when we opened the wall we made the little room into a dining area with half a wall...memory...

Anyway... It was in the old house which was Tony Walter's when he allowed us to live there for the upkeep. It is in the kitchen. Kate is in the high chair with her back to us. Joan and Joe are facing the camera. I'm guessing that your mother took the picture. My harmonica playing was a good accompaniment to the strumming of your mother and Jim Martin who played guitar. We sat around that table many days sipping 'golden glow' and singing and eating and just having a great time. I haven't played harmonica in many years. This has to be late 1972 because I don't think kate was in the high chair much longer than that.

Moving to Cape Breton was the result of trauma for both your mother and I. For her it was a down cycle in her ups and downs. For me it was the aftermath of the tragic deaths of Eddie Woodriffe and his partner that I alluded to before. The trauma was because when the call came to respond to a bank robbery (as all agents were supposed to do) I had a lot of paperwork and turned my car over to Ed who was waiting on the steps of the old post office (where our office was). He then took the call to go to the apartment of the former wife of the bank robber/escapee from Lorton Pennitentiary and it was there that the shooting took place.

According to the third agent on the scene, Ed and his partner were on either side of the door. Ed knocked and buddy inside pulled open the door to the length of the chain and shot Ed in the head. Partner came across and was shot in the chest. Door slammed and third man shot into it but it was metal. Bad guy went out the window, down a tree and across an open area before hiding in the attic of an apartment building across the way. He was apprehended later that night.

My trauma was that I was not there... so what you say? Well maybe things would have been different if I had done what I was supposed to do. Maybe I wouldn't have been suspicious when the guy opened the door. Maybe I would have had my gun out because I was more suspicious. Who knows. Bottom line a good buddy got killed, I was confined to the office for three days because I was a good buddy...then I was assigned to guard Eddie's house. The main job was to keep the media away because this was the first time that two agents had been shot in the line of duty and the first time that a "BLACK" agent had been killed. Eddie goes down in history.

I never knew until years afterward how much it affected me. The Washington Post and Washington other newspaper made formal complaints about the agents guarding the house of Ella and her kids because all they wanted was a story and we told them to get the f... out of there or we would do nasty things to their private parts. Years later I found out about post traumatic syndrome - nobody talked about it then... you guys had to endure it in the trip to CB. Thank goodness it turned out alright...Or is that a question I should pose to the three of you???

So I played the harmonica. Do you ever remember me actually playing???

Picnic at the Bronx Zoo

It is the fall of 1964 or the spring of 1965. I was still in the U.S. Naval reserve on active duty at Dahlgren, Virginia and the U.S. Naval Weapons Test Laboratory... Strange place for a peacenik to be but that was in a different life.

I had come up to New York to visit your mother whom I was dating at the time. We were not yet married. She suggested a picnic and I wanted to see the Bronx Zoo because I had heard it was a good place as zoos go, so we combined the two and went to the Bronx Zoo. I spent a lot of time as a youngster at the Buffalo zoo (ergo my elephant history). I remember the giraffes at the Bronx zoo and I remember winding pathways but then I may be confusing it with the Washington Zoo which I remember as having a hilly pathway through the animal enclosures.

The green car behind me is a Pugeot. I bought it second hand in Buffalo after I totalled my 1963 plymouth valiant in an accident. My accident was in July 1964, the car was just a year old. That is why I think the picnic was early 65 because I can't see any noticable signs of the accident on my forehead.

About that weekend (or the end of it). I was headed back to the base driving the New Jersey Turnpike. When I got to New York on Friday evening, I noticed that my idiot light for the generator was coming on. That meant that the battery was not charging but since I wasn't planning a lot of driving before I got back, I thought that I could make it alright. However I waited until late to leave New York and I had to use the headlights and they of course drained the battery faster than the generator could replenish it. The car started bucking and stalling and I was forced to pull off on the turnpike near the end. I shut the car off and hoped that it would start again. A tow truck working the turnpike came by and offered to tow me back to the privious exit. That I fugured would be an arm and a leg so I turned it down, waited about half and hour and the battery recovered enough by that time to start again.

I headed down the road with the lights off to conserve battery power. My plan was to get over the Deleware Memorial bridge (memorial of what I'm not sure)and then head off to a gas station and have the battery charged full. The Deleware Memorial bridge is a long steep up and a long steep down, not much level. More like MacDonald than the other Halifax bridge but much higher in my memory. I was about half way up when the engine died. At the time it was a three lane bridge with the center lane for the brave of heart. Traffic was moving at 60-70 mph and all of a sudden I was dead in the water. I pushed on the four-way flashers and bolted from the car and went ten feet or so down so as to be away and below when some nut ran into me. I didn't want to be above because then the car would be rammed into me. Smart huh??? Cars were whizzing by, and my very weak flashers were not visible too far away, I'm sure, because some people were braking sharply when they realized that I wasn't moving at all. Then to my rescue was a bridge tow truck with emergency lights flashing which pushed me off the bridge, allowing me to stop in a toll booth and then off the highway to a nearby garage. I slept for a few hours in the gas station while the battery was charged and continued home safely. End of story.

Not much about the Zoo except the giraffes... I still had that sweater when we moved to Grand River because I remember a picture of me in it I think when my Mother and Father visited and we had a family picture outside the house???

Enough for today and hopefully by the time you read this the picture will be a part of it.

bball Bob

This fall of 1968, I am on an Agents team in the FBI and we played against other teams in the government and in the FBI. Also on the team were Wayne Davis, John Glover, R.C. Clack, Ed Woodriffe, Jay Aldhizer and another fellow I can't remember the name of. Ed Woodriffe and the other guy were the ones who were shot and killed by an escaping bank robber later.

The team went undefeated in our section of the league but lost out in the playoffs with other sections. Wayne Davis and John Glover were both college basketball players and were very good. The rest of us were just out for the fun. Basketball was
not my game because I didn't play it until I was in college. I was just a little fellow until grade twelve, baseball was my game and in the winter I would spend time in the gym tossing the ball against the wall and fielding it, etc. I did fool around with the basketball but not enough to be very good.

We played our games in a gym out in south-east Washington. It was a one night a week affair for about eight weeks. I don't know who took the pictures but I got a bunch of them at one time. I suspect one of the guys borrowed a bureau camera and took pictures when he was on the bench. On Saturday mornings, (sometimes) Glover, Clack, Davis and I would get together over in a school yard near Glover's place for a two on two morning session. Gads I was young then.

If you think of anything you would like to ask as a result of my talking about any of these pictures let me know.

Rainbow Reader

You probably remember this better than I do. You after all were a key mover in the Rainbow readers. What can I say...it was sometime after I had Gigglesnatch published but how long after I can't for the life of me remember. I still have the shirt tucked away in my box of special T's. Wish I could remember more but that's it.

Nova Scotia or Bust

June 1972. We had a big boat trailer and built sides on it and loaded it to tow behind a station wagon going to Nova Scotia. The banner was for the side of the trailer. Alas the station wagon we borrowed just couldn't do the job of towing our trailer full of furnishings so we ran out and rented the truck...I knew right away it was the truck for me because of the elephants.

Now as to who is putting up the sign... I can't remember her name...Girlfriend of Chuck Darst, one of the Buffalo Five draft board raiders who was staying at the house along with scores of others. I'm sure your mother will know her name.

The truck was parked across the street from our house on Koons Avenue in Buffalo and we just transferred all the stuff from the trailer to the truck. It looked like a big yard sale before we got all the stuff back into the truck.

Another incidental outcome of the station wagon not working was that one of the people who had planned to ride in the station wagon ended up sitting in the back of the jeep with you, Joe and Kate. I think it was Sally???


Quite the trip - after getting through customs and finding a place for the night, the next day the jeep wouldn't start and the big truck pushed us to start it. Then the engine on the jeep blew out, filling the compartment with black smoke as I tried to navigate at 15 km an hour off the 401 near Toronto. Later, in N.B. the right side rear wheels on the truck blew out. Fortunately we came along in the rental car and were able to get people to the service station down the road for new tires, paid for by the rental truck company.

Quite the trip, we almost did bust. Do you remember any of it???

Northwest Washington

The picture today is the third in your e-mail. Behind my head is the street sign N.W. R - The R is the intersection of 16th St. and R St. N.W, in Washington. I had set out that morning (FBI agent that I was) to get pictures of a subject in an internal security case. (I should add that this was the last or second last year of my "service" in the bureau. So it would have been 1969 probably but maybe 1968.)

Anyway, two young college students lived in an apartment in a building on 16th street and I had gone to the lab to get (shades of james bond - but much less lethal) a briefcase camera. 35 mm Camera mounted inside a normal briefcase with a vent in one end for the lens and a push thingy on the handle to operate the shutter. Talk about antique. Anyway, the buddy who was working with me and I can't remember his name, big tall fellow, short curly blond hair, I have seen him in another picture) took the case and went down the street. I went to the sub's apartment and rang the bell downstairs. Couldn't even buzz me in in those days had to come down and open the door. He lived on the sixth floor. Anyway after buzzing and buzzing I determined that there was no one home, so I headed back to the corner where my backup was waiting and he snapped me with the camera. Notice my FiBi clothes.

I was working the IS (internal security) squad S-6 (security squad no 6) Nos. 1-5 had to do with foreign intelligence. Eg. one was for Russians, two for other soviet bloc countries etc etc etc. S-6 did internal security which meant things like the Communist infiltration in the labour movement, the Communist party itself and its various offshoots like the Young Socialist assiance to which the young couple I was bothering belonged to.

At this time, we were living in Cheverly Maryland in the brick house with the little play house, (shed - with the termites in the floor and walls) in the backyard. This was around the time that we have pictures of you in a blue coat and bonnet type hat playing with plastic Easter eggs. Also around the time that you fell and cut your forehead where you still have the scar. Joe was already born then but I'm pretty sure that Kate wasn't so It was more likely spring-summer 69 or summer-fall 68. Probably the 68.

Charlie Ferguson was supervisor of the squad...he later hung himself in his basement wearing his wife's underpants...FBI - go figure. I was riding in a car pool with a guy who shortly after this jumped out of the fifth floor of the FBI headquarters. Go figure FIBI. Not quite the picture you get on the tube these days/

genug, I'm getting maudlin....It was an exciting time. The antiwar protests were in full swing. Marches on Washington, surrounding the Pentagon and chanting OM OM OM OM OM etc to levitate the evil spirits from it's confines. Hippies, yuppies and yippies marched, chanted, used expletives on their picket signs (which was the thing that got the PD all upset) and made love on the lawn of the Capitol building under the bushes and anywhere else they could think of. One couple was arrested for "fornicating on the steps of the Washington monument"...37th landing...like who was watching???

Go figure...Life is a series of chuckles interspersed with an insane, lunatic bout of real down to earth laughter...if only you can look at the lighter side...

Love you Hope this is not too far out to make the book

Oxon Hill

The picture you have in your letter above was taken in Oxon Hill, Md, in the apartment we moved to when we first got there. It was a ground floor with a patio, two bedrooms. You are on my lap after I returned home from work. You are about 6 months I think. That is the apartment where the infamous hand face on the floor under the door picture of you came from. You don't look especially happy and perhaps that is the reason...

The Viking

I am standing at the end of the hall on the third floor of Christ the King Seminary in Olean New York. I am wearing a costume that I put together for a Halloween party...one of the rare social events we ever had at the school that I can recall.
I had seen Kirk Douglas in the movie the Viking and I decided to imitate his outfit. In the movie Douglas is attacked by a big bird Eagle or hawk and his left eye is clawed leaving scars of three talons top bottom and side. So first with the aid of Dave Yochim a classmate who had been a prop man for highschool plays I split a large marble and with face putty created itover my eye with the scars highlighted by red dye.
Earlier I had gone to the salvation army thrift store and bought the moth eaten old raccoon waist length jacket. This I took aapart to make the cape ovar my shoulders. From a fur collar on an old cloth ofrom the same source I made the fur briefs. The shirt under the cape was a sweat shirt inside out to look like wool and the sleeves which I took off and reversed became the leggings. Material from the lining of the coats I twisted to be the cord which held my leggings, the ties for the cape and the strap across my chest which held the scabbard for my sword. Dave Yochim completed the outfit by hand sewing a pair of felt boots out of some green felt like material he got somewhere. The sword was pieces of scrap wood from the workshop of the school covered with tin foil which I cadged from the nuns in the Kitchen. Overall it was a great outfit and I was in the running for best costume of the night but the judges thought that I was paired with another person who showed up in a tinfoil suit of armor and who kept challenging me to a duel. Lots of fun however and since the prize was only a candy bar , no great loss. Hope you enjoyed the story. It was in my second year at CKS, and I obviously had more time than common sense. But that's what being young is about. I hope that you can bring the picture in more closely because the work on the eye with the half marble and the make up was really the greatest part of the outfit.