A man showed up at the hotel in Sandon and told my mother he was hungry and wanted to know if he could do some work in exchange for a meal. It wasn't unusual for people to work for a meal, or for a night in the hotel. My mother didn't have much for him to do, so she told him he could go the bakery and pick up the hotel's order. She said he only had to tell the baker to charge the hotel as usual. The man returned without any bread because the bakery didn't have any. He told Mom if she had some yeast he would bake her some bread. Mom didn't have any yeast so he walked to the grocery store and returned to the hotel with some yeast. He baked the bread and continued to bake at the hotel for about a month, until he got a job working on the power plant.

A secretary in an office in San Fransisco that did business with the Mac and Blo mill in Ocean Falls got tired of hearing about the great time salesmen had when they made trips to Ocean Falls. She would listened with obvious interest to the endless stories about the beautiful country and the wonderful people. Knowing she would enjoy going to Ocean Falls, the men treated her to a trip to see the mill and the town. In those days people would have to take a boat that first went to Alaska then came back down the B.C. coast visiting the company mills. She was really impressed by the town and took a number of pictures. She wanted to add a few pictures to the collection on the San Fransisco office's wall that was covered with photos of the places the staff visited. She went through her collection and selected a photo she had taken of a cabin that sat on a picturesque point along the shoreline about a mile out of the town. The cabin was the town brothel.

My father would keep track of the deaths around Nelson then travel from town to town visiting the families of the deceased hoping to sell them a tombstone. He was once told by a friend that so-and-so had lost his wife. Next time Dad saw the guy he asked him if he was interested in getting a tombstone for his wife's grave. Things didn't work out. The man had lost his wife when she left town with a travelling salesman.

Once Dad took me on a trip to get some stone from a CN quarry outside of Nelson. A friend of Dad's and I travelled in the back of the truck. It was a really rough trip because the tires were solid rubber, not inflated. Dad's friend vinagled me into playing a game of "What can you do that I can't do." After a few challenges the man asked me if I could take out one of my eyes. So I asked him if he could take out his, so he took out his glass eye. I was about six at the time. Dad's friend was about 47 / 48.

When we moved into the house there was no telephone. The phone company said it would be at least six months before we would get a phone. Phones were rationed because of a shortage after the war. My brother Ken was working at the Invermay at the time and knew a fellow who drank there who was a real estate agent. He asked the fellow if he would be able to help me get a phone. The realtor said he could get one in no time. Months later I ran into the fellow and was about to ask him when he could deliver the phone. Before I could ask, he told me to tell my brother to stop yelling out to him on the street that Charlie wants you to give him a call.

Lots of things were rationed after the war, so on a Friday afternoon there would often be considerable effort put into getting your hands on a bottle. Most of the clerks at the government liquor store were Liberals so it wasn't too hard to get one of them to sign a ration card for you if you were a strong supporter of the party. Tom Uphill, one of the longest serving politicians in the Commonwealth, could always come up with something to drink on a Friday night.

Dr. McDaniel's father was the piano player at the silent movies in Nelson. He was also the projectionist. If the film broke he had to dash up to the booth and splice the film. When a reel had to be changed, a flashing white spot would appear in the corner of the movie. Stuart's dad would stop playing, run up to the booth, and switch the film. He quit work at the theatre and started playing the stock market. After struggling to keep up with the market while living in Nelson, he decided to move to Toronto to be close to the exchange. He left Nelson on the Kettle Valley Railroad to take the CPR to Toronto. By the time he got to Toronto he was broke. It was 1929. He later moved to Portland and bought a partnership in a liquor store.

I went to class in a one room school house in South Slocan. There was just one teacher for all eight grades. His name was Mr. Street. Every Friday he would give me a ride into Nelson so I could go to the butcher to pick up our meat for the weekend. I never spoke to him while I was in his class and we never spoke during the twelve mile trip into Nelson. He would stay at the hotel Friday night. I would have dinner at the hotel - Pork, vegetables, a drink, and a piece of pie all for thirty-five cents. I would go and see a movie and then catch the Kettle Valley train home. I was twelve years old. Sometimes I would meet Ed Mathieson and we would visit his father's bootlegging place. Ed and I would sit in a corner. Ed would whistle so his dad would bring us a ginger beer. Ed called the drink a "whistle." Ed once gave me two pigeons. I took them home in an orange crate, the kind that was divided in two - one side for each pigeon. A few days later Ed's dad came to get the pigeons. He said they were too young to be on their own.

My dad's hobby was fishing. He didn't fish around Vancouver, usually only when he was at Lantzville. One day he took me fishing on the Campbell River near the border. Lloyd Poole went with us. He brought along his son. We didn't catch anything. On our way home we stopped at the beach in White Rock and rented some swim suits and went swimming. Later we stopped at a cold storage place in New Westminster. It was where commercial fishermen put their fish. He bought a nice fish to take home. I can remember seeing the rental swim suits hanging on lines strung around the beach house at Kitsilano Beach.

My dad would fish with Donald Campbell and Malcom McKinnon when he stayed in his cabin at Lantzville. Donald had been a police inspector in Vancouver and had retired to a small farm in Lantzville.Dad visited him and decided to buy a place there. We visited with our kids once. Fresh milk from Donald's cow was in the fridge. I had to sneak up to the store and buy some pasteurized milk for the kids. It would have hurt Donald's feelings if he found out we'd not used his milk.

There were two Malcolm McKinnons. At one Malcolm's funeral I was sitting beside someone who had quite a hangover. When Malcom McKinnon with the wooden leg, the Malcolm who lived downstairs at Irene and Ken's summer place in White Rock, walked into the funeral home, the old guy thought he was seeing a ghost.

Mom and I were playing canasta with Irene, Ken and the Malcolm with the wooden leg. We'd probably had a few drinks too. Mom was getting impatient with Malcolm's slow play, so she kept telling him to hurry up, and she kept hitting him on his wooden leg. Malcolm was pretty deaf.