Part Thirty – Recollections of Childhood

It is really a privilege to have lived through most of the 20^th century. I lived through the 1920’s and have many memories of that period, bearing in mind that during the year 1930 I was only 8 years old.

One of my earliest memories was living at the Comfort Terrace near the tennis courts. We moved from there to the house my parents bought on Prince Street when I was four (the house at that time cost $2000 and it took 15 years to pay off the mortgage). An early recollection was very general, that of impressions of the town. At that time the streets of Forest were not paved and the gravel streets had to be coated with oil every spring to keep the dust down. In the winter I remember a lot of sleighs and wagons on runners in the town pulled by horses. I can almost remember the smells at that time. Very few people had automobiles then and since anti-freeze had not been invented, they had to drain their radiators, remove the tires and put their cars up on blocks before the first freeze-up. Most of those that had cars, had either a Model T and later Model A’s, but there was the odd Pierce-Arrow, Stutz Bearcat and LaSalle.

At that time there were four or five livery stables in town that looked after horses and rented buggies. There were two blacksmith shops, one of which lasted into the 30’s. Most of these livery stables evolved into garages and eventually car dealerships as the number of automobiles increased.

The Kineto Theatre existed in the 20’s. My parents took me to two or three films – they were silent of course. One was Noah’s Ark and another was Uncle Tom’s Cabin. I did not see a talkie until about 1928 when I was taken to the Toronto Fair for a few days. The Kineto converted to talking pictures around 1929 or 30. All I remember of them was the Saturday afternoon matinee where they showed serials which always ended with a cliff-hanger to get you to come back next week. I think the admission price was 5 cents.

I remember being able to buy bubble gum with a sports or movie star card for a penny. We collected these things avidly and traded duplicates. These were not the first premium cards. Cigarette packages contained cards, one of which was a series of golf players. My father collected poker hands in his packages and when you got so many you could redeem them for prizes. I know we got a card table with these poker hands and probably some other gifts.

Kids today do not realize that up to the age of ten we would have maybe one birthday party where our friends would be invited. Other birthdays were family affairs and then not too special.

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