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Chewing pitch
I found the letter on the street cars in the March edition of your magazine interesting, especially the part about people chewing the pitch that was used between the cobble stones on the streets of old St. John's. I assume some of them lived a few days after doing that. I attended St. James Anglican School in Port aux Basques back in the 50s. Not too far from our school was the United Church Academy which burnt down in 1952. I remember seeing it burn from our porch window that night and I remember the empty spot left in the landscape as I walked pass the ruins the next day. There was always some rivalry between the students of both schools with many snowball fights. As far I know no one got seriously injured but there were many students from our school that got strapped after participating in the attacks. It wasn't long until construction on the new school started and it is now the Home Hardware store in Port aux Basques. Among the building materials on the site were many cylinders of hard black pitch which came wrapped in cardboard. This was used as part of the roof construction. Many students from our school would go to the site and pick up small chunks of the pitch, chew it and spit the black juice on the ground like you would chewing tobacco. It wasn't long before the cry went out that "the anglicans were eating the roof off the new united church school." Joseph W. Roberts Conception Bay South Submitted By: NULL
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