<br /> <br /> Nana Brown my paternal grandmother, who took in and raised my father at an early age when his mother died shortly after giving him birth, was a person I happily spent many days and nights with when I was a young boy and on my way to becoming a man. What allowed me to enjoy such good fortune, rather than my older sister or my younger brother, to be chosen to spend my Summers in Thoroughfare remains to me, now and likely forever, a mystery.<br /> <br /> What made me so propitious that I was selected to spend my summer's in Thoroughfare, a place I wrote about with a fondness beyond description and was rewarded with twenty Downhome Dollars for so doing. Needless to say that when my reminiscences were published I felt a happiness, that only someone who had received acknowledgment by others, could ever understand. Adulation? Maybe!<br /> <br /> Now that I am older and supposedly more mature I can offer a multitude of reasons of why I was chosen to go to Thoroughfare for the two month's of summer rather than languish away in gray and foggy St. John's. So let me regale you with a summary of my two siblings (older sister and younger brother) and my thinking why I was and not one of them privileged to spend my Summers in Thoroughfare. <br /> My sister who I had, from an early age, nick-named "Bull" was not a shrinking-violet; liked by the boys but not many adults, loud and opinionated from a young age but sadly having died a premature death from cancer. My younger brother, born with an inherent meanness that was the likely cause of his three failed marriages and three abandoned children, was more than my grandparents could handle on their own. Dad, who more or less made most life decisions when I was a child, decided that I was the lesser of three evils and I would spend summers with my Nana and Baba. I never knew the true reason for his decision but it could have been monetary (one less mouth to feed) or maybe a benevolent one (he loved me best) but I will be forever grateful for the opportunity afforded me to spend my youthful summers with a person I will forever remember, love and adore. My Nana Brown.<br /> <br /> Memories of Newfoundland and all the people I grew up lives with me and makes me feel Newfoundland is truly my home despite the fact that I have lived in Ontario since three days before I turned the ripe old age of twenty three years, now over fifty four years. <br /> <br /> Newfoundland will always be "home to me" and anyone who was not born and raised in Newfoundland or anyone who has never experienced Newfoundland as a way of life life could ever understand the true meaning of HOME   Submitted By: Randolph Toope