The Little Cove had its share of characters even though there never was more than thirty-five people living there at any given time. I remember one time when Nan hitched a ride up the shore with Din. She put out a wash of clothes before she left, knowing she would be back later that day. It promised to be a beautiful summer day with a nice breeze, ideal for drying clothes outdoors. She came to Carbonear to visit Mom and do some shopping. I was all excited because I was going with her when she returned to the Cove. Din stopped by later in the evening and had a lunch. Nan and I got into the cab of his truck for the ride down the shore.

If you drive to the Cove from Old Perlican, even today you can see Nan’s house from the top of Gravel Hill a mile or more before you reach the top of the Cove. It’s the only house you can see from there and Nan’s house is the last house in the Cove on the way to Grates Cove three miles down the road. Nan’s house looks the same today as it did when I was a little boy. It was restored a few years ago. I said it looks the same from the outside, inside it’s modern with electric appliances, two bathrooms and running hot and cold water and central heating. There was no bathrooms or heating when I spent my summers there long ago. The only time we had running water was when me and Nan got caught in the rain.

Nan washed her clothes in a big galvanized washtub with a wooden was board and a cake of Sunlight soap. The heavy quilts were wrung out by hand and draped over the fence to dry because they were too heavy for the clothesline. You didn’t want to break it and if you ever did, for some reason Nan would get Vince who lived down the lane to fix it for her, He also tarred the roof for her and made other minor repairs when needed.

The say was warm and sunny with a gentle breeze. The road down the shore was gravel then and very dusty on a dry day. I was sitting between Din and Nan. There were no seatbelts in cars and trucks back then. Most of the time when I rode with Din it was just the two of us. My feet didn’t touch the floor of the cab and when we went around a turn I would usually slide over to the passenger door and when we turned the opposite way I’d end up almost in Din’s lap. It was fun. I loved being in that truck. It had a standard gear shift, a rod that came up through the floor with a round knob at the top. Din always drove with one hand on the wheel, the other on the gear shift.

As we came to the top of Gravel Hill, we could see Nan’s house off in the distance. But there was something flying from the flagpole outside Nan’s house. You couldn’t tell what it was from the top of the hill, and when we got to the bottom of the hill we couldn’t see anything. We drove on through the Cove to Nan’s house and when we came through the trees across from John Thomas’ house, Nan saw what was on the flagpole. Imagine Nan’s shock when she saw a pair of her dark blue bloomers flying in the breeze atop the flagpole. She knew right away who the culprit was, of course, because there was only one person in the Cove with enough devilment in him to do the like of that. Well, Nan wasn’t long taking the makeshift flag and the rest of her wash from the clothesline. She was fit to be tied and couldn’t wait to confront Vince.

After Nan made supper for herself and me, she watched through the windows to see if she could see him on his way to the brook. After all, it was wash day in the Cove and he would have to refill their water barrels. Lo and behold, she spotted him coming up the lane with his wheelbarrow with the water barrel built in – they had two big barrels on their back porch which he had to fill which meant several trips to the brook. Nan figured to wait until he filled the wheelbarrow, that way he couldn’t get away from her on his way back home. So she watched and waited until he left the brook. Then she went down the hill to the lane and waited.

He couldn’t get away from her, she blocked the lane. “I know it was you who hung my drawers up the flagpole, you devil’s kin. That wasn’t funny you know!” she scolded. Vince just looked at her with a big grin on his face and in a very serious tone said, “I heard the Bishop was coming and I had to put out the flags.”

Cyril Griffin
New Perlican, NL