Dancing In a Jar (5 page)

You will be pleased to know I’ve become a dedicated churchgoer, although maybe not in the way you envision. Every evening I have
been accompanying our landlady, Mrs. Giovannini, to church to light a candle and say a prayer for a few men from the community. Along the way, we call upon a few others and eventually the children of one of the men, a Mr. Louis Etchegary.

There is so little opportunity here that some of the men have taken work smuggling liquor by boat from the French islands close to here into New York. In fact, the tots of Glenlivet you both have in the evening could well be thanks to these men! They have been doing this during much of the Prohibition and have been careful to not find themselves inside U.S. territory. However, on this last trip they weren’t quite so lucky. Apparently, their ship, called the
Which One
, strayed inside the limit while making a handover. The Coast Guard arrested the whole lot of them and they are now sitting in jail in the Bronx. It appears that the fight to end the Prohibition is not going out without some fireworks!

The Etchegary children lost their mother a few years ago, so you can imagine there are lots of prayers joined with theirs when we go to church in the evening.

I have been adding to my language glossary too. This week Mrs. G asked me to “Sing out to Walter. I’m after running out of flour.” That meant I was to tell Walter to go to the store for his mother. Their language is peppered with the prettiest kinds of words.

I will write again very soon. Don always reminds me we have to catch the mail boat before it leaves or else you’ll be worried. But please don’t worry about us. Although the place is rough, the people have been very sweet
.

Love to you both,
Urla

St. Lawrence, Newfoundland

November 18, 1933

Dear Mother and Daddy,

Wind has delayed the mail boat, so I thought I would send you another quick note today. It might keep the mail boat down, but not the women of this town. Mrs. G declared this morning “It’s a grand day for a line of clothes.” The whole town has clothes drying, and flying, horizontally on long lines and the town looks like it is celebrating something.

I laughed at Daddy’s comment that I must be growing gills from eating so much fish up here. While this is primarily a fishing village, the fishing has been so poor and the prices so low that not many are fishing right now. But everyone has a flock of sheep, pigs, and cows, so we have plenty of lamb, pork, and beef. Some days we have duck or ptarmigan. And everything is eaten with potatoes. Don says many of the men who work with him go through a sack of potatoes a week.

Our real treat is cream of wheat in the morning, but only if it has been smuggled in from Saint Pierre. If you have to buy it in the shops here it is sixty-five cents a package. Oranges are three for twenty-five cents, so you can imagine how few of them are eaten.

On the other hand, you can get a pair of wool socks for sixty cents. Everyone here wears all homemade and homespun woollens. They shear their own sheep, spin their own wool, and knit up a storm. I’m surely the only woman in this country who doesn’t know how to knit but I’m intent on rectifying that soon.

Don is working so hard at the mine and I am so proud of him. Since he arrived they have built a two truck garage, a workshop, a house for the crusher and one for a compressor. I’m not sure what all of this is, but he seemed pleased!

They are very short of medicines here and I’m wondering if you could send some things for them to keep out at the mine site? I told Don I
would ask you. They need two large bottles of iodine, two large bottles of Argyrol, and six medicine droppers. It will be wonderful if you could send those out and Don will reimburse you later.

I hope you’re not working too hard, Daddy, and that you have enough time to give Sturdy his daily walks. He must be feeling a little lost with both Ivah and me away at once
.

Love to you both,
Urla

St. Lawrence, Newfoundland

November 20, 1933

Dear Mom, Pop, Howard, Edith, and King,

Well hello from your daughter-in-law. I’m sorry it has taken me this long to check in from our new home, but we have finally settled in and I thought it would be a good time to write.

We really couldn’t ask for nicer people to stay with. Their house is among the nicest in the town. Many of the houses are very rudimentary, some of them elevated on posts with no cellars and no attics, and it always strikes me as odd that the place with the worst weather has the poorest house construction. The wood around here doesn’t lend itself to strong beams and grand houses. It is short scrub pine and spruce, and hardly any use for firewood even. Most of the houses are heated with small chunks of wood and also coal that comes in from Nova Scotia, Canada. There’s usually only one stove and that’s where everyone gathers as the weather turns cold. On the first cold evening, Don and I turned back the bedspread only to find beach rocks, hot from the stove, inviting us in to a toasty bed. What a treat!

I would love to take a photograph to give you a better idea of our surroundings, but instead I will test my descriptive abilities to make you feel as though you are here.

The hills all run down to the sea to make this lovely protected harbor. At the head of the harbor, the rocks run straight up for hundreds of feet forming Cape Chapeau Rouge. On the other side is a matching granite formation, slightly smaller, called Calapoose.

There are no marshes or dunes or flats. In fact there are no easy transitions from one piece of geography to the next. The sea meets an abrupt end everywhere it touches whether it’s a cliff face, a rocky beach, or a big patch of alders. In many ways, it’s like so much around here: all hard edges, hard lives, and hard stories. I will admit it is overwhelming to me at times and I long for the softness of my life at home.

On the other hand, I’m starting to see glimpses beneath the hard exteriors that are intriguing. When I expected that soft, idyllic image of a remote village, I now realize the people would have been soft too. The hardness is an adjustment, but I’m starting to see that the trade off in terms of people may well be worth it.

Don is terribly busy at the mine and working seven days a week. He is determined to get fluorspar on the wharf as soon as possible. I am glad he now has the company of Doc Smith, who entertains us at night with stories and is a great bridge player too.

Mom, you would be thrilled to learn he is an ideal husband. Just as you counseled, I left his socks exactly where he dropped them for two days and he got the message and has been more attentive ever since—well-considered advice!

I must also write Ivah today and want to get both these letters on the
Glencoe
, hopefully tomorrow. Sometimes gusty winds will keep the mail boat from entering the harbor, so I will pray hard that these get to you tomorrow.

I hope this finds you all well and excited for your Thanksgiving feast. We will sure miss the turkey and trimmings, and you all of course.

Love,
Urla

Water Street
St. Lawrence, Newfoundland

November 21, 1933

Dear Ivah,

I hope you notice my official address now that I am a chatelaine on Water Street. Thanks for the news from Bucknell and your booklist. I love hearing about your classes and all the work there is to do. Don’t be too taken in by your roommate, as I’m sure she has moments of feeling very doubtful herself, even if she hides it well.

I wonder could you send me some books from the list I’ll attach to this letter? I had better get busy if I am to start honing my skills as a world famous writer! I have looked about in people’s homes, but I’ve yet to see a book or a bookcase and I’m a little afraid to embarrass them or me by asking. To be honest, I was expecting perhaps some literary provincialism but I wasn’t expecting a literary wasteland. Oh dear. Luckily I have the cold to take my mind off the isolation.

There is a library in the town of Grand Bank, where we stopped on our way to St. Lawrence. But I’m not yet desperate enough to venture onto another boat, so I am taking my time reading the books I brought with me. Anything you can send me, dear Sis, would be well appreciated.

I am slowly coming to know some of the women in the town. There are two sisters, Ena and Gertie Farrell, who have come calling a few times. I am seesawing between young women my age who are unmarried but barrels of fun, and married women who have so much to teach me that I would like to sit at their feet all day. But they are already carrying the weight of children and housework so the last thing they need is a puppy like me around. They never seem to complain, certainly not in my presence, and carry about their days completing enormously under-appreciated tasks. And there is little respite from the housework. I think of Mother painting dishes in the afternoon or sitting quietly to read or needlepoint. That seems a world away.

But the other day I thought of something: maybe it is incredibly important that these women use their intelligence simply to manage the household, and to make life as normal as possible for everyone around them. It is a very noble role. I have never really seen it that way.

Then there are times when I think of how awful my days would be to not have options or to imagine what else I might do in my life. Don has mentioned that mining is opening up in Mexico, and on days when I feel impossibly cold and damp I imagine me under the bougainvillea trying to cool off.

I wonder if the women here have dreams like mine? I don’t know anyone well enough yet to ask, but from what I see, their options are so very limited. Yet no one looks miserable, and at the risk of oversimplifying, I am now starting to see this perhaps as a bit of a gift in that they know what the future holds for them. I’m trying not to panic at the fact that I don’t have a clue about what it holds for me.

Let me get this finished so I can make the mail boat. I hope there will be some more news from you when the
Glencoe
arrives.

Love to you both,
Urla

. . . . . . . . . . . .

Since the letter is still open I will tell you about a recent cultural highlight! Everyone was excited that a new movie was coming to town. You can imagine our reaction when we heard it was Charlie Chaplin in
City Lights
so that tells you something about how far behind we are. They also had the Passion Play showing. As it was strictly a Catholic affair, Don and I decided to go on Saturday as the Passion Play was on Friday only. But the priest here is very wise and knew that the Friday night audience didn’t need the Passion Play, so he saved it for the wicked devils on Saturday night. We were seated right up front and couldn’t leave without being noticed! Bet you haven’t had a Saturday night like that!

St. Lawrence, Newfoundland

November 22, 1933

Dear Pop,

Thanks for your last letter and I accept your criticism that I’m writing more about the place than the work. I know it must strike you as funny that we could find so much to talk about in a little town of 900 people. It surprises us too!

So onto the work.

I finally managed to get the men paid for some back work and now have a great team working on the Black Duck site. While I was waiting for the financing to come through I ran a few survey lines into the mine, through some of the toughest country I’ve ever walked through. I certainly won’t need to worry about gaining weight! This site is further advanced than I was expecting from Siebert’s account. By that I mean the size of the exposed vein and the quality of the fluorspar. The mine site itself, on the other hand, is just a ramshackle operation and not quite as Siebert had described. He has firmly told me there will not be enough money to pay the men and improve the facilities, so I am sticking to just being able to pay the men. I am hoping to sink a new shaft this week. Mostly though it’s an open pit.

The plan is to have 2,000 tons of fluorspar on the wharf by this spring. We will ship it to Dominion Steel and Coal Company (DOSCO) in Sydney, Nova Scotia. If it meets their standards then we have a going concern. The ore in Black Duck is very high grade with up to 95% calcium fluoride and very few contaminants.

Right now it’s more like a deep sewer trench than a mine. The water problem is acute. I can see that going any deeper at the Black Duck will be difficult. The motors that Siebert sent with me are helping for now but we have had to repair the main one twice already to stay ahead of the flow. I have ordered good pumps and pipe to come to Saint Pierre, where the lack of tariff makes them affordable.

I am heading over there in a couple of days and will have more to report then. I will check out the market for wrought-iron products as you asked.

For any packages you want to send, address them to me in care of M. A. Maufroy, Saint Pierre and Miquelon. That should do it. We are heading over principally for dynamite and hope to pick up a ton to bring back. The boat is also taking over about twenty empty boxes that will come back labelled 40% dynamite, but will carry everything from truck springs to false teeth.

I would like to get a good supply of gas from Saint Pierre but that doesn’t look possible. All our gas here comes from the Imperial Oil Company of Canada who has a ten year monopoly. I swear they’re shipping all their junk here because we get at least three gallons of water in fifty gallons of gas. We have a problem keeping the gas lines from freezing tight so that adds to our woes.

I took a trip up the coast the other day in an open boat to see the original discovery stake that was placed there years ago. From the water you could see the wide vein of fluorspar glistening in the sun and I could see why it attracted attention. I’ve never seen so many ducks in my life and then just ahead of our boat were “jumpers”—porpoises to you. All in all it was one spectacular day on the water.