Memories

SEPTEMBER 5th, 1986

CHER MARCEL;

My souvenirs of Sophie and Moïse date back to my young years when I used to spend my summer holidays on the farm.

I remember nearly every room in the house and where the furniture and objects were placed. In the back of the house, there was a small shed with a well where Mémère had a cupboard on a pulley, where she kept her milk, cream and butter, and lowered the cupboard in the well to keep things cool. I used to help her make her butter, running the churn — she had her paper and wooden mold. I think that she sold some of her butter in Cochin.

Mother used to bring our shoes to be resoled in Pépères blacksmith shop. He was self-sufficient and very smart.

His pig stye was in the back yard. When he butchered a pig, he usually gave the pig his breakfast, then would stun him with a sledge hammer, slit his throat, and kept the blood and guts for Mémère to make sausages. Then they would hang the pig by its hind legs on a pulley and they lowered him in a tub of boiling water, then they would scrape him clean, ready for cutting up.

In the spring (I was about 5 years old), Pépère Moïse would gather the lost lambs and Judy and I would feed them milk in a bottle and nipple.

Mémère's chickens used to lay eggs everywhere and when we gathered the eggs we would find new-born chicks that Mémère would bring in the house and kept them warm in the kitchen stove oven.

Sophie made, very often, a big batch of beer. She would hide her barrel behind a big cupboard in the kitchen. She sometimes sold glasses of beer to travellers going through.

Moïse loved horses and spent a lot of money on purebred Percherons. He was so proud of them and Mémère would say, "Look at the old thing spending money on horses."

Sophie had been raised in a convent in Québec and was well educated and she taught Moïse how to write his name. He was smart and nobody could fool him. He could calculate the cubic feet of a hay stack in his head and had it right. He loved to sing and dance and loved music. There was a beautiful organ, in the living room, all decorated with mirrors and little galeries, and mother used to play on it.

During lent, Pépère would put his pipe away up on a shelf near the clock in the living room and would take it back on Easter Sunday.

I used to pester Alice and Alma, rummaging in their room — admiring their beautiful lacy valentines — and their dolls with porcelain heads with their hair painted black.

I would love to stay in the room with Mémère when she carded her wool and spun it on her spinning wheel. She would knit big woolen socks all the same grey-white.

I also loved to sink in their feather mattresses. All the girls had their feather mattress in their trousseau.

Well, I could keep on for hours, talking about my souvenirs of Sophie and Moïse, but time is running out for your book binding.

Bonjour et salutations.

Claire & Bernard (Gosselin)