Every small town has its characters, and mine had
Andy. As a small child, I remember
walking with my parents down Main Street as we ran errands. It usually meant stopping at the pharmacy,
the local grocery store where the proprietor was the butcher who wrapped your
cuts in brown paper and string, the post office where our box was number two
hundred-something, and most boring of all, the bank, where standing in line for
a young child seemed like waiting for Christmas. Once in a while we had to make other stops,
but for the most part, those were the only services our town afforded in those
days. Indeed, they’re much the same
today. The buildings are different, for
the most part. The shop keepers are
different, some the next generation inheriting family businesses. When I walk along Main Street now, which isn’t
often, the village seems so quiet, as though the few who still call it home are
hiding out, watching for strangers from a safe distance. There is a certain distrust in every small
town.
For a character like Andy to have settled in our village
with all his eccentricity was quite an accomplishment. As a small child, I would often keep my eyes
peeled for Andy’s vehicle. You couldn’t miss
it. If he was walking, you couldn’t miss
him either.
Andy MacDonald was already an older gentleman when I
first met him. I can’t remember exactly
when I did, nor can I count how often I ever interacted with him. Like many older folks who knew me without me
necessarily knowing them, I was to him ‘John and Joan’s boy’. Most children want to be known for themselves
of course, but I’ve never minded the stigma.
He had a long, grey beard, which grew whiter with the years. He dressed in sharp red tartans, wearing his
Scottish tam in public at all times. He
smiled a lot, and he interacted with people with ease. Trips downtown for Andy, unlike mine, were
never boring, because he seemed to be friends with everyone he met. Everyone knew him, and everyone liked
him. We often say that about people, but
rarely can we say it with such honesty.
He was just a nice guy.
I say ‘was’, because Andy passed away last week. He was 96 years old, and for a
near-centenarian, he was independent and mobile for all but the last couple
years. His passing made the news. You see, Andy wasn’t just a colourful
character. He was a published author and
some referred to him as a ‘humourist’.
In 1976, with the guidance of his daughter, Andy
published a collection of tales from his childhood, titled Bread and Molasses. His book
was an instant hit in our region. The
title was derived from his staple school lunch—a slice of homemade bread
drenched in molasses carried in a soggy paper bag. The setting was the 1930’s, at the height of
the Great Depression, in Sydney Mines, Nova Scotia, a poor mining town in Cape
Breton. He was raised by his doting,
loving mother, known in his books as ‘Ma’, his hard-working and severe father ‘Pa’,
and his numerous siblings. While he had
several older sibs that only fleetingly appeared or were mentioned, the main
stories focused on Andy himself, his twin Murray, older brother Billy, younger
brother Teedy, and baby sister Pearl. Like
most families in his town, they were dirt poor, and most of the tales were
about how the MacDonald kids ate, worked, played, slept, and survived, in spite
of strict teachers, questionable employment opportunities, and the
ever-watchful eye of Pa. Throughout the
book, you get to know the family really well.
In my mind, I can picture how the kids might look, so vividly he
described them. Try as I might, I can
only imagine a young child version of Andy with a full grey beard and a tartan
coat.
One time, Andy accidentally knocked one of Pa’s giant
coal-mining mitts into the family stew pot, as the mitts were hanging over the
cooking stove to dry. The stew, of
course, was made from a rather expensive cut of meat, so when the black coal
dust began to froth up in the pot, ruining maybe a week’s worth of supper, the
family had to go back to—you guessed it—bread and molasses. It seemed that every time the kids were on
the verge of something big and exciting, it always seemed to fall apart, and
they had to fall back on what they already had.
Like the time they caught wind of an actual bathing suit they could
borrow for swimming, since all Pa could afford to buy them were second-hand
wool dresses for them to wear at the beach.
They had to find it on some guy’s boat drying after dark. When they snatched it up and ran, only later
did they realize all four brothers could have fit inside it simultaneously. There is more than one lesson to be learned
from that particular tale.
About two-thirds the way through the book, Ma passed
away. I remember feeling Ma’s loss when
I read it the first time. Pa, so strong
as the head of the family, had no real way of taking care of himself
domestically, so the children devised a schedule for preparing Pa’s lunch,
getting him up to work on time, cleaning the house, and preparing the
meals. One day, one of the brothers
accidentally woke Pa for work several hours too early, only to have him arrive
at the mine for work at an ungodly hour.
I could only imagine Pa’s reaction when he returned home.
Andy’s stories continued over four more books. You can read them and decide for yourself
which ones you like the most or least. I’ve
read them all, and I like them all for different reasons. His tales became more far-fetched with each
book, but were no less entertaining. He
told the ‘story’ of how he fought his twin Murray for supremacy in Ma’s womb in
his second book, Don’t Slip On The Soap. After his third book, Tell Pa I’m Dead, he began to include stories from his early adult
years, and by his fifth and final book, Don’t
Be Funny, Daddy, he began to include stories of his own family,
completing the circle he had begun so many years before.
There are very few alive now who can relate first-hand to
life in Depression-era Cape Breton.
Still, you could relate to Andy’s stories because there was nothing particularly
special about them. At the root of most
of them were fairly average tales most kids would understand. One example is the game the brothers and
their friends used to play, where they crawled around on all fours like cows,
and one would be the farmer, letting them out to graze in the pasture, and
guiding them back to their stalls. I
think everyone made up silly games when they were kids, but Andy was able to
tell it in a way that made you want to go crawling around, mooing and chewing
grass yourself. He hated going to
school. Who wouldn’t, when the teacher
was cruel and your mind was on the towering cliffs, crashing waves and rocky
shores? He reminded us that you could
still be a success in life even if you weren’t keen on reading and writing.
Andy was known for his books, but he became more famous
for his other significant pass-time. He
was retired as far back as I remember, but he spent most of his time creating ‘dummies’
out of recycled items, anything from old clothes to jug bottles. He made goofy-looking little characters, and
wrote sayings on signs made from scrap wood or vinyl siding that described
their personalities. He literally
created hundreds of dummies, and arranged them all over his property, eventually
calling it the ‘Dummy Farm’. ‘Andy’s
Dummies’ became a tourist attraction. He
notably posted signs advertising his farm every few miles between Sackville and
Port Elgin, so you really couldn’t miss it.
Andy’s car, the same one I used to watch for on Main Street, famously
had a dummy fastened to one of those old woven-strap lawn chairs on the
roof. I once saw Andy driving by in
Moncton, only because his dummies gave him away.
In my university years, I took a job for the village of Port
Elgin at the tourist booth. My job
was to keep the grounds clean, literature updated, flowers watered—standard
fare for a small tourist stop in a small town, except I had one rather unique
responsibility. As a village, we were proud of our
resident author, and as he was promoting his fourth book, ‘Tis Me Again, B’y’, we had one of Andy’s dummies as a prop we kept
outside the booth. It had to be brought
out in the morning and brought in at night.
I remember boxes of that book sitting behind the counter waiting to be
bought. Ironically, today I find that
one the hardest to track down; it was the last one I had to get to complete my
set.
Last year, I found myself searching for a decent book I
could read aloud to my Grade 3 and 4 students.
Most of the well-known ones are either made into movies or have already
been read. I thought I’d try Bread and Molasses, because I figured
the stories would relate to the small town kids I was teaching, not to mention
it was a Maritime book from an author I actually knew. Sure enough, it was a huge hit. The kids begged me to continue it when it was
time to switch to another subject.
When I heard the news that Andy MacDonald had passed
away, I felt a sadness I have only felt for lost family members, even though I didn’t
know him particularly well. I will never
meet so gifted a storyteller. I like to
tell stories too; I have always looked up to him as a mentor of sorts in his
ability to take a simple moment in time and weave a magical story from it. He was as witty as he was kind. One day, I was canvassing with my Cub pack
for Apple Day, and when Andy greeted me at his door, he bought an apple, then
gestured to the apple orchard in his back yard.
He showed me some of his dummies around the yard that day. It makes me sad that I can’t remember any of
their personalities.
I will, however, forever remember Ma, Pa, Billy, Murray, Teedy,
Pearl, and of course, Andy. I had
briefly considered having my students write to him after we had read Bread and Molasses to let him know how,
generations later, his life growing up in the ‘hungry thirties’ was still
capturing young imaginations. I wish I
had. Who knows how many young writers
have put their pen to paper because of Andy?
I can name one for you right now.
