A & W – Angus & Winnie

Those of us who travelled on the commuter train to high school or work became a close knit group. Everyone got to know everyone else. In 1948-49, I was in my last year of high school when I became aware of a new presence among the high school crowd, a girl that I had never seen before. She was blonde and beautiful and I could feel palpitations in my chest so loud I felt everyone could hear them. Her name was Winnie Gorham and she lived at Crystal Beach, so she had to cross on the ferry and walk to Westfield Beach station to get on the train. It was also quite a walk from Crystal Beach to the ferry. It’s strange how one’s voice and movements freeze when they encounter a person of the opposite sex who they are attracted to. However, Winnie made it easy for me and I soon relaxed when in her company. We started dating and I spent a lot of evenings at the Gorham home at Crystal, quite often watching wrestling on the telly.

Mrs. Gorham was always very nice to me and brought tea and sweets and talked about life in general. Sometimes Winnie and I would stay in town after school and go to the show, coming home later on the bus. One of her sisters (Elsie I think) sometimes went with us. One of our first dates was to be a drive in my father’s car on a Sunday afternoon. I drove to the ferry but found that it had been unable to cross as the ice was running heavily. I was very disappointed and went to Ivan Kierstead’s store and looked out the window to see if it might eventually come. I waited quite a long time but it didn’t appear. Then,miraculously who should come walking up the road from the ferry landing but Winnie! She had come with some others in a rowboat.

Winnie’s father was Arthur Gorham who was one of the ferry operators and a fine man. He brought his car from his house every day and left it by the ferry landing, just out of sight of the ferry. The ferry didn’t run all night at that time, closing at 11 or 12 PM (I forget which) and the operator left at the appointed hour and went home. If there was an emergency, Bill and Edison Thompson lived very near and would be awakened to look after it as they were both operators. Art Gorham got used to me coming and going to court his daughter, walking the half mile or so to and from Crystal Beach. One evening he took pity on me and told me to use his car and bring it back before closing time. This I did many times until one night when I was very tired and brought the car back to find that the ferry was on the other side. I decided to wait in the car until the ferry came back and promptly fell asleep. Art couldn’t see the car from the ferry so he waited in the cabin for me to appear. He waited for over half an hour past his going home time, then decided to walk. He, of course, only went a few yards when he saw the car and me fast asleep. He wasn’t happy, especially since he had to start up the boat to take me across. My popularity decreased. However, my popularity also decreased with Winnie for other reasons as she had fallen in love with Eddie Leggett and eventually married him.

I met an older man on the train who hailed from Welsford, who sometimes used the train to get to work. Other times he travelled with his brother Stanley Jones by car. In the fall of 1949, after having graduated from Saint John High School, I started to work at the North End Branch of The Bank of Nova Scotia at the corner of Main St. and Douglas Ave. When I arrived the first day, having walked from Union Station to the bank, the manager Harry Burton introduced me to all the staff and lo and behold, there was Angus Jones, the assistant accountant, much to my surprise. It was interesting to watch Angus as he was a real country boy with no pomp or ceremony as he waited on customers and the older women flocked to him for his boyish charm and simplicity. Like all boys brought up in the country, Angus rolled his own cigarettes and these were the days when it was OK to smoke anywhere, even at work in the bank. I watched him one day as he was looking after a well-to-do woman, leaning with his elbows on the counter. He then reached into his jacket pocket and brought out the “makins”. He took out a cigarette paper and held it in his left hand while he poured tobacco into it with his right hand, letting the overflow drop on the counter. He then proceeded to roll the cigarette while more tobacco fell to the counter and he took great pains to lick the paper. The finished product wasn’t very pretty with tobacco sticking out both ends so he used his fingers to clear one end so that he could put it in his mouth. He left the tobacco sticking out of the other end and proceeded to scratch a match on the seat of his pants, all the while talking to the lady customer. When the match lit the cigarette, there was a burst of flame and smoke that got in the customer’s face until the loose tobacco was consumed. Then Angus drew a deep drag which you could tell he greatly enjoyed, and proceeded to blow the smoke into the lady’s face again. She took her hand to brush away the smoke from her face, smiled at Angus and carried on with her business. Angus had charm and he also was very good to me, helping me to learn the intricate workings of the bank and I appreciated his help. His habits never changed while I was there but in 1950 they transferred me to Belleville, Ontario and a whole different world.

The events that I have mentioned happened over sixty years ago, but these and many other incidents still stick in my mind. Imagine, remembering how a man rolled his cigarette over sixty-two years later.