Salt of the Earth
I just came into the house after splitting wood for an hour or so, quite invigorated. Goldie made a fine roast chicken supper complete with gravy, a wee bit of salt beef, some new cabbage, new spuds, along with the rest of the typical cooked Sunday dinner trimmings. It’s summer and we tend to not follow tradition schedules.
On Sunday, winter cooked dinner day, we took a rainy road trip to Heart’s Content and along the Trinity Bay shoreline. The scenery was lovely, both ocean and landscape, but I took particular notice of how folks had their wood stacked for summer drying. Chopping and stacking wood was on my mind. An hour working on my woodpile this evening put a clever dent in my supper and got me thinking.
Folks go to all sorts of trouble and lengths to burn calories and get sufficient exercise to maintain a healthy body. I think sometimes about days past when there were no gyms. There was no need for treadmills or rowing machines. If people lived off the land, spending most of their time outdoors, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone overweight. Imagine the work that goes hand in hand with heating a home and cooking with firewood.
When my father was a young man, along with his brother Reg, he would walk 10 miles or so behind a horse and sled, and for good measure cut a load of wood with an axe. There were no chainsaws. There were no ATVS or snowmobiles. And a gym would have been a seriously unprofitable business venture.
You may question why I’m splitting and stacking wood in early August. That’s fair. I should have completed that chore in May, but I was in Florida chasing around snook, bass and tarpon. I try to do traditional things in my life but not necessarily in proper order or sequence. Then I went salmon fishing.
My father and Uncle Reg had more practical matters to attend to, like getting garden fences in order and vegetables all planted before it was time for the Labrador fishery. There was no time for two-week sport fishing trips, and certainly no spring holidays to the sunny south. It was a totally different world. I wonder if we have what it takes anymore. They were a tough breed.
Let me tell you about the toughest woman on this planet. She is small in stature, but a force of nature getting stuff done. Mrs. Edith Toope turned 90 years old a few weeks ago, and Goldie and I were in Trinity East for her birthday celebration. She’s originally from Ireland’s Eye, Trinity Bay, but she and her husband, Eli, moved to Trinity East in the early ’60s. Eli passed away a few years ago, a lifelong fisherman, saltwater hunter, moose hunter, woodcutter, and very skilled boat builder.
I learned a lot from the Toopes and both Mrs. Toope and Eli are very dear to me. I only wish I had a video of them picking turres. That would be something.
Buddy Wasisname thought he was tough pulling over a Corvette engine with a pull-cord. I figure Mrs. Toope could do that with one hand, in her day. She tore down an old fence just a few weeks before her 90th birthday, and pulled up the stakes herself. Tough hey? At nine decades of age, can you imagine?
Let’s wander back to this exercise/splitting wood business. You know, it really is a workout. Well, I’ll have you know that Mrs. Toope has her winter’s wood all split and drying in her yard, with no help from anyone. Not that friends and family wouldn’t lend a hand — no sir, she just wants to do it herself. And I took notice. She really knows how to stack wood, second to none.
It’s funny how you notice the details when you have an interest in something. Let me explain this stacking wood business I’m going on about.
Lots of folks stow their wood in rows with vertical posts at both ends to keep the whole thing from collapsing. Not Edith Toope, and those who know the art. The trick is to leave out the posts and cross pile split junks at either end. Take notice driving up the Great Northern Peninsula. Some folks in that neck of the woods know how to stack wood.
But it’s one of those dying arts I suspect, like splitting fish and filing a handsaw. Mrs. Toope stands tall at the end of a generation of living-from-theland-and-sea, salt-of-the-earth Newfoundlanders. Tourism will never replace the true self-reliant outport way of life. Only tiny pieces remain.
Let me tell you about getting stuff done. In the spring of 1982, I was boarding with Eli and Mrs. Toope. I came home for lunch to find Mrs. Toope in the kitchen with the trout I had caught the evening before sizzling with fat pork in her cast iron pan. She had homemade bread cooling on the counter, and she was standing on a wooden kitchen chair painting the ceiling with a brush. She told me she had been down in the stage all morning helping with a big tuck of fish. Now that’s getting stuff done. She probably made splits and lit the fire as well.
There are so many stories I could tell of my time spent with the Toopes. Edith would go to bingo on Thursday nights, and I’d pick up a bottle of dark rum for Eli and me. They were great chats. I learned so much about the old way of life. Eli spent endless hours hunting seals, ducks and turres. I’ve hunted with him and he could spot a seal so far away, in spite of having only one eye.
Best of all, I loved the woodcutting stories. All the men in Ireland’s Eye would leave home in the late fall and head to the mainland to cut wood and bring it home by boat. They would set up camp for at least a couple of weeks. And they had no cell coverage or satellite phone — imagine. What wonderful evenings they must have enjoyed around the fire after a hard day’s work. And Eli could rest assured that Mrs. Toope could look after things and keep the home fire burning.
I could go on and on. Edith Toope cooks the best turre dinner in Newfoundland and Labrador. Goldie and I had so many Sunday dinners at Eli and Edith’s. Fantastic always — turres, chickens, roasts alike. Eli and I would sit back afterwards and talk about moose hunting, schooners, boat building, fishing, and the like. Goldie and Mrs. Toope talked on quilting, family, food, and the old ways. We are so lucky to have such wonderful friends in our lives. There was no texting during conversations.
Mrs. Toope, I’m sure you will live to be a hundred, and you’ll likely be still stacking your own woodpile. Happy 90th year of getting stuff done from all of us who value the contribution to this land from people like you and Eli, salt of the Earth. We all owe a debt to you.