Here’s to 100
Irene Totten will mark her 100th birthday this Friday and recalls the way things were
Straw mattresses and scrub boards.
Looking back over her 100 years, those are two elements of her life that Irene Totten is happiest about putting behind her.
“Washing machine,” Totten declared without hesitation when asked a few days before her 100th birthday about her favourite technological advancement.
“That was the hardest job in life, a wash tub and a wash board on two chairs,” she said, of doing clothes by hand.
“And sleeping on a straw mattress,” she added, of another aggravation from the days of old.
“After the oats was cut and dried we used to save the straw out of it all and use it to make your bed.”
All these years later she still recalls the sensation of getting jabbed by the ends of straw that would poke out.
“And it was damn sharp, too,” she said.
Although other more modern mattresses had been created before then, the innovation did not reach her home in MacPhees Corner, near Shubenacadie, until she had reached “womanhood.”
“That was the biggest change that I ever had in life. You just said, that’s God’s blessing. Never, ever expected to come in life to have a nice felt mattress to sleep on,” she said.
“Oh my land. The old mattress, you opened the window and threw them out.”
Totten (nee Drysdale), was born Sept. 8, 1917, to parents Bert and Mary Drysdale at MacPhees Corner near Shubenacadie.
“That’s a long time ago,” she chuckled, of her birth date.
The third eldest of 12 children, she was raised on a small farm, like many others of her day, when a few cows and a horse were a standard part of everyday life along with planting and harvesting crops and essentially just living off the land.
“We had cattle because there was so many of us to drink milk we had to have cows,” she said. “And we had to have a horse to help do our gardening.”
Life wasn’t easy, and there was lots to do, she said, including being “down on our hands and knees with a scrub brush.”
Growing up before school buses, Totten recalled walking three miles each way to her oneroom schoolhouse.
After Grade 10, she went to work housekeeping f as well as doing babysitting for neighbour- ing children, before becoming a cook at a lumbering operation.
“I used to be a cook in the woods for the lumbermen, cutting logs and hauling them to the mill. I had the woods crew and I had the truckers and I had the mill crew,” she said.
Totten’s longevity saw her outliving two husbands and her only child. She also believes she is the only living member of her own family although she can’t be certain, after losing contact with a couple of her siblings who moved to Ontario many years ago.
Except for a few minor afflictions throughout her life, Totten still enjoys good health and both her mental faculty remains fully intact — along with her sense of humour
Asked if she’s excited about her upcoming centennial birthday, her response is immediate and succinct.
“Well, I would say so,” she said, with a mischievous glint in her eyes.
But just how special a birthday is it, she is asked.
“They’re all special,” Totten said. “You come to think back, they’re all special. Once you come in the world and you’re still here at that age, well, just say I’m spe- cial.”
As far as sharing advice to the younger folk, Totten admits it probably wouldn’t be welcomed anyway.
“They’d go and tell me to sit down somewhere,” she said, with another chuckle.
But then she does offer up a pearl of wisdom that has been used to guide her own way through her 100 years.
“It’s just life. You are going to live your life, live it,” she said. “One day at a time. One hour at a time. When you go to do some- thing, do it. Don’t leave it. Don’t start something and leave it laying there half done. Pick it up and finish it.”