Three Months When Dad Was Still Alive
Edith Jane Catton and young friend (name not known)
Introduction:
Edith was quite young when her father passed away. Would his passing have contributed to her aforementioned timidness? Surely. But in my mind at least, I do not feel her timidness was her defining feature. Her creative spirit, her artwork and much more stands out.
Her recollections continue:
NorwichWe have been here in Norwich for over fifty years, except for an 8 year stay in a small hamlet five miles away. I didn’t know then that my Dad was coming home. He died three months later, and last year I learned that his grandfather Catton had come to Norwich in 1852, and his great-grandfather Searls had arrived in 1818. We had really come home.
My earliest memories in Norwich concern those three months when Dad was still alive; we arrived on May 7, and he died on August 2, two days after Arthur was born and on Verne’s birthday.
Verne had soon become friends with Jack Vigar, who lived on the street just back of our house. Our house was next to the town water tank and the hydro building, and those two boys, five years old, were riding around the block on Jack’s tricycle, one steering and one pedalling, and the other standing on the back.
It was a sunny day “with cloudy intervals”; the wind was moving the clouds across the sky rather quickly. I happened to be outside when Verne and Jack went by on one of their trips; probably I wanted a ride. They stopped for a moment and pointed up toward the tank. “Look, the tank is falling over!”
I looked up, and sure enough, the tank was coming toward our house. I started to cry, and ran into the house to warn my mother. She came out and looked up, then told me the tank wasn’t falling.
But I could see it was! I continued to cry and finally Mother told me to go around the corner to my great uncle Arthur’s where my Dad was. I ran as fast as I could to my uncle’s. Dad was there talking to Uncle Arthur and he picked me up and asked me what the trouble was.
Sobbing, I told him my tale of woe. “Those little rascals”, he muttered. Then he turned around and pointed to the tank.
“You see those clouds over the tank? The west wind is blowing them to the east. If you look at the tank and the clouds, you can see either of two things. The clouds moving east, or an illusion of the tank moving west. It looks as if it is falling down, but it really isn’t. It won’t fall on our house.”
Then he comforted me once more against my fears. I don’t know why my mother didn’t explain this to me, but perhaps she knew I needed my dad at that moment. That scene is very clear in my mind though I was only seven.
Another day I remember walking down Pitcher St. on my way home. From somewhere I had received five cents, and had gone up to the main street and bought an ice-cream cone. I met my Dad- he was going up Pitcher St. as I was going down. He stopped of course and asked me for a bite of my ice-cream cone.
I remember him painting the fence on both sides of the parking lot across the road from our house. No doubt I was over there watching him and talking to him. Later I walked the top of that fence on the east side many times on my way to the post office or to the store and back.
Dad used to let me comb his hair (I have always thought I’d like hair dressing), and I recall him sitting on the front verandah, probably reading a newspaper, while I stood behind him on a box and combed his hair.
My only other memory of Dad was just after my brother Arthur was born. We had been sent to Uncle Arthur’s house to sleep overnight. I remember I lay awake for a while wondering why I couldn’t sleep at home, and the next day when we went home there was a new baby. Later my mother sent me upstairs to find out whether Dad was sleeping—he hadn’t come down.
I believe that earlier she had sent me with a note up the street to the Dr.’s house, because she had heard Dad threshing around and had worried about him, but the doctor didn’t come and so she sent me upstairs.
This was in the days when you didn’t dare get out of bed for two weeks after the baby was born, so Mother had had to lay there worrying about Dad. She was on a couch in the living room.
I crept upstairs and saw my Dad laying on the bed in a tangle of bedclothes; he was bare except for the covers around him, and lying still, so I presumed he was asleep and told Mother so. I was seven years old. Later in the day when Dad still didn’t come downstairs, Mother sent the practical nurse who was caring for her after the doctor again.
This time he came, and when he had seen Dad, came downstairs to report that Dad was dead. Mother always thought that if the doctor had come sooner, Dad might have lived as long a life as she has. But Dad was an alcoholic, and that’s what he died from, so he would not have lived a long and healthy life unless he had given up drinking.
I was probably not at Dad’s funeral. I only remember, in the days that followed, sitting out by the rhubarb patch, on a board, and feeling very sad and missing my Dad and wondering where he had gone.
From other pages, titled “The Norwich Years”
We moved to Norwich in May of 1930, when I was seven, the year after my grandfather Catton died. We moved into his small house— kitchen, pantry, dining room, living room, storage room and woodshed downstairs, and two bedrooms upstairs.
We children didn’t know it at the time, but Mother was expecting her fourth child when we moved, she was then nearly forty, as she had been thirty when Fred was born. I think now my father, who was not well, moved us to Norwich so as to be near his Uncle, who was comfortably well-off, and owned the small house to which we moved.
Whether my grandfather left the house to Uncle Arthur or whether he had owned it all along, I don’t know. My mother has told me that Dad bought the house and was to make payments as rent. However, when Dad died shortly after we moved to Norwich, the house ownership reverted to my great-uncle, who may have thought that we would have no money for repairs and taxes, which would have been true. He rented it to us for five dollars a month.
My memories of Dad after we came to Norwich and before he died are few. (See family history)
We made friends in the neighbourhood that summer, and at school when September came. Fred had been exploring the creek banks when he met up with some other boys who lived near the creek where it ran along one side of the cemetery— there were two families living across the road from each other on Avery’s Lane: the Aveys and the Farrells. Both families had two or three boys about my brother's age and he was spending most of his time with them.
Verne played with Jack Vigar who lived on the street just behind us to the south, and on Church Street which ran north and south there were boys and girls named Clark that we got to know. We lived on Front Street, just one block south of Main Street, and in one side of a double house on Main Street lived two girls close to me in age.
We moved to Norwich in May of 1930, when I was seven, the year after my grandfather Catton died. We moved into his small house— kitchen, pantry, dining room, living room, storage room and woodshed downstairs, and two bedrooms upstairs.
We children didn’t know it at the time, but Mother was expecting her fourth child when we moved, she was then nearly forty, as she had been thirty when Fred was born. I think now my father, who was not well, moved us to Norwich so as to be near his Uncle, who was comfortably well-off, and owned the small house to which we moved.
Whether my grandfather left the house to Uncle Arthur or whether he had owned it all along, I don’t know. My mother has told me that Dad bought the house and was to make payments as rent. However, when Dad died shortly after we moved to Norwich, the house ownership reverted to my great-uncle, who may have thought that we would have no money for repairs and taxes, which would have been true. He rented it to us for five dollars a month.
My memories of Dad after we came to Norwich and before he died are few. (See family history)
We made friends in the neighbourhood that summer, and at school when September came. Fred had been exploring the creek banks when he met up with some other boys who lived near the creek where it ran along one side of the cemetery— there were two families living across the road from each other on Avery’s Lane: the Aveys and the Farrells. Both families had two or three boys about my brother's age and he was spending most of his time with them.
Verne played with Jack Vigar who lived on the street just behind us to the south, and on Church Street which ran north and south there were boys and girls named Clark that we got to know. We lived on Front Street, just one block south of Main Street, and in one side of a double house on Main Street lived two girls close to me in age.
Just north of our house was a large parking space, where horses and buggies and cars were parked on Saturday night when the country people came to town to shop. To the west of this space was a large white house where a veterinarian and his family lived— there was one child, a girl, and she was also my age. There was no lack of playmates, though I know that two mothers, at least, thought I wasn’t suitable company for their daughters, since I was such a dirty, untidy, little tomboy.
I thought nothing of climbing fences and trees, going barefoot in the mud, getting my clothes torn and mud and rain spattered, and yelling at the top of my voice at our games. I had no sisters to play with and whenever we couldn’t play outside, and often when we could, my time was spent with my brothers, especially Verne.
More to follow.
Please click here to view Recollections: Mother's Own (Part 1)
Photos GH
