POSTING #57

Leo O'Neil's Barber Shop in Arthur

There were three barber shops in Arthur when I was growing up.

They were all equally adept at the old 'short-back-and-sides' haircut that was the fashion in Arthur at the time. Dad, my brothers and I patronized each shop, going from one to the other, but when I became a teenager I gravitated toward Leo O'Neil's shop.

I am not sure why I settled on Leo's but looking back it was probably because his shop had more character. The other two were neat, clean, well lit and business-like.

Leo's place was different.

On entering the shop, one noticed that the front window was full of pots of huge rubber plants as well as of some kind of ivy that grew and grew. Leo carefully trained the ivy shoots up the wall, over a mirror, around pictures, and on around the room. It was hard to believe that water and nourishment could flow all the way from the pots in the window to the ends of the vines.

Leo and his large old-fashioned barber's chair were on the left, with a sink and counter against the wall and a large mirror above.

On the back wall of the shop were shelves with cubby holes that in the old days held the shaving cups used by each of the customers. By my time, few people got shaves and the cups were full of pencils, pens, screws, nails and bits of hardware.

On the right of the store was a round coal stove, a Quebec Heater, with an upper and lower door, the upper one for putting in the coal and the lower one for taking out the ashes.

Behind the stove and against the wall were old mismatched dining room chairs on which old-timers sat---retired farmers---who got out of the house each day to meet and sort out the weather, the state of the crops, the success of the local hockey team and occasionally local scandals and accidents.

Some of the men would be chewing tobacco and when the time came to spit, they would come around to the front of the stove, open the top door and expectorate. The hiss was something to hear.

As I say, Leo's place had character.

Leo was, I guess, in his early 60s and he could remember back to the turn of the century. I liked to get him talking about the old days.

Here is one of his stories.

He said that in 1900 Arthur, which was well shy of a thousand inhabitants, had three distilleries and five breweries.

When he was a lad, his father would send him to one of the breweries for a honey pail of beer.

I should explain that in those pre-plastic days, containers were scarce and relatively expensive, so people re-used them whenever they could.

Honey pails---five or ten pound size---with a wire handle were much prized, (They are much prized still, but now in antique shops, where they sell for up to a hundred dollars or sometimes more depending on the condition.)

Once when he came back with the pail of beer, his dad became angry because the pail was only three-quarters full. It wasn't Leo's fault, the brewery person had filled the top quarter with foam, which had disappeared by the time Leo got home.

The next time, Leo's dad put his finger in some butter and ran his finger around the inside top rim of the pail.

As soon as the foam touched the butter, it collapsed and the brewery was forced to give Leo a full pail of beer to take home to his dad.

Leo chuckled when he told that story.

ooo


During the winter of 1946-47, Arthur was cut off from the outside world for over a week because of a series of fierce snow storms. There were no snow blowers at that time and there was simply no room for the normal snow plows to push the snow. The roads that linked Arthur to the rest of the province were blocked.

Finally, a couple of horse drawn sleighs loaded with emergency supplies managed to get through by travelling over fields.

What emergency supplies did they bring in to the cut-off and suffering residents of Arthur?

Flour for the bakeries, so they could bake bread.

And beer for the hotels!


ooo

Talking of beer reminds me of my own days brewing beer. I started while we were living in England in the early 1960s and my early efforts (and failures) will be the subject of another posting.

When we returned to Canada in 1966, I discovered that to brew beer legally in Ontario I had to have a license. I prepared the required forms listing all the equipment I would be using and was told that I could start brewing but only in the location in which I was living at the time. I had to post the license in the room where I was going to brew---the basement of our house.

I would brew the beer in new, large white plastic garbage containers and then age it in 5 gallon glass carboys. After the beer had aged, I would siphon it using a rubber tube (listed in my license) into beer bottles.

When our two boys were about 6 and 4, they liked to watch the siphoning process. I think they were fascinated by the flow of beer up the tube and then down into the bottles. And they enjoyed watching as I pinched the tube to stop the flow as one bottle was filled and then transferred the tube to another bottle, all without stopping the siphoning process.

They badgered me to give them a chance to suck on the siphon tube. Assuming the statute of limitations has expired on endangerment of young lives, it is OK to admit that I agreed to let them have a try. I explained that you had to give one really big pull on the tube and then quickly insert the tube in a beer bottle.

Again and again I warned them that if they got a mouthful they had to spit it out immediately.

They proved to be very good students, and as far as I can recall they never got a mouthful.(Pat seems to recall that they did---we'll have to ask them to settle the issue.)

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See you next Sunday for Posting #58 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or email me at johnpathunter@cs.com.