29Summer
Glorious Summer

Summer didn't come to our area on June 21. The first day of summer was marked by the last day of school. Major events like haying, hoeing potatoes, picking strawberries and outside painting were conveniently timed to correspond with the ending of the school year.

Summer was an exciting time. The anticipation of the events had been uppermost for several months: the Sunday school picnic, the family reunion, the church garden party and possibly either the Niagara Falls excursion or the Toronto Exhibition trip. Some of the more fortunate families had vacations. Few had cottages or even knew people who did.

There were several essential chores that had to be done. The screen door had to be hung, and possibly new screen installed, and mesh cloth known as mosquito netting had to be tacked to the outside of window frames.

Flies were a major problem and breeding areas for either flies or mosquitoes had to be taken care of. The stable and hen house had to be cleaned daily and limed. The fly swatter and sticky fly paper were the means of insect control.

One of the main events of the summer in some communities was the garden party. This is not to be confused with the English-type garden party hosted by the Queen. The garden party was a fund-raising event for the church.

There were several notable garden parties in the area of Mt. Brydges. Cooks Church and the churches of Appin, North Caradoc and Zenda were a few. These events were held outside, under the summer evening skies, and the entertainment consisted of a troop of professionals from Toronto.

One of the highlights of the garden party would be the refreshment booth, with hot dogs, watermelon, ice cream and bottles of pop. You could buy one of each and still have a nickel left from the quarter earned in the weeks prior to the garden party.

The stage of Cooks garden party was the concrete slab that formed the roof for the Town Hall cells. The audience sat on plank seats and the sky above provided the acoustics.

There was little change in the entertainment or the entertainers for the annual event. Harry Binns had a repertoire of old and current songs. He also had a wardrobe of costumes to go with the songs. Al and Bob Harvey sang, told the same jokes each year, and finished the evening with their "Yawning Song". Not many in the audience could resist yawning with them.

Lou Ayres accompanied each act with his piano playing. The old Town Hall piano never sounded so good; Lou had been one of the original Dumbell Troupe during the First World War. The unforgettable Claire Rouse would clown around on stage producing everything from a small mouth organ to a trombone from the pockets and folds of his dress suit.

No evening in a community with a Scottish heritage would be complete without a kilted ballad singer, with a crooked cane, singing the songs of Harry Lauder and the land of the heather.

Harry Binns and his wife Jessie Butts always thrilled the audience with their rendition of "Rose Marie", Harry dressed in a Mountie costume and Jessie in a stunning dress of the 1800s.

The garden party would end, but fond memories of the entertainers and the program would linger. The next year would be anticipated - audiences would laugh at the same jokes, thrill to each song and welcome the return of their favorite summer entertainment.

Few people remember if a summer was hot, dry, cold or one of the best on record, but everyone who ever travelled to Niagara Falls on the summer excursion train will remember the trip and the day spent at the Falls. It was a long day. People arrived at the station at 6 a.m., complete with stocked lunch baskets, the family including the children all decked out in their summer best, and everyone full of anticipation of the wonderful day.

The train left the Falls after the display of spectacular lights, and a weary group of passengers would be brought home in the early hours of the morning. Details of this excursion would be retold many times during the long winter months.

Several weeks before summer circus posters would appear on the sides of barns and some of the old buildings in the community, with fierce tigers jumping through fiery hoops and beautiful girls in tights on the highwire. These posters would be about as close as most of us would come to the circus, but each year those tigers appeared more ferocious than the year before.

Some people from the village always took the excursion train to the Toronto Exhibition and until the next year they would tell of their experiences - the wonders of the exhibition, the prize cattle and horses, the new developments in automobiles, radios and machinery; the midway shows with the fat lady, the dog-faced boy and the escape artist; the girlie shows, not fitt'n for people of high moral standing; and the games. "Four-four" beer was one of the highlights of the great exhibition.

Once we returned to school in the fall all of the adventures of the summer had to be reviewed, the impressions of each event explained and embellished with each telling. Maybe next year we would go to the circus.
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