OUR VILLAGE

People who visited the village always wanted to see the mountain. The rolling fields of Caradoc sand had little resemblance to Mount Everest, Mount McKinley or even Hamilton mountain. On the roof of the C.N.R. railway station a sign board stated the place was Mt. Brydges and neatly lettered on one end, elevation 810 feet. The individuals who surveyed the railway right of way apparently discovered that the area at the top of the grade five miles from Komoka was the highest point between London and Windsor, 800 feet above sea level.

The elevation was difficult for villagers to check since most of them had never seen the sea or for that matter another mountain. The gray Geography book, used in all Public Schools of the period showed pictures of snow capped mountains in the Canadian Rocky Mountain chain. The history books of the era showed Jacques Cartier erecting a cross at Hochelaga with the mountains in the background. On a clear day, if you climbed the semaphore at the railway station, you could see a train leaving Glencoe or one clearing the Komoka yard.

Mt. Brydges was not an isolated community .It was only a short drive to visit relatives in neighboring communities or Delaware, Christina, Mount Carmel, Falconbridge, Longwood, Komoka, Muncey or Melbourne. The occasional trip to the city of London, with a good horse and buggy , was possible but with five passenger trains a day to and from the city , it rarely became necessary .

The day of the horse was still in evidence well into the decade of the '30s. The village supported two blacksmith shops, drive sheds at the churches, a stable at the Continuation School and hitching posts complete with horse droppings on the main street. On occasion, a horse auction of western horses would be held at the Commercial Hotel barn. It would be well into the '30s before a Ford tractor replaced the farm team.

The main street of the village was a gravel road. This thoroughfare was mainly full of ruts, puddles and mud after a rain, dust during dry periods and packed snow all winter. This changed in 1927 when the main street was paved from the second concession to what was known as the top of the town but a few hundred yards short of the fourth concession. It was a big event in the development of the village; no more summer oiling of the road with black, sticky, crude oil. The railway crossing wasn't the only dry crosswalk in the community during spring and fall. The highway builders removed the hitching posts and they were never replaced on the main street except the one hitching post; a traditional cast iron horse's head in front of Dr. Wood's residence.

The paving of the main street when complete was celebrated with a street dance and the general stores did a rushing business in the aftermath, selling new shoes. Numerous pairs of shoes found their way to the shoe repair shop of Joe Stover for half soles.

The village had a variety of sounds. The shrill whistle of the trains, called flyers, as they roared past the station or approaching the level crossing. The church bells clanged each Sunday, calling people to worship. The town hall bell summonsed the local fire fighters to a fire. The clang of the electric school bell that needed manual assistance when its use was required. The merry sound all winter of sleigh bells as fast cutters and high stepping horses brought their owners to town. The slow plodding of the heavy horses and the rhythm of the bells as the gravel sleighs proceeded through town in winter. The sound of the big saw ripping through logs at Longfield's saw mill. The steam whistle at the mill that was sounded to start work, announcing noon hour and the return to work, and the end of day.

The village sounds became a melody, those distinctive emissions of each local industry. The sounds of hammering and cutting coming from Harvey Mitchell's cooperage in the Crow factory. The clang of the blacksmith's hammer when Tom Rushby or Bill Hyatt made iron shoes to fit a heavy draft horse, a driver or a pony. The distinctive chug, chug of a steam engine pulling a grain separator on its way to a summer threshing. The mooing of cattle being driven along main street on their way to pasture and the shouts of the boys who urged them on and kept the beasts from wandering into a resident's yard. The distinctive sounds of the saws, planers, sanders and the shaper coming from the lumber mill and the variety of sounds emanating from the grist mill. These were the many sounds blended with the vehicle traffic of main street that characterized the village.

The quiet of a summer evening could be broken by the shouts of the spectators urging their hometown baseball team to win as they played behind the village hall. The yelling of boys playing cops and robbers among the lumber piles in Longfield's lumber yard echoed through the village or the shrill voice of someone's mother calling her offspring home before dark. Sunday evenings after church villagers could hear the crack of a whip, the shout of a youthful driver as he encouraged his horse to excel in the weekly main street buggy race.

The village was surrounded by farms and the familiar sounds of cows being brought in for milking, roosters crowing early in the morning, dogs barking, whinnying of a horse or the squeal of a pig reminded the villagers of their agriculture heritage.

The quiet time came at dusk; the axiom of early to bed early to rise, was personified in the village. The work day started at seven each morning for many villagers and ended at six each evening. The lights went out early and they would shine again before dawn as mother prepared breakfast for the family.

The solitude of the night might be broken by the whistle of a train, village people became accustomed to the noise of trains and if the noon flyer didn't come through at twelve noon, confusion would settle on the community; most people checked their clocks by the time the flyer roared through town.

If the telephone rang during the night it was a sign someone needed help. Either there was sickness in the home and a doctor was needed, or the veterinary was being summoned to tend a cow in labor or horse with colic. Nobody would ever think of making a frivolous call late at night; the telephone was reserved for emergency situations.

The blending of the sounds of a village became part of daily living. A change in one of the sounds, a missing sound or an alteration of the tempo caused a matter of concern for the community. Such instances became a subject for conversation as people gathered at the post office for their daily mail.

Village people became creatures of habit. The mail arrived four times a day. Jim Bronson met each train and trundled the mail to and from the post office in his two wheeled cart. Henry Bartlet and his able assistant Mary Kellestine sorted the mail while the villagers assembled to discuss the important happenings of the day. The village never needed a newspaper. Even if the event didn't take place in the village, it was of little concern to the residents. A pregnancy, granny's declining health or the birth of a calf became bigger news items than an earthquake in Japan. If a villager died, it was news that required an earlier gathering at the post office so the merits of the deceased could be fully reviewed. The meanest individual of the community became a worthy citizen of the village once they passed to the life beyond.

In a village nothing is sacred; private or a family matter. A visit to the doctor became a community news item, the preacher making an unscheduled call required discussion; a happening at the school was public knowledge before the students reached home and Ben Fisher was watched every day to see if he would be on his way to someone's home to tac one of the colored quarantine cards on their front door. Each communicable disease required an individual colored card and a stiplication on the card of how long it had to remain on the front door. The quarantine card for mumps, measles, chicken pox or whooping cough on the front door did not deter most adult visitors, people always entered the house by the back door, the kitchen was the assembly area for regular guests and the family.
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