FROM THE SCRAPBOOK
by Dr. Bill Randall
July 1997
By Dr. Bill Randall
A Present For Grandma
Recently our son Bill was visiting with a student in Ontario who is writing her Ph.D. thesis on the History of Early Farming in Ontario. She was asking Bill if there similar writings from New Brunswick authors, and suddenly there flashed across his memory a poem he had heard recited by the author, Jessie Moffitt. He asked me if I thought I might be able to find that particular poem “Don’t Leave the Farm to Me, Pa”? I did find it in the little book of poems Jessie had given to me many years ago.
That little book triggered some fond memories of the relationships our family has had with the Hamilton family and the stories of their early lives in Magaguadavic.
When we came to Harvey in 1954 with our three children we frequently needed folks to stay with our children. Amos and Beatrice Essensa became sort of surrogate grandparents. Without children of their own they willingly entertained our children and Bill especially remembers when Amos would cook bacon and eggs. Beatrice was one of a family of ten children born to John Hamilton and his wife Emma Saunders. Soon we got to know Annie, Beatrice’s sister who as a widow of Herbert Henry came to live with Amos and Beatrice. Her dry humor was always appreciated. We got to know Mabel, the wife of Roy Moffitt, who lived nearby and later sister Jessie the widow of Fred Moffitt joined her sisters in Harvey. It was an ideal place to acquire local history, for though I never got to know the whole family I learned to know about them. Louise who died at the age of two, George who married Ina Vance and lived to be 90, Ross who married Effie Vance, Alice who married Albert Hood and had a very large family, Gordon who didn’t live nearby and John Stanley who married Helen Bell. So they and their families pretty much made up the community of Magaguadavic related to the Jamiesons, the
Sloans, the Finney’s, and of course others. Perhaps some of these descendants will find special memories evoked when they read Jessie’s poem “A Present for Grandma”.
A Present for Grandma
I want a present for Grandma – but what, oh what will it be?
There’s been such a change in Grandma’s since eighteen ninety-three.
It was then that the dear old Grandma, demure in a long black gown,
Was content to knit by the chimney while the snowflakes drifted down.
With the Christmas fires blazing, she fashioned the popcorn chain
The cranberry rings and tinsel with infinite care and pain.
She stuffed the farm-raised turkey, concocted the pumpkin pies,
Her snowy hair and apron a glory to youthful eyes.
Then when her tasks were over, she called the children near
Unfolding the manger story, repeating it year by year.
But there’s been a change in Grandma – gone is the long black gown
And Christmas day is for pleasure, and a carefree time on the town!
And where once a sip of sherry was viewed as a deadly sin,
There’s a plentiful round of cocktails with a whiskey sour thrown in!
And as for the snowy tresses, they too have gone their way
And Gram may be blonde tomorrow – but she’s a brunette today!
And instead of a seat by the fire and a bag of peppermints
Gram zips away in her sports car with garments of brightest tints.
She now preaches “liberation”, and with all the freedom to date
We ask in honest wonder, “What’s left to liberate?”
We watched the jet take over from horse-and-buggy days.
We saw the moon invasion with marvel and with praise,
We’re amazed at all these changes, but I think you will all agree
That the biggest change is Grandma’s since eighteen ninety-three!
J.H.M.
Source: Rev. Bill Randall’s “From The Scrapbook Vol. One.”