BarrieToday welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected] or via the website. Please include your full name, daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). The following letter is in response to 'REMEMBER THIS: Where have all the carollers gone?,' published Dec. 9.
Where have all the carolers gone?
Alas, this is not of the city of Barrie but in a small community in the North Bay area. We lived at the end of a dead-end road and there were about 35 houses on the three-kilometre road.
Ted, a farmer on the road, rigged up a hay wagon with some straw bales and lights. His daughter made up some posters with the words of some carols. We started at our end of the road and sang carols at each house.
To our surprise, at each house, people asked us to wait for them to join us. They bundled up and hopped onto the wagon for the brief ride to each stop.
Between houses, we practised our carols. Our main concern was keeping the exuberant participants from running across people’s lawns where their septic beds were located. It could cause freezing of the bed. Everyone was pumped.
At the one place that we stopped, we all wandered down to lane to the back of the house. Ted knocked on the door. The inside light of the back porch came on. As we were ready to burst into song, the inside porch light went out as well as all of the lights in the house. It was dark. We were mystified.
Not to dampen our spirits, we all hopped back on the wagon and continued to the next house.
The evening ended up at Ron’s place at the other end of the road and we indulged in some warm beverages and lots of wishes of the Christmas to come.
About two weeks later, at one of the establishments in town, Ted ran into one of the lads who lived in the mystery lights-out house. The lad explained to Ted that they had procured some dope to celebrate.
When Ted had knocked at the back door of the porch, the lad looked out and saw a man with a fedora and a group of people behind him and thought it was a raid! He turned off the lights and told his brother to flush the dope down the toilet, which he dutifully did.
He had no idea that it was a group of carolers until he talked to Ted.
It was a great road to live on.
Steve Oaks
North Bay
