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My father and mother were raising their own pigs. Every year they had too many for ourselves, so they would sell whatever they didn’t need. They had two or three litters of piglets, when they reached the age of 6 or 7 weeks old they would sell the rest of them for five or six dollars a piece. With a big family like we had, we had to raise our own meat. I remember one spring a neighbour of ours, Leoned Vautour, wanted to buy one pig. He didn’t have any money. He had a violin; he asked dad if he would take the violin for the pig, dad told him that he would.

Nobody knew how to play the violin, but mom started to play with the violin and learned a little bit, then some of the boys learned to play. I could not play the violin. I was too young at that time and never learned to play anything musical or step dance. My brother Leonard was a good step dancer, and my cousin could dance, but he was so shy he would put himself in a potato bag that was the only way he would dance.

My brother Raymond would play the fiddle when we were in the blacksmith shop that was fun, I really enjoyed listening to the fiddle and watch them step dance.

I was always too busy thinking of doing something else because I always like to build things. My brother Camille and I would always find something to do around the farm. The blacksmith shop was a very exciting place to explore and we used to do a lot of different things.

There was lots of horseshoes, when the shoes would wear out and they had to be replaced, we used the old ones. Dad had to buy them; I remember they were all different sizes. He had to put cork on them. When he put the cork on the front they had to be heated enough to be welded, the back of the shoe had to bend about three quarters of an inch long, there had to be three corks on each shoe. We used to watch him doing all these things, very interesting; I didn’t realize how much I was learning by watching.

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