Cleighton Little
When I turned fifteen I was offered a job working on the road. The chance to make a dollar was much more appealing than school, so I accepted the job. Using a horse-drawn bobsled which had been fitted with a box, I hauled gravel from Tommy Wilson's pit to the construction site. The road construction site stretched from Ab Johnson's (George Pollock's) to Charlie Grieve's (P. Neilson's). With pick and shovel, we dug and loaded the gravel. It was approximately three miles to the construction site. The gravel was piled along the side of the road until spring when it would be levelled with a grader. Eight teams worked on this particular job. On a good day we could usually haul two loads. I was paid $5.00 a day out of which I paid my father forty or fifty cents a bushel for oats to feed my team. This job lasted for about three months.
The next year I went to work at Kay Craig's Garage. Early in the morning, I would go in and clean the tools and sweep the floor. In the spring, a lot of customers, whose cars had been blocked up during the winter, would bring their cars in to get the valves ground and new rings put in. I worked here for seven years.
After leaving the garage I went to work at the Yarmouth Creamery which was overseen by Willie Craig. The cream was collected by truck along the main road. In the winter, the cream sold by farmers on the side roads, which weren't plowed, was collected by horse and sled and brought out to the main road where it was picked up by the truck. The collected cream was graded, dumped into ten-gallon cans and shipped to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, where it was processed. This lasted for three or four years.
When the Yarmouth Creamery was enlarged, a butter churn was installed. This churn would make 800 - 1000 pounds of butter three times a day. The butter was printed by hand. There was a long table with a person at each end; the butter was put on the table; one person would wrap the butter in butter paper, and the other would put it in one-pound wooden boxes.
In the summer, when there was a surplus of butter, it was put in fifty pound boxes and shipped to Saint John. Here it was put in cold storage until winter. It was returned to Harvey, rechurned and printed. Approximately seventy five, fifty pound boxes were shipped by truck to Saint John. The finished product was shipped to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, local stores, and farmers.
While at the Yarmouth Creamery I was sent to St. Stephen to learn how to grade eggs. We collected eggs once a week. The eggs were graded according to freshness and size.
I also graded the butter. The butter was heated to measure the water content. If there was too much water in the butter, it didn't meet the Government standards; too little water and it didn't meet the bosses standards. In either case the butter would have to be unwrapped and reworked.
Although I was supposed to be the main butter-maker at the Yarmouth Creamery, I performed many other duties - collecting the cream, grading the cream, butter, and eggs, delivering, etc. My butter won several awards at competitions in Fredericton.
When the Harvey Creamery took over the Yarmouth Creamery, I continued to grade the cream and butter. During the summer there were three employees collecting the cream, two delivering, and twenty five working in the creamery. The local cream or sweet cream was collected by noon. This sweet cream was made into ice cream.
In 1940 I brought to Harvey the first snowplow to be stationed here for the winter. The first plow truck was a Diamond T. In 1941 it was exchanged for a Mack Truck. I drove the plow for three winters, clearing the main roads - from Harvey to Longs Creek, Harvey to Vanceboro, Thomaston Corner to the County Line. There were times when the drifts were too deep for the truck plow. I would have to get a group of men to shovel ahead of the plow.