11.45 pm. is of course no time to start a letter such as this one may become, but still that's the time it is now and after all a letter cannot be started at any time except "now", -- now can it ?? Unfortunately also, I cannot merely type right on through the night as I used to,--those were the days when I really did get a terrific amount of writing done. Perhaps in times to come this temporary state of domesticity will end or change to allow me once again indulge in my one time all absorbing pursuit, writing.

In the last duplicated letter to you all, you will remember that about a year ago, I was still only thinking about the purchase of a certain five acres of bush and swamp, on which I hoped to clear ground for a shop, and perhaps later on a house. All those letters were not even sent out, so some of you will be getting two of these once a year letters that are my notion of keeping up my correspondence, (the first two, the second of which is this). ---But another development had not appeared at the time of that letter. It seems at this late date, just an incident in history, but Father and I discussed it at some length after I suggested that he could not continue to live alone indefinitely in the Delhi Home. He had to agree, for it was a fact, and there ensued the business of contacting Real Estate men and the listing of the house and property for sale. It seemed reasonable to expect that such an old fashioned house in the big two acre lot, (big for a town lot) would take years to "sell", but in only a month or so, there appeared a three generation family group, the 80 yr old Father and grandfather of which, was retiring from a Western Canada farm, and needed just such a big old place for the ten members of his house hold. And so the best laid plans of this man, went all awry just like Robbie Burns mice, and I was in for drastic measures to last the remainder of the Summer and the year up until now in fact. But that is a good beginning point for the next session of writing herein being it is 12.45 am now on the 20th.

12.45 pm Sunday the 26th February '61.
              As usual I really don't want to continue with this at the moment as much as I want to finish it off finally. Just now I want to use the typewriting machine to cut a stencil of a meeting notice for sending to a limited number of people to invite them all (though it'd be quite a crowd if they all did come) to an evening at my House when the current Social Credit Organizer is to come and attempt again to spark plug some more action for that Movement, it being a year and more since anything was done,--(for which I was solely responsible, but could not continue). ---So I must fill the remainder or this page.

You will note that I said "my House" above, and there is a subject on which several pages could be written for it is also subject for all my last Summer's work and worry, ---and accomplishment too of course.

---same day at 10.30 pm. and I've just finished getting the makings of breakfast together for the morning, and settled myself here with a cup of tea (two of them in fact--in the pot) for a go at this before bedtime. The notices for the Social Credit meeting are all duplicated and enveloped and addressed, there were 27 of them, and two are actually already delivered. One is a tenor in the choir of the Port Rowan United Church, which I attend now, and the other is its Minister, both of whom I would like to attend the meeting if they would.

Maybe it is because the years are slipping past me so quickly, but it almost seems that (in retrospect at least) I have but to dream of a thing and plan for it, and lo and behold in due course it becomes fact. 'Way back in '45 and before I dreamt of a world tour, even practiced sleeping out and caring for myself,--and now it is history my almost seven year long world tour. Along about the same time I thought I would some day have a shop of my own, and though people thought it strange that with such ideas I should have taken off on a world tour, still the tools and equipment I had obtained for that purpose, had only part of a decade to wait, and now they have been used for almost 4 years in my own business, though the business was in a rented shop. Similarly you have seen how a year ago I was "dreaming" of how I would find a bit of ground, something cheap, waste ground nothing but bush and swamp---of how one customer could clear it on account, and another give me stone and gravel and sand---then my "best laid" dream plans called for a shop building to be put up by slow degrees with living quarters in it so I could live on the job while putting up a dwelling for my Father and me. That was the plan that went somewhat awry for as you've already read in this letter, the Delhi Home passed out of our hands before the new house was even built, and the first excavation was made only a week before we had to move the accumulations of 35 years living from big 14 room house, into a tiny four room house I was lucky enough to be able to rent next to the shop where I worked.

I guess it was remarkable, anyway I know my sisters were flabergasted, when they offered to come down and help pack up the stuff, to find that they were a week or so late, and that I and another customer with a big truck had packed and moved all the stuff in three days flat, and we were almost flat on our backs with the work of it. Of course the moving was one thing and the disposal was another thing. To complicate matters, Father wasn't able to stay in the rented house for over a few days when it became imperative that he go into the Hospital for his old complaint, and have a postate [sic] gland operation. Everybody except Father thought he made a remarkable recovery etc etc. But I could not care for him as an invalid, so he had to go up to my sister Evelyn's 400 odd miles away in Ottawa. So he stayed there until world Communion Sunday week end, (first Sunday in October) when he came back to Delhi for the special dedication service which was held for the gift of a new Communion Table which the Ladies of the Delhi United Church had donated in memory of my Mother. I and my sister Alice and her family, and Father were able to be there, and it was a memorable service indeed. Father return with Alice to her Home in Scarborough, and then in Islington, (also near, or part of greater Toronto)---since her family was also moving. He had quite a celebration there for his 89th birthday on the 23rd of October, but there was a constant stream of letters, with all the same tune,---"when can you take me away to my own Home, I'm such a bother to Alice and her family----". In other words Father could hardly stand the pace of the modern teen-aged family, though I guess years ago we five of his own children gave him plenty of trouble. Evelyn recalls how Mother would threaten to pack up and leave the lot of us if we didn't quieten down!!! Still a man should not have to live through that sort of thing twice in his life time---now should he ??? I've not lived through it even once yet, though I guess its not so bad, since, (as my pen-pal Wallie in Christchurch, said of my beard in those days) it "sort-of" grows on one!!

Needless to say, all this time I was working day & night at the new house, to be dubbed the Bush House, since it was on the "Bush Lot". My chief assistant was a local young farmer carpenter who turned out to be a very good practical carpenter, a good complement to my theoretical "blueprint" carpentry. He got some 500 hours on the job before my finances dictated that he should leave me. Another fellow, decidedly inefficient put in some 100 hours as helper, and though I paid him off by working on his car I was sick and tired of him and his job by the time he was finally paid off. Trouble was that I just HAD to have the house for the winter, and the more time I spent on his car the slower the house job went, for I couldn't trust him to work at the house on his own. He didn't need the car done so soon actually since the work to be done was only body work that didn't affect its transportation ability, while I had not even a house to live in. (The gear from my shack was moved up to the new house, along with the house goods from Delhi to be stored in wild confusion in the basement, as soon as the basement was floored with concrete)--(which was after the roof and walls upstairs were weather proof.) We did have a long and mellow Autumn fortunately with several "Indian Summers" it seemed, so that outside work continued well along toward Christmas. Otherwise the septic tank disposal bed would never have been useable, nor either one of the two wells. (I had dug one which was so slow, I dug another--with a hired back hoe of course at $10 an hour--at a point which a local water diviner chose for me. It was no better, but the two were better than one, since when one is pumped dry I can switch over to the other well.) Even so water supply has been a problem, what with an extremely dry Summer and Fall so that farms with many animals had to buy water and have it drawn many miles from the Lake or some still wet river. The frost did change my well covering programe, I had been counting on a customer covering the wells with his tractor and loader, and he never turned up, and the 100 odd tons of earth I shovelled and wheel-barrowed, were not really enough, even though at the end I was digging through 6" of frost to get at the soft earth. But it was just a matter of switching from one well to the other up till Christmas time, 'till on Christmas eve both wells were "unreachable". Luckily Father and I spent Christmas 100 miles away with Alice and Family in Islington, and on our return there was a thaw and considerable rain, so I could prime a well again. The well that I didn't use therefore, had nearly a month of the one really cold spell of the winter, to freeze until the other well finally went dry again. That day was most bitterly cold, as had the previous days of the week, during which the soil pipe from the bathroom had frozen twice, even after the pipe was covered with 18" of straw bought from a customer. I think it froze the second time because "Pretzel" our dog (a four year old given Father by Alice when he left Islington) found that the straw was a fine nesting place when ever she was left outside, and had pawed away too much of the straw from the pipe. Anyway when the full well was cut off by a frozen suction line and the other one was dry, it meant some three days and nights of work, rigging up a temporary pump, (one which a customer had left for repair last Summer but which I'd never fixed nor had he called for) finally repairing the same for the job, and insulating with more straw, a temporary garden-hose suction line, to be able to get water pressure in the hot water tank, and then rigging up more garden hose to the hot water laundry tap, to insert the "hot water hose" into the larger main water pump suction line with a slow flow of hot water to melt its way through the ice in the plastic suction pipe. Several customers hearing of my success, came to me for advice, copied my programe in the weeks that followed, for the cold was quite exceptional and the frost went down as far as three feet in certain types of soil, as the temperatures dipped as low as 21 below zero. In this part of the country the cold seldom reaches even zero or 10 below maybe once or twice a winter. Since then of course my water worries are over, with a late winter thaw and very heavy rains, so that now the sump pump and the footing tiling that we planned so carefully under the basement floor, is paying off with the perfect automatic pumping out of the underground water that collects through the sand over the hard clay "hard pan" subsoil, into the sump hole where the electric sump pump is sitting in the corner of the basement. --please excuse the poor composition of that t o o long sentence above.

I've been typing away nearly an hour already between periods of reflection, and haven't indicated that it is March now and is the 12th a Sunday afternoon, 4.40 pm. Events always arrive for me so very much faster than they can be recorded,--this time I had a chance to buy a little one car garage for only $75 that was on a customer's summer cottage lot, which had to be moved to make way for a new provincial park enlargement out on Long Point. This Point is the 32 mile long point of land which you will see jutting down from the north shore of lake Erie, on any map of the Great Lakes area of Canada & the U S A. My side-kick garage man Albert here also bought the floor sections from the veranda, and between the two of us we were busy at "hard" work for a week of days, getting the stuff moved. The little 22X12 foot building will make a good storage place for my stuff while I proceed with the bigger shop building itself.

It is the building of that place which I've been anticipating for so long,--which will require the jeep and its cable drum winch and loading arms or booms. There was a spell of lovely mild weather which put the thrill of spring into every heart, recently, and forcefully reminded me that I've no proper shop yet with which to build up my business to match the five acre spread and the unprecedented style of house I've built.---I've not even yet told you all what kind of house it is, have I. Humn---Iet's see, how should I describe it. Though I call it a bush house, it is made entirely of aluminum roofing material,---ribbed sheets. In size it is 30X24 feet, with a full basement, and a cottage roof. Of the 700 odd square feet of wall area over 300 is in window glass. The living room is 24X22 roughly, and contains two picture windows totalling 24 feet, on two walls facing North and West. Of course I had to break up such long windows with mullions, so to keep the obstructing uprights as slim as possible, these are but 1½" thick X 4" wide (i.e. 4" X 1½" edgeways to the outside of the wall). The panes are all double sealed directly to the window frames with no sashes to cause drafts rattles and more expense. The double glass keeps the windows clear regardless of the weather, although all the window glasses are not yet fitted with the inner glass sealed in. I have all the glasses in place, but the sealing in job is dependant on getting the glass REALLY clean first, a thing impossible in frosty weather. We made our own outer doors, but the Japanese mahogany inner sliding doors to the bedrooms (3) and bath, were cheaper than anything I could make. Plywood floors, "gyproc" walls and ceiling backed by 5/8" insul board under the outer aluminum (set with the ridges horizontal for appearance by the way), then a 3" blanket of fibre glass and on the ceiling the 3" fibre-glass is set well up on top of the rafters, to leave an air- space between it and the aluminum foil stapled to the under side, and creased upwards to form a second air space between it and the gyproc finally nailed up to the joists. A mere 50,000 B T U oil space heater was never even turned up over ¼ full to keep the upstairs at the even 68 to 70 degrees temp- which I prefer. Of course for active work a temperature of 60 or 65 is more nearly ideal.------Oh yes by the way, every window, (every vertical window that is since some are high horizontal windows) has its 12" X 20" ventilation moveable pane at the bottom, being a heavy 32 ounce glass that slides up in its own channel. An outer storm window for the winter will be replaced by a screened frame this size in the summer. There is no doubt that many pages would be needed to describe all the plans of things yet to be done to the bush house, all the way from kitchen cupboards yet to be built, to making the oil space heater into a floor furnace with provision for piping the heat to the bedrooms, and possibly a means for changing over in hot weather to a system of air conditioning using the same air pipes. But such speculation is to say the least somewhat premature, in as much as the interior walls are not even covered over properly yet, nor the outside yard made somewhat more presentable if not even accessible, "cratered" as it is now with unfilled well sites and trenches, (partially filled i.e.)

My photographic bent is getting awfully dusty these years although I have managed to make a fair number of pictures of the new house in its various stages of operation. But only some of the coloured slides are to hand as yet, the black and white film is still either in negative form yet or else still in the camera. Naturally I would like to return to my photo printing hobby, and send many of you pictures of my activities. One of the more recent of these has been the membership I took out in the local County town (Simcoe) Chapter of the Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barbershop Singing in America, ("S.P.E.B.Q.S.A." for short) The word "Quartette" should appear in that title after the word Barbershop, There is to be a Concert put on by these 30 good fellows on the 24th of March. which is only next Friday since it is the 19th of March, another Sunday pm. as I write. The question of a photograph of the assembled singers at the performance was raised at the last practice (which is every Monday night) and while I certainly said nothing, it did make me wish that I had had time to keep up my practice at photography. I'm still teetering on the brink of whether to invest in batteries and bulbs for my flash gun, unused as it has been for umpteen (at least 9) years. The event will be past and over no doubt before this letter is finished,

The Social Credit meeting was held on the 8th March '61 in my new house and Home, the first of any such gathering in the house, There were some seven fellows out, besides the two speakers, but I felt that little progress was made, a subject I'll not enlarge upon just here, for I intend to cut a "report" stencil to send to the originally invited people, and no doubt will have copies to include with this letter.----I see lunch time has rolled around, so I must prepare "our" lunch as usual, for Father and me.

I'm tempted to enlarge upon the domestic arrangements in which I find myself, and if my "enlargement" doesn't become too involved with dietary detail in tho way it used too,----I'm sure I must have bored some of my readers with all these details when I first started being my own dietitian, (chief cook and bottle washer) etc etc.,----then perhaps a little literary reflection is in order.

Last Summer, in August I think it was I heard from Audrey my Trans-Tasman acquaintance, who, with her Norman, was one of my New Zealand guests during my June 1959 vacation trip. Her letter was full of the glad anticipations of preparations for her marriage and marital domesticity. Perhaps these things have become history by now, but at that time it was most intriguing to read of the household work of preparations, wiring, plumbing, furnishings, and all such things with which I was intimately involved just then also. But I could not help but reflect upon how vastly different was my lot. It wasn't only that my house had risen from the virgin soil, and its design from my own imagination, not only that I too was leaving a life in which (nominally at least) I had only myself to care for, not only that I was going to have to learn how adapt my schedule to accomodate another's,---in all these, in fact, my lot was so very similar to my N Z friends, and yet for all the preparations for leaving the single life, I was as alone as before. Oh it was true that when it came to the actual building and planning, as all such work in which creative urges are tapped, my time was pleasurably employed, but still there was no future in it. In fact I was building for the past, for the love and loyalty which I'd shared in the past, with my Father. I didn't need a house, but Father did, I could care for myself, Father couldn't or soon would reach the time when he couldn't. It would be a great joy to be one of a team where counsel, decisions, and work would be shared but now my counselling, decisions, work are still my own but for two instead of being by two. In fact it was my own decision, all this.

Of course Father realises all this too, and it would be his dearest wish to be able to get along in his own dwelling. He did just that of course for many years before Mother left us, and for a few years afterwards. So it seemed best to me that Father take steps to leave his solitude while he was able, so that at least my presence would be available more easily when needed. I must admit now that perhaps ---no not perhaps---certainly,---time has moved faster than the calendar, for by the space of a few months, from the time Father was muddling along in his old Delhi Home, 'till it was sold, and our stuff moved out, his spell in the Hospital, followed by the inevitably hectic stays with the noisey teen-aged families of my sisters'---Father has not really aged by years, but somehow changed,--humn, well now I write of it,--he hasn't changed, and that's why he doesn't fit in with changed circumstances,--yet. Of course he's only been with me now since early last December, and the birth pains of the new house were still present then. Birth pains in a new house by the way, refer to such things as the leaving of a hot water tank heater on far too long, before the safety valve blow off pipe had been installed flooding the whole of an upstairs floor and the boxes and trunks etc on the floor below,---it takes only an estimated 30 odd gallons of water. Reference could also be made to the leaking taps from which a customer's job called me away for too long, when a mere 15 gallons flooded the basement once before. The same defective hot water safety valve that allowed the 30 gallon flood, also gave way again later the same week, though this time the "blow-off" pipe was in place, and the water pump merely pumped the well dry out the same pipe, several hundred gallons on to the ground, when water was so very hard to come by. Of course "birth pains" in a new house are much more severe when an elderly and forgetful person is at Home there, as for instance when the automatic gas stove burners do not light when they should, or pop-up toasters and electric kettles, fail to work properly, or even when they don't.-- 5 pm. supper time now,--time for the preparation of it that is, which being the big meal of the day in our schedule, takes an hour to prepare, plus an hour to consume and wash up and put away afterwards. Then it will be time for evening church services, followed this Sunday I believe, by the once a monthly "Fireside" period of fun and get together and tea, coffee and cakes. Unfortunately for me there are no elegible contemporary members of the opposite sex in the congregation here-----.

(9.30 am. Friday the 24th March '6l)----as I continue, while waiting for Father to finish the breakfast dishes, so I can set up my mirrors and give myself a haircut in anticipation of the big S.P.E.B.Q.S.A. Concert tonight. Its in a District High School Auditorium in Caledonia, some 50 miles from here, and that means there will be several cars going from Port Rowan to carry the four chorus members and their friends who will swell the audience. The practice that we had in this auditorium on Monday night last afforded me a chance to try out my "synchro-switch" accessory to my Konica 35mm camera, on which I'd spent a lion's share of my free time on Monday, getting it adjusted etc. Since then I've taken several other "Flash" photos since the 23rd was the first birthday party of my business partner, Albert's grandson. Yesterday I developed the film for all these, and an earlier film too, both of which turned out very nicely. Maybe this SPEBQSA diversion will reawaken my photography hobby pursuit, although it remains to be seen how time will appear for all such. ----Time for haircutting before further stencil cutting.

Easter Monday now at 12.55 pm the 3rd April '61-------the big Concert rush is long since passed, and quite successfully too although the chorus had far too little practice, if practice was what was needed to give the fellows more familiarity with the selections. I know that this type of singing is so very different from the sort that I'm used to, that it is almost like I haven't been singing in choirs for 25 odd years.