Photo courtesy of Elmer Harp, Jr.

I wasn't very old when I started cutting out sounds off the bones and taking all the black off them. As soon as you were old enough that they could trust you with a knife and be safe with it they had you doing it as your chore. I'd pack them in the wooden boxes they used to have from the Purity cream crackers. You'd pack those boxes full and put them in dry salt. Sometime in the winter you wanted a meal of sound you'd take them out of the dry salt, shake the salt off and soak them overnight, the same as the salt fish. My mother used to make what we called sound hash, a stew, and that wa excellent. It was one of the prime meals for the winter.

I was no more than about 10 or 11 when I was in the stern of the boat with my dad. I wanted to get in the boat and there was no way to keep me out. I wouldn't get in early in the morning when they'd leave to haul the traps, but when they went back out I'd be jigging while dad would be hauling his trawl. I had 9 quintals of fish that summer. I probably salted about 15 barrels to get 9 quintals of dry fish out of it. I kept my fish to myself and sold it. I was always an entrepreneur, you could say. I'd look around and find a spare tub or barrel, and I'd salt my fish. After eight or nine days I'd take it out of pickle and pack it up in a pile. I made sure I found a space tc get mine out first. I think I got $7 or $8 a barrel for it when it was dried. I remember having $67 or $68 the fall. It was great.

Mom was in charge of everything on shore. She never ever fished, but she did practically everything. I don't think she split, she always used to gut or head. But her big job in the fishery was to salt. I look back at that and think about the way that she worked, having a family and working in that stage. She was having a baby every two or two and a half years. She was out of the bed at 4:30 or 5:00 in the mornings trying to get that bit of extra work done in the house and a bit of clothes washed and one thing or another before the boys and men came in with any fish. I'd see her come up from a stage in the night time and get a lunch, a wash, and many times fall asleep on her knees, saying her prayers to the couch. You'd have to call her to go to bed. Beat tired, see. Nobody works like that today, I tell you. I don't think we could stand it anyway. Life was totally different.