Florence and Solomon Curl Photo courtesy of Rene Poole

Nowadays there are no big families like there used to be years ago..There use to be lots that had 10 or more children. My parents, Florence Curl and Solomon Curl, was one such family. They had 15 children in all. That was one of the biggest families around at the time. There were four girls in our family. There was myself, Josephine, Lina and Mildred. There were 11 boys. There was Herbert, Solomon Jr, Clarence, Phillip, Grafton, Wesley, Harold, Holis, Ralph, Melvin and Austin. That was a whole lot of mouths to feed and a whole lot of bodies to clothe.

My father was a fisherman and needless to say he had a lot of help in the stage. My mother was a housewife and she had to work like a dog. In those days we could not afford to buy clothes, so mother had to make all of our clothes on the sewing machine. She had to cook all of our meals, bake bread, wash the clothes and do all sorts of other things. When she went to bed at night she never had no trouble falling to sleep I guarantee you.

Having such a big family meant having to make a lot of food. Mother had to make bread almost everyday and sometimes twice a day if she had something to do the next day. In those days flour came in a 100 pound bag and we would use one of those bags in a week. One of our main meals was fish and potatoes. Mom would cook 4 or 5 nice size fish and she would cook a 2 gallon boiler full of potatoes. We also ate rice soup often. Mom would have to cook a big 2 or 3 gallon boiler full. Mom would also cook some sweet stuff like old fashioned buns and pies. She would make 3 or 4 dozen buns and about 4 pies at a time. That was a good treat, but it did not last very long in our house.

In the fall of the year we would move from Fox Harbour to Lewis' Bay. Father had a motorboat then. We would pack up all our luggage and materials and shift up to Lewis' Bay. There would be a big crowd in that boat. Sometimes Dad had to make a second trip back to Fox Harbour because he could not carry all the family and all the materials in one trip. We had a good size house up at Lewis' Bay. We had a upstairs and a downstairs. The girls would share rooms and the boys would share rooms. There would be 4 boys sharing 1 room. There would be 2 beds and two boys to a bed.

For a long time I was the only girl. I believe there was 7 or 8 boys and me before another girl was born. Being the only girl for a long time I had to help mother. I had to do the dishes, help get the meals ready and do countless other chores. The boys in those days did not do much house work. They would be outdoors most of the time fooling around. I used to say the only thing they are good for is to make a mess, which I had to clean up! Yes sir, when I was growing up I knew what hard work was.