Memories from Myra - a Mini Series

by Myra Matthews

Many years ago my younger brother won airplane flight over Halifax in a Fire House Frolics contest. Back then, this was a big deal because flying commercial was just becoming popular and it became my mother's main topic in the post office.  All she spoke about was him winning this flight and Lorna Densmore, Nancy Clark, and Keith Clark also won one.

 I wasn't happy with all the attention he was receiving - the way mom was going on you'd have thought they'd won a trip to Disney. Well, this is where things got interesting. On the day of the flight Lynne Tomlinson and Marjorie Densmore came to the airport with us. While Mom and Dad were busy with the Fire House Frolics crew we left the airport and walked about a half mile or so back to the building we had passed on the way into the airport.

   The sign on the building read “Halifax Flying Club.” In we went. We had some spending money with us and we told the man we wanted to rent a plane to fly over Halifax and, by God, that's just what we did!

  Marjorie’s favorite part of the story was when we went into a nosedive after I, who was sitting in the copilot seat, said, “Hey, what's this for?” and grabbed the steering wheel.  It was one more time those angelic faces of ours could have ended up on milk cartons or we may have even ended up in the Halifax Harbor that time! We finally made it back to the airport laughing at our big adventure when we were met by one frantic mother.

   When she saw us, you could see the relief on her face - but when we told her we had just flew over Halifax with a strange man she almost passed out. She was so traumatized she never told a soul and it was never spoken of again. I don't think she even told my father what we had done.

   Do you see a pattern forming here? Missing kids never to be seen again -it was a theme of our childhood. It's a good job we grew up in a time when kids had no rights because the fear of God from our parents was all that kept us under control.

Next, we all attended Sunday School and one year we went through three teachers - they all quit- Rhada McCulloch, Gary Mumford, and a third person, who I can’t remember, though Marjorie thought it might have been Ray Casey.  Marjorie's mother was a Sunday School Superintendent who ended up taking over our class, mainly because she couldn't bribe a single soul to take the class.  She vowed she was restoring law and order and straightening us out.

During one of her long-winded prayers, Marjorie kicked my shoe up the aisle. I went to get my shoe during the prayer, but it ended before I made it back to my seat. Whoops! This was NOT going to be good. Because I was parading around the church instead of praying, the wrath of God was about to come down upon me, I was certain.

 Marjorie lovingly called her mum “Mumsy.”  Boy, I can still hear Mumsy yelling and calling us by name, “Marjorie Anne and Myra!” then reading us the riot act when we got caught in our bad behaviors, but God love her, Mumsy would also defend us to the fullest to anyone in the community who dared to question our bad behavior.

  Gloria Densmore summed it up best not long ago when she dropped in to visit me. “It was almost a full-time job for Irene to defend you two,” she said. “One fiasco wasn't ended when two were into another and dragging the rest of us with you.”  Mrs. Densmore was the most kind, loving person and I truly loved her - she was the best.