Left: Great Grammie, Lucy, widow, married to George St. Germain,
widower (for which Rita Lucille was named)
Center: Mémère Daigle holding the twins, Rita head folded in on left, who were born March 10th of that year the photo was taken. Right: Aunt Maude, Rita's father's brother's wife, holding Louise her daughter Front: Children: Hermon, Paul, Belle, Queen This photo taken on the front lawn of house in Wallagrass, New Canada across the way.
Twins in the carriage, Rita in front, Rhea in back. Queen the little girl besides the carriage. Alva in the back near her maman. The rest I have to find out who they are.
Aunt Rhea's wedding at Wallagrass. George St. Germain kneeling
with white hair. The grandfather.
Ray Cote on Water St. preparing the soil for planting with hand plow...notice the tool to make his rows straight in the background.
Rhea and Rita at Ft. Knox with matching outfits. This is pre-WWII photo because they took the cannons from Ft. Knox to make bullets/bombs for the war. Rita is pregnant for Ray.
Rita and Ray wedding breakfast at 227 Water St., Pepere Cote's house. Peps is on the right, scowling. Louise, my aunt is in the plaid skirt. She died of TB. Her daughter Jackie is the little girl. Roland, Pe-pet is peeking in the background. For my mother's relatives, aunt Elva, who went gray at 16, her son, and I don't know the other woman...although she looks familiar, Jean d'Arc perhaps, aunt Elva's daughter.
Rita and Victoire, her maman in Wallagrass. No porch on the house. No bathroom, just an outhouse, as it was when we went there when I was a girl.
This is a polaroid of me and mémère Daigle when we visited in 1962. Her living room. She always smelled of Winter Green...the body rub.
Mémère Cote when she lived with us. She was bed ridden and had had many shocks, strokes. Her left hand was permanently closed. When the Ladies of Ste-Anne, les Dames de Ste-Anne, came to pray for her at the funeral home, they came in and left...and came back...they did not recognize her. She had gained weight with my maman's care. She had always been way too thin. She had French Toast for supper every single night...no change. She loved them so much. For two years. She was a good cook, my dad always said.
M. Daigle, mémère Daigle's second husband on his horses
hauling logs. He was a wood cutter. Could not read, but could
tell my maman how many board feet in his piles of cord wood with great
accuracy.
Mémère Daigle, M. Daigle, and Joann, my maman's sister who had had spinal mengitis and was deaf as a result. She died of alcoholism. I have a cousin exactly my age in the South...never met her. Her name is Ann. Ann is one of Joann's daughters.
M. Daigle on the porch of the Wallagrass house. He did not want maman to go to school so she had to leave home to come to work in Bangor just after she turned 17.
Rita and Ray...my hasn't she matured...
The staircase of kids... Rita and Rhea are the second and third from the front. Joann the last in front. Mémère Daigle was widowed with these many kids...and she kept the family together...doing laundry for the men working on the railroad. And, recently revealed to me by the aunts, making "hooch" to survive. Good For HER! Often, when I am discouraged, I think of her with all these kids and not giving them up to the state...no education, she worked in the mills in Fall River, Ma. when she was ten...she could write in French and English, keep a double set of books, bookkeeping, work in the lumber camps...and LOVED the soap operas when she got older. She also played the harmonica. I saw her play it once...and I think I love harmonica dearly because of that one time I saw her play it at aunt Elva's in Waterville. She could also sing, aunt Rhea tells me. Enough for now.
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