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True Stories . page 1Tree Inherits Seat
In the fall of 1973 a local farmer from a small community in Conception Bay South parked his tractor, for the last time, on the edge of his hay field. The rapidly expanding community eventually meant less demand for his hay. Jump to twenty-four years later, in the spring of '97, and it was time to move the tractor to make room for a new home. As it turned out, that wouldn't be so easy. A nearby tree had since matured and grown around the seat of his piece of farm machinery. Try as they might, they could not coax the seat from the grip of the now 30 foot Maple without damaging the tree. Eventually they relented, declared the tree the winner and removed the seat from the tractor. The tree still stands to this day. True Story!Photo and Author anonymous | Click for more Tractor Seat photos Turtle Tale
The year was 1983, back when you could legally go out on the ocean to "jig" codfish. My future husband Steve, and I had borrowed my father's 14' aluminum boat c/w a 9 1/2 hp Johnson outboard, adequate for sheltered Conception Bay on a calm day. It was a hot summer afternoon and we had already been fishing for a few hours when I thought I saw what looked like a short stubby tree log slipping below the surface about 100' away. I told Steve, and as he looked at me with some doubt, it surfaced beside our boat. Thus began a 2 hr. and 15 min. adventure as we befriended a 12' Leatherback Sea turtle. We stayed with him as he dove and surfaced again and again. He seemed at ease in our presence as he let me photograph him and at one point, rub it's back. Finally, he rolled over and showed us his under-belly before swimming off into the distant waves. We used our 14' boat to estimate his 2' head and neck, 9' shell, and 1' tail. He was caught in a fisherman's net the next day in Petty Harbour and, happily, was safely released after confirming our measurements. True Story!Photo and Author Donna Meeker | Click for more Sea turtle photos Sweet River
As a child, growing up in Chamberlains, I remember my dad, Captain Chaytor, telling me about his Uncle Tommy Dowden. Near as I can recall, it was back in the late 1880's, when his Uncle Tommy was cutting wood in the Fowlers Road area. He stopped for a lunch by a small brook and boiled the kettle for a cup of tea. The brook was fed by a spring and was well known by locals who drank the water. He had brought Blackstrap mollasses for his tea, which was often used when sugar supplies were low, and accidentally tipped over his mollasses into the stream. Ever since then, so the story goes, people who drank the water down stream were convinced that the water tasted sweeter. The events of that day are still evident by the names of nearby streets; Blackstrap Path and Sweetenwater Avenue. True Story!Photo by Fred Gaulton Author Dorothy Halliday   . . . .
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