A Tribute to uncle Walt Roberts. It was October or maybe November not right sure , but I remember it was 1980. I was sleeping soundly and it was early in the morning but daylight,when all of a sudden I was awakened by a man by the name of Francis Barney who was from LA nseAul Loup Labrador, he was doing the finishing work on a new house my Dad was building in Charlottetown , he said uncle Walt Roberts house is on fire, hurry up and get dressed , with that I was on my feet putting my clothes on and as I looked through my little window that was three feet by two feet in my upstairs window in my room of our old salt box two story house we lived in at that time in Charlottetown Labrador,and while I was putting my clothes on all I could see was smoke coming out of uncle Walt Roberts house. Within seconds I was running down the stairs on with my old unemployment boots as they called them in this days and as fast as my legs could carry me I was running for uncle Walts a man who was my hero a kind and gentle man but powerful and strong. And as I ran towards his house my mind was thinking is everybody all right and by the time I got alongside of his house I can still remember thinking if everybody is not out of that house now therere not going to get out, by this time the men from Charlottetown was running with buckets of water and dousing it on the fire but it was to late the fire was out of control and If anybody was still in that house it was to late to save them I thought to myself as the men were running with the five gallon buckets of water and throwing it on the side of the house and on the smoke that was bellowing thought the wood and rising in the air in giant columns of smoke. And as the tears ran down my eyes I learned after that, that the great man that was so strong and kind was dead , my hero uncle Walt Roberts who calked one of his daughters after my mother and one of his sons after my father was gone and I would never again be able to go to his house with his son Ben and listen to the hockey games on radio while uncle Walt tells me stories about my Father, yes the great man to was dead my hero was gone and I was heartbroken, all of a sudden I realized that life was not forever and your heroes died and I was witnessing it in real life at a young age. I loved uncle Walt, he was so kind and I remember as a boy my dad trying to start the old 20 Calvin HP engine in the fall that we used to light our house in the fall of the year, and sometimes it was so cold that my father would tell me to go up and ask uncle Walt to come down and see if he could start the old Calvin engine, I can see him now as a small boy taking of his old checkered shirt that he wire and start cranking the engine and all of a sudden the smoke would start coming out of the exhaust and before you knew it hed have the engine running and then hed put his old checkered shirt back on and start walking back to his little two story house on the hill, Yes uncle Walt Roberts was a man I admired as a boy, I never ever heard that man say a bad word about anybody and I went to his house every day and almost every night, he came from Seal Islands area just about thirty mile to the north of Charlottetown , and he married a beautiful Lady by the name of aunt Susie as we called her, she only had one good hand the other was a club hand but she was better than anybody in those days with two good hands, she could wash and sow and hang out the clothes on the line as good as anybody with two good hands . And I can remember uncle Walt going aboard the Cabot Strait a coastal vessel that brought passengers and freight and mail to our communities when I was a boy and giving the cook a salmon for a chunk of fresh meat. Its those kind of people thats my heroes as I look back,people like uncle Walt and uncle Harry Marshall and all those who where so happy and helped each other every day, they didnt have a lot of the fancy things people strive for in life, but they had happiness that money cant buy
Posted on: Sat, 22 Nov 2014 15:46:54 +0000
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