Centenarian has a head full of history, capacity to articulate LEROY PEACH The Cape Breton Post October 27, 2008 At 100, retired teacher Fanny Cohen has a head full of history and the capacity to articulate it. Her first teaching job was west of Antigonish. To get there she hitched a ride with the local mail driver and traveled through miles and miles of forest to a rural farmhouse, her lodging for the year. The farm's occupants were a couple and their son. "I'm sitting down in the kitchen," she said with a laugh, "and they are all sitting down on chairs like mice in a row." The landlady looked at Fanny and asked, "And what religion are you?" Before Fanny had a chance to respond, she said, "If you're Presbyterian, this side of the river says you can't stay; if United, the opposite is the case." It was shortly after the union of denominations which formed the United Church. "I told her what I was," Fanny said, "and there was silence." The lady jumped up, went to another room, cranked the party-line telephone and yelled to a neighbour, "Guess what she is!" That night Fanny never saw so many wagons in her life, so many people eager to get a glimpse of the new teacher. "They cluttered up the farm yard," she said. "I couldn't wait to get out of that place and they couldn't wait to get rid of me," she added with a laugh. For one thing, the daily menu was problematic. There was an unavailability of certain staples. For example, at breakfast there was no butter. The butter was bartered for other goods. "I ate so much molasses that I never ate it for 20 years," she laughed. As well, there were no sweets. "When my parents sent me a box of sweets, I wasn't about to share them," she said. The lady kept a clean house, but she wasn't nice. "She ruled the roost," Fanny said. The father and son were her subordinates, the son frequently threatened with loss of inheritance. Two experiences stand out for her. Neighbours invited her to view a bull moose that was trapped for shipment to Cape Breton in order to start a herd. The moose was on a truck at another farm. Out of curiosity, a crowd gathered. "I went right up to the wooden bars of the truck," Fanny said, "and I met two of the largest black eyes I ever saw. The moose, with its big rack, was reclining. The game warden, proud of his catch, was prancing up and down." Fanny took one look at the moose and shouted, "He's dead!" She then looked at me and threw her head back and laughed. "You'd think that I was a veterinarian," she said. She didn't get over the threshold of her lodging that night before the whole community knew about the dead moose. "They're probably still talking about it to this day," she added with relish. On another occasion, she had to cross the river and take her school register to the trustee. "He sat behind a desk and he didn't rise to greet me," she said. He said he wasn't about to pay her the yearly salary of $500 because she started in mid-September. She insisted; he relented. Then he made her read the entire back of the register. She later found out from the landlady that the trustee made everyone read the register because he was illiterate. Fanny's story continues next week. LeRoy Peach lives in Port Morien and may be reached at leroy_peach@yahoo.ca. His column appears every week in the Cape Breton Post 27/10/08