"Well, That's The Story"

Saturday, July 7, 2007

"Well, That's The Story"

Gordon and Lois McEwan and their family of four, Lou, Loiey, Bob and Terry moved to St. Marys in 1952, having purchased a house on a double lot from Kelly Hearn. The house on St. George Street has its own interesting history in the Hearn family chronicles from the Hortons to the Hearns to the McEwans and from clapboard to red insulbrick to its present Tudor white plaster treatment.

Gordon McEwan had been offered a position and partnership in W.A.Clarke Hardware in St. Marys by Walter Clarke. So, it was good-bye to Dickson's Corners and hello to new surroundings in St. Marys, "The Town Worth Living In."
From the classroom to the hardware store seemed an easy transition for Gordon as his natural abilities in meeting, greeting and enjoying people were given full play in the hardware business, an already successful venture because Walter Clarke, himself, was generous, affable and civic-minded with a sneeze that would reverberate down and around Queen Street from D.L. O'Brien's Clothing Store to Dave White's Butcher Shop across to L.A. Ball Fiurniture Store and Funeral Home and back up to The Toronto-Dominion Bank.

Phoebe Eely ran the office in the hardware store and Marjorie Switzer, John Tyler and Gordon McEwan handled the customers, selling everything from nails to wallpaper to pots, pans and kitchen utensils to fishing tackle and other sports equipment. My job in Grade 8 was to sweep the floors every morning at 8:00 a.m. before I went to school. There was a big barrel of dustbane at the back of the store and I scattered dustbane up and down the aisles and then swept it up from the front of the store to the back. Marjorie Switzer thought I lifted the broom a little too high and covered the open bottom shelves of the display counters where the granite ware was kept with dustbane. Gordon usually swept the front sidewalk and that was an excellent opportunity for him to greet fellow business people and early customers to the store. In dealing with customers, Gordon would discuss and answer all the questions he could, closing the deal usually with, "Well, that's the story.

1952 also saw the arrival of a new minister at The St. Marys United Church. Ross and Helen Crosby and their two sons, David and Paul, took up residence in the manse and thus began a long and rich ministry both to the United Church and the town of St. Marys. Walter A. Clarke was a member of that search committee and "W.A." was always pround of the fact that he was instrumental in bringing both the Crosbys and the McEwans to St. Marys in the same year.

"Well, That's The Story"

Postscript # 1: I was always amused when my father, Walter Cull would come into the hardware and be greeted by Walter Clarke with a cheery, "Hello, Waller" followed by an equally friendly, "Hello, Waller."

Postscript # 2: When Walter and Ella Clarke were first married, they lived in an apartment above Sommerville's Drug Store. On the opposite side of Queen Street where Tim Hortons is now located was a Chinese Laundry. Mr. Wong, the proprietor, would collect laundry from people's homes as part of his customer service

One morning when Walter Clarke was shaving and getting ready for work, there was a knock at the apartment door.

Walter called out, "You go, Ella."

From the other side of the door came a response from the irate M. Wong, "You go 'ella too, Mister Clarke!"