Weather is my job, but it is also my passion and maybe that’s why I love to hear from you when something I write strikes a chord.
It warms my heart to see that so many of you enjoy and connect with my stories about Grandma.
Recently, this sweet letter came from Doug Myra. I received his consent to share it with you:
“My grandmother Regina Myra lived in Riverport with her two daughters.
My grandfather had passed away and my grandmother, although a stern, large woman, was also very kind.
“At the time our family lived in Kentville and occasionally we would make the trip to Riverport. In our 1936 Ford, we would leave Kentville, head to New Ross then Chester Basin, Lunenburg and finally Riverport. All the roads were dirt and dusty with the smell of oil; I usually became car sick.
“We would arrive and my father would go across the cove to his uncle Lenny Zinck who had a butcher shop and get a supply of Lunenburg Pudding and Sausage.
I would go with my grandmother’s to milk the cow, feed the pigs and chickens and then my grandmother would pick out two chickens for Sunday dinner.
After plucking the chickens she would say, “Dougie let’s go into the pantry for a cool glass of branch water" which she kept in the icebox. She always called her drinking water branch water.
“It was many years later after my grandmother Regina Zinck passed away and I asked my father why she called her drinking water branch water. My father smiled and here is what he told me:
“My grandmother was the youngest of 12 children and in a dry summer, the well would be low and drinking water had to (come) from a nearby spring and pond.
My grandmother’s mother would say, “Regina make sure the water you bring home is branch water.” Off my Grandmother would go with two buckets on a pole over her shoulders; a bucket on each side. At the spring pond, she would take a branch and remove all the leaves and flies from the surface of the water and fill the buckets with clean water which was called branch water.
“(Until) the day my grandmother passed away her drinking water was always branch water.”
Thank you for sharing that beautiful story Doug and those heart-felt memories that we must cherish forever.
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Cindy Day is the chief meteorologist for SaltWire Network
