The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

"Some of the teachers were real wingdingers," says Bill. "They could slap you down, clip your ear or knock off your glasses for misbehaviour. They wouldn't dare do that today. I remember laughing in class when a lad seated ahead of me was scolded for not knowing his Latin declensions. The teacher turned to me in fury and said, 'There's a barn out back for horses and mules. You go out and bray with the mules!' Schoolgirls in those days passed around autograph books, or Birthday Books, as they called them. Bill still keeps the one that belonged to his late wife Stella, and fondly leafs through its pages. "Not many of these names are still around." There's Constance Dean, who wrote, Love many, trust few, Always paddle your own canoe. And Hilda Ashenhurst, who wrote on 16 August 1928, If you wish to aspire To heavenly joys, Don't sit in church And wink at the boys! Stella walked three miles to Ashgrove school back then, along country roads where winter snows were packed down by horse's hooves and sleigh runners. "She didn't mind the walk," says her husband of fifty years. "Sometimes someone with a horse and cutter would come along and pick her up. But if the snow was really deep, you just stayed home." Has education changed since then? "It must be better. We've made many strides in technology. There are so many amenities today that were just a dream back then. Somebody trained the minds that invented those things." Bill McDonald figures he started working at Grandy's Grocery Store on Main Street when he was 17 years old, during the depression. It was a job he held for twenty years. The store quickly changed hands, to become Farnell's but many still remember Bill from the shop by a nickname that stuck--Bill Grandy. The place was a hub for local shoppers. In those days, people could phone in their orders or make selections in person, but they never carried their groceries home. It was Bill who hitched up Nellie and the wagon to make deliveries, daily around Georgetown and twice a week to Glen Williams.