Editor's note: Mr. Bartlett wrote this about his grandfather who was a lighthouse keeper years ago down East.
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CLOSE CALL ON NORTHUMBERLAND
When my mother was a little girl,
She lived in a lighthouse by the sea;
It was on an island by the name of Amet,
Where the waves would lull her to sleep.
Her parents were hardy lighthouse keepers,
And sometimes there were slim pickens;
They had all the things they needed,
With a garden and a big flock of chickens.
One fine day in December,
When the weather was nice and clear;
Her father decided to go to Malagash Point,
For the mail, four miles from here.
So he boarded the family boat that morning,
And headed across the Strait to town;
It was only four miles across the water,
And Lloyd was a sailor of renown.
The boat was an eighteen-foot cutter,
And was pointed fore and aft;
It had a single sail and a single mast,
And was a fine little sailing craft.
His wife insisted he take a coat and a hat,
For her ladies intuition was strong;
She sensed there was a big storm coming,
And she was so seldom ever wrong.
The trip over to Malagash was uneventful,
So Lloyd chatted and picked up the mail;
But when he got halfway back across the strait,
The wind changed and began to wail.
The Nor’Wester struck like a bolt of lightning
The snow was too heavy for him to see;
So he threw the mast and sail overboard,
As a sea anchor for mobility.
He rode out the storm that wild windy night
And finally, his boat touched the shore;
The boat was destroyed when it struck a rock,
But Lloyd was back on land once more.
So there he was stranded in a snowstorm
And he didn’t know where he was that night;
So he found some dry wood to make a fire,
But his matches were too wet to light.
He knew that he would have to keep moving,
If he was to survive the rest of the night;
He kept tramping around on a path in the snow
To keep warm ‘till the morning daylight.
As dawn broke he could see a farmhouse.
He struggled to get there through the snow;
The farmer welcomed him into the house,
Where he thawed out by the fire’s glow.
It turned out he landed at Brule, Nova Scotia,
He had drifted that far down the coast;
Lucky for Lloyd he found that farmers’ house,
Who gave him a hot pepper drink and toast.
Lloyd’s wife didn’t know what happened to him,
For she had had a dreadful night;
She had to make sure the light was visible,
So the ships could see it all right.
She wouldn’t know for another two weeks,
What had happened to Lloyd in the storm;
These were the days before radio/phones,
She couldn’t know he was alive and warm.
Finally, Lloyd arrived back at Amet Island,
On the icebreaker ‘Lady Minto’ from Pictou;
Lloyd was very happy to see his wife Martha,
And his kids that he missed so.
They spent ten years on Amet Island
And enjoyed their solitary life;
It seems Lloyd always had something to do,
As he tended the lighthouse with his wife.
Most of the old lighthouses have disappeared,
Many more will follow too soon;
They are being replaced with computers,
So ships won’t run aground on the dunes.
But these lights are still doing their job,
No matter what powers the light;
Much the same as they did on Isle Amet,
When Grandpa Lloyd kept it shining so bright!
Bob Bartlett,
North Bay
