Evelyn Benson practises what she preaches.
Benson recently published a new book, A Century in a Small Town 2 – More Family Stories, a sequel to her 2013 book of stories about life in New West. Soon after finishing the 2013 book, she was already planning a sequel as the stories continued to flow.
“Just like my first book, my stories are all authentic – stories that have been told to me or I experienced myself,” she said in a press release. “After my first book went to press, I kept remembering stories I had left out. So I began to make a computer list, and next thing I knew, I had nearly a hundred more.”
Benson encourages residents to record their families’ history and memories. She has done “three ring binder” sessions, where she encourages folks to jot down their family’s memories in a notebook so they can be passed on to future generations.
In A Century in a Small Town and its newly released sequel, Benson seeks to capture the ambiance of a small town – its people, their problems, their secrets and day-to-day happenings. The latest novel features stories about a convent girl who outsprints nuns to elope with her true love, children who watch the ‘chain gang’ build a brick road, a Rocky Mountain trapper who was stalked by a vicious animal on his trap line, families who felt desperation and helplessness in the Great Depression, gossip on a multi-family shared phone line and a close call with a 300-pound intruder.
Benson has dedicated the book to her father, James Lewis ‘Lewie’ Sangster, who took most of the photos in the book. Her family has donated more than 1,500 of Sangster’s negatives to the City of New Westminster’s archives and they’re now part of the Sangster Collection.
A Century in a Small Town 2 is $20 and available at Black Bond Books or at amazon.com.
Here’s a Christmas story you’ll find in the latest book.
A Christmas Windfall
After Don and I bought the old family home at 319 Sixth Avenue in 1965, we set about modernizing the 1920’s kitchen. Remembering how my father had put a small air-tight wood stove in the kitchen every winter when I was a kid, we decided to take advantage of the still-standing old brick chimney and install a permanent wood-burning stove in the spacious old kitchen. The whole family piled into our big station wagon and we drove to a fireplace store on Kingsway.
After much deliberation, we chose a handsome Franklin stove and enough stovepipe and elbows to connect it to the brick chimney. The two older boys, Mark and Scott, helped Don manoeuvre the heavy stove from the car to the kitchen where they set it upon a brick hearth we had prepared. The girls, Kim and Janet, and our youngest boy, Jay, carried in the length of stovepipe and began to unwrap them from the protective brown paper wrappings.
We were all surprised when an envelope fell out of one of the pipes. Don and I assumed it was probably safety instructions from the manufacturer, but Mark picked up the unsealed envelope and yelled, “MONEY!” We were thunderstruck! We couldn’t believe our ears when he finally announced the total. “Seven hundred and fifty dollars!”
Where had it come from? The factory? The store? Where? Now, by using Sixties economics calculations, its buying power today would compare to more than FIVE THOUSAND dollars!
Because it was only a few days until Christmas, everyone started mentally upgrading their Christmas wish list. We were rich! The immediate consensus was that all the kids could have new bikes. Someone suggested that we take a family trip to Disneyland. I began dreaming of a new chesterfield suite.
Then cold reality set in. Don said, “I really think we should give this a little more thought. This money belongs to somebody. Don’t you think we should at least TRY to find the owner? What if the money was someone else’s Christmas money and now they won’t have a Christmas?”
A long discussion followed. We looked at all the possibilities – pro and con. Finally we took a vote by show of hands. “Who thinks we should find the owner of the money and give it back?” One by one, each child slowly raised a hand. Don and I joined the vote. It was unanimous.
I don’t think I was ever prouder of our kids.
The next day we returned to the fireplace store. Don casually asked the owner if he had misplaced anything. He looked at us incredulously and blurted out, “The money! You found the money! HOW CAN I EVER THANK YOU! That $750 was most of our Christmas ‘take.’”
While this was going on, the woman clerk took me aside and told me that she had hidden the cash in a length of pipe so the cash register wouldn’t be too full of cash in case of robbery. “There are some very desperate people at Christmastime. Robberies happen. My boss was so upset that he threatened to fire me unless it was found. He knew I could never replace it. I’m a single mom. You people saved my job. Thank you for your honesty!”
The owner was amazed by our action. When we explained that we had actually taken a family vote, he swore that any stoves or piping we ever needed would be sold to us at cost. We took him at his word. Later, we bought what we needed for our summer cottage in Howe Sound. And he kept his word. He even showed us the invoices on what he had paid the wholesalers. In the long run, it was a good bargain.
Every year when Christmas rolls around and the family gatherings start to happen, inevitably someone remembers the story of the Christmas Windfall that fell out of a chimney pipe and repeats it to their kids and now even to their grandkids. Isn’t that what Christmas is all about?
