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WIIlty Free Press, Wednesday, JuIy 7, 1993. Page 7 CucuberBihilia 1 grew up on another planet. Well, not exactly another planet. But in a time and place far enough away from the present to qualify as another planet. Let me provide some details. On my home planet we heated houses with coal, cooked summer meals on a wood-burning stove in the summer kitchen, carried drinking water from across the street, pumped wash water from a cistern. And ahem, ahem, suffered summer and winter the inconvenience of outdoor conveniences, if you know - what I mean. My inother also kept a bucket next to the kitchen sink "for catching slops." This was known as a slop pail. At that time this was common in rural Ontario - just one of the many side effeets of having no indoor plumbing. 0f course, if you neyer had in loor plumb- ing, you would flot cali this a side effect. It was just the way things were. Daily, one of my jobs was to empty the slop PEU. Having no hogs to slop the potato peels and fr-uit . ... rinds to, we simply dumped them on the garden --in a shallow pit dug especially for the purpose. Twice a year we would move this pit -- my job again, the digging, dragging the cover into place. Last year's pit became this year's cucumber patch. 1 ever tell you about how big we grew those cucumbers, big as watermelons, they were. I bring you this history lesson, gratis, brought to mind this week as I puttered away a couple of vacation days in my backyard. My job: to dismantie a temporary compost bin built two years ago. No slop pail in our kitchen no sir. Just a plastic bag hooked oyer a drawer nob, tMere to hold vegetable scraps. Daily, one of my jobs is to empty this bag into the 50TH WEDDING ANN1VERSRY 0F MU. AND MRS. R013ERT WRITE, JULY 5,1893 compost bin. And spring and fail, too, we dig into the This picture was taken at the residence of Mr. and Mrs. White at the southwest corner of compost bin. The black gold therein makes perfect soil Cochrane Street and llossland Road. The house was demolished in 1990. Rlobert White dressing for shrubs and flower beds. This year, at the operated a brickyard on his property starting about 1854.1 insistence of one seven-year-old female résident of the WhItby Ac1ives phoo Swan household, we have cultivated a cucumber hill -- built from compost. I can't wait to see the product, big as watermelons, im sure. Isn't it wonderfu.l that 10 VEARS AGO modern life has come se far. from the Wednesday, July 6, 1983 edition of the So far, in fact, that many people I know have two WEIirmY FREE PRESS homes. One in the city, near work,' near schools, near e yrd.=ed Meadows subdivison with 177 homes at Garden Street and Manning Rond libraries. With indoor plumbing, and electric lights, ofcal opened on June 30. you name it. * The Free Pres l praising Mayor Bob Attereley for an editorial on Whitby'e marketing Theothr huseis alld aucotag~~.Thi bose s *strat,2gy in the Toronto Star. The the bose s caleda "ottge".Thi bose s *David J. Thomas, one of the last veterane of the Firet Worid War in Whitby, celebrated usually located far from the city, far from work, bis 90th birthday on June 28. usually on roads that literally carved out of bare rock. a Thieves broke into the Brooklin Legion Hall for the second time in a week, stealing a O ften thee smmer hnoeshave nnoelectricit.- Or large quantity of liquor. grow cucumbeýrs bigger than any you've every seen. ~ i_________________________'