Hudson Bay Parcels

You know that we used to get a parcel every month from Canada, from the Hudson Bay Company. That’s the only parcel we used to get, and in with the stale cigarettes, there used to be fifty 33s they called them. Horrible cigarettes. There used to be a bottle of Johnny Walker’s Red Label, and two bottles of Black Horse beer. That was in our parcel. I think we drank it all.Interviewer: For how many men? Eleven? No, that’s for each man.Interviewer: Oh, for each man.Each guy got his own parcel. Oh, and there was chocolate bars. Dark Horse. I don’t think we enjoyed the chocolate bars very much. We put them in a drawer, and there was little tiny white ants, armies of them. And they’d go into a chocolate bar and take everything out, and you’d have an empty wrapper. Couldn’t believe it. But that, you know, insects were many. Cobras everywhere. Scorpions everywhere. You had to always check your boots to make sure there wasn’t a scorpion in it. There was cobras in your room because they were all thatched huts. No windows on it, just open spaces. A lot of big lizards, but they weren’t harmful. But there was a lot of insects. From ants, thousands of ants … but the worst part was, the worst one was the scorpion and the cobra.