Happy New Year 1948!

Springhill, Nova Scotia

This stylish couple is my mother, Anne Robertson Sulzbach, and her cousin, Harmon Spence Jr.  (see Spence Pedigree Chart) They are both 29 in this picture.  They were always close because they were the same age, and when you have 12 kids in the family, even a year makes a difference.

They are on their way to a New Year's Eve dance in, I forget, Parrsboro?  Amherst?  My mother used to tell me about these dances and I always felt left out that I couldn't go.  This was, of course, 15 years before I was born.

The big story was the moose.  One night, driving home from the dance on the dark wooded road, you can see how high the snow is piled, they saw a creature in the woods beside them. 

 "Look, a deer!"  said my mother.

"That's no deer," said Junior.  "That's a moose!"

The moose took an interest in them and decided to accompany them home.  As a kid, I didn't understand the significance of this - I knew that moose were big, but I didn't know that moose stand 6 feet tall at the shoulder and weigh over 1000 pounds, with antlers that can be 6 feet wide.  Moreover, if a car and moose collide, the undercarriage will just hit the moose's legs, causing the massive body to fall on the windshield and roof.  Bye bye car passengers.

A Maine state trooper's car after colliding with a moose

So Junior drove faster and faster, on a dark frozen road.  He tried to outrun it, but the moose was still curious.  It ran alongside them in the forest, keeping pace with the car for many miles, but never ventured onto the road.