Well, I guess I will have a look in at the Public Library. This is down the hall, past the boots and shoes. It is dimly-lit, with one southerly window. The walls are lined with shelves of much-read books. Here, the distinctive odour from the store mingles with that of old and new books, making a scent to be remembered if not to enjoy.

Some current and back issues of the best-seller magazines of the day are on display on a table near the window. These magazines include the Canadian Home Journal, Canadian Countryman, Country Gentleman, Farmer's Advocate, Ladies Home Journal, Good Housekeeping, Liberty, and Popular Mechanics. I love to browse through these books and magazines and borrow a book or two to take home for family reading. I am especially interested in "Popular Mechanics". From these new and back issues I learn much about the outside world of science and mechanical wonders. These areas of activity are the subjects of many of my daydreams. Some day -- perhaps --

On the way to and from the Library, I pass the door leading to the Telephone Exchange. This is a "Party Line" system. Each of its subscribers with a phone, of course, is assigned to a party line. Sometimes as many as a dozen or more would share one line. Each "line" has a number and each party or subscriber is assigned a "ring". Later on I will tell you more about "Our Party-Line Telephone".

This road, down past the store, is known as the Mill Road. Let's wander down there and have a look at the Old Mill. Although owned by the Marsh Family, this mill is known, locally, as "Daddy Arrand's Sawing and Grist Mill". This is a water-powered mill whenever there is enough water in the Mill-pond to operate it. At other times, Daddy Arrand has to use either steam power, furnished by the steam engine that he uses to power his threshing equipment, or a large gasoline engine which he has installed in the mill. There seems to be enough water-power today, and the mill is operating. The millrace is running full and I hear the purring sound of the water-turbine, the slap of the belts, and the murmur of the grain grinder. I guess grain is being ground for some of the men back at the store.

The Old Mill: The "Daddy Arrand" Sawing and Grist Mill Feed grain from neighbouring farms was chopped for Grist and Meal. Logs from Woodlots were made into lumber.

This old mill building appears to be as I have always seen and remember it -- always rundown and forever being repaired. The mill has been for many years one of our most important industries. Farmers for miles around, come here with their horse-drawn wagons, carrying bags of grain to be ground into "chop" or "grist" to be used as food supplements for their livestock.

If this were wintertime, we would see these same farmers, perhaps, hauling their bobsleds piled high with logs which they had cut the year before. These logs would be sawn into lumber for some sort of construction or repair job about the farm. Then we would hear the whine of the great saw as it sliced its way through a yielding log clamped to a travelling carriage. We would see piles of logs still waiting to be cut for some other customer. There is still a large pile of golden-brown sawdust which could be had for a small fee and hauling away.

So we see this mill, "Daddy Arrand's Sawing and Grist Mill" a member of the Marsh Consortium, was and indeed is the industrial heart of our community.

Well, behind the mill is the Mill-Dam. Much like the mill it serves, this structure is always in need of repair. Usually, every Spring, the melting ice and spring rains would do extensive damage to many parts of the dam, making these repairs necessary.

Well, often on hot summer days and evenings, our mill pond will play host to Skinny-dippers of all ages as they dive, splash and otherwise cavort in the friendly, patient, cooling water.

In the wintertime, our pond will be frozen over with ice about a foot thick. This makes an excellent playing field for those who are young at heart. Boys and girls of all ages will glide about, darting hither and yon on ice skates of various styles and models, skirting the reeds and rushes. Usually, a bit of romance is added when some of those old tunes are played on a hand-cranked gramophone which is located in the skating shack there just off the ice.

The pond also yielded a very useful domestic product. Late in the month of February and early March, several families in the neighbourhood converge on the frozen pond to claim their share of the "Ice Harvest". This share is then hauled away on a bobsled drawn by a team of well-shod horses, to be stored in the "Ice House". With proper storing and packing with sawdust from the mill, this share of winter's bounty will serve a useful purpose well into the hot summer months.

So it is, our millpond, too, has played a very important role in the life of Coldstream community at the time before the electrical refrigerator.

Now, having performed its service to industry, and the environment, this happy stream spills its surplus over the dam and quietly ripples on its way to later become a full-fledged river -- the Sydenham.