` ` ` Unable to resist the first rays of the morning sun breaking over the eastern horizon at 5:30 each morning, Mrs. George Holmes, 80-year-old Tilbury East Resident, is like the woodpecker, she's up brignt and early doing her many household duties.

` ` ` Cooking breakfast, washing dishes, separating milk, arranging beds and dusting and cleaning her neat, frame home on the firth concession is her daily routine. And the most interesting part of the whole thing, Mrs. Holmes is always looking for more work.

` ` ` Besides all these tasks, she undertakes the tremendous responsibility of managing ehr farm in a most business-like manner. From her home to the residence of her farm-foreman, she has a private telephone which is busy several tiems a day as she fires snap orders across the wire.

` ` ` Mrs. Holmes cmae to Canada from Aberdeenshire, Scotland, her birthplace, at the age of six with her parents, David Fletcher and Rebecca McCombie, in 1860. Besides the family of 4 girls, two boys and the parents, eighteen other persons made the trip to Canada, the land of opportunity. In Scotland at that time it was impossible to buy a farm and the best a farmer could do was rent land for a tenure of 19 years.

` ` ` The Holmes family settled on the seventh concession, in Tilbury East, occupying 300 acres of dense brush and what is today the J. H. Williams farm. Those were the days when men were men and women were not far behind, Mrs. Holmes said.

` ` ` Dense forests had to be cleared, homes built, tree-stumps blasted out and all farm work had to be done by hand. To get a supply of drinking water, pails were fileld from ditches, the "wrigglers" were taken out and the water was boiled for many hours, she stated.

` ` ` "Times were very difficult then but we all survivied," Mrs. Holmes said. "It is hard to realize the difference a few years can make. Today we have electricity, running water, telephones and the latest power equipment for farming. Little did we realize that this would ever happen."

` ` ` Apple-paring bees, something enver heard of these days, waqs a popular past time in Mrs. Holmes' early years. This would be a safe, economical way for a farmer to make certain of a good supply of apples during the winter months. CENTER>

CORD EXPENSIVE

` ` ` These bees were conducted in an interesting fashion. The apples were peeled by the women and cored by the children. Cord was made`from bass wood, binder-twine being too expensive during these times, Mrs. Holmes said, and passed thtrough a steel support taken from an unbrella. This crudely-fashioned needle was passed through the apples until a string of sufficient length was obtained. The apples were then hung up to dry and used for pies and suace in the witner.

` ` ` Only once did spirits touch her lips and that was on doctor's orders. She was 16 at the time and she was told to take a little "nip" of porter. It made her so violently ill that it was her first and last. She has never smoked but her mother puffed a pipe from the age of 16 until 80, when she died.

` ` ` Mrs. Holmes is one pioneer who does not live in the past. She strives to keep up with the times by means of books and newspapers. he is able to tell you the latest movements of allied troops and without the slightest hesitation.

` ` ` "We had more than our share of trouble in early tiems but we were always happy," she said. "We used to have parties and community singing was always enjoyed. There is a great deal said of the younger generation, but the young people of today are just as good as we were.

` ` ` "There is no sense of looking back into the past -- you have to face the future if you want to get ahead. You've got to live in these times or you are going to trail the field. Competition is too stiff to sit back and say 'That's the way we used to do it in the olden days.' Times are different now."