My older sister Ann is pulling me along on a contraption we used to call “the cart.” We’re on the Sauble Beach Pavilion’s outdoor dance floor, summer 1960.

By 1960 the Pavilion, besides being a dance hall, had become Sauble’s unofficial community center. The growing community now had a Chamber of Commerce, which used to hold fundraising bingos at the Pav every Thursday night (years later Tuesday nights were added as well). Also, the Pavilion hosted a range of special events, such as the Miss Sauble Beach pageant. Growing up as a kid in this atmosphere was a lot of fun, I can tell you. There always seemed to be something new and exotic going on.

At the back of the outdoor dance floor were sheds which housed hundreds of chairs and tables. And that’s where “the cart” came in. The cart would be piled high with chairs and then, load teetering, hauled indoors by the Pavilion’s summer help. The next day they’d all be hauled back to the shed again. By the seventies this became one of my main jobs, and it still amazes me to think that, in three or four hours, I and one other guy could set up enough chairs and bingo tables for two thousand people!