My father met a lot of Merchant Marine ships carrying coal to American and Canadian ports and became friends of the captain of the local tug boat which had to dock the larger merchant ships. The captain and the engineer loved to listen to the hockey games on Saturday radio (a battery radio). They always wanted to play cards (45’s) in silence while the game was on.
We kids were always allowed to stay up and listen, too. We dared not open our mouths to say one word – if we did we were sent to bed. Discipline was number one when the hockey game was on. We all got so much from Foster Hewett and I remember the night he let his son Bill, who was 12 years old, broadcast part of the game.
The engineer of this tug was a religious man and never said a cuss word in his life. Mother moved her oak drop leaf table she used for cutting clothes, quilt patches, etc. on because the oak was hardwood and it never got scratched.
The engineer thought the game was over, the Leafs won the game, Mother made them lunch and it was in the kitchen when all of a sudden Howie Morenz scored a goal at the last minute (the engineer was a Leaf fan) when the engineer put his fist up in the air and hit the table and said, “I’ll be damned!” and he broke the leaf in two pieces with his fist. Mother was upset about this table. The men tried to fix it but Mother said it was never the same. So every time she used it she would say, “That darn Howie Morenz broke my table. My father would tell her "Gordie Howe didn’t break your table the engineer did." She always answered, "if Howie Morenz hadn’t scored that darn goal, I would still have my table. "
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