Katie Ferguson

 

Our Mother, Catherine "Katie" Ferguson Reekie

Our mother, Catherine "Katie" Ferguson Reekie, was born in St. Monance in 1898.  Her parents were Peter and Minnie Ferguson. Their family home was the house at the top of The Cribbs, near to the middle pier of the St. Monance harbour. Sometime in the distant past it's my understanding that  Peter's forbearers came from somewhere in Perthshire before coming to St. Monance.  Peter was a maker of fine furniture and Minnie, as was the custom of the day, was a homemaker.  Unlike today, in these days the job of wife was no small task, as there were none of the labour saving devices that we have today.  Peter was quite a character.  At one time he was convinced that he could fly.  He made quite an elaborate set of wings that he strapped to his back. On the day that was appointed for take-off, most of the villagers went with him to a bridge, the parapet of which was his point of departure.  Just before take-off he said to his gallery, "Now don't go away for I'm just going for a short hover."  He took off, plummeted to the ground and broke both his legs and several other bones.  Another time one of his ventures was to make a submersible.  He placed it in bottom of St. Monance Harbour when the tide was out.  His plan was to get in it, let the tide rise to cover over him, then at some later time he would surface his craft.  Well it didn't, and he was very lucky to finally extricate himself.  For a moment he was more dead than alive.

He loved to play pranks on us, his grand children.  One time I, with Noel and John, my two brothers, went to see him.  "Come in to the workshop.  I've something to show you," he said.  Hanging near the ceiling by a system of pulleys was a coffin which he said he'd made for himself.  He lowered it down to the ground.  The lid was hinged and had a big window in it so he could see out.  He got in and closed the lid and asked us if we thought he had enough elbow room. When he did die he was buried in his glass windowed coffin in St. Monance churchyard.

My mother, Katie, was 16 when she went to work in a shop in Elie, three miles away from her home in St. Monance.  She told me that she never walked but always ran the distance each way.  Her route was to follow the pathway just above the shoreline between the two villages.  She had a very good voice and she told me that she sang as she ran.  What spare time she had, her passion was watercolour painting.

After my dad and mother married they lived in St. Monance for two years. My sister, Minnie, was born there in 1920.  In 1921 they bought the house called The Cross just across the road from the Earlsferry Town Hall where in due course brother John was born there in 1923, I in 1926 and brother, Noel, on Christmas Day 1929.