What can be said of being a newborn or a very young child? Really,the only difference between 1961,for me,and times before is that I existed.But I have no real memory of any of that,or at least no memory that my own mind generated.
My parents returned home and life went on as you might imagine it would.But all I know of that time are not things real to me.They come mostly from the pictures my parents took,and from the stories they told,but to me those pictures and stories could have been anyone as I had no memories to go with them.But I've seen the photos and been able to study them,drawing inferences from each one.The stories I've been told so many time that they form into something that kind of makes sense,and that I can relate to others.But in truth all of that is mostly myth.
The first picture of me as near as I can tell must have been taken some months after my birth.It's summer and I'm in the country,a small farm of sorts,which I now know to have been my grandfather's home in Western New Brunswick.In it,I am being held up on the back of a roan colored horse,by a thin,flat looking man with hardly a chin,just a face that vanishes into the front of his body.There is an unpainted barn nearby and a house covered in red roofing shingles.It's situated on a small hillside covered with a profusion of hay and wildflowers,mostly Daisies,Indian paintbrush and Black Eyed Susans.It must have been my coming out party, so to speak,a chance for my parents to show me off to family for the first time.We must have gone to Springhill on that trip as well.Once my parents pointed out a tiny motel where they said we stayed,and it was in the Memramcook Valley,close to where New Brunswick and Nova Scotia join.They say that in that motel,I slept in a "bread box." It must have been the summer of 1961.
Summer passed and winter came.but I can tell you very little of that outside of pictures.I don't know what the place where we lived looked like at all,save for what is told by a few dozen photos.There was a military base with dark green trucks and jeeps,and sleek looking silver planes parked near the road.There were piles of snow,being eaten up by huge snow blowers.Then the spring came and the streets were a quagmire.The road in front of our home,a yellow and white trailer were a river of mud,such that I could not possibly imagine how anyone could come or go.The yard too was a mud hole.
There are only a few pictures I recall from inside our trailer.One shows me,likely at a year old sitting in the middle of the floor,surrounded by cans of Carnation Evaporated Milk that someone had erected around me in a circle.Carnation Evaporated Milk is what I was fed as a baby.My sister say's that's because there were no cows in Goose Bay,so you could not buy locally produced milk. I have no idea if that is true or not,but Goose Bay does not look much like a place conducive to dairy farming.
Outside the immediate area of the airbase and our home,the countryside in Labrador was rather rugged looking.Typical Canadian Shield,with a lot of exposed,granite looking rock,stands of tall trees and lakes.There is the picture my family took at a place called North West River,of my mother,at sunset talking to a couple of Native men while the sun was setting.It was a deep orange and beautiful sunset that streaked the clouds.In all,those photos revealed a place that looked a lot like much of Northern Canada.
There is a picture of me outside our trailer too.In that picture I appear to be trying to remove the license plates from a blue car sitting in the driveway in front of our trailer.My father always used to relate that story to me when I was young.He is in that picture too,and the car appeared to be perhaps a 1960 Chevy Bel Air,or something very similar.
In my mind I visualize my parents quite differently than they appeared in those photos.My father was neither tall nor short.He was slim,never given to carrying extra weight.But in those days his hair was dark,very nearly black and he looked fit and trim.In my real memory,I can't recall a time when his hair did not have some grey.My mother had short,mousy brown hair and was only just over five feet tall,though she stood erect and looked alert and attentive.She was slimmer that I ever remember her,and would likely have been noticed in her passing down the street.
Seasons followed one after the other,winter to summer and back again.Life went on in it's routine way,whatever that routine was,and 1961 turned into 1962.
In 1962,The Cold War was ongoing,though perhaps not quite as heated as in 1961.Both America and The Soviet Union were busy with nuclear testing,and exploring space.The first Canadian satellite,Alouette was also launched in late September..Jackie Robinson became the first African American inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame,and Jackie Kennedy,America's First Lady conducted a White House tour on television.Walter Cronkite began anchoring the CBS Evening News,and The Rolling Stones performed for the first time.There was an Expo held in Seattle,and 12,000 people were killed in an Iranian earthquake.The United Nations announced that Earth's population had reached three billion.Martin Luther King was arrested for a demonstration in Georgia,and,on September 29,John Kennedy authorized the use of federal troops to bring about integration at The University Of Mississippi.
American writer William Faulkner,former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and gangster Lucky Luciano all passed from this world in 1963.And American icon Marilyn Monroe was found dead in her home of a drug overdose.
Singers Sheryl Crow,Jon Bon Jovi,Garth Brooks and Paula Abdul were all born in 1962,as were actors Tom Cruise,Rae Dawn Chong,Jodie Foster and Rosie O'Donnell.Crocodile hunter Steve Irwin also entered the world in 1962.
In July of that year we were joined by my sister,also born in Goose Bay,at the Happy Valley Hospital.Her name was Krista Marie.There are pictures of her too,though she was very tiny.The only one I really recall is one of us both being pulled in a sled.We are bundled against the weather and there are enormous mountains of snow all about.
!962 was to be our last year in Goose Bay.
Reference: www.onthisday.com
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