All through childhood,both before we came to Moncton,and long after,it always seemed to me that we could travel just a very short distance,yet things were so completely different than they were at home.It's not that they really were so very different,and if they were they were,they were in a subtle kind of way.
We went everywhere by car once we'd moved to New Brunswick,and it really was a very small sort of a place.It didn't seem that way to a small child though.You could drive for just a few minutes and see the ocean,for instance,and instead of the things we would see around our home,there would be a lot of water,and fishing boats and there might be lobster pots stacked in driveways,and sea shells instead of gravel. In other places you would see little cabins in the woods,with men in red and black checked woolen jackets.In other places the houses were covered in tar paper and looked so different from our big white house.People talked different too.They talked a language I could not understand at all,especially in Redmondville,once you got very far from our house at all.I Didn't know that this was French.Not until I got to Moncton,where a great many people spoke French,and,eventually we would all be taught to speak it.
So,if traveling out into the country was like visiting a foreign country,coming to Moncton couldn't have been more different than if we'd landed on the moon.It was busier,with far more cars and truck,though not right in our yard.It was safer,because we were not permitted outside of the back yard,and so,no traffic came really close to us.That's not to say our neighborhood wasn't bustling though.
Moncton,in 1964 was a medium sized industrial city.As far as Atlantic Canada was concerned,Moncton was located pretty much right in the middle of the region,and so it was a convenient place to put a city,to locate all the services that the region would need.At the time,it was growing rather fast.
All the trains passing from the west into Nova Scotia,Prince Edward Island and points east passed right through Moncton,and so,we lived in a train town.There was a switching yard,and further on,towards the center of town a huge locomotive shop.Anytime we went downtown,we would pass that shop.It was a long,low,dirty looking building,with rails snaking all around,and trains coming and going all the time.Usually it was smoky and smelly as well.When the shifts changed at the shops,you could hear the whistle from anywhere in town,or,at least anywhere I ever was.Up by our house,you could always here trains too,chugging along and you could hear the crashing when they were hooking cars together.Trains,in those days were the one true reality of Moncton. Everyone knew someone who worked at the shops.Our next door neighbor worked there.It was the biggest thing happening in town.
Moncton had a downtown too.Downtown was a new concept to me.It wasn't very big really,but it seemed big to me at the time.It was a single big street that was lined with stores of all sorts.Usually we went downtown to go to Eatons,which was the biggest department store in town.In fact,when we first moved there it might have been the only department store. Woolworths came a bit later,just down from Eatons.When it opened,everyone was talking about it because it had escalators,which was completely new.At Eatons,which had several floors,there was only an ancient elevator,or a set of stairs.The building was old at that time,kind of a dingy brown color,with big windows,like an old factory might have.The elevators always worried me,and they must have worried my parents too,as anytime we went shopping,we took the stairs.
Farther down Main Street,there was just about any other kind of store you could imagine.Lots of clothing stores.More than one shoe store.We went to the shoe stores all the time,because our feet were growing fast.I'll bet it was every few months we were in the shoe store.There a man would use some kind of device to measure our feet,then go in to the back of the store and bring out a new pair of shoes in a big box.Sometimes he was gone for what seemed like a long time,but that never worried me,because the shoe store had one of those mirrors that wrap around you where your standing,and when you stood next to it,you would see maybe eight of yourself reflected in it.That's the reason I always liked going to buy shoes.
I'd go downtown with my father sometimes,to go to the bank,and to city hall,and to a place called HFC.I had no idea what HFC was,or why he went there.And the bank wasn't very interesting at all.But it was an impressive building,being made of old stone,and standing in a scale that would make you feel very small. City Hall would make you feel even smaller.It was an old building too,made of stone blocks.It might have been the biggest building in town,apart from Eatons and the locomotive shops.It towered above your head,and the steps leading up to it were big and wide.Pigeons flew all around City Hall too.Inside,it was big and open,with clean,shiny floors,stairs and railings.My father would always say,in those days that we had a good City Hall,we could be proud of it,because we lived in a good town.He was also proud of the bank.You see,it wasn't just any bank.It was The Bank Of Nova Scotia.And my father was Nova Scotian to the core.It's the only bank he used then,and he liked it because it belonged to the place he came from.
At one end of downtown,near,just beyond Eatons,there was a little shack with a lot of windows.The Co-Op Ice Cream Bar.It was located right by the Co-Op store,which we never went into.That store,so my father said was for farmers,and we were not farmers.But he loved to go to the ice cream store,and,as far as I know,that was the only place you could buy ice cream.It was in a busy part of town,and my father liked to be seen there in the summer time.I didn't understand it at the time,but that was a sort of status symbol for him.He was new in town,had a decent car a growing family,and was not wealthy,but modestly prosperous.And taking his family out for ice cream embodied all of that.He would always have orange pineapple,my mother always got butter pecan,my sister strawberry,and I always had chocolate.It never varied much,at least not when we were small.
continued
No comments:
Post a Comment