Chapter V continued.

On the second of March,1965,I celebrated my fourth birthday.For the very first time ,I had a party.In fact,it's the very first time I ever recall being at a party.A few other children from around the neighborhood were there,but mostly I don't recall who they were.My sister was  there of course,but she was still really small.and not much into the party.The only other person I recall was a little girl who lived across the street and one house up from us at 12 Watson Avenue.When we first moved in,there seemed to be people moving into and out of that house a few times in a short time period,so I don't really know who that girl belonged to.My father used to refer to the man living there as Mr.Hale,and ,for some reason I was under the impression that he worked for the military.My father talked to him a lot and seemed to know him quite well.But I don't know if that little girl was his.What I do recall was that her name was Marlene and she was a chubby little girl with light curly hair.We used to play together sometimes,but not often,because neither of us could cross the road on our own.

My party was like most children's birthday parties.We ate cake and ice cream,and we played games.The cake had four candles,and I thought I'd never be able to blow them all out,but I did.

There were several different games that we played,and each one had prizes.But the only game I really remember was one called Pin The Tail On the Donkey.My mother made certain that none of the children at the party went home without a prize.

Pin the tail on the donkey was a lot of fun.The object is just what the game says.Inside the box,there is a picture of a tailless donkey and a whole bunch of numbered tails.To win the game,you had to pin the tail onto the donkey,closest to where it would belong on a real donkey.With a pack of four year old children,that was never really close,so the donkey ended up being deformed.First,my mother blindfolded the player,and turned them around in a circle three times,so we were a bit dizzy,and of course,blind.So the poor beast would end up with tails on his nose,or ears or knees-everywhere but the anatomically correct location.But we would all laugh to see a donkey with so many tails,and somebody won the prize.It turned out to be my first real training in being an iconoclast as well.I never would have guessed that at the time,but later in life,when I'd been writing for some time,and had learned a lot more about life,I recalled that game.By the time I'd heard of people like Alberta premier Ralph Klien or Toronto mayor Rob Ford,I was already aware that having a handful of numbered tails tended to make everyone look like a donkey.

On the night of my birthday,after the party,we all got into the family car and headed up the coast to visit my Uncle Bill,who worked for The Royal Canadian Mounted Police,in a small town in Northern New Brunswick.I was tired from the party and must have fallen asleep on the way.I do recall arriving there though,in the middle of the night.Uncle Bill lived in a bungalow that was attached to the police station.At the time his family was just him and his wife and my cousins Janice and Shawna.Janice was older than I was and she was walking with crutches.Shawna was just a baby,and my cousin Alan might have been on the way at that time.

Uncle Bill's place was an exciting place for a young boy to be because it was the police station.There was a police car parked in the driveway,and another one in the garage,along with a fast looking boat on a trailer,and a snowmobile.All were painted just like the police cars.And of course,I got to sit in the police car and turn on the light and siren.

I thought it was neat visiting my uncle,and getting to sleep in the police station.I would tell people about that for weeks afterward,and they always seemed to think there was something funny about sleeping in a police station.They would smile and chuckle when I told them that.

We visited for a whole day,then started for home again at  night.It's very dark in that part of New Brunswick.The towns were all small and far apart and you were really out in the woods.So,there was not a lot to see-unless you looked up.I sat up front and my mother would point out The Big Dipper and Orion to me.I don't recall there being a moon that night,but there were blue and green lights that seemed to dance in the sky.My mother suggested that I try counting the stars,but I couldn't count nearly that high.

Our car had a radio too.I was amazed that there were people in the radio who could talk and sing,and I couldn't really figure out how it worked.My mother explained that the people I was hearing were at the radio station and they spoke into a machine which took their voices and threw them into the sky.The car had another machine,the radio,which could somehow catch the voice and bring it inside so we could hear it.The story fascinated and confused me as I sat there between my mother and my father. How could a single voice leave the radio station and come into our car.It occurs to me now that I had a good deal of  trouble separating the idea of a person voice from that person,at the time.So I imagined a machine throwing people into the air,and our car catching them.Only I couldn't see them.I had other questions in my mind about this too.Like why didn't those people just get lost out there with all the stars? And how would they ever find our car,and not some other car?

If the story about the voices were true,I thought,there must be wondrous things in the air.All of the things that were ever on the radio were floating around outside the car,in the night.There were singers and people telling the news.There were also stories,about good guys and villains,and even cowboys and Indians.I was beginning to view the world with a sense of wonder,filled with things that were there but that I could not see.I remember two songs on that radio,inside our car.The Statler Brothers were singing about Counting Flowers On The Wall,and  Nancy Sinatra was singing These Boots Are Made For Walking.I wondered, and sometime in the night fell off to sleep.