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Monday 24 October 2016

Chapter VI continued

It seems as though we were always on the road,going someplace.Either the beach,or just around town.I'm amazed that my father wanted to go anywhere at all with all the driving he did back and forth to work.It was over two hours either way.

My mother drove the car,but most everywhere we went in town we went on foot,at least when my father was not at home.But my mother could and did drive too.At the time,though,we only had one car,and my mother would walk to work if my father was working too.When he was home,we would go off somewhere in the day,then pick up my mother after work.

When we first moved to New Brunswick,most of the roads were not so good.Even after we moved to the city,most of our end of town was still under construction,but the city started coming together.The roads were getting paved gradually.Even some of the driveways were being paved over,and it would not be long until my father decided to pave our's as well.For that he enlisted the help of my grandfather,who came to live with us for a short time.But we lived in a mobile age,an age of automobiles.Some of our neighbors were starting to get more than one car,but that was a ways off for us.Still,we drove everywhere,just about everyday we were driving somewhere.

We went a lot of places by car.But of course,the places we went most often were the two towns that figured most prominently in my childhood,my mother's and my father's hometowns,where my grandparents still lived.One was in Nova Scotia,one in New Brunswick,and they were both interesting places,in very different ways. Springhill,of course was well known as a mining town,but it was a mining town that was nearly finished with mining by the time I was able to recall and understand it.Dead Creek,and Canterbury,my mothers neck of the woods were dying towns too.There really were quite a few places like that in Atlantic Canada,owing to an economy that was never really robust.But I didn't know much about such things at the time.To me,there was a lot to see in these places,a lot to know about,and really,I wish I'd paid better attention.It's possible,too that my parents had attitudes about where they,and where each other lived as children,and I think that may have skewed how I saw each of these places.Still,aside from Moncton,both of these places were formative ion my upbringing,and I carry a bit of them with me even today.


Authors note:Yesterday I received a note,and had a subsequent conversation with an old friend from Moncton.She said that she didn't know I had a blog,and that she would need to catch up on reading it.So I would like to welcome Cheryl Hannah Nicholson along for the ride.Cheryl and I attended the same schools dating from the mid 1970's.Today she lives in Prince George,British Columbia and is a fascinating person,who has lived a life at least as interesting as my own.I have talked  to her often on social media over the past couple of years,and the discourse has always been time well spent.So welcome Cheryl,I hope you will keep reading,and I always welcome comments.

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