Welcome/Happy New Year.

Welcome.As we stand here on the brink of a new year, let me invite you, if you happen to be reading this blog for the first time,to come along for the ride, as I  write this memoir of my life in Atlantic Canada during the 1960's and 1970's.Hopefully you will find something of interest, either just as a story, or as a primary source in terms of the history of that place and time.Only a Large Hill began in blog form about eighteen months, but it's groundwork was laid down years before as I wrote journals out in longhand in coil notebooks.

As an adult in my thirties, I went back to school after over a decade out in the working world.Before I could do that I had to take upgrading classes in reading and writing, which seemed unreasonable to me at the time, because I thought myself to have enough intellect,and I'd never set aside the idea of learning, even though I'd been busy doing other things.In retrospect,however, I came to see how one's skills can become rusty, and how much the upgrading was going to ease my academic burden.More importantly,the beginnings of this memoir can be credited to those few weeks of classes.

One of the assignments during writing class was to keep a daily journal.It didn't have to be on any particular topic, but we were to write one page a day, essentially as writing practice.I was busy at the time, working full time and I had a young family.Moreover, it was hot,uncomfortably so at times, during those six weeks, so I often found myself going about the task rather peevishly.But I received good grades on the assignment, and decided not to give up on the journal writing once class had finished.So for years I just kept writing down anything that came to mind, until I had a stack of notebooks.

It really wasn't until the early years of the twenty first century that I decided, hey, these writing might actually be important.They might actually be of interest to someone.The biggest obstacle to starting a memoir, for me was convincing myself that my life might actually interest someone.You see, I was just busy living life, working and going about the daily business  of being to consider it very interesting myself.I'd always remembered the days growing up in Moncton, New Brunswick, and even the days before that, living in rural New Brunswick as little more than an infant.I also recalled many stories that were told to me by others that served to set context for my being.So from an early time onward, I've always been filled with stories, though not necessarily a gift for story telling.

Still, it was in looking both forward and back that I decided to tell my story.In looking back, I discovered that there had never really been storyteller in our family before, at least so far as I knew about.My paternal grandfather grew up in and around Springhill Nova Scotia, a notorious town, often
well known for all of the wrong reasons. He was a ships carpenter, according to his own telling, a bootlegger during the 1920's, an all round hellion and a very tortured man, given to excess of drink.He could tell a story orally, but had to be harassed to do so, and then told tales of poetic nonsense.Later I discovered that he neither read nor wrote, so what might have been a great and stimulating tale never came to be.The other side of our family seemed to me a notoriously closed mouth lot.They lived in Western New Brunswick, in a hard little place called Dead Creek.Surely the day to day challenges of  living in such a place alone would have made for fertile reading.Yet again, the story was never told, because those people from whom my mother came were stoics, United Empire Loyalists.Stoicism makes complete sense if you'd ever seen the place they came from, and how many people there lived.My mother always used to say"If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all."I realized that it must have been something that was bred into her from childhood.My grandfather often said nothing at all.So their story can often only be known by inference.

In looking forward, the events of September Eleventh 2001 were to provide an extra incentive to start work on my memoir, because, as I considered the world past, I came to realize, as I began my day in the city of Calgary Alberta, that the world was to be irrevocably changed, divided into the time before, and the time after.I didn't know what to expect, exactly, but it was around that time that I began to feel an urgency in regard to getting the past written down.In the months and years that followed, I realized that words define and identify us, either our own words, or those of others.I found the idea of being defined by others repulsive, and who knew then how much our society would allow us to define our own experience moving forward.So a memoir was begun.

The whole concept of Only A Large Hill has been from the beginning, to allow you to have a sort of back stage pass to my writing room.You get to see the work as it's being produced, kind of like what you might find if you slipped into the room where I write.The downside of that, as I've discovered is that the writing you see can be of inconsistent quality. I've considered writing this memoir for print media, and may well yet do that, but as for right now, it stands what it is-essentially unfinished work product, to be further refined, perhaps should the need arise.

Nevertheless, I invite you along for the ride as we head into a new year.My blog will be of interest to you if you are interested in the history of Atlantic Canada in general, or of growing up in Moncton,New Brunswick in particular.It also touches on events in other places.

After eighteen months of producing this blog I've yet to get myself through the schoolhouse door for the first time.That's coming in the very near future. Largely that's because I grossly underestimated the things that I would be able to adequately recall from my very youngest of days, and didn't see the treasure trove as being all that rich.In just the time since I began blogging, I've also come to realize that the story as I've been telling it has a kind of continuity right up until today, that I never really imagined when I first started out. There is a particular thread of the story that really would not have made complete sense to even me as little as two years ago.Again, that story is ahead of us in the coming months.

So in closing, let me again invite you along for the trip, if you have any interest at all.I began this project for my family, but really, my family has come to include many more people than just siblings, my son, nieces and nephews, and all those yet to come.A story is for all.

As I move forward, I had goals for this blog aside from just more entries.As of this date, this blog has had just over forty five thousand views.I'm satisfied with that.I never dreamed that that many people would read some portion of my memoir.In terms of numbers though, I'd like to double readership in the year to come, and I believe that's fully possible.Obviously I'd like to continue to tell a story of readable quality, through to it's conclusion.

I have something to ask of you readers though.And that's that I would like you to visit the blog and comment.It's with regard to comments, and followers that I'm lagging behind.If you are one of the followers to whom I personally send this blog out, entry by entry, I'd like you to go to Blogger and become an actual follower.A few close friends have provided input on Facebook, but I'd like to ask you all to actually visit the blog.I'd also like two things further of you.First,I'd like you to send the stories you find here to anyone else you might know who you think would be interested.Secondly, it's always been my goal to partner with another blogger who is doing what I'm doing:publishing an online memoir of life in Atlantic Canada.Essentially what I want is to carry someone else blog on my site, and have them do likewise.So, if you are a memoirist from Atlantic Canada, please contact me to make arrangements.

Finally, I want to note that I currently produce two blogs. The second, entitled  Waking Up In Winter picks up the story began in Only a Large Hill, some thirty or so years later, in the Canadian West, when things began rapidly changing within our family, and when the idea of identity began to be challenged from seemingly every corner and front. So I want to invite you along for that ride too, as I write and produce it concurrently with Only a Large Hill.

So Happy New Year from Toronto Canada.Won't you sit down for a few minutes and allow me to tell you a story?

The Memoirs & Misadventures of Mones: This opinion piece will self combust

The Memoirs & Misadventures of Mones: This opinion piece will self combust: So In light of yesterdays events and a few posts and articles I’ve read. Rather than complete a long dramatic Facebook status I’d like to d...

Chapter Xii,1967,Continued.

One of the rites of passage before I could enter school was getting a vaccination for smallpox.I'd never met anyone who had had smallpox, and that was largely because a lot of resources were being invested to eradicate it.Everyone had to be vaccinated.

Every adult I knew had been vaccinated.They all had little round scars on their arms to show where this had been done.My mother and father both showed me what their scars looked like, and explained that they were put there with a needle.I would go to a nurse, and she would stick a needle in my arm,and inject the smallpox vaccine.The reason I was given for this at the time was that it would stop me from getting sick.Smallpox was a very dangerous sickness, and, my parents told me, if you got it, you would die.That almost certainly explained why I didn't know anyone who had smallpox, and that everyone I did know had a scar on their arm. In any event, I didn't want to die without ever getting inside the schoolhouse, and I might want to marry my friend Karen someday I thought.Truth be known, the school was a big attraction, but I'm not certain I'd rather have married Karen or died.I still remembered our rock fight, and at times thought she was mean.

In those days,the vaccinations were given at the Legion Hall, which was at John and Highfield Streets, just before you got downtown.It was a rather cool spring day when my father took me down there for the vaccination.On the way he asked if I was afraid."No." I said.But I wasn't so certain.I knew having a needle poked into my arm was likely going to hurt.But I was not going to admit being afraid.I was going to walk right into that room and let the nurse do what she had to.Thinking about it was uncomfortable though.I knew that pain was something to be avoided. The worst part of it was having weeks to think about it.I'd occasionally fallen outside and hurt myself, with the usual assortment of childhood cuts and scrapes.Only in those events, there was no need to think about it, because the mishaps just happened.There was no thinking about them.They happened and they were over just as fast, and life went on.It seemed unfair somehow that I had to think about this vaccination for so long.

Inside the legion,there were a bunch of older people sitting around at tables drinking beer.My father seemed to know some of them, and greeted them warmly. The room for the vaccinations was off to the side, behind a closed door.There was a table lined with these tiny containers, all in neat rows.There was also a sort of a box with things that were clearly the needles. The air had a sharp alcohol scent, and I didn't like it much.It was that smell that I wanted to get away from more than anything.It only took a minute.The nurse, who wasn't dressed like a nurse at all asked me what my name was, then asked if I was ready.I told her I was and she said that I might feel a little poke, but that it wouldn't hurt much.What I actually felt was more like a little scratch, and it really didn't hurt.It was kind of like brushing a piece of sandpaper over my arm.The nurse had a piece of candy of some sort that she handed me as a reward for not making her job difficult.She also handed my father a pamphlet with information about the vaccine on it.It showed pictures of how the scar should look after certain periods of time.The last picture showed a scar just like the one on both of my parents arms.That took about three weeks.It would scab over, and eventually the scab would fall off. Along the way though, there were some pretty ugly looking stages, and this worried me more that the needle.

I still recall vividly how the scar came to fall off.It had gotten to the last stage, which looked like an ugly grey scab.It itched a little bit.We were playing in the living room one night, with an old box.We would take turns getting into the box, and then we would roll the box over, with either me or my sister inside it.Then,we would roll it upright again ant the person inside the box would pretend to be a jack in the box. So when it was my turn to jump up out of the box,I did.And I caught the scab on my arm, which I'd nearly forgotten about,on the edge of the box,and off it came.Actually that hurt much more than getting the vaccination did.I was happy it was gone though.At the babysitter's I was made to take an aspirin, and go for a nap, because the babysitter decided I was having a reaction to the vaccination.With the aspirin, I was made to chew it up because she said water would make it so that it wouldn't work as well.It tasted dry and bitter and was hard to get down without water.As for the nap, I was six years old.Afternoon naps were an affront to my dignity.I can't say whether I was having a reaction or not, but I wasn't feeling sick at all. In all,the vaccination hardly seemed as big a deal as all the adults made it out to be, and now, finally, I was almost ready to go to school.  

Chapter XII,1967,Continued.

Even though I'd yet to get into the schoolhouse I was to find out that some of the children in our neighborhood liked a somewhat more rough and tumble kind of play than I was used to. There were a lot of new kids moving into the area,especially down on Willet Street,towards the woods.And that's still where I hung out. A new duplex went up on Willet right by where the woods ended,and there were a couple of kids that lived there.Both were older than I was, but not really that much older.Most of the time they were reasonably good kids to play with.But not always. The same could be said for the kids that lived right on the corner of Willet and Watson.They were a big family with a lot of boys.My father used to say things about them being"Catholic." and that they were "prolific." whatever that meant. Karen and her brother still lived across the street too, and I still played with Karen, but only when there weren't any boys around.

For Christmas in 1966,I'd gotten a lot of guns.Games that involved toy guns were very popular among all of the boys.Sometimes the girls wanted to join in too, but the boys almost never allowed them to.One time we were getting ready to play guns,and Karen demanded to be allowed to play.Her brother,who was about four years older than us would hear nothing of it.Eventually he ended up pushing his sister down and she went away crying.Karen's brother was always nice enough to me, but he ran with a rough crowd, and he used a lot of bad language.Between him and his friends it seemed like they were using the F word all of the time, and I knew if my mother ever heard them,I wouldn't be allowed to play with them anymore.So I was kind of good at keeping their secret.

Most of the boys I hung out with were a bit older than I was, as there were no boys on our street exactly the same age I was.This also made them seem badder to me.Some of them really had an attitude.Mostly they didn't like little kids tagging along when they went to play guns, but usually we went along anyway.The problem with playing guns with the bigger boys is that they always got to decide who won, and what kind of play experience you got from the game.

First, if you were going to play guns,two of the bigger boys would become team captains.You could never dispute who the captains were,because if you did they might slap you around.It wasn't unusual for some of the boys who were just a bit younger to challenge the oldest boys,and then there might be a fight. But all the younger kids like me just kept our mouths shut and went along with whatever was happening. We had no real choice if we wanted to play at all, and nobody wanted to be left out.

When we played guns,the games usually took one of three forms.First there was war.Or,the next most popular game was Cowboys and Indians. Finally there was cops and robbers.Our games, in those days reflected the various prejudices of the time, but few of us thought much about that.Again, as smaller boys we just went along to get along.

When we played war, the teams,led by the older boys,broke down into one of two groups.Basically it was the good guys versus the bad guys- us or them.Usually though the bigger boys were not really shy about identifying the two groups as either "Americans." who were the good guys, or the "Krauts." who everybody hated and nobody wanted to be.Sometimes the "Krauts." were called "Japs." but they were still "bad guys",and nobody wanted to be one. At the time, it was only about twenty years after WWII,and there was a lot of negative feelings still towards our enemies in that war.I suppose it was to be expected, knowing how humans are, but it seemed like a bit of a shame that all the boys around adopted such prejudice so willingly.One night after playing guns until dark,I asked my father what"Kraut" meant.He said that it meant a German person, and explained that I was not to use the word.

When you played guns,the outcome of the battle was always decided.I'm not certain why anyone would have wanted to play,given that it was always the same people who always won.Sometimes the older boys would flip a coin to decide which group got to be "Krauts" then they would take turns in each new round.That seemed okay to me because you would win every second game.But then sometimes the older boys would just decide among themselves that us younger ones would have to be "Krauts" or "Japs" and you would have to loose every game if you wanted to keep playing, and nearly everyone did.Usually when this happened there would be an argument over exactly how old you had to be to be an "American." Sometimes this would end up in a fight, and the oldest boys would always get their way.Even when some of us younger ones got together by ourselves, the older boys would often come along later and take over the game,making us play by their rules.

The bottom line in all these games of guns was that the "Good Guys " always won.The games always ended up with dead "Krauts". We would start out by having one of the teams going off to hide in the woods.That's where everything happened-in the woods.After everyone was hidden, the team waiting to attack was supposed to wait until someone counted to one hundred before heading for the woods.But I don't recall anyone being too honest about that.Usually the counting stopped much earlier than that,and boys would start heading into the trees with their guns.Not everybody had toy guns.Some of the boys just had sticks that were supposed to pass for guns.And of course, if that was the case,the older boys always looked down on the kids with the sticks.Sometimes they would make a rule that you had to have a gun in order to play. So once the attacking team entered the woods,the idea was to shoot the first member of the other team that you saw.You would just say"Bang,You're dead'" But usually the other kid would say"You missed me." Especially if he were older.That was part of the game.If you were a little kid, you never killed anyone.That honor always went to the  older kids.So we would run through the woods shooting and yelling until the game ended with a whole bunch of dead "Krauts." Only it didn't matter how many times you shot someone, if you were a little kid, you never got credit.The oldest two boys on each team were usually the only two kids who got kills.And usually the Americans didn't have any casualties at all.Only then one of the older kids on your own team would decide that somebody was a deserter and deserved to be shot.So the team captain would walk up to you, place his gun at the back of your head and shoot.That didn't seem fair at all to any of us younger kids, but again we had to go along.If you didn't fall down, or if the captain didn't like the way you fell down, he might give you a little kick, or he might say you couldn't continue to play.So everyone went along until someone eventually got too pissed off to put up with the game anymore, and things broke up for awhile.

Cowboys and Indians and Cops and Robbers all worked out the same as war,with a few minor variations.In a game of cowboys and Indians,the weapons would often be bows and arrows or knives.Sometimes we would even make bows and arrows from twigs and a piece of string.As for knives, nobody ever had a real knife that I recall.But some of the boys figured out a way to make "Play" knives. What they would do is find Popsicle sticks along the street or sidewalk, then start rubbing them along the cement on the sidewalk.After just a few minutes, you could grind one of those sticks into a really sharp point, and you had a knife.I tried it one time on the sidewalk right in front of our front door.I made a really good,sharp knife, but my mother came outside and asked what I was doing.She was not at all amused, and took my knife away from me.They were dangerous, she said.Someone might lose an eye from one of those knives.She said if I made another knife, I would not be allowed outside. So,from then on I made my knife out of sight of the house.In fact,while nobody ever lost an eye,people did get hurt from those knives.Kids were getting nicked up all the time, or were getting splinters from the wood.But no one ever got seriously hurt, and eventually that novelty wore off. Aside from all of that, the games ended just the same as war.With dead Indians and victorious Cowboys.Sometimes though, the Cowboys would allow one or two of their number to be captured so that the Indians could torture them, because, after all, that's what Indians did.In all,most of these games paralleled  television movies of the time.You really couldn't say there was much of a social conscience, either on television, or among the kids who played guns.

Cops and Robbers ended predictably too, and it was likewise dominated by the older boys.Most of us felt a bit better about robbers being shot than we did about "Krauts" or Indians getting killed. Robbers were almost universally held to be bad, and were seen as being deserving of getting shot, even though I don't recall anyone ever getting shot in Moncton at the time.In fact, I don't even recall that many people ever got robbed.

It's kind of hard to know how adults felt about our games involving guns.All the kids liked to play guns, and most kids had more than one toy gun, so on one level, I guessed adults thought it was alright.There were kids around though who were not allowed to play guns of any variety.One of the kids that I don't ever recall being involved in any game of guns, was the kid who had told me to call him Johnny Bastard,because I couldn't pronounce his last name.He said it wasn't good to kill someone, even if it was just pretend.But by and large no adult ever objected to guns.They might have if they'd known all about the mean sorts of undercurrents that the games really involved, but I'm not certain they really were aware.There came a time though when I was involved in a sort of a gun incident with one of the two brothers that lived in the duplex on Willet Street.And, even though I never told anyone about it, it was a rather serious incident, much worse than anything that went on in any of our games.

Chapter XII,1967,Continued.

When spring came around in 1967,I was back to doing all the things I'd been doing in the warm weather months for as long as we'd moved to Moncton. We were still splitting our time between home and the babysitters place through the days. I went to the place on Crandall Street where the anthill had been, because I was still fascinated with ants.I'd had my mother check out books about ants out of the bookmobile several more times, and had been waiting for them to make a reappearance.Only they didn't. They were gone.There were still ants around, but not in the old spot where I used to play. I saw the kid who had stopped by and incinerated the ant with a magnifying glass back in the fall too, but he never even bothered to say hello.

The other constant in the neighborhood were fire trucks.They still came racing up Crandall Street to the corner of Snow Avenue where the fire box was.Often it happened over the noon hour,and was almost certainly a false alarm turned in by some of the kids going back to the school. Fire trucks still fascinated me.They were about the most exciting thing that ever happened in our neighborhood.

My father took me up to see the fire box one time, because he wanted to point something out to me.It was likely a part of getting me prepared for first grade, but I didn't really see it that way.He pointed out the box, a bit too high up on the pole for me to reach, and explained to me how it worked. There was a handle on the box,and if you pulled it, an alarm went off in the firehouse and trucks were sent out. Even though I was not big enough, he wanted me to know that I should pull the handle on the box if I ever saw a fire. But only if I saw a fire. Never at any other time. He explained that when people pulled the alarm and there was no fire, it was possible that there would be a fire somewhere else while the firemen were busy at the false alarm, and that could cause someone to be burned or even to die.Even though I'd not developed a full appreciation of death,I knew that I did not want to be responsible for someone being hurt or killed.And my father told me in no uncertain terms that were that to happen, I would be responsible. Also,in my mind the idea of fire was still closely related to the idea of Hell, so that was a big part of why I never pulled the alarm.

Sometimes we would take short car trips in the afternoons on the days we stayed home with our father and when our mother was working.Late in the afternoon we would go pick her up, but sometimes we would go somewhere else first.The park,or the garden center, or the hardware store. One afternoon, we went to the fire station out on McLaughlin Drive.I had no idea that you could actually visit the fire station, but it was a great little field trip. Very exciting for two children four and six years old.

We were met by a fireman who welcomed us into the station house.He was not dressed like the firemen I'd seen that came to the firebox.He had on a neat white shirt with a number of patches on it, and a crisp pair of dark pants with a razor like crease in their legs.I got the impression that my father knew the fireman, which would not have been unusual, as Moncton was a really small town back then.We'd been to visit a man my father had called "Junior" and he'd always said the man was a fireman.But he was not at the station on the day we visited. This man took us for a walk through the fire station, showing us the firetrucks which were brilliant red,and as shiny as anything I'd ever seen.I could look into the red paint and see my reflection.The fireman explained that since there were not a lot of fires, the men got a lot of time to shine up the trucks, and he seemed very proud of the equipment.Along with all of the red fire trucks there was also a white one, something I'd never seen before.And it was just as bright as the red ones. For a while,the fireman stood around talking to my father about all the things the fire trucks could do: how much water it could pump, how many ladders it had and how long they were. How many axes they had.He showed us a really big chainsaw as well, something he said was for cutting metal.I was surprised at the array of equipment on the truck:so many different sorts of tools. Then, he let my sister and I sit up in the cab of one of the fire engines, and I was in seventh heaven.Nothing in the world could be better that being a fireman, I thought.They got to drive around in a big truck with a lot of flashing lights and sirens, and they got to put out fires so nobody would get burned or killed.Sometimes they even got to rescue people, and that seemed very exciting.So, immediately I wanted to be a fireman when I grew up. The first thing I though I could do,once I became a fireman,was go to Springhill and put out that stinking pile of burning coal slag.

Before we left the fire station, the fireman showed us some of the things that they were doing that was not really about fighting fires at all. In those days firemen and fire departments were closely associated with fighting Muscular Dystrophy. They raised money for the cause, and advertised the fact on both television and radio.There were posters all about Muscular Dystrophy all over the firehouse.I had no idea what Muscular Dystrophy was except that it was like having a kind of sickness that killed you when you were really young.So I liked the idea of fighting that kind of disease almost as much as fighting fires.

In the back of the firehouse the firemen had another project going on.There was a big room back there and it was all filled up with piles and piles of toys that were broken, or just old. The firemen in Moncton at that time collected old and broken toys and repaired what they could, then donated them to what my father called "under privileged children" so that they could receive Christmas gifts as well.I didn't really know what under privileged meant, but later my mother said in meant poor.So I though that it was a really great thing for the firemen to be doing, along with fighting both disease and fires, and reminding people not to smoke in bed, and fire fighters began to take on a status next to deity in my mind.  

Chapter XII,1967,Continued.

When we went on vacation in 1966,I had no idea that the place we'd gone would become a second home to us.But,in the spring of 1967, my father began the first step in returning for a second year in a row.He was a natural born beach person who loved the sun and warmth of summer.He loved sand and salt water,and I don't think there was ever a time I've seen him happier than when he was at Fox Harbour,on Nova Scotia's north shore.His friend Art,his mentor in life really, had a cottage there,just two doors down from the cottage we'd rented the year before, and all of his friends and acquaintances from Springhill could drop by after just a short drive.My grandmother was nearby too,still living in Shubenacadie,in the central part of the province,about half way between Truro and Halifax. So Fox Harbour was the ideal setting for building a cottage.It really was peaceful and rather secluded.

Sometime in the spring,on an absolutely glorious day,we all piled into the family car and started off for my grandparents place in Canterbury.But this was not to be a straight forward trip.Instead of it being point A to point B, this time we turned off the highway at Sussex,and headed down toward Saint John.I don't think I'd ever been to Saint John before, so I thought it wound be a bit of an adventure.I just wasn't really clear on why we were going. As it turned out,my father was looking at finding temporary quarters for us to live in at the lot he'd purchased in Fox Harbour. In the form of a trailer. I guess he'd already checked out all the lots in Moncton and decided he needed to do some more shopping around. So off we went to Saint John.

So what I clearly recall about that trip is this: first,it was a beautiful day, among the nicest days I've ever seen.It was warm but not hot and there was very little wind.And it was at just that point in springtime that the first green leaves were coming out on the trees.There were apple and cherry blossoms all along the way too. Once we passed through Sussex,we headed down this river valley,and there were hundreds of ducks and geese about.This was not the Saint John River,like we used to drive past of the way to Canterbury.It was the Kennebacasis River,and it was not nearly so wide as the Saint John.It cut down toward the southwest from Sussex,through a really pretty part of the province, clothed in luminous new green and scattered with white churches and farm houses and old grey barns.It's the first real time that I remember looking out at the land of my home province and considering how beautiful it was.It's the first time in memory where I considered myself connected to a particular place, and I decided then that I wanted to live by that river when I grew up and left home.

After what seemed like the longest time,we arrived at this place on the outskirts of Saint John. It was a lot where there seemed to be used cars and trailers both.So we all went into a small office,and a man in a suit met us and showed us out to the lot where all the trailers were. The only trailers I'd ever really noticed before were the old Airstream ones, because my father liked them and would point them out any time he saw one out on the road. They were all bare metal on the outside, and would just about knock your eyes out if the sun was shining.But the trailers the man showed us were not Airstreams. They were much smaller than that and the metal on the outside was painted.

We looked at a few different trailers.In each one the man showed us all of the features of the trailer.They all had a brand new upholstery smell. Finally he led us to this little blue and white trailer and opened up the door.He showed us how the seats the table could be folded down to make two beds.The table was located just inside the door.At the very back of the trailer,it was a bit like a couch,and that could be extended into a bed as well. In the middle was a fridge of sorts-it was really an icebox, and a propane stove. and a toilet too. There was also a clean water storage tank on the outside, and another tank for not so clean water.So,while the salesman tried selling the trailer to my father, he was busy trying to sell the idea to my mother.She wasn't saying much,other than that she didn't like the smell of gas that seemed to come from the stove. But it was clear that she would eventually find herself in agreement with her husband. So my father went back into the office,while we waited in the car. It seemed a long wait.Both my sister and I were a little edgy because it had already been  a long day,and we were not even half way to my grandparents house. So we really wanted to get out and run around.For a while,I was happy to sit and consider the trailer. I could count to four,and indeed it had four beds, but I was not really convinced that all of us would fit inside, because the whole trailer seemed like it would fit into any one of the rooms in our house if you could just get it through the door. And I wondered about the icebox.Where would we get ice? And surely it would run out all over the floor.So I had some reservations about living in a trailer, even at that age.

We were clearly getting bored sitting in the car,waiting and waiting.Then my mother noticed something really strange.On this big chain link fence by where all the trailers were parked,there was a box with a telephone in it.She pointed it out to us and asked us to watch it to see if anyone ever actually used it. It was just a ploy to keep us amused after the long car trip,but it worked for just long enough.At some point the phone started ringing and a man came running from halfway across the lot to answer it.He talked for a bit,then hung up. But before he got more than about ten feet away,it rang again.For maybe half an hour or so,all he seemed to be able to do was run back and forth to the phone. The whole thing struck me as really funny in a ridiculous sort of way.I'd seen phone booths before,but this was just a phone hanging on the fence.I wondered why anyone would want to have one.To me,it seemed as silly as bringing a phone booth into our front room,and I laughed at the thought of it.

 Eventually my father returned and got back into the car.He pulled up behind the blue and white trailer that we'd been looking at.Then he and the salesman hitched the trailer up to the car, and we were off, pulling our summer home to be behind us. We pulled it all the way to Canterbury,where my father showed it off to all of my mothers family.The, when we were finished visiting, it trailed behind us all the way back to Moncton.

Chapter XII,1967,Continued.

It never really occurred to me when I was very young that my parents may have been wearing armor of one sort or another all along. They both seemed invincible to me,bringing anything about as a simple act of will.My father could get us across the whole province of New Brunswick in a car in just a few hours,and that alone seemed amazing to me,even though I had no real clue as to all of the things that could go wrong. My mother would go out to work, come home and prepare our meals, knowing how to do so in a way that was both pleasing to us,and assured that we got the nourishment we needed to grow,and this was equally amazing,if for no other reason than that it seemed to be working so well. But,by some time in 1967, my fathers armor was showing some telltale cracks.Still,I had to grow some more, then turn and look back on it all to know this.I did have some understanding of it at the time, but the fact was that we lived in a sort of world that was manufactured for us, so it was somewhat more than slightly askew.

Years later,in my thirties most likely,I encountered the rhetorical idea, that we may not be able to determine truth or reality because it was possible that a malevolent deity was deceiving us,contriving what we experience to that sole end.I found that idea troubling,for any number of reasons.But there was a chord of truth in it that seemed to apply to my growing up, and perhaps to the way things were for a great many of the children of the 1960s.  Only it didn't involve a malevolent deity at all.In fact, if it involved any sort of Deity, it seemed to do so only in a second hand way,by way of the church,and whatever influence it had on my mother. Or perhaps my father too, but such was not easily seen, as he seldom attended church. My point,though is that we lived in a world where unpleasant things were vanquished as a matter of routine. So, as I'm always quick to argue, if you propose deception, why stop at the idea of malevolence. Couldn't a benevolent god deceive as well? At least in looking back that seems to be exactly what was happening.

Imagine,for instance death. By 1967, I knew that people and animals died,that they would not be with us forever.We had lost a pet to traumatic death after all. And while I knew this, I never really knew anyone who had died, so it was a remote sort of thing to me. I knew that I had grandparents, and that grandparents were older people, and eventually,older people died.That's because I was told this one day when I asked my mother where her grandparents were. Didn't she have any? Well,yes she did,she said, but they died before she ever came to know them. People died because they got old, and when you got old, you got sick, and then you died. Or,you could die if you had an accident and were badly hurt. The kind of accident that most worried my parents was getting hit by a car.That's what happened to our cat,and the thought of it happening to us was likely unimaginably traumatic for my parents. If you did that, you died, or so we were told. And all of that, as true as it may have been didn't mean that as a five year old that I could connect all of these dots in a perfectly logical fashion.And that,from time to time caused me some insecurity. Because the fact was that sometimes I got sick.It never really occurred to me that there were degrees of sickness, so it was easy to reason that if I got sick, I might die.

Then one night around five o'clock we were headed home from the baby sitters, straight down Sumner Street, when my sister got hit by a car.In my mind, it was a taxi, and it had been backing out of a driveway on our right hand side. By this time, we were allowed to walk the short distance home by ourselves, after my mother arrived home and phoned for us to come.So we were walking down the street and this taxi backed into my sister and knocked her over. And she didn't die.In fact, I don't even recall that she was badly hurt.She was just walking, then she got knocked down,and there were a few people around her making a bit of a fuss.I don't even recall that the police ever came, and after just a short time we were home.* So death didn't seem to be a natural product of getting hit by cars.It was good advice on my parents part, but part of the manufactured world.

Then there were people who got sick and did die, and were struck by cars that ended their lives.It was all a matter of degrees, of terrible potential.But how do you explain that to young children? In a sense,you're just better off moving to the natural extreme.It does insure obedience,but it also brings about a kind of psychological tension too. Then,at some point it occurs to me: if my parents really were invincible, then why does the possibility even exist,that I could get sick and die, or get hit by a car? It's kind of like the question of why does a god who loves us allow bad things to happen, only on a much smaller scale. The answer was,of course obvious once we were a bit older.Our parents were not invincible. If they were,then why even bother with church and God? But that's not always clear to five or six year old children.

My father always seemed so upright and sturdy to me.He was not big, but he was strong and well muscled.He walked with good posture and a confident stride,whether he was going into the bank to pay his mortgage or the city hall to pay taxes, or to the ice cream store. He drove a long way to work, put in a full day, then drove home. This was the picture of my father as a young man,a man in the prime of his life.But it started changing,almost imperceptibly at first.

In the first year or two that my mother grew her garden, there were onions planted.Not many, not like the long rows of them in my grandmother's garden.But they were there.Then they disappeared.Usually they had appeared in the Shepherds Pie that my mother made from time to time.Then they just stopped. I never really knew why, or at least never gave a lot of thought to it.Then one day in the spring of 1967,my father was home early in the morning, and he fried some green tomatoes for breakfast.Fried green tomatoes were something my grandfather made, when he had stayed with us the year before.What he would do is dump a whole bunch of butter into a very hot frying pan,then dump in the green tomatoes. These he didn't simply cook, or fry.They were burned until they were blacker than a lump of coal, the house was full of blue haze, and they smelled dreadful.Almost like having that burning pile of coal from Springhill right in the kitchen. My father swore he liked the ghastly things, but on this occasion, they made him sick. And not just like we would get sick on the odd occasion. A few hours later, he was spewing all over the bathroom.By the time my mother was home, it was all over and he was feeling better.But what became of it was that there came to be a growing list of things that he couldn't eat. It wasn't the last time he got sick either, but I was reasonably certain he wasn't about to die. But the thing to remember was, that we were living in a manufactured world.One where sickness wasn't really supposed to come.Only it did, and thus there was the need for propaganda to reasonably explain it's presence.For my mother,the propaganda seemed to be all about denying anything unpleasant. For my father,it was about maintaining a confident facade, so that our world wasn't disrupted.

Up the road, at our babysitters house,things seemed unpleasant too, and we were not shielded it from that at all. Our babysitter was in fact a visibly neurotic chain smoker, often sitting at the kitchen table with more than one cigarette burning away.She seemed on edge all the time, especially when her husband was at home, but also when the older kids came home from school. She would yell and scream a lot,at the top of her voice, then later be apologetic for having done so.And despite seeming a bundle of nerves most of the time, she still loved children, but was having trouble expressing it in a way that was very obvious even to me. One day a girlfriend of hers came over to the house,and we all piled into the car and drove down to the hospital.While we were driving, she complained about her "lungs." The hospital was not far away, and when we got there, my sister and I and her youngest son stayed in the car with her friend while she went inside. It took likely something close to a hour for her to come back, and when she did, she was talking about having a "blood count." I didn't know what a blood count was anymore that I knew what lungs were. Then, a short time later, we went back to the hospital again for another blood count.

Already things had changed noticeably from the year before when her and my father had met at the corner of Crandall and Sumner.Then, they were the picture of health. A year later,she seemed smaller and was irritable and nervy and he was having trouble keeping food down.



* I would like to invite my sister to comment on this situation if she would,as I'm not certain how accurately I'm recalling it.

Chapter XII 1967,Continued.

The road to my grandparents house from Moncton was improving,it seemed,but there was still a long drive and there was a lot of construction above Fredricton while they built the roads higher up, as part of the dam construction that was going on.For a lot of children,I guess it could have been a really boring ride.Usually my sister would go to sleep in the backseat.Sleeping in the car was something that never really appealed to me that much.As far as I was concerned, there was just so much to see.

I never liked to sit in the back seat.Never! And I sometimes got into arguments with my parents about that.But usually I was allowed to sit up front,in the middle between my mother and my father, at least when we had a car with bench seats.In those days nobody ever used a booster seat, and not all cars had seat belts either.In those that did, they were usually shoved down behind the seats, because nobody I knew back then used them.My mother once told me though, that it would be better for me to be in the backseat in the event that we were ever in an accident. Usually it was an argument that she did not win.I refused to believe we would ever be in an accident.My father was simply too good a driver to ever let that happen.And,as I said,there was a lot to see,and I was convinced I could never see it as well in the back. And even though the view didn't change that much over time,the sights still fascinated me:  Animal Land the bridges at Cole Island, The lake,at Youngs Cove, the high,arching bridge at Jemseg,Army trucks near Gagetown-sometimes you could hear artillery far off on the opposite side of the river,trees growing up right out of the water and cows grazing on little islands in the middle of the river. A huge Potato by the roadside.The river far below as we crossed the Princess Margaret Bridge,ant the skyline of Fredricton, most notably Christ Church Cathedral.Then the machines cutting back the hills above the river, leaving sheer rock faces that soon became covered with graffiti.The blue river below,and high, verdant hills and pastures on the far side.There was a road over there too, and I always wanted to take that road,just to see what was there.But we almost never took that road. Then there was Crowhill and the last leg of the trip into Canterbury.

When we would get bored,my parents would sometimes invent games for us to play.We played "I Spy".A game in which you said"I spy,with my little eye,something that is red." or"Something that begins with T." Usually we went by color, because I didn't know what everything I spied started with.Then my parents would try to guess that the thing that you saw that was green was a tree, without being too obvious that they already knew. After all, what else could it be.Central New Brunswick certainly had a few interesting trees, and in some places, not much else. My father used to tell us to count the red lights on poles along the roadside at night, saying that they were jackrabbits.For some reason he had the urgent need to know how many jackrabbits there were.It was integral to having a safe trip, in some way I've yet to understand. So count jackrabbits we did, until I was old enough to realize that no rabbits ever climbed trees.And, every time we spotted a field full of cows,we would quickly roll down the window and moo at them.Later on we would count Volkswagen beetles, or,as my father called them,bugs.Much later, that evolved into a game called "punch buggy."

Sometimes we would have to stop to use the washroom.If it was daytime we would scurry off into the trees.There was always plenty of cover. But sometimes at night, we would just go right beside the car.Like most little boys, the thought of peeing along the roadside was a source of great amusement to me, a treat of sorts, like doing something you really weren't supposed to but knowing that you were going to get away with it.So sometimes I'd be standing there in the dark and peeing right on the cars tires, because the brake pads were hot, and they would hiss softly and release steam.It would always make me laugh, and became part of the ritual of a road trip.

There was one thing that I never liked about road trips though.Never goy used to it, not even to this day. My father was a smoker.I had no idea then if he smoked a lot, because I had no idea what a lot was. He wasn't like our babysitter who would sometimes be smoking a cigarette while another one was burning down in the ashtray. But he smoked quite a number of them on a road trip of any length.So, on a trip to Canterbury,he might smoke something like six or eight cigarettes. My mother would sometimes have a smoke too.Not because she really wanted a smoke, but because she saw it as uncivil to refuse if one were offered, even from her husband.But she would never have more than one per road trip, so far as I can recall. The thing was, they would never let us roll down our windows, so the smoke just kept building up in the car.Sometimes I had to sit there and try very hard not to get sick, because all that smoke really did nauseate me. Occasionally I could convince my father to open the vent window-cars back then, for the most part had these little triangular vent windows located just ahead of the front window. But opening the vent window really didn't take much smoke away.It just allowed a rush of air into the car and blew the smoke around,while offering relatively little fresh air. Sometimes, along with the vent, he would crack the side window a bit and that would evacuate some of the smoke. But we were not permitted to roll down the rear windows.In 1967, both my sister and I were still sufficiently small that we might have fallen out a car window, and for my mother, I think she truly did fear this. More so for my little sister perhaps. But I would stick my hands outside too, and I always caught the devil for that.

Most car rides were pleasant enough.I was never really bored, and looked on car trips as an adventure.The smoke though turned into a bit of an ordeal, and it was a part of family trips that I came to dislike more and more as time went by.In fact, I came to be a bit militant about always having the window up.It's likely the biggest reason that I never acquired a taste for cigarettes, or any other kind of tobacco.In fact, by the time I was in grade one, I'd pretty much set my mind that I was never going to smoke.

Chapter XII,1967,Countiued.

Home was not the only place that was concerned with preparing me for school.My mother's mother,in far off Canterbury was doing her part as well,every time we visited. My grandmother was not an educated woman, so far as I know,yet she greatly respected the concept of learning, and realized that for the latest generation of her family, it was the key to the future.I think she clearly understood that her grandchildren would not be tied to the land as her and her family had been.Consequently, she jumped in with both feet when it came to mine, and my sisters pre-school learning.

By 1967,my grandparents were settled into their retirement for the most part, though I do recall that on occasion my grandfather still went to work, though he was nearly eighty. They were settled into a little two story house about two thirds of the way up Orchard Street,at the top of the first hill in Canterbury.The house was not big at all, but I thought it to be larger than our own simply because it had an upper floor,while ours did not.My grandmother, being hyper kinetic also gave the impression,that were she not on the move from sunup until past dark, all of her housework would never get done, though that would have been an exaggeration.So,sometime in the time we were not visiting her,she took the time to cut out all of the letters of the alphabet,using old cereal or cookie boxes, or the boxes from any other product that she used.Then,when we came to visit she would bring out a box containing all of those letters, and help us make words, just like we were doing on the chalkboard at home.I would sit for a long time spelling out the words that I already knew,and I was learning to spell my name as well, which was likely harder than any of the simple one syllable words I was being taught. I used the M from a box of Catelli macaroni, and was somewhat jealous that my sister got to use the biggest letter in the box to start her name-the capital K from the box of Special K.

My grandmother also had a small collection of books that she read to us whenever we visited.The only two that I really remember was this thin,hard covered book about a rather precocious black and white puppy,that liked to hide in a laundry basket, and a book about a red hen who tried to get all the other animals to help her make bread.They wouldn't help her make the bread, but they were there as soon as the bread was ready to eat.To me,the stories were just fun, quality time with my grandmother, but I think that both my parents and grandparents understood that reading to children was important in helping us to develop language skills.

By now, my grandparents were not the only people we knew who had moved into town.The farmland out in Dead Creek was for the most part,the rural equivalent of a ghost town.My mothers brother and his wife had moved on into Fredricton around this time, and her sister, my Aunt Ruby and her husband,Ernie, and bought a service station at the top of the second hill in Canterbury, just before you go out of town towards the lakes,and eventually the American border. Their house,at the time was a small shack like building with a full porch in front, and the ubiquitous red asphalt shingles.It was more than one room, but so small that when you were inside, you were more or less aware of the presence of every other person in the house.Sitting in the front room,you could hear anyone in any of the bedrooms if they happened to be snoring.This seemed to suit Ernie and Ruby quite well,because,although they had a large family, most of them were not still living at home.Later,someone else came to occupy the house,and Ernie and Ruby moved a green and white mobile home onto the lot.It was still just a short few steps to the garage for them when it was time to go to work.By the time I was four or five, I used to like to hang out at the garage and watch Ernie repair tires,or scurry about in the grease pit,fixing some part that I couldn't see on a car.The next house down the hill, and the third to last house in town belonged to my grandmother's sister, Anna English and her husband Fred.Fred was a very old man,or at least it seemed that way to me,by the time they had moved to town.He was a tall, austere,thin looking man that rather reminded me of Vincent Price.And, he smoked cigars-a lot of them.A decade and a half later, after he had been gone a few years, I could still smell the cigar smoke when I walked into his house. My aunt,Anna English,whom everyone called Annie was old too, but very spry and lively, and she adored children.Many of the neighbors children would drop by to see her when we were there, and she was always kind to them.She was a God fearing,religious woman,though not severe in any way that I could tell. Being around her was, until the day she passed, one of my favorite places to be.  

Chapter XII,1967,Continued.

As our country was turning one hundred, I was turning six years old.And as our country was changing almost daily, there seemed to be a lot of change in my life, and in our family life as well.

In fall I would start school, walk through the doors of that building up the street, that building that my father so admired and was so proud of.But that was a few months off, and the early months of the year continued much as before, in a kind of carefree routine of going to the babysitters some days, and staying home when my father was off work. War movies and cowboys and Indians in the afternoons, never mind that those movies were not providing me with especially good ideas or attitudes about some of my fellow human beings. Then, in the spring, there was time to ride around my neighborhood-I was still on a tricycle, and play with my friends Kenny and Johnny Bast...I mean Johnny Basterache, when he wasn't in school.

At home, a lot of what was going on was directed at getting me prepared for school.At Christmas, one of the gifts that we received was a small blackboard with colored chalk.My father showed us how,if you drew on the board, you could later take anything you had written on it, and wipe it away with a cloth, or an eraser that was made for just that purpose.That kind of amazed me at the time, because I was used to thinking that once something was written down, it was written down for good. So we drew pictures in chalk-sort of.I tried to draw stick men, but the efforts looked rather Neanderthal. My sister drew as well, but between the two of us it was mostly just scribbles.But then, when my father was home from work, he would show us how to make words.The first word that I can ever recall making on the blackboard was C_A_T. Cat! And then several words that rhymed wit cat.Hat, Rat, mat and a few others.Then he taught us dog as well.And pig.And big.Big Pig! Then car and far and more.Before the snow left the ground I was even spelling really hard words like fish. There was a line of letters at the top of the  blackboard too.The alphabet.So I learned all of the letters and how they sounded. Then I learned numbers up to ten, and the fact that one and one makes two,two and two makes four, or, a bit harder,two and three makes five. I would not be going off to school totally unprepared or ignorant.My parents wouldn't have that.

Along with all the new words and numbers, my parents prepared me for the etiquette of attending school,well in advance.In school,you were not to talk unless the teacher asked you a question.No talking with the other students.You were not allowed to eat or chew gum.That didn't seem like much of a problem, as we were not used to eating between meals, and I didn't even like gum.If you went to school, you needed to be able to tie your own shoes, because you couldn't ask the teacher.So my father started teaching me.It seemed to take a long time getting it right, and I practiced all the time.Even our babysitter helped me with that. You had to line up when you were going in and out of the school. but at home there was only my sister and I .so there wasn't much way to practice that.Two kids hardly make a decent lineup.

There were a lot of other things to do to get ready for school as well.I had to go to the doctor, for a routine medical check up.And to the eye doctor to find out if I needed glasses.And then the dentist to have my teeth checked.And in those days,everyone had to go get a needle, called a vaccination before you could start school.It was a sort of rite of passage.

One day, while we were talking about school, and what it would be like, my father said,"You'll likely have a girlfriend when you are in school.Most boys do." I wasn't certain at all that I liked that idea. What good were girls, I thought.They didn't play with trucks or guns, and just stayed with each other and did their own thing,like playing with dolls.That was something that I had no idea how it was even done.The only girl I really knew, aside from my sister was Karen, who lived across the street.We played together a lot, but she wasn't a girlfriend, though she seemed agreeable enough to me. No,I thought, by girlfriend, my father had something ekse altogether in mind, but I wasn't certain what.I had a lot to learn about going to school, before I could actually go. 

Chapter XII 1967,Continued.

Canada was celebrating it's one hundredth birthday in 1967.Instead of a birthday cake with a hundred candles, a flame was lit in front of the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa. It was lit on the first of January, with the idea that it would be extinguished at the end of the year long celebration, but, due to popular demand, it was left to burn, and burns there still, coming up out of the water in a fountain that has the Centennial symbol, and coats of arms of the various provinces and territories.

Canada had it's beginnings as a nation in 1867, and at the time consisted of only four provinces.Our home province of New Brunswick was one of those, along with Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia. Actually, though, what was to become the one hundred year old nation of Canada in 1967, was the result of the world wide conflicts of two European nations, England and France, as they tried to carve up the "New World " between themselves, forgetting,for the most part that there was a world here long before they stumbled across it. So,the world that was brought together politically in 1867 reflected these tensions, as it did on it's one hundred birthday and beyond.

In it's first hundred years as a nation, Canada had grown from four provinces to ten,that spanned the North American continent from The Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans.It had managed to unite itself geographically by rail, and to fill in the empty territory between it's eastern and western most parts with Eastern European immigrants and others, so that it was not absorbed by America.It had fought two world wars, and survived a Great Depression and a dust bowl that threatened to blow it away.It participated in the Korean War,and had become a respected member of the world community.In 1967,Canada was a nation of nearly twenty million people, most of whom lived rather close to the nation immediately to our south.

1967 was a year of great celebration in Canada, as it should have been.It was a year of building and artistic performances.Money was spent on heritage buildings across the country,so as to leave lasting infrastructure. The center piece of the building, the celebration was, of course Expo 67,the World Exposition held in Montreal between April and October.All through that year, it's all anyone seemed to talk about in Moncton."Are you going to Expo?" And many people did. We did not.

Expo was built for the most part on some man made islands, and one existing island in the Saint Lawrence River.It got off to a rather rough start, and it was questionable as to whether it could all be brought about on schedule,but it was.It went on to be a very successful exposition, with about fifty million visitors,or more than twice the population of the country at the time. Some of the structures built for the exposition are still standing, most notably the geodesic dome that housed Man and His World, and a development called Habitat, a housing complex that resembled, more than anything else, a scattering of Lego blocks, stacked one on top of another.My father took an look at Habitat in the newspaper, and pronounced it a monstrosity.

The most noticeable sign of the celebration in Moncton was the Centennial symbol, a maple leaf composed of eleven different colored triangles representing the ten provinces, and the Northwest Territories.All over town people were painting the symbol on houses, and even on buildings.There was one house on Crandall Street that had the symbol painted on a recently paved driveway.The symbol was seen on flags as well.The Park we would to go too, in Moncton's west end was now called Centennial Park. There had always been an old Canadian National Railway steam locomotive displayed at the park entrance.In 1967,it was joined by a silver fighter jet,erected on a big cement pedestal, the later, by a tank. A line of flags was erected as well, one for each of the provinces, a centennial flag,the new Canadian flag, and perhaps even a holdover older style Canadian flag, variously referred to as The Union Jack or the Red Ensign.

The celebration was rather muted at our house.It's not that my parents were not proud Canadians.But celebrating was just not a really big deal.My father still hadn't really gotten used to our new flag, and sometimes called it"Pearson's bastard flag." There was a lot of sentiment among some of our neighbors too,that we should still be flying the old flag, that the new flag was a slight of tradition, that tradition being essentially British. Our driveway was newly paved-sort of- but there was no though of painting the Centennial Symbol, And, as for going to Expo, that was too far away, and to expensive, hard to have small children sit in a car for that length of time just to view something that we were thought to be too young to have any real appreciation of anyhow.My father was more interested in his own building projects anyway, thinking them to be more important in enhancing our lifestyle.The money was better spent at home, so we came to see Expo through the stories and pictures of our neighbors who had gone.

In 1967,not a lot had changed in regards to the historical tensions that defined the part of North America now called Canada. Everyone was proud to be Canadian, but tensions still existed from the past.Certainly in our hometown there were tensions between French and English.And, as much as we'd heard stories about how our country was discovered, and created some of the stories were not being told. We got to hear about the building of the railroad, for instance, but not about the many Chinese who were instrumental in building it.Or we would hear about the settlement of the west, but not about the displacement of native people from their land.We knew about places like Toronto, and Montreal, because they were large, world class cities, and because much of Canada's affairs took place there, while our region had nothing comparable, and people sometimes had to leave to scratch out a living. But our parents were right.At the time, neither my sister or I had much of a concept of, or appreciation for Canadian History.

Chapter XII 1967

The final days of 1966 were a bur.There were visitors to the house,and we all enjoyed the season.There were all the new clothes to wear and new toys to occupy ourselves with.There were turkey sandwiches everyday,the New Years day rolled around, and there was a roast ham,and everyone was getting dressed up in their finest clothes and going pout somewhere to ring in the New Year.My sister and I were both too young to even know what that meant, so we stayed at home, went to bed early as usual,and when we awoke,it was 1967.We went to bed thinking how odd it was to say"good-night,see you next year." Then,in the morning,we took down the Christmas Tree,put away the strings of lights,that now looked not bright,but forlorn.We put the tree outside for the trash collectors to take, and the season was over.

Nineteen Sixty Seven was in some ways like the one  one,or the ones that had come before it.There were still race riots, Americans and Soviets were still trying to outdo one another in space, and in testing the latest weaponry closer to home.It was surprising how few days went by without some news of the space program, and the more and more powerful bombs that were being tested, and such things occupied a much more prominent place in the minds of everyone, even children than they do today.

In 1967,the Boeing 737 made it's maiden flight.The first Super Bowl was played,and The Green Bay Packers defeated the Kansas City Chiefs 35-10. May 2nd was a day like none since,because on that day, the Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Montreal Canadiens four games to two to win The Stanley Cup. The draft board refused to grant a draft exemption to Mohammad Ali,and later in the year he was drafted, then stripped of his title for refusing to serve.

On January 12th,Dr.James Bedford was the first ever person to be frozen, in the hopes that he would someday be resuscitated.To the best of my knowledge, he's still waiting patiently.1967 also saw the first heart transplant preformed in South Africa,though it's recipient only lived a short time.The late, great John F. Kennedy's body was moved from a temporary grave, to a permanent memorial, but nobody was entertaining thoughts of his resuscitation,because his body was likely not in the best of shape, missing a brain,as it was reputed to be.Two days before, on January 10th,Edward W. Brooke was sworn in to represent the state of Massachusetts in the Senate.He was the first African American to be elected to that office.January tenth also saw the inception of PBS.

In June,what is now known as the Six Day War began between Israel and Egypt,Jordan and Syria.On the twenty eighth of the month,Israel annexed East Jerusalem.A day before that saw the first ATM installed,in England.On the last day of the month,Robert Henry Lawrence Jr. was named the first African American astronaut.In December,he was killed in a training accident.

Racial events were making news, if not always progress in other ways in 1967 as well.Early in June, the United States Supreme Court voted unanimously to end laws against interracial marriage.Speaking of the Supreme Court,1967 was also the year that justice Thurogood Marshall was appointed and confirmed, another first for an African America.That,at least was progress,America beginning to move out of it's dark ages,called Jim Crow. In December,someone attempted to assassinated singer Bob Marley at a concert rehearsal.

Born in 1967 were runner Donovan Bailey,singer Kurt Cobain,and actors Nicole Kidman,Julia Roberts and Jimmy Kimmel.

Jack Ruby died in prison in 1967. Physicist Robert Oppenheimer, one of those responsible for building the atomic bomb,left the world such as it had become in part because of his work.Musician John Coltrane died of cancer,actress Vivien  Leigh of tuberculosis, and revolutionary Che Guevara was executed in Bolivia.

In 1967,monthly rent was about one hundred twenty five dollars and the average cost of a new home was about fourteen thousand dollars, or roughly two full years salary for the average person.A gallon of gas was about thirty three cents.Yearly inflation was 2.7% in America, and on the first of November, silver hit a record in London.One dollar,ninety-five per ounce.

1967 saw the launch of Rolling Stone Magazine.Popular films that year included Dirty Dozen,In The Heat Of The Night and Guess Who's Coming To Dinner which seemed very apt in light of all the progress on other fronts.Popular television shows of that year were The Monkees,Star Trek(also especially appropriate),Peyton Place,I Dream Of Jeannie,Bewitched and Hogans Heroes(just to prove that there was still a race of people who we could still ridicule).

Almost four hundred words were cited for the first time in The Oxford English Dictionary.They included MOOG,referring to an electronic synthesizer invented the previous year,no-fault,referring to auto insurance that pays regardless of who was at fault,and microburst, which was originally a term applied to radio transmissions.The word "hoagie" was also first cited.It referred to a submarine sandwich,and the reference was originally a term local to the city of Philadelphia.The word bummer referred, to a bad experience, and the word interface was first used to describe what computers do. Tae Kwon Do was first used to describe a Korean form of martial arts.The words Ibuprofen and Jihadist also appeared for the first time.Scratch and sniff also made it's debut,and the word scumbag first appeared to refer to an undesirable or despicable person.That word seems almost prophetic, given that Nixon was about to run for president the following year,to say nothing of all the clowns to follow,in both high and low places. Scumbags were becoming fashionable as the years moved forward,from 1967,even up until the present day.

World leaders of the day were Lyndon Johnson in America,Leonid Brezhnev in Russia,Harold Wilson in Great Britain and Indira Gandhi in India.In Canada,Lester B.Pearson was Prime Minister,until he retired from politics in December, ushering in the first Trudeau era.But not before Canada celebrated with a huge birthday party.

                                                                                                        Continued

Chapter XI,1966,The Later Months,Continued.

1966 is the first time I distinctly remember Halloween, as far as what it's purpose was.And for us, being Protestant,it was a completely secular purpose.The day was like so many of those days in the fall of that year, golden and warm, but not too hot.A lot of sunshine, and very comfortable outside in only a light jacket, or perhaps just shirt sleeves.

All our Halloween costumes consisted of that year were just a mask, of some scary creature or other.But we couldn't wait to hit the streets.By supper time the light was fading and the sun was low in the sky.It's also the first time in my life when I'd began to notice that days were shorter at some times of the year than at others.In summer we played outside until nearly bedtime, but by Halloween,there was hardly any time to play outside after the evening meal. Before we ate, there were people at our house trick or treating, and I was in a hurry to get going.But we had to wait for my mother to get home,and we had to eat all of our supper.Only then could we put on our masks and head out.

In those days,there was no talk of anyone trying to harm children on Halloween.It must be true,though, at least that year,that my parents went out with us, and it's unlikely that we went to more than just the houses on our street,and maybe a few others here and there.We went to my friend Kenny's house at number 59 Watson Avenue, but my parents wouldn't let us near Johnny Bastards...I mean Johnny Basterache's house, being as it was, run down and out in the middle of the field. But.even so, it was great fun, running up to each house and yelling "trick or treat." And of course, I'd never seen so much chips and candy in my life.I enjoyed all of the other kid's costumes too, especially the ghosts.Back then there were literally hundreds of children out and about on Halloween.The sidewalks were just lined with kids from one end to the other, or so it seemed.When we got home,we were allowed to eat a small part of our candy, then we helped my parents pass out treats to all of the other children.That was nearly as fun as our own excursion, and I wished it could be Halloween every day.My grandfather,as near as I can recall was still with us on Halloween.I recall being out in the front yard with him before dinner, but while we were passing pout treats, he stayed off in the background somewhere.

The weather stayed on the warm side after Halloween too for a bit.I can recall the last house on our block being built, and the people who lived there.The house was actually on Willett Street,but just across our backyard.There were a lot of trees about on that property, and one day I saw a man out in what would have been his back yard, cutting bushes with an ax.This vaguely disturbed me, because my mother still read us stories like Little Red Riding Hood,all the time, likely at least once a week or so.The version she always told was one that ended with the Big Bad Wolf getting his head lopped off by a woodsman.The guy outside cutting bushes certainly looked the part of a woodsman,with a red and black checkered jacket, and a hat something like the one Elmer Fudd wore on the cartoons.There were still a few stray dogs around too, so the ending to Red Riding Hood seemed kind of plausible,in the sense of it playing out in our neighborhood.Well, I guess you really had to be there, and had to be five years old for it to have made any sense, but it made a kind of sense to me.In the end, I didn't know if the man I was looking at was good or bad. A few days later, I actually met the man,and his sons, both of whom were older than I was.I couldn't help looking around nervously for the ax.But he turned out to be a decent enough guy.

One thing that people used to do back then was to burn leaves in their back yard.They never really did that for very long, before it was outlawed, but back then they used to do it.It was an easy, if somewhat risky way to get rid of leaves.It tended to stink up the whole street too, and people would complain about it.One Saturday after we watched morning cartoons, I went outside and noticed that our neighbor, the woodsman had a small fire going in the his backyard, so I went down to take a look.He was raking up leaves and piling them onto the flames.They were damp, so there was no real danger of the fire getting out of control.Still,eventually the leaves would dry out and burn.But leaves were not the only thing he was burning.All about his yard, there were scraps of construction material,and these too went onto the fire.And something else too.Remember, the year is 1966, and to the best of my knowledge the word"Tree Hugger" had not yet been invented, or at least was not in common usage, and David Suzuki hadn't emerged on the scene either.That must of been the reason that the woodsmen did something that you would never do today.He slung a couple of old tires onto the fire, and they got going really good.They also stunk like nothing I'd ever smelled, not even the turpentine my grandfather had spilled.It must have covered my jacket as well,because in the afternoon my parents called me home,and we drove downtown to Woolworths. My father asked where I'd been and I told him I was watching the woodsman burn leaves...and tires. This got my father upset, and he said people shouldn't burn tires in their yards.He mumbled something about complaining to the city.When we got home an hour or so later, the whole neighborhood had a low cloud of smoke, and you could smell the burning rubber from our house.

Sometime before Christmas, but perhaps not much before, it turned cold, and there was snow.We went out and cut down a Christmas tree that year.The trip took a whole day, and I don't really recall where we went, but it couldn't really have been that far away from Moncton. There is a lot of woods everywhere around there, and that's all I remember.That we cut the tree down in the woods, and there was not a lot of snow.

My grandfather resurfaced for a short time too.All of an afternoon to be exact.By this time my fathers sister and her brood of kids had moved up to Pleasant Street in Springhill, up near the hospital.It was not a very nice house, but better than the one they lived in out by the prison.It was at the end of the street, and there were trees around and it was quite dark.The older kids always told us not to go outside there, because there were bats that would get into your hair.But one day, we'd made a roadtrip to visit my aunt and her kids.At some point my grandfather came by.I have no real idea of where he came from.He might have even lived there, but Springhill was small, so he wasn't that far away.But when he got there, he and my father left, and were gone for a few hours.I didn't like being at my aunt's house at the best of times, those being the occasions when both of my parents were around, so I'd started to put up a bit of a fuss.My aunt came into this room, with an old stove in it, and got this idea that she would help me write a letter to Santa Claus.When we were finished, she opened up the top of the stove, the part where you feed in the coal, and put my letter in.I was appalled, afraid Santa Claus would never get it.But she explained that that is how it got to the north pole,that it turned into smoke, then, when it reached it's destination, it turned back into a letter.It sounded kind of silly to me,but I didn't say anything.I was just anxious to have my father return so we could leave.I seemed to have had a bit of an attitude about being around my aunt, for as long as I can remember.Later, back in Moncton, I told the babysitter' oldest daughter, the one with the mouth, all about the letter.She just said"Your aunt is so full of shit'" I knew I would have to try hard not to repeat that.

Eventually Christmas arrived, and gifts were piled high under the tree we had decorated a few days before.Guns and toy soldiers were the theme that Christmas, and for my sister there was a doll, and coloring books and new books for the both of us.We ate a big breakfast of bacon and eggs, then a Turkey for supper.Both of my parents were home, we were all together, and the season was bountiful.A week later, 1966 disappeared into memory and history book.For me, it had seemed a long and eventful year.

Chapter XI 1966,The Later Months.

Eventually the day came when KMart opened, and that huge parking lot across Mountain Road from the end of our street filled up with cars.I don't recall exactly when that was, only that it opened around the same time as the school.It was kind of a big deal because there was very little else in northwest Moncton at the time, as far as shopping facilities were concerned.Usually we would still go downtown to shop, but gradually we started going to KMart more too.

KMart was a lot like the Walmart of it's day.As stores go, it was considered to be a place where you could get good value, so it's being placed in our end of the city was ideal, because we lived in an area that was new,and growing,and was home to a lot of young,middle class families.Right next to the Kmart was a Dominion Store.It really wasn't that big of a store, but it was shiny and new, and very convenient, being only about a ten minute walk away.Beyond that there was a barber shop, a beauty salon,ans a Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce.At some point my parents began going to that bank, and later,my mother would work there.Where the bank was,the mall made a turn, and there were a couple more stores, including the American Auto Association.I don't really recall if there was a tavern there back then, but there came to be later.If there was then, I'm certain my parents would not have pointed it out.Kmart,back then was right at the edge of town.Mountain Road went past going north, and there was some development along there, but going east,down Mapleton Road,you were out of the city as soon as you passed Kmart.Beyond there it was still field and bush,and Mapleton Road went down a big hill to the Trans Canada Highway, a mile or so away.

Inside,KMart was unlike anything I'd ever seen.First, it seemed so much bigger than any store I'd ever been in before.In fact, it likely wasn't much bigger than Eatons downtown, because Eatons occupied several floors of an old building.But Kmart was sprawled across the landscape, giving the impression of great size.It really wasn't that big when compared with the stores of today, and it was only one story, but it seemed that you had to walk a long way to get from one part of the store to another.

For us kids, or at least for my sister and I, the Kmart experience began just inside the front door.There was a guard,or loss prevention officer standing at a little booth just inside the door.He wasn't exactly like the Walmart greeters today, but most of them would say hello as you passed by.If you were carrying any other bags with you,he would staple a piece of paper, a different color every day onto those bags.The thought was that if you wanted to slip anything else into your bags, you would need to damage the paper, and would be obvious when leaving.Just past the guard there was what I would call a snack stand,or deli of sorts.They sold things like coils of sausage,popcorn,caramel corn and other snacks.But the very best thing about KMart,or at least it was to my thinking back then,was the doughnut machine. KMart made doughnuts right on site,not in some back corner, so you could actually watch them being made.I don't know if someone mixed the batter, or if it came in a container premixed-I never actually saw anyone mixing it.But there was a sort of a hopper there,and the mix went into the top of the hopper.Once the machine was turned on,the hopper would release batter into some hot oil below.The batter would then be pushed around in a circle,until it had gone all the way around once,the a mechanical arm would flip it over,and it would go around again,cooking the other side.Another arm would then flip the fully cooked and still very hot doughnuts out into a tray,to be collected by the person working behind the counter.In those days I was fascinated with small, animated things,be they ants,or doughnut machines.My sister and I could stand there watching the doughnut machine all the time my parents were shopping.They would never really worry that we would not be there when we returned.Kmart was really big,and there were a lot of places for kids to get lost, and they did all the time-nearly every time we were in there.But I never got lost in there.I'd always be right by the doughnut machine.

Of course, there was a lot more to KMart than just a doughnut machine.Generally,once you entered the store,all the clothing was to your right,while all the things that were not clothes were to your left.At the back there was a sit down cafeteria,where we almost never went, because the food was expensive, and not very good.In the corner of the building there was a pet shop,which we would visit on almost every trip to KMart. There really wasn't a lot to see there.No dogs or cats that I can remember.Mostly it was fish and birds.Goldfish and tetras and guppies.Angelfish too sometimes.Budgies,canaries and finches.Every once in a while they would have gray or pink parrots,who some people said could be taught to talk.But I was never able to get any of the birds I saw in KMart to say as much as a single hello. At times KMart also had little turtles and lizards too.In all, it was a very small pet shop, but we liked to visit there every time we went.

Sometimes the doughnut machine was not working,so we'd have to go along with our parents to look at whatever it was they had gone shopping for.Mostly this bored me to death,so I got the idea to hide among the rows of clothing.I never really got very far away,and usually my parents could still see me.There were also these mirrors on the clothing section that were really a few mirrors lined up around a little semicircle so that when you stepped up to the mirror,you could see all around yourself.Or,more accurately,around yourselves,as the effect of the mirror was to produce reflections of reflections,so that there would appear to a whole bunch of you standing there.We had mirrors at home,but none of them did this, so I thought this to be very exotic.

In those years,as always,my parents would shop for food using the advertisements placed in the newspaper,the idea being to get the best price on everything by comparing.So,even though we used the new Dominion Store, and the old Mountain Way,just across the street, we still went traipsing all over town on grocery days.And from very early on,my parents were using the bank as well, as there wasn't another bank within miles.I'm not certain what it was that convinced my father to use The Bank of Commerce,rather than the Bank Of Nova Scotia,but once that bank was opened,we would go in from time to time.When I was really young,though, my father used to think that it was the patriotic duty of every Nova Scotian to bank at their homegrown bank.I didn't really understand his thinking at the time, but I came to see it as I grew up, only I sort of understood it in reverse.

Chapter XI,1966,The Later Months,,Continued

My grandfather may well have presented a problem for my mother, and perhaps for my father too.Looking back,it seems as though there might have been some tension between the two of them over his being there and,perhaps differences in family values in a larger way too.Certainly I can look back and see how there were things that brought that world my mother didn't wish to know about, or at least have us know about,that world that I call The World Just Beyond, a bit too close for comfort.As long as my grandfather was out of sight,he was to a certain extent out of mind too.But when he was around, there were things he said and did,perhaps that needed explaining, or that stuck out as being different.That kind of explaining was something my mother often chose to opt out of.

The language that came out of my grandfathers mouth when the pie blew up in the oven was not really typical of him, at least not when he was around us children.He didn't swear a lot, but in looking back I realize he was making a real effort to behave himself in that way.Often he got to the point in a sentence where you knew what was coming next, if you had even a slight knowledge of swear words and their use.And I had been educated in that at our babysitters. But then,my grandfather was quite good at editing out the unwanted words on the fly, and replacing them with some euphemism, so we rarely heard the cussing. I've come to think ,though that it was not his normal way of speaking, but he at least had enough respect for my mother to keep his mouth under control.

As far as being around us kids, he really made an effort too.But I don't think he was necessarily well oriented to small children.He would spend some time with us, and even  stayed with us at times when our parents were out.But he seemed to be caught in the realities of his adult world such as it was.At times he would go out for a walk with me, and at times both he,my father and I would go.All three generations at once.But that was rare.We walked down to the barber school once together, and we both got a haircut.On the way back,we came to Birchmount street, and I decided to take him on a detour,all the way up to where the school was,then down some of the back streets,almost to Killam Drive.He must have known I'd led him astray, but he went along willingly.Then, when we got home,he went down to the basement room and went to sleep.

Although my grandfather was sometimes left to care for us,he may not have been that attentive all of the time.He was after all an elderly man, and he sometimes needed to rest.Maybe he thought that children should go to sleep in the afternoon but we we were really beyond the point of doing so.But sometimes he would slip off into the new room and doze off.This was not necessarily a problem,because I don't recall that either one of us kids was really high maintenance at this point.We could watch television or play by ourselves for longer periods of time, but it did cause me some concern not having an adult right there and awake.One day my grandfather was dozing on the bed in his room-it had by this point been called his room- when I went downstairs and noticed a strange smell.Noticed would actually have been a bit of an understatement, as this odor was sharp enough to make my eyes sting, and it was something I'd never smelled before.My sister was with me in the basement,and started to cry.I wasn't certain that the odor was anything dangerous, but I knew for certain that I didn't like it, that it didn't really belong in our house.So I went into my grandfathers room and tried to wake him up.This took a bit of doing...much longer than I expected.When he came around I mentioned the smell to him.I was wondering if it were some sort of fire,but I couldn't see any flames or smoke."No",he said"It's turpentine." Somehow he had spilled part of a can of turpentine on the basement floor.He said that it wasn't dangerous,and I believed him.But I just knew that it was unpleasant, something I never wanted to smell again.I didn't really know that enough of it in the air could be dangerous if it was anywhere near the furnace, or near someone smoking.My grandfather smoked all the time.

I';m not certain if any of these little incidents contributed to disagreement between my parents, but they may have.My mother preferred keeping a much tighter reign on her children than what my grandfather provided, and so may have viewed these small things as a lapse of sorts.If that went far enough, I'm certain it must have led to some discussions that I was never privy to at the time.

Quite aside from these small things,there were some things about my grandfather that would have called for explanations, and were likely somewhat bigger issues of longer standing.First there was the issue of just where he lived.I'd never visited my grandfather up to this point at a place that I knew for certain was his place.I knew he lived in or around Springhill, but that's about it.Then, of course was the issue of where he did not live.Specifically, he did not live with my grandmother, and this all begged certain questions, as my other set of grandparents lived under the same roof.It invited certain questions about my grandmother too, and I suppose in the larger sense about the values of my father's side of the family.

Then there was the fact that my grandfather had once or twice made reference to being in jail.The way it sounded would not give the impression that he attached any real stigma to it.But it's very likely my mother, and perhaps even my father did.He also let it be known that he liked to drink rum from time to time.I didn't know precisely what rum was, but thought likely it was something that children were not supposed to know about.While they were building the room, my father and grandfather drank beer together, and I never though this anything other than completely normal. What my mother thought might well have been a different story.

Whether there was any real division in our home regarding my grandfather or not, I was never aware of it.There was never any fighting or arguing between my parents on that matter or any other.In all it was a peaceful time in our home.Sometime between Halloween and Christmas ,my grandfather left, and returned to whatever living arrangements he had before he'd come.Or perhaps he had no real arrangements. It's a bit hard to know for certain.