Chapter X 1966 Continued.

Figuring out my mother,and how she fit into our family life was a great deal more difficult than considering my father and what he was all about.In a sense,what you saw is what you got,with both of them,but in thinking back,my mother was both a good deal more circumspect,and much more complicated.You could easily have missed all the moving parts in her life,simply because there was a lot going on on the surface,and that could give you a good picture of her,but one that would have been very incomplete to my way of thinking.

Physically,my mother was small,but heavy and energetic,though not nearly as hyper kinetic as here mother.Her movements were smoother,more controlled,and did not come with a never ending soundtrack.She rose early in the morning,every morning and worked hard and diligently through until bedtime,whether she was caring for us children,tending to the house,or going out to provide for her family.She looked big to me back then only because all adults did,and she also carried enough force of personality to feel confident in all she was doing.There was no question of her lacking any needed control within the family.

Outwardly my mother seemed religious,and I don't think it was simply a matter of seeming that way.There was much about her religion that opened itself up to interpretation and even criticism,and I think that played out in our family from earliest days onward,but I would never question that she felt that it was necessary to have and actively pursue beliefs,and that those beliefs were purposely directed at leaving the world in a better state than she found it.Again,it was a matter of religion having a lot of moving parts,while seeming outwardly to be simple.So,she took us to church,but didn't necessarily deal well,and by that I mean,in a satisfying manner with the deeper,more problematic issues that religion implied.Overall,on the surface,she wasn't a philosopher,though she might well have made a good one,because she had a fine mind.She just seemed to see religion in a practical kind of way,a way to help her,and us to live as well as we could with others.And while this worked well for her,it was not always evident to me how you could take up belief in a pragmatic way,but leave aside the tougher questions that went with it.

While my mother was living in our family,she also had to have had a foot in another sort of place,a place I've taken to calling The World Just Beyond.The World Just Beyond was clearly a place that you could infer the presence of because it had an effect on the world that I was living in. But it contained,among other things,all those things that my mother was either clearly uncomfortable with,or did not know how to explain to her children,or did not think it appropriate to share with us,or perhaps with anyone.

There was the matter of where my mother came from too.It was such a very different place,on the surface much simpler,though I suspect that to be an illusion.That part of her background was very rural,some might even say backwards,and she tried very hard to be a creature of where she found herself,though I think at times she kept a foot in both worlds.And I'm sure she did so with intent,because I'm certain her moral code carried a great prohibition about forgetting where you come from.To use just a single word in describing her,I would say she was adaptable.Adaptability may never have had the very best of outcomes for her,but it made life anywhere manageable ,to the point that she could be satisfied,if not fulfilled.

As a child,I really could not apply religious principles to people,nor am I even sure that we should try.My mother knew a lot about how to get along in this world.That was as evident to me in 1966 as it was forty years later when she was taken from this world.There were things of note that might have caused me some wonder if I'd known more of Christian principles at the time,but they were never really things that caused any cataclysmic doubts or changes in the way I viewed her.Why was it,for instance that she would accept a drink or a smoke when offered,yet never touch either when left to her own devices? Why,if church was so important did we never go in the summertime? And why did she ever marry a man who would never go to church with us? Plus,there were all of those things that she never wanted to talk about,that I could never get answers to,that still seemed so important.All of this would follow me through all the years of my life,and,while the nature of my mothers belief was at time unfathomable I never doubted that she lived,and believed well,that she passed good things along to her children,and that she received a good reward.

Most likely the year 1966 was revealing her to have feet of clay as well.But,as with my father,that was nearly impossible to see.And it was to stay that way for many years longer,as she truly was the stronger of the two. 

Chapter X 1966 Continued.

In 1966,it would have been hard to look at either of my parents and think that they might actually have feet of clay.We lived in a decent home,in a decent and growing neighborhood,and we really wanted for nothing that we really needed.

My parents had both turned thirty two that year and,as far as I knew were the picture of health and reasonable prosperity.My mother had graduated from high school in 1950,according to her diploma,which hung on the wall of her room,and had been working most of the years since.My father likewise had been working since he left home around the same time,and by 1966,had been out on his own for as many years as he'd lived with his own family.To all appearances,he was a healthy,confident and fit man in the prime of his life,and I would not have dreamed at the time that there was anything he could not do.

To picture him as he was,I think back to a particular day during the warm part of 1966,standing on the corner of Sumner and Crandall,talking to our babysitter,who lived just a few houses up the street.It seems strange to me now that so many of my clearest impressions of people seemed to begin on that very corner,just behind our house.

I clearly remember him,dressed as he often was in those days,in a clean white t-shirt and some sort of gray work pants.He would normally be wearing the same clothes to work that he wore about the house,and some of his shirts would have been stained with spots of oil,but otherwise clean.Some of those t-shirts were the sort with a pocket,so that he could carry his cigarettes,either Players,or Export A.On this day,we'd been going somewhere,though I'm not certain where,when we met the babysitter on the corner.I'm quite certain that my father knew this woman in the past,likely back in Springhill. Or perhaps it was her husband that he knew.In any event,they were somehow connected to Springhill.

The conversation on this particular day was nothing really out of the ordinary.Just the way that friends,or neighbors would chat about nothing when they met on the street."Hi.How are you.How are the kids.how is the garden growing." that sort of thing.The woman,Helen was a smallish woman,who would most likely have been thought of as having a good figure.Her hands,I though were small and birdlike with fingers that twitched a lot,and seemed lost without a cigarette.Her nails seemed yellowed,and the two of them puffed smoke out into the clear air in continuous blue streams.If I'd known the word back then,I might have described her as neurotic.She never really left the confines of her kitchen much when we stayed at her place,so it was a bit strange to see her out of doors,walking down the street.

But as much as the conversation that day was a very normal,everyday sort of  talk,it was also a sort of summing up of things as the were. A kind of State Of The Union sort of address on my father's part.I didn't catch the words that brought it on,but I recall him saying clearly to our babysitter."You,know,life is alright. I've got a good job,and a house,and a car that works. We've got food on the table,and I have a happy wife and children.I'm not complaining much." And really,what was there to complain about.We lived in a good,forward moving town and we were growing with it.Aside from the smoke being exhaled from my fathers lungs,there seemed no clue that he would ever be anything other than whole,healthy,happy and fully in command of his world.

Chapter X 1966 Continued

Usually when we went on road trips it was to Springhill or Canterbury,to visit either one set of relatives,or the other.If we went to see my mothers family in Canterrbury,the trip would be longer than a day most times.But you could drive to Springhill in just over an hour,so that was usually a day trip.Most time we went to Springhill by car.But one time,my father and I went as far as Amherst on the train.There was no need to go by train,other than that my father wanted me to know what it was like to ride on the train. Moncton was such a small place that there were no trains in the transit system,so there was no real opportunity to ride a train in day to day life.So the trip to Amherst was just a means of opening up the world to me a bit.

Early on a Saturday morning,we all got into the car and drove into downtown Moncton,by the Canadian National Railroad Building,which seemed like the tallest building in town,with about eight or nine floors.Behind the building,there was a small depot,where the train came in.My father and I got onto the train and found our seats.Riding the train was,of course a really big deal to me,even though the trip was only about forty five minutes long.But I'd never been on a train before.

It was a splendid day outside,not a cloud and quite warm.Late spring,just coming into summer.After we'd been on the train a few minutes,it started to pull out of the station.I could see the old Eaton's building.It was one  of the very first buildings we passed,looking dingy and old on the right side of the train,when compared to the shiny black and silver railway building out the left side windows.We crept out over the subway,which ,of course is not really a subway,but just a cement overpass.In those days,and on that day in particular,the overpass was just gray,or some such dull color.Nobody had yet decided that it should be beautiful,so it was an eyesore that you passed under on you way into the main part of downtown.But on the train,you passed over it,and were up higher than the cars on the road,and about halfway up the side of some of the lower buildings.A bit farther up,the tracks crossed St.George Street,and I was impressed that all of the cars had to stop for it.I looked for our car.My mother and sister were going to Amherst by car,then they would meet us at the station,and we would drive the rest of the way to Springhill. But I couldn't our car when I looked out the window.

After it crossed St.George Street,the tracks cut at an angle up towards Mountain Road,past the high school,and down into the flats by Hall's Creek,where all of the car dealerships were located.The tracks were built up at that point,so we were up higher than the road.It wasn't long until we were in some part of town I didn't know at all,then,we were out in the country where there were trees and marshes all around.All along the tracks there were people picking things,maybe fiddle heads or maybe even strawberries.Many of them stopped the things they were doing to wave at us on the train.

Before long we were gliding along flat land with a lot of little creeks cutting through if.There were cat tails everywhere,and I saw some young boys with fishing rods walking through the marsh.This was the Tantramar Marsh,which makes up a big part of Southeast New Brunswick,and seems like about the flattest part of all Atlantic Canada.We crossed a road as we were coming into Amherst,and I looked again for our car,but wasn't able to see it.It wasn't there when we got to the station either,and we had to wait for a few minutes.My father was saying something about"your mother drives so slow."

Once we were all together again in the car,we started off in the direction of Springhill. It was kind of a rough piece of  road,very hilly with a lot of  turns,and like most roads in Atlantic Canada,rather rough.There were trees on all sides,so there really wasn't a lot to see.Maybe about half way to Springhill,there was a big yard where the circus stored all of their rides in a warehouse.By the time we got there,my sister and I would be bored,and would most likely asked "Are we there yet.".a hundred or so times.So my mother would encourage us to watch to see if we could spot anything like the carousel or the Farris wheel.Most times we never did,but once in a while we would see one of the trucks  they used to haul equipment with.These trucks were most often red,and they would have circus scenes painted of the sides.It wasn't a circus in the sense of animals or clowns,or that sort of thing.It was just a carnival,but we all called it a circus.

Before you come into Springhill,you come into a lower area called The Junction,or Springhill Junction.Sometimes when we were on road trips my father would stop there ,at the liquor store to buy beer.On the day we took the train,I guess he had it in his mind to have a bit of a picnic,so he got some beer,and,instead of driving right into town,he took a side road right by where the road crosses over all the tracks at The Junction.It was a really rough looking area,all dirty and smelling of creosote,with blackened coal cars parked off tho the sides.There were tiny house nearby too,and it must have been poor people who lived there,as they really were just shacks,some of them unpainted.

The train trip was my first train trip.But it was not to be the end of first things on this particular day.As we sat there,outside of the car,we ate some sandwiches and were looking down onto the tracks.On the far side of the tracks,there was a line of trees,and,as we watched,we noticed a dog walking along the trees,going in and out of the woods,but walking roughly parallel to the tracks.It was a big,bulky and well muscled sort of creature,with rough fur,some of which was missing in big clumps.I recall my father saying"There's a dog." to my mother.And we watched it for a short time,before my mother said"we should leave." What was clear to me at the time was that my parents seemed a bit concerned about the dog.So we got back into the car and drove off.It took me a few years to realize that the dog was actually a wolf,and it was the first time I'd ever seen one.My parents really didn't want to tell us that it was a wolf,because to us,wolves were not a good thing.The only wolf I knew anything about was supposed to be big and bad,and I'm sure my parents though that one,or maybe even the both of us children would freak out if they said the word "wolf." That first wolf I'd ever seen turned out to be the last one until I moved out west years later. 

Chapter X 1966 Continued.

One summer afternoon I saw an odd thing at the babysitters place.In fact,it was to be a few years before I understood what it was that I saw,and,even at that I'm not certain I really completely understand it.But I was reading a magazine one day,and I happened across the clearest explanation I'd ever heard of what it was I'd seen.It wasn't so clear as to allow me to be certain that it was the exact explanation though.

It was getting on to late afternoon,and it had been a reasonably nice day,though kind of muggy.Close and hot,and not really sunny.We were out playing in the sitters driveway.I was about the only place we could play at her house,as the front yard was newly planted with grass,and she didn't want us running about in the back yard either.So,we were in the driveway,playing and waiting for my mother to pick us up.

Then,at some point,the weather got bad.Another thunderstorm rolled in,and there was quite a bit of lightening,and some thunder.The sitter came out,likely with thoughts of gathering us into the house.But she didn't  because there was no real rain falling and she was saying that our mother would be along any minute.It was spitting just a bit of rain,but only a drop or two,not enough to get wet in.

We were walking up the driveway,towards the back yard when I saw it.Just before,the sitter was asking if I was afraid of lightening.My sister,I think was already inside,having most likely answered that question in the affirmative. I didn't tell the sitter I was afraid,because really,I wasn't. I'd seen a lot more violent storms than this one,but I guess she though I was afraid regardless of what I'd told her.So we were walking up the driveway when this thing came shooting,flying really,down the driveway from out of the back yard.Whatever it was,it seemed to be made of light.It could have been a light bulb flying by.That's sort of what it looked like.I was a bit bigger than a golf ball,but smaller than a tennis ball,but it was all lit up.And it went flying past so fast,between us and the house,right out to the end of the driveway,and into the street likely.When I aw it,what I really thought that it was was a moth,of a butterfly,because it really wasn't round,you could have said that it had wings,like a butterfly.That's how I'd always thought of it as being like.I thought to reach up and catch it,but it went by too fast.And it was followed by a clap of thunder.

I always remembered seeing that thing,I can recall it vividly today,just like I'm still standing in that driveway.I don't know if the sitter saw it.If she did,she said nothing about it at all.But I never really knew what it was,so I never talked to anyone about it,except maybe to call it a butterfly.I'm sure nobody would have given a second thought to butterflies,and it would never have crossed anyone's mind that I was describing something unusual.But a few years later,maybe as many as eight years,I was reading an article in a magazine about something called "Ball lightening." Ball lightening described what I saw that day fairly well.Not perfectly,but it was more logical than anything else I could think of.The problem was,the thing wasn't really a ball.It was just more like a ball than it was anything else that I had words for.

Chapter X 1966 Continued

All through the spring of 1966 we hauled things around in that little red trailer.Dirt for the lawn and for a garden,gravel for the driveway,whatever needed hauling.As it turned out,my father had an ambitious improvement plan for our house and yard,now that we'd been there nearly two years.It started when he hitched up the trailer and brought three trees home from the nursery.We planted them in the back yard,about two thirds of the way to the property line,in a nice neat,evenly spaced row.One was a pair tree,one plum and one apple.They were small.and my father said that it would take a few years before anything grew on them.As it turned out,nothing ever did grow on them,and after a few years,they all died off.The apple tree,in the middle lasted the longest.

 That summer was spent working in the garden.Once we got enough loam hauled in,our neighbor came over with a big rototiller and ground it into a patch that ran from the corner of the house back to the property line.My mother planted beans,peas,carrots,radishes and a few other things there.And it must have been about that time that someone got the idea for the willow hedge too.As long as the weather was decent,we were out digging in the garden,and later harvesting vegetables.But,of course,the weather wasn't always agreeable.

That whole summer and spring just seemed like a great time to be outside,the weather seemed glorious.But it rained some of the time,and when it did we were housebound.My father never minded the rain back then,or cool air.He would just cheerfully explain that it had to rain sometimes,or nothing at all would grow.Later he came to detest weather that was wet,or much cooler than eighty degrees.

Sometime it would rain if we were out at the park.And then we would have to run home.There were lightening storms too,and every time that happened ,someone would run and unplug the television.But we were never obsessive about that,like my grandmother was,running to pull every plug on every appliance out of the wall,then double and triple checking to be certain that not a single thing remained plugged in.

At five years of age I was familiar with thunder and lightening.I was never really afraid of it,but I could be uneasy about it at times.Usually it was about two or three times a week in the summer that we would get an electrical storm,so we were very used to them.My sister really didn't like thunder much,and could start to get restless.When that happened,one of my parents would gather her up and urge her to go to sleep,and usually she would.I,however,would not.Because as uneasy as the lightening could make me,I did enjoy the light show and the low echoing boom of the thunder.

One night,though,my parents were unable to get my sister to go to sleep in an electrical storm.I don't recall that it was an especially bad storm at all.There was a bit of rain and it seemed to go on for a long time,but it never seemed to be directly overhead.Just a very average summer storm.But the reason that my sister was not able to sleep through it was that she had wandered off.

We had been visiting that night over in the city's West End,over near Jones Lake,between St. George Street and West Main Street.I have no idea who the person we were visiting was,but I do think that they were someone my father knew from the military,perhaps someone from Goose Bay.We had been at Centennial Park earlier in the day,and afterward went to this person house,which was really only a few blocks from the park.I think it only occurred to my father to visit these people as we were leaving the park,and the thunderstorm was getting started.

Not all of my parents friends were the most interesting people in the world.Some of them had no children to play with,and,as I recall,these particular people were like that.There was not a lot to do,and nobody really paid either of us much attention.What they did have in their house though was an old guitar,and it wasn't long before I was looking it over.One of the adults asked me if I knew how to play it,and took it down,laid it on the floor and told me to go ahead.I must have looked at him like he just came in from Pluto or some such place.The very idea that he would think I knew how to play a guitar.

Things must have been really boring for my sister there.I can't think of any other reason she would have wandered away,but after we'd been there for some time,we noticed that she was missing,and began to look all around for her.It didn't take long before a lot of the neighbors were out looking for her,and a police car came along too,and the cop was talking to my parents.Eventually we found her,down across the street from the entrance to the park,where there used to be a Volkswagen dealership.It really wasn't that far away,but it wasn't right on the way either.You would have had to have made a couple of turns to end up there from the house we were visiting.But I remember going down there and picking her up.It was summertime,and not quite dark out,even though it was already late.I guess she must have been noticed by someone at the dealership,and maybe they called the police.But in any event,we were soon reunited with her.My sister seemed scared,maybe of the thunder or lightening.She said though,that she was afraid of the noise in the service department of the dealership,where she was when we found her.The storm,even though it was not a really bad one was still going on.The road was wet,every now and again there would be a flash of lightening and some thunder.Like a storm that was moving away slowly.Still,to a girl not quite four years old,it must have seemed frightening.

Chapter X 1966 Continued

Before we went for dirt for the lawn,and for the garden,we went to get a trailer to haul it home in.My father must have either saw an advertisement for the trailer,or knew someone who told him where he could buy one.so early one morning,we dropped my mother off to work and drove out into the country to look at the trailer.

It was one of those days when my father was on a stretch of days off so we were not packed off to the sitters for the day. It was a fine,warm day,the kind you can get in Moncton,that can be typical of early May,where the air is warm and smells of wet earth.Trees were just beginning to bud out and everything was clothed in the lightest green.It really was the sort of day that made you want to ride around with all of the windows down,after a cold winter of never cracking them at all to the outside.

Wherever we went,it was not far from home.I had the sense of being near ocean water,the air had that kind of tang to it,and the ground was rather flat or gently sloped,and there were a lot of cat tails and taller grasses all about.Somewhere near Shediac perhaps,or maybe the Memramcook Valley.

We pulled up to this old house,a cottage really.There were some sheds and maybe a barn.A small one.An acreage.Not quite a farm.Some of the ground was plowed up,waiting to be set in rows for the planting of a garden.I could smell horses in the air too.my father got out and told us to wait in the car.He went into one of the buildings.He really couldn't have been gone long,but we decided to get out of the car.Just too nice of a day not to.

After we'd been out of the car for a while,the door to the cottage opened up,and this short,heavy woman came out to see us.She had a voice that reminded me of a bird singing,and,I could not understand a thing she was saying.At last she asked us"Do you speak French?" We replied that we did not,though only out of politeness.I'm not even certain that either my sister or I knew that there was such a thing as French.I thought there was only one language in the world,though I must have heard French around our neighborhood.When I had though,it was spoken by people who also chose to speak English ,when they were not conversing among themselves.this woman did not,and it never occurred to me that she likely could not.She lived in a community that included very few English speakers,and most likely she had little use of any language other than her mother tongue.

In gestures,not conversation,she indicated that we should wait,that she was going somewhere,but would be right back.Then she disappeared into her cottage and returned quickly a moment later.she had a plate of cookies,which she offered to us.I was not sure I should accept cookies from this woman I didn't know and couldn't understand,but,like the fresh spring air,they were beyond my ability to resist.And so,when my father returned a few moments later,that's how he found us.Eating cookies an in a conversation that wasn't really a conversation with our new friend.

A minute or two later this slim,tough looking man,not too tall came up the gentle slope of the yard pulling a small utility trailer,as though he was a horse.The hitch was lifted up on his shoulders,and he was just sort of trotting along with the trailer as though it weighed nothing at all.He put the trailer down right over the hitch on the car,then fiddled with some wires until the rear lights came on.Then my father counted him out some money,they shook hands and we drove off with our trailer.

On the way home we stopped at a gravel pit out near Magnetic Hill,out along the ridge.A man who worked there filled the trailer up with loam,which we hauled home and my father dumped out into the front yard.And,we did all that before it was time to bring my mother home for lunch.Later we went for more dirt.

Our new trailer was not very big at all.It didn't even hold a whole scoop of dirt from the loader at the pit.It had been painted red but was beginning to fade,and it's metal parts had been sprayed with aluminum colored paint.It's two tires were quite badly worn,but it worked well enough.Later,when it had been parked in the back yard,I discovered that it could be used as a seesaw.If I was sitting in it,I could move to the part of the trailer farthest from the hitch,and it would tip all the way to the ground.It wasn't a gentle seesaw though,like the ones in the park.The trailer would nearly pitch me out on the ground when I walked to the back of it.And,when I crawled up the other way,the hitch would slam into the ground and jar my bones.

We had that trailer for many years,hauled a lot of things around in it.And I recall not only the day we went to get it,but the day many years later when we came to have it no more,when I took it to it's final resting place-sort of.