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Monday 8 May 2017

ChapterXI,1966,The Later Months, Continued

The late summer,and fall of 1966 was a time when some things were coming to a conclusion in our home and neighborhood.Down the road,the new Kmart shopping center was close to opening.What had been a big hole in the ground took the shape of a modern shopping center,and soon we would be able to walk to the end of the street to get many of the things we needed.

Most of the streets around our place had finally had curbs and sidewalks completed and all of the roads were paved,though there was still some construction going on a bit farther off.

In our basement,there was a big crock full of wine brewing away in the basement,right beside the furnace.It was cool in the basement,but the furnace could give off a bit of heat,which is why my mother set the crock down there,and not someplace else.Inside the crock,the wine turned into a deep maroon color,and the top had a paler,pinkish foam on top.And the whole of the basement began to smell of the wine.A few times my mother used a sheet to strain the contents out into another container.But by early September,it was ready to be bottled.

While some things seemed to be wrapping up,other things were just getting started. My father decided that it was finally time to pave the driveway,and was anxious to get it completed before winter. He also had the idea that he wanted to finish part of the basement,so that the house would have an extra bedroom.Until this point,my sister and I had shared a bedroom.And we still had the same boarder in our house, as she completed nurses training at The New Brunswick Institute Of Technology, and at Moncton Hospital. So the house had grown a bit small, and an extra room would come in handy. So a pile of lumber materialized in our basement,and all of these projects soon got underway. And,we came to have another visitor during this time, a man who stayed until at least Halloween. And all of this took place just as that big crock of wine was coming into it's own.

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