Chapter X 1966 Continued.

Karen and her family were the first new people that had moved to our street after we got there,ans she was really about the only other person around who was close to my age.So we ended up p[laying together a lot.I would have preferred to have had another boy to play with,because Karen sure wasn't too interested in trucks,or playing in the mud,and she eventually became better friends with my sister than with me,despite a years difference in their ages.As it turned out,given the way we met,Karen and I got along well.She wasn't mean,despite the rock fight.In fact,I think the rock throwing was really about boredom,and each of us trying to get the attention of the other in what seemed like the only possible way.We couldn't very well go across the street and shake hands and say hello,and the rocks did work.

If Karen was not mean,then the same could be said of her dog.I don't recall the dogs's name,but she was a big baby.She was a doberman,and she looked like she was all business,but really she was as gentle as a lamb.She was quite big though,her head rising above my own.Once or twice I even jumped on her back and rode her around like a pony.Not only did she not mind,but sh was more than strong enough to provide pony rides without complaint.Most of the time she would stay off leash in the yard without running off.So,as much as she looked as though she might eat small children for dinner,she really made me realize that dogs were good companions,not something to be feared.I began to become much more at ease around dogs after that,even the ones running loose.

Karen turned out to be a good playmate,and her family,and ours became friends,pretty much as soon as the rocks stopped flying.Soon I was allowed to cross the street to her place,and she was over at our house a lot too.Both sets of parents were always hanging out together as well,at either one of our houses,or out in the backyards.Karen had an older brother too,old enough that he didn't bother much with either my sister or I.In fact,he likely only paid attention to his sister because she was a sibling.By the time I was in grade one,he was in grade four or maybe even five.As much as I don't even recall his name,it occurred to me,a year or two after they'd moved away that he must have been quite the hellion.Of course he hung out with kids his own age but,by the time I was in junior high school,a couple of those kids had fallen far enough behind that they had become classmates of mine.They were kids who liked to fight too,and who were always getting into trouble.Karen's brother seemed alright to me,he was never really nasty and didn't swear a lot.He was always calling other kids"Fruit",though.It seemed like "Fruit"was his favorite word.I knew he wasn't talking about apples or oranges when he said it,so one day I asked him what a fruit was.And at first he replied "you know...things like apples...or oranges."Then he said "Fruits" were girls.This seemed a little odd since the only one I'd ever heard him refer to as a fruit were other boys.He seemed to think it was funny though,so there must have been some secret that he wasn't letting me in on.I tried the word out at home,and it didn't go over so well.I didn't get into a pile of trouble over it,but I was told never to call anyone that again.

So we'd met our first real friends in the neighborhood,which was really still quite new to us.My father knew a lot of people all over town,mostly military people,but he really didn't associate with many of the neighbors until Karen and her family moved in.My mother was either at work,or home looking after us,so she really didn't socialize much either.She was more than friendly with anyone she happened to meet,but I don't recall us having a lot of company from anywhere around town.Eventually she made some friends in church and some of them started coming around.But really,Karen and her family were our first close friends in Moncton.They lived across from us for about a year,then moved up to a new house on Ayre Avenue,then eventually moved away. 

Chapter X 1966 Continued.

As it turned out,I was developing a bit of a knack for getting in trouble at places other that the babysitters.One of the places I liked to play was right on the edge of our allowed range.Right at the curb in front of our house.I wasn't allowed to cross the street,but I guess I was already pushing boundaries and wondering what was  beyond,maybe even thinking of extending myself beyond what was allowed.

Sitting at the curb was a great place to view all the comings and goings of the neighborhood,and there was still a lot going on.I would never sit with my feet out on the street.I just sat cross legged on the boulevard and watched.Dogs would run up and down the street,getting into the garbage,knocking over the cans or ripping into the bags.Once a week the garbage truck would come down the road and pick up our trash,then throw the can back into the driveway,not even giving the least thought to putting it neatly in place.By this time there was a street sweeper coming down the street on a regular basis too,along with a big tank truck that would spray clean the road surface.There was even an ice cream truck that came by once in a while,and,of course a food truck that came by for the construction workers.I really wanted to get lunch from one of those trucks,as the thought of eating from the back of a truck was quite novel.Telephone trucks were busy in the neighborhood too,and I loved to watch the men climbing the poles.Occasionally the fire trucks would come screaming up the street.

There was the routine coming and going of the neighbors too.Nothing very interesting there,but I was getting to know the neighbors and was able to spot most of their cars.One day a moving van came up our street,and stopped at the house directly across from ours.This was a house that was turned end wise to the street,with the door in the wide side of the building.Some men got out.opened up the rear of the van and started unloading furniture onto the front lawn,then into the house.They were there for the better part of the day,but I didn't see any other people around.Eventually they locked up the house and left.

It was a few days before I noticed anyone around the house.There had been people living in the house,which was already fully built when we moved in,but I had no idea who they were.Over lunch I heard my father saying to my mother that it looked like we were getting new neighbors.

It seemed of no great significance that we were getting new neighbors.Really,they were not neighbors,because as far as I was concerned,they might just as well have lived in China.Across the road was not very far away.I could see there and even beyond,but I couldn't even think of ever going there.So that made them not neighbors,but people who lived very far away.

The first I ever saw of our new neighbors was their dog,chained up in the driveway.It was a tall,big,mean looking dog with a cropped tail.Dogs were something I was still trying to figure out,but I'd generally adopted my mothers attitude toward them.That could best be called wariness.Dogs ran about all over the place,and I was glad that this particular dog was chained,because,in truth,I was afraid of it.It was what we usually called a police dog,so I began to wonder if our new neighbor was a cop.

Then one day,not to long after that I was by the curb,watching the neighborhood,pitching small pebbles from the drive way out into the road,which was something I did from time to time.At some point,a little girl approached the opposite curb.I guess she was doing about the same thing I was -checking out the lay of the land,trying to figure out what was new.Checking me out,tossing my stones out into the street.It must have looked like a fun sort of a game to her,because before long she was pitching stones too.If she was saying anything by way of introduction I couldn't hear it,as we were both in our own front yard,and there was quite a distance between us.And that was a good thing,because we were soon involved in a full blown rock fight.Really though,we had no hope of inflicting any damage on one another.Our rocks just landed in the road,which was only a problem for cars,and,at that not much of a problem.Half way across the road was about as far as I could throw a rock,and she couldn't even manage that,so we were like a couple of armies shooting at each other from about fifty miles away.At some level,I certainly knew I should not have been heaving rocks.And,when both of our mothers arrived at about the same time,we ended up busted.I spent the rest of the day inside.And that is how I met Karen.

Chapter X 1966 Continued.

On the morning we first went to the new babysitters,we spent the whole morning playing with her youngest son,who was just a toddler.My sister and I considered him a baby,and would likely have elected not to play with him at all,had we not been a captive audience.

My mother walked us up to the babysitters house on the first day.It was mid winter and quite a cold day,snowing a bit and there were icicles growing on the fronts of all the houses,from where it had recently thawed,then refrozen.The house we were going to was not far up Sumner street,not even all the way to Hastings street,but we were not allowed to walk there ourselves at this point.

We were greeted at the door by a woman of about thirty.She was not a very big woman.I suppose,though all adults seemed big to me at the time.She was long and slim,tall but light boned,and she had short,dark,curly hair.a cigarette dangled from her lips and she held an ashtray in her hand,an ongoing habit of hers as I was soon to discover.this was the first sign of her being different,as our mother did not normally smoke.At times she would accept a cigarette when offered one,but,as a rule she didn't smoke.In fact,her parents considered women who smoked to be indecent.But our new babysitter smoked,more or less continuously.

Once we had entered,the woman told us what to call her.That is,she told us her first name.but our mother insisted we address her by her surname,proceeded by Mrs.In all,she seemed like a nice enough woman,and she told us a bunch of things we already knew about her.Her husband was away most of the time,because he drove truck.In fact,he hauled aviation fuel. Occasionally he would be home,and,she told us when he was we were not to go near the truck.we would also have to be quiet,as when he was home,he would be sleeping.She told us about her four children,only one of which was in the house when we arrived.The other three would be home at lunch time.She told us their names,and that the oldest two would most likely not want to be bothered with us because we were so young.We could go play with her son for the morning,in his room.If we had any questions or problems,we could find her in the kitchen.

Her kid turned out to be about half my size and maybe three years younger than I was.He had fine,blonde hair and wore coveralls.In his room,we discovered a large toy box,filled with things that  had little or no interest to me,because he was really still an infant.My mother had anticipated this,and allowed me to bring one item from home to play with.that turned out to be an action figure of a caveman,holding a boulder in both hands,high above his head.That one item I guarded jealously,and it turned out to be a good thing.

This kid turned out to be a bit of an entertainer.The only idea I had of babies came from my little sister,and she really was not that much of a baby in comparison to myself.But this little kid knew that he had an audience of two,and he seemed determined to make an impression,to draw us into his circle,to make us laugh.for a while,all was well.We took everything out of the toy box,and there were a lot of things there that we never had at home.most of it was his,so,as I said,none of it was all that interesting.I did discover a square,red thing with a couple of knobs on the front.To me it looked something like a television.It turned out to be something called an Etch-a-Sketch,and I spent a bit of time trying to figure out what it did.

But as the morning wore on,things took a turn for what turned out to be for the worst.The lady left us pretty much to our own devices,only sticking her head in the door once or twice.We could here her in the kitchen,talking on the phone,but as things seemed to be going well,we had no need to find her,and,as we were being quiet,nobody was squabbling she must have decided all was well.but all was not well.Her kid found his way to the head of the bed,which happened to be right by the window.In no time at all,he had slid the window open.It was warm in the house,so it seemed sensible to me that he would let in some air.On the other hand,I supposed that he really wasn't supposed to open the window.It was something we were not allowed to do at our house.

Letting in fresh air was about the farthest thing from this kids mind though.Once the window was opened he got down onto the floor,found a toy,a stuffed animal of some kind,climbed back up onto the bed,and pitched it out the open window.now I knew he wasn't supposed to do that,I could think of no reason why that sort of behavior would be good.So I would tell his mother.well,I would wait a bit,and then tell his mother.Because what he was doing struck me as being kind of funny too.My sense of humor was also developing,and he would turn around and smile,looking for our approval.So I would allow myself to be entertained,then I would tell his mother.Giggle! As fast as that first toy was gone out the window,and we had rewarded him with a quiet chuckle,he was on the floor again,finding another toy,and it too was gone out into the snow.Giggle,giggle! Down onto the floor.up onto the bed.Out the window.Giggle! In about a half hour everything that had been in the toy box was outside,under the dripping icicles in waist deep snow.All the dolls,Legos,a jack in the box,a bunch of lettered blocks,picture books,even the Etch-A-Sketch.my sister had brought a stuffed monkey with her,and when the time came,she just passed it over to him,and out it went.Giggle! The only thing left in the whole room was my caveman,an empty toy box and the bed.Giggle,giggle,giggle.The show was over,but I'd really enjoyed it while it had lasted.

Finally the kids mother called out from the kitchen."Almost lunch time.Clean up the room,put everything away neatly." now that was going to be a bit of a problem,wasn't it.Well,not for us surely.We hadn't really done anything.But now was the time to do the right thing,so I went out to the kitchen,found our babysitter and ratted out her son.I also thought that this might get the biggest laugh of all.Giggle!It really was funny after all,so she would be really impressed-just before she got mad.I really couldn't have been more wrong.She blew off a bit of steam in the direction of her son.Giggle,giggle! Then she turned her ire upon us.He might have tossed the entire contents of his room out into the front yard,and we might have done the right thing,but why did we wait.Our omission turned out to be not going to her right after the first stuffed animal got evicted."He's just a baby," she said,"you've got to expect he will do things like that,but you two should know better." I guess likely I did know better,giggle,giggle,giggle,but really it was pretty darn funny.Still,I'd only been at the sitters for one morning,and I'd not even managed to get to lunch time before finding myself in trouble.

We had tomato soup for lunch.The other three children arrived home at noon,and were promptly dispatched out into the snow to retrieve everything that had been tossed.To say they were less than thrilled about that was a bit of an understatement.The snow was quite deep,and cold water was dripping off the roof,and they protested about things not being fair as they each made a couple of trips to gather up the toys.All this while the sitter huffily provided a running commentary on how we had let her son toss everything out.the oldest girl,maybe twelve,turned out to have quite a mouth."Little bastard." she hissed under her breath,followed by something to the effect that she would toss us out the window if she had to clean up our mess again.    

Chapter X 1966 continued.

I turned five years old in March of 1966.Ironically,I have no memory at all of that birthday,unlike the one before.It seems unlikely that I had a party,and it must have been just an uneventful stretch of days in early  March.

Had I had the fortune to have been born in December,instead of March,1966 is the year I would have been starting school. Instead,I had to wait a year,and was closer to seven years old than six when that time came.But 1966 was that year that led up to school.I recall it as being a time of expanding my horizons,being able to wander a bit farther from home,and learning and preparing for that day when I finally could enter school.It really was,so far as I can remember the most carefree time of my entire life.

Nearly ever day we would wander by the school,which was not yet built.It began as just a big hole in the ground,and endless piles of bricks,some red and others yellow.But slowly it took shape,opening in the fall of 1966,without me.

There were a lot of rituals involved in getting ready for school,and they seemed to take up the whole year.I had to be vaccinated against smallpox,as all children did back then,and I seemed to have spent a long time anticipating that.My father took me for a complete medical check up too,and it was the first time I ever went to the doctors that I recall.The optometrist and the dentist followed as well.Again,a lot of time was spent looking forward to each of these milestones.My parents must have been unsure as to how I would react to all this ritual,so they spent time preparing me for it long in advance,walking me through what exactly would be happening.

We spent some time actually preparing for school too.My parents had brought home a small chalk board and began to teach us to spell simple words on it.Words like cat,or cow,or box,dog,fox or hat.When my father was home we did not leave for a babysitters,so he spent long,patient hours helping us learn the alphabet,and construct our first simple words.

When my father was not at home,but working a day shift,we went to the home of a neighbor who lived up on Sumner Avenue.For the most part we'd been at home for much of the time up until this point,but that changed in 1966.The home that we went to was a very different place from our place in a number of ways,though,of course,it was laid out according to the same floor plan.The most noticeable difference was that there were a lot of children around.The woman and her husband had four children of their own,the two oldest being teenagers.There was a girl a year or two older than I was ,and a toddler as well.

Up until we went to this woman's house,my sister and I had really only had each other for company.There were not a lot of children our own age within a house or two of where we lived,and most of the time was all spent playing in our own yard,though that was all about to change as well.So having at least four other children around,and sometimes more because this woman brought in other children as well,took a lot of getting used to.I'd spent a lot of time on my own,and I'd rather liked it.In fact,that wasn't going to change much.I had no idea at all as to how to react to teenagers,not that anyone ever does or did,but it was a completely new experience to me.The toddler was the only other one at home during the day,and at almost five years old,I didn't relate all that well to him either.So my sister,being the closest in age to myself stayed my closest companion.At age four,there was not as much difference between her and myself as there had been when we were younger.It was just more crowded,more of a shared existence,with some people,some children I might not have chosen to share my  being with.In particular,there was one of those kids,the oldest boy that I never felt comfortable around.But that was most likely just because he was much older than  myself,and a boy,being the way boys are.

Home life was a lot different at our new babysitters house than it was at our own.We were exposed to a whole new system of values,so very different from our own.I'm not certain how this particular family was selected to provide childcare for us,but it seemed to me that they were already known to my parents.We were told that the woman was someone my father knew from Springhill,and once,while we were driving around outside of Springhill,we met her there,in front of this old house out in the country.Her and my father were very nearly the same age,and the house was close to the part of town where my father grew up,so I'm guessing they grew up together,though this was never spelled out in any detail.

Where this family got there values from is another thing.Things were just very different than in our own home.Different words were spoken,different things done,which would not have been said or done at home.In particular,they were things that my mother would possibly have been less than comfortable with.And I wondered,or at least began wondering about the differences between my parents,and how they thought about things.They never openly presented themselves as not being united in belief though,and I was not yet old enough to discern any conflict between them.   

Chapter X 1966 Continued

The inside of our house had 1960s written all over it,in a way that could updated but never fully disguised.The floors were tile in the kitchen and bathrooms,hardwood everywhere else.The walls were of drywall,sheet rock,not plaster and lathe like in pre- war houses.The windows were double glazed and were opened by sliding the panes from side to side.There were dual doors both front and back,one a screen door,one,the inner one of heavy wood.Each entrance had a doorbell.The basement came unfinished,unadorned except for a furnace and water heater at the foot of the steps.The cellar floor was concrete and unpainted,and it was cooler there tan in any part of the house.There were a number,four,perhaps five narrow windows cut into the foundation.

When I think back to those days,the most striking part of the view is in just how little there actually was in the house at that time.The walls were all neatly painted in light shades and there were very few pictures of any kind.Neither were there any bookshelves.There was a mantle over the fireplace,and on that my mother kept an ornate clock in a glass dome,The clock never worked,and we were never permitted to touch it.Our house,in 1966 had very much not been grown into at all.It was all there,all functional but it really had very little in terms of personal touches.

The floors were laminated hardwood,cut into strips and nailed onto the sub-floor.All of the house save kitchen and bathroom were that way.In those days,hardwood flooring required a lot of care,and my mother would wash and wax the floors nearly every week end.The living room floor was covered in a large rectangle of green carpet,not the wall to wall kind,but something that was placed there as an afterthought and covered up most,but not all of the living space.Underneath there was a sheet of underlay that was not quite the same size as the carpet and was made from something like horse hair.It was rough to the touch,and if the carpet wasn't set on it evenly,it stuck out and my father would say it looked like hell.

Inside the living room,we did not  have a lot of furniture.What was there was functional,but rather minimalist,and certainly not beautiful.A green couch more or less matched the carpet.It was a boxy looking thing that stood on four short legs,and the thing I most recall about it was the roughness of it's surface.You could scratch an itch on it.It could peel up a patch of your hide.It had a matching chair that just looked like a big ,ugly green cube.There was a coffee table,complete with two matching end tables,a big stand up lamp,and that was about it.The tables were made of some sort of plastic laminate,the only wood being in the legs.The coffee tables's surface had a hole at one corner,where it had most likely been overturned on something.A pot lid perhaps,while we were moving.Actually,something a bit smaller that a pot lid.But the hole was always there,ever since I can remember,and I don't recall the event that put it there.Even by 1966 standards the living room furniture would have been considered "budget",if not cheap.The rest of the house contained similar furniture,beds in the bedrooms,chests of drawers,all made of some form of laminate.The kitchen had a table and four brown and white chairs.The dining room was a huge empty space,no heavy wooden table,no chandelier.Those were a few years in the future.There was an old box stereo system in the dining room,and a big stack of vinyl records.No carpet.   

Chapter X 1966 Continued.

By the time 1966 rolled around,our neighborhood had taken pretty much the same form as it has today.All of the house that are still there were completed,and most of the neighbors around us were in their homes.In fact,the next door neighbors on either side were to remain the same until long after I left.The Clark family is still there.

Northwest Moncton was one of the newest areas in the mid 1960s,essentially a product of the demographic changes brought about by World War II.It was nearing the end of the post war Baby Boom,and there was a large demand for more,and more modern housing,and services to supply those living in those houses.So our community grew up as a kind of more or less uniform suburb.

For the most part the houses around us all looked similar,if not alike.Cookie cutter houses,with only a few different floor plans,put up as quickly as they could be.In fact,there the majority of the houses would have been a variation of a single floor plan,the variation consisting of how they were oriented on their lots,which for the most part were all the same size.The houses were all bungalows,one story,with front and back doors,more or less in the center of the house,and approximately opposite one another.The living rooms,dining rooms and kitchens were set to one side of the front door,the bedrooms and bathroom to the other.Some of the houses would have bedrooms to the left of the door,some to the right,but in either case the floor plan was essentially the same.A few of the houses had set so that their ends faced the street,but again,the basic layout was the same.There was the odd L shaped house as well.

When Northwest Moncton was built,it was not undertaken in the same way as things are done today.The big difference is that today a sub division would be proposed and all of the land acquired to build it.Anything older that was still standing would be bought up,not giving any choice to those who did not wish to sell,and houses would be erected and sold.But,in our neighborhood,there were a number of houses that were there before the building of that sub division,and they were left in place,so that along with the 1960s style bungalows,there are a number of older houses,and those houses were allowed to remain and are still standing today,for the most part.The Duffys just down and across the street lived in  one such house,as did the Flanigans,at the beginning of the next block down.There were a couple of much larger houses at the end of Watson Avenue too,on our side of the street just before Mountain Road.The other streets around had quite a few older houses compared to our street.

There were a couple of houses in the neighborhood that are no longer there.One was located in the field between Watson Avenue and Crandall Street,the other at the corner of Whitney and Lorne. Both houses were home to people who gave every appearance of being much poorer than the house around them,and I'd always heard people complain how the houses wee eyesores and should be torn down.The one up on Whitney,a low slung and leaning shack with asphalt shingles and a sinkhole for a yard was torn down a few years later.The house in the field burned down one night.

Chapter X 1966

In March of 1966,John Lennon proclaimed that The Beatles were"More popular than Jesus Christ." About a month later,Time Magazine asked rhetorically on it's cover"Is God Dead?" Mississippi became the last American state to repeal prohibition,and American Catholics were no longer required to abstain from eating meat on  Friday.

Chevrolet introduced the Camaro,Milton Bradley introduced Twister,and Quaker Oats first marketed instant oatmeal.An average new car cost about twenty six  hundred dollars,a gallon of gas thirty two cents and a new dishwasher about one hundred and twenty dollars.

In September,Star Trek debuted,and in December,The Grinch stole Christmas for the very first time.The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation became the first Canadian network to broadcast in color.

When the year turned from 1965 to 1966,much remained unchanged in the world.There was still a preoccupation with the military.Russia and America were still staring each other down,still testing nuclear weaponry,still trying to outdo one another in space.France and China were also getting involved in testing atomic weapons.On December 8,1966,The United States and Russia signed a treaty agreeing to prohibit weapons in outer space. The war in Vietnam was still in full swing,with the American president saying that troops should remain there until the defeat of Communist forces was complete.

Race riots continued as well,in Atlanta,Omaha,Lansing and Watts,among other places.Martin Luther King marched in Chicago,and was struck by a thrown rock.

Lyndon Johnson was President Of The United States,Lester Pearson The Prime Minister of Canada and Harold Wilson Prime Minister Of Britain.Indira Gandhi became leader of India.And,in America,Edward W. Brooks was elected the first African American senator.Ronald Reagan was elected Governor of California.Huey P.Newton and Bobby Seale formed The Black Panther Party in October.

In June The United States Supreme Court rendered the Miranda decision,which required that suspects be informed of their rights upon arrest.In Texas,sniper Charles Whitman killed fourteen people at the University Of Texas in Austin,and,in Chicago,Richard Speck murdered  eight nurses.

Actress Cindy Crawford was born in 1966,as were Kiefer Sutherland,Halle Berry,and Adam Sandler.Singers Janet Jackson and Sinead O'Connor were also born in 1966,as were boxer Mike Tyson,golfer John Daley and future British Prime Minister David Cameron. Meanwhile,Walt Disney,Admiral Chester Nimitz,comedian Lenny Bruce and feminist and birth control advocate Margaret Sanger left this world.

In Canada,Toronto Transit Commission opened the Bloor Danforth Subway Line,while Montreal introduced it's Metro System.The Centennial flame was first lit on Parliament Hill,ironically a full year before our centennial.Both The Canada and The Quebec Pension Plans began operation.

The Oxford English Dictionary had three hundred and eighty two new words in 1966.They included AWACS,a military acronym for Airborne Warning And Control System,a concept that was in it's developmental and planning stage at the time. Multi-tasking was used for the first time,as were Kung Fu and autowind,which referred to a camera feature.Jacuzzi was first used as a generic term for whirlpool bath,and Mastercard became a proper noun referring to a credit card of that name.The Vietnam war produced the term medevac,referring to medical evacuation,and the word bot was first used in reference to various forms of robots.

There were a wide variety of slang terms in use in the mid 1960s as well.They came,in some cases from the Hippy and drug culture,from the war in South East Asia,as well as from many other sources.The expression"Hell no we won't go." was the most commonly expressed anti war slogan.A "hit" was a drag from a marijuana cigarette."Heavy" meant serious or profound,and "pig out" meant to eat too much."Pig" was often used to refer to police officers,as was "narc",which could also identify a drug informant.A police helicopter was sometimes called a "pork chop".The term "square"refered to an uncool person,and "sick puppy' to deranged,crazy or perverted person.Some peoples jobs were described using slang terms:"Roadie"-a laborer who travels with a rock band."Talking Head"-a news anchor."Rent-A-Cop"-a security guard. A "Mean Machine" referred to a fast,cool car,and a man who was thought to care too much about his appearance might be called a "Ken Doll".

In truth,I have no idea how popular The Beatles really were.They may well have been just as John Lennon said,as I expect Jesus Christ was relatively less popular in the mid sixties than He had been in the past,given all the worldly attacks against Him.I expect Lennon's statement was not nearly that popular in our home,especially with our mother. Moncton was still a very church shadowed place,and you would have been much more likely to encounter Bible Stories For Children in it's bedrooms or office waiting rooms than you would Time Magazine.