Chapter VII continued Springhill.

Both of my grandparents came from Springhill. Both are buried in the cemetery on the hill leading out of town,on the side of town farthest from the mines,beyond the shady part of upper Main Street,where you are least likely to notice the foul air.But both are from the other side of town,where you would never notice the scent of roses and lilacs,or warm fallen leaves in the grave yard.

Rose Elizabeth Davis lived in another town,farther into Nova Scotia,and by 1965,I still do not have much of a memory of ever having seen her.Her maiden name was Ryan.During the time of my fathers growing up,she was separated from her husband.They never lived together in my lifetime,though the times I'd seen them together,they were respectful enough of each other.

William Wallace Davis seems to have been named after Braveheart. He was a larger than life sort of figure,about who there was an abundance of outlandish stories.In the 1920's he ran bootleg rum,and entered into the depression a reasonably wealthy,though no longer prosperous man.

My grandfather came around to live with us for a short time,and he helped my father do some building.During most of my childhood he would shuffle about between family members in Nova Scotia or Alberta,and often lived in decrepit little rooming houses.

He was not tall,but sturdy,thick and square,and he dressed in archaic fashion:gray trousers,white shirt,a gray jacket of Harris Tweed,a gray tweed British racing hat all proclaimed that he'd never really left the 1920's.His face was lined,his hands hard and thick,with one finger gone at it's top most knuckle.A mining accident,he said.

I'm not at all certain how he viewed children.He seemed to work hard at presenting himself to us in a way that my mother would find acceptable,when in fact,he might have otherwise lacked that inclination,being of a rough cut mining breed.As it was,he might have had the slightest suggestion of a sneer when he tried to remain acceptably civil,and may have regarded my mother as being prudish.The suggestion was there,but he never said as much.So he would sometimes use expressions like"Son of a ...lady dog" or "pain in the ...sitdown",always managing to to stop short of cussing when we were around.Relating to young ones must have been a full time job for him,and mostly he did it well.

By trade he was a carpenter,a ships carpenter he said.He built things well,so that they would last,and he would take hours checking to be sure that things were level and square.His eye was steady that way,though it seemed he never worked quickly.

Chapter VII continued.Springhill.

My cousins lived out in the land below the hill.You could see the new prison from where they were living,a big building encompassed by fence and wire,and set aside from the rest of town.It was compensation for the loss of mines,where hard and hard up,largely unskilled men could draw wages.

They lived on a rough,gritty patch of ground,in an old and used up house without paint.Nothing much grew about there except some hay that went unharvested,and some trees,farther back.There was honeysuckle too,tangled among the other growing things,but unseen.It would vie with smoldering coal for the attention of the senses.

Uptown was pretentious,with it's town clock.It was the face town tried to show the world,pristine white churches and tended lawns,and decent,even grand houses and mature and ancient trees.But the land below the hill was a mining town,with coal no longer king,but instead a deposed monarch whose reign was past.

Feet told the whole story of town.My cousins were unshod,and I watched them,wondered why they were allowed to run about without shoes.Each toe pad collected small circles of blackness,each heel became a sooty crescent of ground in grime,each nail a tiny crescent moon,under which grit gathered,The ones fortunate enough to have well formed arches would have a splotch of white or pink down the middle of the sole.Skin,thickened and iron hard,before they ever went to school.

Later,in the car my mother asked"How do they run around like that all the time?" In my mother nothing sounded like disapproval unless you listened hard.You would miss the criticism,were it there at all.But you could detect the move of her eye to a naked and soiled foot,and later,the question,"How do they run around like that." And it made me think how every few months we would go down to Main Street,back in Moncton,walk into a shoe shop or two,checking for the best deal.In each shop a man in a modest suit would come out and carefully measure our feet,then hurry off into a back room,returning with a box of perfectly fitting shoes.And we would go out into the night,into church shadowed downtown,then ride off into our clean white house,returning again in another few months.

Coal burned all the time in the lower part of Springhill. Sometimes you could see the smoke hanging close to the ground,or like dust motes in a cars headlights.Even though coal was no longer coming out of the ground,it defiled the air.It drifted from a heap of mine slag,down where the mines used to be.Some time ago it had caught fire,and burned for years.At night it would glow,and I once asked my grandfather,while we were passing if that was Hell.Dark on a moonless night and smoking,it seemed Hellish to me,and I was always happy to pass.It's sulfurous miasma would rasp at my nostrils,causing them to flare,and,after a time a vice would tighten at my temples,unless we were gone to some other place.

I thought of the coal smoke as a kind of a ghost.Had I only known. Springhill felt to me like a deeply haunted place,with apparitions coming up out of the ground,and sailing around in the dark,on  thin clouds of smoke,looking down at passing cars and coal tarnished buildings and asking to be remembered.Asking not to be left nameless.

The living  too,seemed to wear a dark veil,not by choice,but because they could never really escape it.You could see it,spotting the leaves of garden vegetables,streaking painted houses,and settling darkly on cars after the rain.And all the dresses of the housewives appeared somehow darker,lank and drooping,unlike in other little towns all about.The young girls looked slightly rough and thin,and you would have to look hard for their prettiness,as they would stand about,smoking,seemingly saying,in the harsh,plain speech of miners "Black Lung,you can't catch me."Defiant.

Sometimes you would hear people cough.My grandfather would cough up black mucous,into a paper cup,hacking away lung cells,dissolved,sometimes streaked pale red.Men would gather,down by the liquor store,down in The Junction,and I could hear their voices,like sand paper,asking for a dime,bent in the back,and looking forward to what they had to look forward to.Their livelihoods gone,they searched for ways to ease the pain of being too old to change and not ready to die.Their backs were bent,their insides dissolving,and they could never escape coal,the deposed monarch.

All things that live,live in the shadow's  cast by other things,and so Springhill became a character,personified,and you could see and know the people it brought forth,and know why they were,and how they were.

Chapter VII Springhill

We entered a barber shop,my father and I.It was on one of the road trips.Usually we had our hair cut every few weeks at the barber school at the New Brunswick Institute Of Technology,because they provided inexpensive haircuts and were within walking distance of the house.Children's hair got cut for free,and adults paid a quarter.

There must have been a reason for this visit,aside from the cutting of hair.But I've never been clear on what that reason was,other than it was likely just a visit,for it's own sake.My father knew the barber,called him by his name,like he'd known him forever,and perhaps he had.

There was a building being torn down just across the street,a busy road with shops all along it and the hulking automobiles of that  day prowling up and down.My father sat in the chair and I watched bricks and boards fall to the ground through the barber's front window.It was a two or three story building,one of the larger ones on the street,and it was missing a big chunk of it's top left hand corner,as a piece of machinery kept poking away at it and little clouds of dust rose and drifted into the street.

The barber snipped hair with scissors and complained of the dust,and the noise.Snip,snip,"Damn I wish they'd finish.Just bring that building down." Snip,snip.And another board would fall into the street.The barber carried on a lively,good natured banter with my father as he clipped and buzzed and combed,talking about people I didn't know.But it was a small town and both my father and the barber seemed to know everyone in it.

The barber finished with my father,dusting away hair onto the tile floor,removing the ribbon of white paper from around the neck,and holding up a mirror so that my father could view the back and sides,and nod approvingly.

And then it was my turn.I shuffled through the pile of hair clippings on the floor all around the chair,and crawled up into place.It was a long way up into the chair and the barber had to pump a hydraulic lever to raise the chair so that he could reach me.The chair was ornate,of shining brass and pewter,and soft gleaming leather,the sort of chair that proclaimed the shop to be the exclusive habitat of men and boys.The barber was dressed as barbers then did,in gray pants and a crisp,clean white smock,not unlike that of a doctor.And he began to snip,trying to make small talk with me,asking me silly questions,afraid maybe that I would protest his efforts.

"How old are you?

"Four"

"Are You married?"

"No." Why would he ask such a question? I could see myself in his mirror,I could see all his instruments laid out on a counter beneath it-comb,clippers,scissors,more than one pair of each.If I stretched and struggled just a bit I could still catch sight of the building across the street out of the corner of my eye.I tried to make the movement with my eyes,so I could hold my head still,so as not to be poked by the tip of the barbers scissors,or cause him to make a crooked cut with his clippers.

My father walked around the floor,paced,really,though the place was small.He didn't sit in the chairs where people waited.He had no interest in the magazines laid out on a small coffee table.He was watching the building too."Sad to see that old building Go" he said as he paced.In those days he was slim and fit,carrying little body fat,his arms veined and sinewy.A bit short of six feet.About one hundred and fifty pounds.Neat,with his short,well trimmed haircut,his hair still dark,without a trace of gray.He was a picture of youth and health,looking as though he could do anything,looking as though he belonged,right there where he was standing,like that world belonged to him.

For fifteen minutes the barber clipped,until my hair was cut just like my fathers.I watched as little bits of it dropped to the floor,and I wondered how often the man gathered up the clippings,and what he did with them.Sent them away in the garbage I supposed,and it seemed strange that a part of what was once me was lying on the floor.At last he finished,and dusted away the final bits of hair with his brush,and lowered me to the ground.Those chairs seemed really high when I was so short.

We said our good-byes.

"Come again,Walter."said the barber."It's always good to see you."

"I will" said my father.But I don't recall ever being there again.

Down the hill we drove,the old town hall with it's clock tower on our left.Ticking away the hours.It gave the town a southern and Gothic look.Ticking away the hours.Maybe the tallest building in town,but not really on the highest part of the hill.It made the town look as though it was a place that mattered.Ticking away the minutes.It was an odd time,strange minutes to be passing,because the town was changing too,not what it had once been,looking for a different sort of existence.

I wonder,did those minutes seem to pass quickly,or slowly during the times of disaster,when the towns men were trapped beneath the ground.It must have resembled something other than the faithful,mathematical,measured movement of time.Too slow!"It's been too long."Or,"so quickly,the hours are rushing away,too many".It made no difference to the old town clock,none at all.

We went to the Sears catalog store and picked up a package for someone,though I'm not sure who.And we went across to the candy store,on the right hand side of the street as you go downhill.The owner greeted my father warmly,talking to him as he seemed to everyone,like they'd not quite left childhood behind,but that's the kind of place the candy store was.There were few people there that day.No children hanging about because it was early afternoon.It would be busy when the schools let out,busy with small kids each with a few pennies.

The shop owner scooped out three kinds of candy into three paper bags."Come again,Walter,It's good to see you,you need to come more often",the little man said,in thickly accented English.

We got into the car,with three bags of candy and headed out into the flats below the hill,where downtown was forgotten,where the air was bad,the houses dingy and the town's life blood once was taken from the ground beneath our feet.In past days.

And that is my first,my earliest memory of Springhill. 

Chapter VI continued

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

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

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

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


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

Chapter VI continued.

We went to the beach at Shediac a lot,but we went other places too.One of those places was down in Albert County.Rather than a beach,this place was a little creek,just the right size for children to play in.The water come up to my knees in most places,and we would wade around all day.We could go from one side of the stream to the other,either by walking right through the water,or by hopping from stone to stone,and trying not to get our feet wet,making a game of it.

This place had it's own kind of movement.And it's own sound.I think it's really the place that caused me to be amazed by the sound of water moving over rocks,singing through the woods.There were birds here too,and their songs,little peeping things,and feathered creatures both seen and unseen with their elaborate melodies.And frogs too.You could see them,shooting through the water,grabbing at flies,and you could hear them,all day long and on into the night.I loved to watch the dragonflies too,how they could almost stop in the air.Once,some older kid  told me not to get bitten by a dragonfly,because you would die.But then my father said,no,that's not true,and I was so relieved,because I didn't want to think such beautiful creatures could hurt you.They looked very much like helicopters in the way they could move,settle in one place,then dart away.And there were water striders too,a kind of spider that could walk right out on top of the water.Later,I heard kids call them"Jesus Spiders",but my mother would never have let us call them that.Still,they were incredible things to watch-they were the only thing I knew of that could walk on water.I wanted to catch one and bring it home.We didn't have an aquarium back then,but I thought I could put one in the bathtub.But,in a whole childhood,I never managed to catch one.

I much preferred the stream to the beach.I guess I never really became a beach person,but I could not wait to get into the car when we were off to the stream.It never took long to get there,though like everything else when you're a kid,it seemed like a long time.Sometimes we would go there for a picnic after my mother got off work.Other times my father would take us there on summer afternoons,before we went to pick up my mother.The woods there was not all grown over then,it had been thinned out and there were picnic tables among the trees.Really,it was the most perfect place to relax and play,a green,brown,mossy,birdsong water world,where there seemed not to be a care in the world.

chapter VI continued

One of our more frequent road trips was to the beach.I'm certain that proximity to the beach was a big selling point with my parents when they decided to settle in Moncton. Moncton was a bit inland,but it only took an hour,or maybe a bit less to get to the beach,even without a direct,multi-lane road like they have now.

My father loved the beach,almost to the point of obsession.That must have started when he was a teen living in Springhill. Springhill was the kind of place that people might like to escape in the summer months,but it was quite a bit farther from the beach than Moncton was.Once,while we were driving to our summer cottage,just as we were leaving Springhill,my father started telling me how they would all walk,or perhaps hitch to Heather's Beach,near the community of Port Phillip.I looked out at the land before us,at thickly wooded trees and I thought he must have loved the beach if he was willing to trek across that rough country.It must be about thirty miles.He said they would sometimes take two days to get there,they'd camp in the bush somewhere on the way,and kill some farmers's chicken for food.

The beach we used to go too was at Shediac,south and east of Moncton,maybe twenty five miles away in those days.A big part of that trip was through town,then out the old Shediac road,past a golf course until you got almost to the coast.The road wasn't all that good and you couldn't go very fast at all.

Once you got to the end of Old Shediac Road,there was a T intersection with a couple of gas stations and some seafood shacks.Beyond that you could see the town and the ocean beyond. Shediac is all about lobsters.My memory of the town is of a clean,white looking place.Modest white buildings,many of which would have a billboard with a lobster on it.They all had neat asphalt shingled roofs as well.Properties around the town seemed well kept,because,after all it was a tourist town,trying to look pretty for summer visitors.

Beyond the town,out in the water there were a lot of lobster boats,low at the back and high at the prow,and most often painted white,though I've seen them in all colors.The boats,and the little harbors that sheltered them were often scenes depicted on post cards from Atlantic Canada,scenes most typically used to identify the region in other parts of the world.

There were always stacks of lobster traps out on the wharf anywhere there were lobster boats.But most of the houses around would have lobster traps as well,sometimes large stacks of them,sometimes just one or two to decorate a lawn,cottage or small business.Once again,these are typical images of Canada's Atlantic coast.

When you got to the T intersection,you turned right to get to the beach.If you turned left instead,you would go up along the east side of New Brunswick,through all of the little villages,past where my father worked and where we used to live and beyond.But a right turn went to the beach.Once you were at that corner,you knew it wasn't far.

The first time we went to the beach we took plastic pails and shovels.My father had brought home two big bright colored beach balls,then gathered us all into the car for the trip.

I'd never seen the beach before.I don't know why we never went to the beach when we lived in Redmondville.It wasn't really that far off,but some of the beaches around are not that good for swimming.Some were rocky and others covered in thick,slimy mud.But the one at Shediac was ideal.Very sandy.In fact,there seemed to be miles and miles of sand along the coastline.We would go out in the water and swim.Or at least my father would.I didn't know how to swim.Still the beach was a new and wondrous place.All that sand and all that water.The place always had a sense of motion about it that I'd never seen anyplace else I'd been.The waves moving from far out in the water,then washing up along the sand.And seagulls overhead.Sometimes they would land  nearby,Near enough that I thought I should be able to catch one.So I tried to,but they could move away so fast.Then they would circle and screech,and dive into the waves,sometimes coming away with small fish.And there were other creatures too.Clams and crabs.Crabs had a strange way of moving,something like crawling.You could see the little trails left behind by little creatures trying to get back into the water after having been left up on the land as the tide went out.Tides went in and out,farther away,then closer.The thing about this beach world was that it was always moving,and almost never moving like traffic in town,or like people when they are walking to get somewhere.And I would move too.One of my favorite ways of moving was to walk right out to the edge of the water,parallel to the surf,then try to stay away from the waves before they caught my feet.But it was wonderful to be caught too,to feel that cool ocean reaching around my feet.And then I'd watch how quickly the waves could take away the footprints I'd left behind.My father used to say that the waves were taking my footprints away to Africa,or maybe China,and would leave them there for someone else to find.Moving.The beach was always in motion.

Higher up,away from the beach the sand dried out.It dried out gradually as you got farther back from the water,and when I was tired of chasing waves I could go up a bit to where the sand was still damp.Here I could dig,fill up my plastic bucket and make sand castles.I wasn't very good at making castles at first,but I did like to dig.It amazed me that once I'd dug deep enough,there would be water in the hole.Farther back still,all the sand was dry,and hot to the touch,unpleasant to walk on.And there was crabgrass too,big clumps of tall grass.My mother always said you had to be careful,that crabgrass could cut your skin,but it never cut mine.I don't know of anyone who was ever cut by it.

There was a hut that sold food at the beach. Hot dogs,hamburgers and french fries,and maybe local fare too,like lobster rolls or fried clams.Sometimes we brought our own food for a picnic,but usually we had hot dogs and fries.The thing about fries was,the gulls would sometimes chase you for them.There were always gulls circling around the food shack.I'm amazed that the Health Department never shut them down because of the gulls.My father would take a french fry from the cardboard container and pitch it up in the air,where a gull would catch it,fly right over the outside of it sometimes,without even clamping down on it with it's beak.And my father would chuckle,then toss another one up.I'd never seen any kind of bird do that in the city.But the beach was a very different place.



   

Chapter VI continued.

The town where my mothers family lived was over two hundred miles from Moncton,and getting there was a bit of an ordeal.Then,as now you cut right down through the  heart of New Brunswick.Only back then,you actually saw a lot more of the country.the road went right by towns,both large and small,through fields of cows,and a big farm near Sussex where if you looked out the side window you could see a whole field white with chickens or turkeys,or maybe both.Other than Fredricton,Sussex was largest town we passed on the way.It was farming country with pastoral views of gold colored Jersey cows munching on grass and unpainted covered bridges.There was a commercial strip along the highway in Sussex,and sometimes we would stop there at a bakery for cookies.The woman that ran the bakery was German,or Dutch,perhaps,and she was always kind and friendly,and loved children.My father loved the cookies and other baked goods there.All of the things that it took to make them came from the local dairy,and he said that the best butter and milk,or ice cream came from Sussex.In that,I believe he was right.but,for the most part,it was just good to get out of the car and stretch our legs,because the trip to our grandparent's farm was a long one.

We knew we were halfway there,or,halfway home,when we came to a big bridge at Jemseg.That is where it seems like all the waters of New Brunswick gathered together,many feet below.Grand Lake was located to the northeast of the bridge,and it met up with the Saint John River just under that bridge.You couldn't see the water really well,because you could never stop on the bridge,but sometimes you could catch a glimpse of boats down below.

Once we got past Jemseg,the land flattened out into river bottom.The river was  on your left side all the way into Fredricton,and it was lush,green,wet country.In places there were huge trees growing right up out of the water,and I always wondered how trees could grow in the water.There was a big island there too that had cows on it,Jerseys and Holsteins,and I wondered how they would come home for milking,or how the farmer would come to them.There didn't appear to be any house or barns on that island,but the trees were so thick,they might well have been hidden from the road.Across the river,there was an army base and sometimes you could hear the boom,boom,boom of artillery practice.You'd see a lot of army trucks sometimes too.

The land started to rise when you got to Fredricton.And the roads in those days started to get bad upriver of The Princess Margaret Bridge.They were building a dam upstream,so the roads would all have to be replaced with higher roads,and there was construction all along there,all the way to where we would turn off the main road about sixty miles west of Fredricton. Some of the roads were little more than cow paths,there was construction equipment parked everywhere,it was dusty,and sometimes you had to detour,or stop for long periods of time.

The place where we turned off the main highway to travel into the back country was called Crow Hill.It was usually very dark when we arrived here because we often arrived at night.if we were still awake,my parents would begin to make crow noises-caaaw...caaaw-to let us know the trip was nearly over.But I don't think I ever saw a crow there.

Sometimes we would start back home during daylight hours and I could see what Crow Hill really looked like.But it was many years before the significance of it dawned on me.In very few words,let me describe it as the place comedian Jeff Foxworthy warned you about.I'm eternally glad we never broke down on that road at night-"Drive faster,I hear banjos." Crow Hill would not exactly put your mind at ease if you were heading back into the hills,not for most people anyway.

I don't think Dead Creek,the place where my grandparents lived would have looked much different than Crow Hill to the casual outsider.The only real difference was that we knew most everybody who lived there. My mothers family lived in four farmhouses right beside,and across the road from one another.It was not really good farmland and a lot of the people who lived around there had begun to abandon it.It wouldn't be long until my grandparents moved int town too.

In 1965,when I was four,I was too young to have formed any opinions about Dead Creek.I suppose I could have developed quite an attitude about it had I been older before my grandparents decided to become townies.Much like the Bogeyman's hood in Nova Scotia,Dead Creek was the sort of place that could evoke negative feelings and ideas in anyone who didn't live there.But by the time I was able to understand comments about the family trees of people who lived in such places looking more like fence posts than trees,my grandparents had moved.Still,they were very different from people in Moncton.They looked different,wore different clothes,spoke and acted differently too.But I never regarded that as a bad thing.

There were a lot of isolated communities in New Brunswick at that time and Dead Creek was one such place. I've heard others referring to the the people who lived there as hillbillies. I've heard the area referred to as The Badlands,and I've heard references,only half joking,to ignorance and inbreeding.Nevertheless,that is where my mother's family is from,and,as far as I know,they were all decent people. Church people.

                       I"m proud to say that I've been blessed
                        and touched by their sweet hillbilly charm
                                                                             Dwight Yoakam,
                                                                             Readin',writin',Route 23