Chapter XII,1967, Continued.

During the spring of 1967, we seemed to be staying home with my father more and more.But at times we still went up the road to the babysitters. Being at the babysitters was , in truth getting to be a bit of a drag for me.Usually I was allowed to watch movies in the afternoon while my sister, and the lady's younger son slept, and I rather liked that.In truth, her kid was a bit of a pain, and being away from him for a couple of hours was alright with me. He was younger, and I considered him to be a baby, someone who couldn't really play and talk and interact at my level.By noon I was usually tired of his nonsense.

Sometimes, though I was made to take a nap too, and this really never sat well with me. One of these times was, of course, the time I got the smallpox vaccination.I didn't feel sick, there was no reason at all for me to slow down and rest, or to eat that nasty aspirin without the benefit of water.So I just lay down on a bed in one of the bedrooms, and looked at the ceiling, because I couldn't sleep. Another time,we were going to pick up my father where he worked, then we were heading onward to my grandparents place in Canterbury.This, for us was a very long trip.Almost eighty miles to start with, before we even picked up my father. So the babysitter decided I needed to have a nap, because I'd surely be tired by the time my day was over, deep into the night. So off I went to the bedroom, right after lunch. Again, I was not happy.First, I was not a little kid and didn't need to sleep.Secondly, I'd come to see being sent to my room as being a kind of punishment for misbehavior, and I had no idea what it was I'd done to warrant punishment. But off I went.On this particular day, lunch had been a bit of a testy affair between the babysitter and her oldest girl, and there had been a yelling match. The longer we stayed at the sitters house angrier she seemed to get, so I wasn't eager to to try her patience about having a nap. I lay down on the bed for a bit, then I heard here tell her oldest son to come and check if I was sleeping.There was no need to check on the other kids because she knew they'd be out like a light. So her kid comes into the room and asks "Are you asleep?" I wasn't, but my eyes were closed tightly and I was pretending, so I answered "Yes." He went back out into the kitchen and said to his mother"He says he's asleep." There was a lot of laughter at that, then I heard the screen door slam and her three oldest kids were off to school.

I don't recall just how my father came to be at work without a car, or how he got there, but the idea was that my mother would drive up and get him.For some reason she'd needed the car in the city, or maybe he'd caught a ride up to work with someone else.We didn't have two cars then, and sometimes my father would even talk about hitchhiking to work.He may have done that a time or two, but I don't really recall it for certain. In any event, my mother picked us up at the sitters by mid afternoon, and we were off to pick up my father. I hadn't slept much at all. In fact, I'd given some thought to crawling out the bedroom window and playing in the yard, but I couldn't think of how I'd get back into the house without being noticed.So I stayed put.

In those days, there was no double lane road up the east side of New Brunswick. First you took the road out towards Shediac, but, before you got there, you came to a tee in the road and turned left.Then you were off up along the coast, right along the water for the most part. Every few miles you would pass through a town, so getting anywhere fast was not happening.Still, there was a lot to see.It seemed that there were signs and billboards everywhere that had lobsters painted on them.There were even houses that had lobsters painted on them, and sometimes other sorts of things, like fish or clams too. In one of the towns along the way there was an old anti-aircraft gun in a park right along side of the road, and I always wanted to stop and have a look at it.But it was many years before we did. Another of the towns had a building, a church maybe, that was completely round, and that fascinated me because it was the only round building I'd ever seen. Once, as were were passing by my father said something about confusing someone by "Putting him in a round building and telling him to go piss in a corner."My mother shot him a hard look, and he never said anything about that building again. Somewhere along one of those little towns, my uncle worked as a Mountie, but I can't remember exactly which town it was.Still, I knew that they lived in the police station, so I would come to recognize it as a landmark along the route to where my father worked.

My father was getting off work that day at four o'clock, so we must have started off from Moncton at about two o'clock.We got there a few minutes early, and, even though it was on a military base, we were allowed to drive right into the place, after stopping at the main gate, and sometimes being asked for identification.Usually, though we were just waved through, as the man at the gate knew my mother, as well as my father.

The outside of the building that my father worked in was crowned with these structures that looked like giant golf balls, and these housed radar scanners.Also, inside the building there were a bunch of motors that turned over day and night to produce power.My father called them "Turbines." or "Diesels", which were not the same thing, but I didn't know what the difference between them was. Either way, each of them, and there were three or four of them, were as big as a house, and they not only made a lot of noise, but they set the whole building to vibrating.That was something I wasn't sure I liked , but I did rather like being where my father worked.There were a lot of tools there too.My father had some tools at home, by the variety and size of the tools here was something like I'd never seen.He even showed us a wrench that was nearly as big as I was at the time.I couldn't imagine what that wrench would ever be used on.

One of the things that happened on that trip, that I though was kid of cool at the time was that we got to eat in the mess hall on base.There were soldiers coming and going all of the time, and the food was really good, and I could eat as much of it as I wanted.After dinner, we were all herded into the car, and started off towards Newcastle, where we would catch the road going down to Fredricton and on to Canterbury.But, before we got there, my father decided it would be a good idea to stop along the roadside to let us blow off some steam, to get us tired out, so we would go to sleep. So he pulled off beside this field and we all got out and went off for a bit of a walk.Before long, my father noticed something in the grass, and motioned to our mother to bring us over to where he was standing. There in the tall grass there was a bundle of snakes, all curled up together in a big knot, all slithering around with tongues darting in and out of their mouths. I'd knew about snakes.Well, sort of. My entire knowledge of them at that time came from the story of Adam and Eve, so I really didn't have a great view towards them.Some of the older kids said that snakes were poisonous, and that if one bit you, you would die.So I really wanted to get out of there. But my father said that these were just grass snakes, and, just babies.They wouldn't bite anyone.He reached down and picked one up in his hands and let it crawl around a bit before putting it back in the grass with the others.That was the first time I'd ever seen a live snake, and, at the time it was happening, I was glad when we got back into the car.I wasn't planning on sleeping on the way to my grandparents place.I still liked listening to the radio at night, I still liked watching the stars in the front windshield.It all gave the impression of there being a world that was much bigger than myself to wonder about.But hours later I was being aroused out of a deep sleep as our car came to a stop.My mother was knocking on the front door of my grandfather's house.The porch windows rattled loudly and there were moths flying as my grandmother opened up the door.Then I was asleep again.  

Welcome/Happy New Year.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter Xii,1967,Continued.

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter XII,1967,Continued.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter XII,1967,Continued.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter XII,1967,Continued.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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