Memoir-Backstory

For years I've kept journals,so,if you ever get a chance to view them,none of this will seem all that new to you.Keep in  mind that I first wrote this story down in one form or another some twenty years ago,so I'm not sure why I'm putting it inside a computer.Safe keeping perhaps as I've already managed to lose at least one copy of it.Remember too that the details of this story are likely to have changed somewhat since my first telling of it.I'm not intentionally telling lies,but my memory has changed over the years and I make no apology for it as I am working primarily from memory.I don't use my past writing as reference when relating todays recall.That's just the way it is.Others may recall certain things in a different light and thats fine too.For the most part they are not lying either.For the most part.But my history is mine and the only defense I have against it being told wrongly is to write it myself.So here it is.

My mother was Elva Mae Graham-Davis,though she never hyphenated it.Her parents were Thomas and Alta Graham,from Dead Creek New Brunswick.And of the people before them I have very little idea,though I suppose it is very unlikely that they were much different from my grandparents.

My father was Walter Bruce Davis.He was born and raised in Springhill, Nova Scotia,a rather hard scrabble coal mining town in the county of Cumberland,near the New Brunswick border.His parents were William Davis and Rose Davis,formerly a Ryan.Before william came Samuel Davis and Robert Davis,though again,those are no more than names to me.I'm told that they landed in Cumberland county at a place called Blue Sac road.You still pass that road today on the drive from Parrsboro to Truro and my father would always point it out and say "thats where your people come from"every time we passed.And we passed many times over the years.

Let me start by explaining,such as I understand it what Dead Creek was like.I'm sure there are many who have a better understanding of life there than I ever will,but most of those people don't have much to say about it.That makes me most curious.In deciding to write all this down I've come to realize just how much I don't know about the place,as my moters people were not really story tellers.

My memories go back to the early 1960's when my grandparents still lived on the farm,before they moved into the nearby town of Canterbury.The earliest reference I have to myself in that place is a picture my mother took of my grandfather holding me up next to a large bay horse.I appear to be just an infant so I'm guessing it was sometime in the warmer months of 1961.

In my mind I don't imagine Dead Creek to have changed much since my mothers time.The cars certainly have changed.When I was a child most of the cars were 1950s models,almost exclusivly North American made.There were a lot of rusting automobiles sitting in the yards of abandoned farms and old farm implements as well.By the time I was born many people had began to leave their farms,if only to move into town.Some people moved to Toronto or Fredricton,but most people moved somewhere.

Dead creek burned out in a wildfire in the year my mother was born.Her house was burned when she was about two months old.Maybe about the same age I was when the picture of me with the horse was taken.The countryside must have grown back so it would have had just short of thirty years to have changed before my first memories of it.It was rough country.Of my grandfathers home itself,it was sitting on the side of a hill that some people called a mountain.In some of my memories of it there was a big cistern by the road-a big wooden container of some sort.But in some of my memories it's not there,so really,I don't know if it was there or not.The country around was a place of a lot of trees and hay and wildflowers.I recall daisies and dandelions and black eyed susans most of all.There were kittens and cows and chickens too and horses of course.I can't ever remember a dog being there.When you entered the barn through the front you were at ground level.If you took the stairs into the hayloft you were still at ground level at the back,and how such things could be mystified my young mind.

Dead creek is not far from the Maine border.On a clear day you can look west and see Mt.Katahadin.How you would ever know if you stepped across that border,I have no idea.Maine and New Brunswick were pretty much alike.

Of course Dead Creek had a creek called the Deadwater Creek on some maps.It crossed the road up the way from my grandfathers farm,then turned and flowed in behind the hill on which his house had been built.I've never been down to that part of the creek.In dreams that recur occasionally I'm walking the whole of Deadwater from one end to the other,in the creekbed at night,always by the light of a bright moon.I can't say how that dream ends.