memoir writers homework/a past relic.

When my grand parents moved into town,from the farm,in the mid 1960's it's as though they brought the past with them.There were old rusty tools in a gray wooden shed out back.Many were the tools of a lumberjack or a woodcutter.There were old farm implements too.A hay rake,to be pulled behind a horse,every bit of it red and pitted with rust.A seat was mounted to it on a big coil spring and it was the most uncomfortable thing I've ever sat on,even when I didn't imagine the roughness of the fields where the horse would pull it.

My grandfathers car was a relic too.The only thing was,he didn't know that and continued to drive it.It was a 1953 Chev BelAir that used to be a light metallic blue until he repainted dark blue with a paint brush.It had hard seats with no seat belts,and years and years of dust embedded in its upholstery.The window wipers went faster the faster you drove,so that if you were to encounter a torrential downpour you would need to drive very fast indeed just to be able to see.That seemed like maybe something the engineers hadn't given all that much thought to,to me.It would push my mother way beyond her 40 mph comfort zone.My grandfather wouldn't be caught dead driving in the rain,or the snow.Every October he would take the battery out of the car and put it inside the house,on the staircase where you could spend the winter stubbing your toe on it during nocturnal trips to the washroom.

My grandfather modernized his car in about 1976.Sold the 53 Belair to my father and upgraded to a 1961 Ford,to stay more current with the times.We went to pick up the old blue chevy and bring it back to Moncton.I wasn't sure how such a car was going to go over in Moncton.It might clean up well enough to be considered a classic at some point,but as it was,once it was parked on the back lawn,it was likely to send the neighbors a very clear message.We are the folks that Jeff Foxworthy warned you about!

That trip is one I recall so well.My father was there and so was Phillip Wilbur,to drive my fathers car back.We stopped at Davidson Lake on the way home.The lake has a beautiful sandy bottom and,as it was a very hot day,we swam until late at night,then decided to wait until morning before driving the rest of the way home.In the morning we loaded up the cars and set out for Moncton.When we came to the place on the old highway that's called Cambridge Narrows,we came upon a sight straight from Hell.During the night,a fuel truck had gone off the road and plunged into a small gully on the opposite side of the road where it rolled and exploded.It started a small forest fire too.by the time we came along,they were retrieving a body from the ruins.I was amazed at how few those ruins were.What was once a tractor trailer was smoking and probably small enough to put in a small basement.What was once a human being was just a skull and a hip bone.It was a good thing I guess we decided not to press for home the night before.No point risking car problems in the dark with that old relic.We would likely have been very close to right on scene for that tanker truck accident.I knew then,standing at the roadside,smelling kerosene where everything was blackened,that some very bad things could happen in this life.