Moncton,then as now had some busy streets.Main Street,of course,which ran through town just up from the Pedicodiac River and crossed the whole city from east to west,more or less.St.George Street which did the same.Downtown,such as it was then was located along Main Street between King and Highfield Streets.It was a vibrant downtown,though small enough to walk from end to end in just a few minutes.Back then,it was not nearly as impressive as it is today.there were no real high rises.The highest buildings were the churches near Church and Queen Streets.The busiest stores were Eatons,on one side of the subway,and Woolworths on the other side.The busiest restaurant then would likely have been The Palace Grill.
St.George Street had a busy section too,between Highfield and High Streets.It ran from east to west,more or less parallel to Main Street.Out in the west end it was very wide and passed through an industrial area.
Mountain Road was the other main thoroughfare,maybe the busiest street in all of town.But again,there was not nearly as much in the way of development along this busy street.Of course,we could not go anywhere near Mountain Road,much less across it.Our street,and for all intents and purposes,our world ended where Mountain Road crossed just three blocks down.They might well have put up a sign saying"beyond here there be dragons."The Kmart was not even there then so across the street was really nothing but wilderness.Mountain Road started out on the east side of town,but had bent around to the north by the time it passed our street,on it's way,eventually where it turned into Route 126,just past Magnetic Hill.Anyplace we went that took us beyond Mountain Road involved a trip in he car.We didn't even walk to church in those days.
The part of Moncton we moved to was very much a work in progress in 1964.It was not even close to being a finished neighborhood.All the houses that are there now were on our street then,plus one or two that are gone now,down by the corner of Mountain Road.But the rest of our area was really like one giant construction area,and construction areas back then were never fenced in.Most of the streets branching off Crandall Street had dozens of houses still under construction.Birchmount Street and Ayre Avenue did not even exist at that point,nor did many of the streets that were beyond Lorne Street.Between there and Killiam Drive was woods for the most part,though there were walking paths through in a few places.And,to the best of my memory,our street was the only one that was paved.All of the others were still dirt,filled with pot holes,and usually wet enough to be at least somewhat muddy.We would have been very much on the edge of town in those days and there was still a bit of a country feel to our new home.
Because Moncton,or at least our part of it was still being built,it was an endless source of fascination to small children.My earliest memories are filled with images of the men and machines that came and went all day long.Graders,paving machines,cranes,dump trucks,trucks carrying big panes of glass,cement mixers,and many other kinds of working vehicles. Sometimes fire trucks or police cars would come up our street too.The fire alarms in those days were located in a red box mounted to utility poles.There was one at the corner of Crandall and Snow,and at times,someone would reach up and pull the handle,and three or four fire trucks would come racing up the street with lights flashing and sirens blasting.Nearly every time it would be a false alarm.
Nearly as interesting as all he trucks were the men that drove them,and the others that worked all day with shovels,rakes and picks.As I recall we called those men"monkeys",probably because we saw some of them climbing poles.But,really,when we said "monkeys"we were referring to any of the workingmen,so long as they were wearing hard hats.Those men were monkeys,men without hats were not.I'm not at all certain how we got the idea of calling them monkeys,as I can't recall actually knowing what a monkey looked like when I was three years old.In my mind I think the monkey idea came from my sister,but maybe it was my mother or father that said something to the effect of "they are climbing up that tree just like a monkey."Nevertheless,we called them monkeys and,at some point we expanded on that idea and started calling our hometown Monkeytown.So,whenever went to Canterbury,where my mothers family came from,or Springhill,my fathers hometown,and someone asked us where we were from we would reply with enthusiasm"Monkeytown."The only ones who didn't seem to fall over laughing when we said that were our parents.Everyone else got a big kick out the idea,thinking that we were small and didn't know how to say"Moncton",though that was far easier to pronounce than "Monkeytown."But people never laughed when you just said "Moncton"
Just beyond our backyard an endless parade of construction equipment worked day after day for what seemed like forever.Each morning that it wasn't raining would find me out on the back step,as early as I could manage to get there.I was always distracted at breakfast as I ate cereal and grapefruit,bacon and eggs,as I could often hear the dump trucks arriving.I didn't want to miss a second of it.All of the equipment was bright in color,as were the workers.If I woke early enough,there were lanterns burning at the side of the road,where the workers set them out to mark the trenches they had dug for laying in the curbs.They were ghostly looking at night and in the early morning,and when the first workers arrived,they would spend a while extinguishing them.
They must have used the big shovel to dig trenches for the curbs.For a long time it was parked at the end of Sumner Street,just a short distance from our back step.In the morning I simply had to be on our step before the worker started that machine.I was entranced by the way smoke puffed from it's stack when it was first started.It told me that it would not be long before the other trucks would arrive.All day long they came and they went,bright orange and yellow and emitting sound,not quite a cacophony,not quite a symphony;growls and grinding and roaring.Cement scraping the inside of the drums of the mixers.Gravel sliding from the upraised dump bodies of the trucks.Men shouting,and,I suppose, swearing.Shovels in earth,hammers on metal or on wood.The machines seemed to grow out of the ground,there were so many.A forest of earth movers and a whole gang of monkeys who lived in that forest..And gradually our community came together.
Crandall Street,like all of the other streets was dirt like a country road.It seemed full of holes,each of which would hold a small puddle most of he time.Very few cars would come up Crandall Street.Most of the traffic was construction traffic. Sometimes it would grow dry and get very dusty.Clouds of dust would foul the air and get all over everything.The city had a solution for that though.A dirt,ancient looking old truck,that at one time had been yellow but was covered from end to end in a thick oily film.On the back was a tank filled with tar.This frail looking truck would spend the days driving up and down the dirt roadways.It smelled bad,but it cut down the dust.
St.George Street had a busy section too,between Highfield and High Streets.It ran from east to west,more or less parallel to Main Street.Out in the west end it was very wide and passed through an industrial area.
Mountain Road was the other main thoroughfare,maybe the busiest street in all of town.But again,there was not nearly as much in the way of development along this busy street.Of course,we could not go anywhere near Mountain Road,much less across it.Our street,and for all intents and purposes,our world ended where Mountain Road crossed just three blocks down.They might well have put up a sign saying"beyond here there be dragons."The Kmart was not even there then so across the street was really nothing but wilderness.Mountain Road started out on the east side of town,but had bent around to the north by the time it passed our street,on it's way,eventually where it turned into Route 126,just past Magnetic Hill.Anyplace we went that took us beyond Mountain Road involved a trip in he car.We didn't even walk to church in those days.
The part of Moncton we moved to was very much a work in progress in 1964.It was not even close to being a finished neighborhood.All the houses that are there now were on our street then,plus one or two that are gone now,down by the corner of Mountain Road.But the rest of our area was really like one giant construction area,and construction areas back then were never fenced in.Most of the streets branching off Crandall Street had dozens of houses still under construction.Birchmount Street and Ayre Avenue did not even exist at that point,nor did many of the streets that were beyond Lorne Street.Between there and Killiam Drive was woods for the most part,though there were walking paths through in a few places.And,to the best of my memory,our street was the only one that was paved.All of the others were still dirt,filled with pot holes,and usually wet enough to be at least somewhat muddy.We would have been very much on the edge of town in those days and there was still a bit of a country feel to our new home.
Because Moncton,or at least our part of it was still being built,it was an endless source of fascination to small children.My earliest memories are filled with images of the men and machines that came and went all day long.Graders,paving machines,cranes,dump trucks,trucks carrying big panes of glass,cement mixers,and many other kinds of working vehicles. Sometimes fire trucks or police cars would come up our street too.The fire alarms in those days were located in a red box mounted to utility poles.There was one at the corner of Crandall and Snow,and at times,someone would reach up and pull the handle,and three or four fire trucks would come racing up the street with lights flashing and sirens blasting.Nearly every time it would be a false alarm.
Nearly as interesting as all he trucks were the men that drove them,and the others that worked all day with shovels,rakes and picks.As I recall we called those men"monkeys",probably because we saw some of them climbing poles.But,really,when we said "monkeys"we were referring to any of the workingmen,so long as they were wearing hard hats.Those men were monkeys,men without hats were not.I'm not at all certain how we got the idea of calling them monkeys,as I can't recall actually knowing what a monkey looked like when I was three years old.In my mind I think the monkey idea came from my sister,but maybe it was my mother or father that said something to the effect of "they are climbing up that tree just like a monkey."Nevertheless,we called them monkeys and,at some point we expanded on that idea and started calling our hometown Monkeytown.So,whenever went to Canterbury,where my mothers family came from,or Springhill,my fathers hometown,and someone asked us where we were from we would reply with enthusiasm"Monkeytown."The only ones who didn't seem to fall over laughing when we said that were our parents.Everyone else got a big kick out the idea,thinking that we were small and didn't know how to say"Moncton",though that was far easier to pronounce than "Monkeytown."But people never laughed when you just said "Moncton"
Just beyond our backyard an endless parade of construction equipment worked day after day for what seemed like forever.Each morning that it wasn't raining would find me out on the back step,as early as I could manage to get there.I was always distracted at breakfast as I ate cereal and grapefruit,bacon and eggs,as I could often hear the dump trucks arriving.I didn't want to miss a second of it.All of the equipment was bright in color,as were the workers.If I woke early enough,there were lanterns burning at the side of the road,where the workers set them out to mark the trenches they had dug for laying in the curbs.They were ghostly looking at night and in the early morning,and when the first workers arrived,they would spend a while extinguishing them.
They must have used the big shovel to dig trenches for the curbs.For a long time it was parked at the end of Sumner Street,just a short distance from our back step.In the morning I simply had to be on our step before the worker started that machine.I was entranced by the way smoke puffed from it's stack when it was first started.It told me that it would not be long before the other trucks would arrive.All day long they came and they went,bright orange and yellow and emitting sound,not quite a cacophony,not quite a symphony;growls and grinding and roaring.Cement scraping the inside of the drums of the mixers.Gravel sliding from the upraised dump bodies of the trucks.Men shouting,and,I suppose, swearing.Shovels in earth,hammers on metal or on wood.The machines seemed to grow out of the ground,there were so many.A forest of earth movers and a whole gang of monkeys who lived in that forest..And gradually our community came together.
Crandall Street,like all of the other streets was dirt like a country road.It seemed full of holes,each of which would hold a small puddle most of he time.Very few cars would come up Crandall Street.Most of the traffic was construction traffic. Sometimes it would grow dry and get very dusty.Clouds of dust would foul the air and get all over everything.The city had a solution for that though.A dirt,ancient looking old truck,that at one time had been yellow but was covered from end to end in a thick oily film.On the back was a tank filled with tar.This frail looking truck would spend the days driving up and down the dirt roadways.It smelled bad,but it cut down the dust.
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