Wednesday 17 October 2012

memoir chapter II-continued.

Just before dinner time,all of the machines would come to a rest.The hammers and saws would stop.All of the men,the "monkeys"would gather up their lunch boxes and monkey hats,and walk or drive away,leaving our neighbourhood very quiet.All of the men had black lunch pails,and I always wondered what could possibly be in them,as we ate our own lunch inside.At that age,I really wanted to eat out of a lunch pail like the monkeys.

There were not so many people living in our neighbourhood as there are today,so when construction stopped for the day it was an almost silent place.Lots of the houses were still unfinished,without famlies living in them,so there did not seem to be many children around.And because all the streets were under construction,hardly anyone used the neighbourhood as a short cut,like they would later.It was summer time,and sometimes,in the evening,my father would take us out walking.On those occasions,we would walk up and down the new streets,past unfinished houses and open excavations,and we would walk right up to some of the equipment that was left parked on the road.There were lots of bull dozers and graders and even the big shovel used to dig trenches for the sewers and curbs.They were completely different sorts of things when they sat still.They were not really safe to play around,but we could get right up close and look at them,and one or two times my father would boost me up onto the seat of one of the bull dozers.He told us never to climb on the equipment when he wasn't there,and for the most part I complied.

But then there was the tar truck.It got parked at night too,but we never went near it.Nobody wanted to go near that thing ever,so it seemed.No one but me so it seemed.When went out walking,my father would steer well clear of it.It really was dirty,smeared with oil and big gobs of tar,then coated in dust and mud from driving around on the unfinished roads all day.And,of course it absolutely stunk.My parents wondered why someone couldn't just take it home at night,but I suppose that no one really wanted it parked in their driveway either.And there wasn't much danger of anyone stealing it either.It was an old looking truck,a very unique looking contraption even in those days.It never moved very fast,and I think it was because it couldn't.Not much point in stealing it if you cant drive away quickly and I suppose theives didn't like the way it reeked any more than anyone else did.But,because I could never get near it,of course,I wanted to really badly.

After the tar truck had passed,usually much later,we could walk up to the street and see what it was the truck had done.When it went by,it oozed wet,hot and very sticky tar from a pipe that ran across the back of the truck.You could see it,and you could certainly smell it.I could tell that it was very hot because stem would rise from the road for a few minutes each time it passed.And so I knew it was dangerous and that I shouldn't go near it.

But eventually I got my chance to get closer to the tar truck.I remember it as a wonderful,kind of storybook experiance,a delightful taste of forbidden fruit.My mother and father both worked at the time,so some of my mothers family had come down from Canterbury.My grandmother was there for some time,and so was Aunt Ruby,my mothers sister.My father of course still worked up north.On this particular day,both were away working at noon.I recall my grandmother standing at the back door that day telling me to wave to my mother as she left for work.We would stand at the door and wait for her to return too,and it seemed to me there were a lot of days when we did this,though really there could not have been so many.

Sometimes if it rained,the equipment would shut down early,and thats what happened on the day I found the tar.It had been a very warm day and both my sister and I were outside in the back yard.Sometime about mid way through the afternoon,the truck crept up Crandall Street,leaving tar behind it.And,right after it had passed it began to rain.Not hard,just a gentle summer shower.I don't even think we came inside.But by the time the shower had passed none of the machinery was still running and none of the monkeys were still around.But that tar truck was very nearby.So I slipped through our neighbours yard to the edge of Crandall Street.It was all tar and water,and because of the cool rain,it was a bit foggy right over the street.And there was water standing in the little potholes.My sister was right at my side and I just couldn't resist the tar.At first I just stuck one foot down off the edge of the road.Really the road had no edge.The grass just ended and the dirt began.If I just put one foot out,I reasoned,it wouldn't really be like playing on the road.And so I did.The tar was wet and warm,but,at the same time the rain water was cool and there was no danger of burning myself.It really was a wonderful sensation on my feet,except of course that it smelled awful.I didn't mind the stickiness.It was a sensation,a texture that I wasn't reall familiar with.And I couldn't really understand what the fog was either or why it disappeared when we walked in it.There was just something magical about the road that day.And so I stepped out into the road,urging my little sister to follow.She did,but only reluctantly.Before I knew it I was out in the middle of the road,started for where the old tar truck was parked.And just a moment after that,I saw Aunt Ruby,coming through the back yard on the run,and we were quickly herded back toward the house.She washed the sticky black mess off our feet with the garden hose and I'm surprised we didn't get a spanking for our misadventure.We may have,but thats not the way I recall it at all.To me it seemed like one of the most wonderful adventures of my whole childhood.

My mother,and sometimes my father,or even other adults would sometimes read to us when we were very small.Especially at bedtime.One of the stories I recall was about a fox that kept trying to catch a rabbit,without sucess.So he made something called a tarbaby,that he put out in the road,and along came the rabbit,who touched the tarbaby and thus got stuck.I don't recall the whole of the story,but from what I do recall,it turned out well in the end.So.for a while,I thought of myself as a tarbaby,whatever a tarbaby actually was.

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