One of the first places I remember us going to once we moved to Moncton was the beach.My father loved the beach and warm,even hot temperatures.He liked to swim in the ocean and sit in the sun on the sand and go for long walks along the shore.digging clams and cooking hem in a huge pot was one of his favorite summertime things to do.In fact,from what he told me later in life,he must have been nearly obsessed with the beach.He would,he said gather up some friends when he was young and head off,over land from Springhill to Heather's Beach,which had to be nearly thirty miles away.On the way they would raid a farmers hen house and kill a chicken or two.Once they got to the beach they would dig clams and live off of those for the remainder of the weekend.It was a time my father always spoke of fondly.
Moving to Moncton gave us the oppurtunity to go to the beach when my father was on his days off.The beach was at Shediac,a bit east of Moncton,on the road to where you used to catch the ferry to Prince Edward Island.Shediac holds itself to be the worlds lobster capital,and everywhere there was evidence of that fact.Big piles of lobster traps everywhere,lobsters painted on the sides of buildings that housed restaurants featuring lobster.There were even lobster shells laying all over the beach and all up and down the roads that were anywhere near the beach.
It took a while to get to the beach from our house as we did not have the roads we have today.You had to drive out on the old Shediac Road,through some farm country and past a golf course.It seemed to take forever when e were kids.When we came to a T intersection,you could get to the beach by turning right.The ocean was straight ahead,and if you turned left instead of right,you would go to where my father worked and where we used to live,after passing through all the little seaside villages along the coast.
The beach was a very new experience for me.I'd never seen this much water before,nor,for that matter so much sand.Everywhere I looked it was either water or sand and I could never decide which I liked more.The water was cool,but good for swimming and wading in.I loved he way the waves would come up on the shore,and made a game out of trying to outrun them.It was a game I could play for hours and I liked it nearly as much when the waves did manage to catch me.I loved the way the cool water felt on my bare feet.There were seagulls overhead too and I believed I could catch them.It never once occurred to me that they could not be caught no matter how much I ran after them,so I ran and ran and ran.The birds were a noisy lot,always squawking and squabbling over the tiniest piece of food.Eventually,I noticed that they would dig up clams,which they could not open,except for an unusual way that they had devised for doing this.Once the clam was on the sand and they could grasp it,they would fly off with it and drop it on some nearby rocks so that it would break open.Then they would descend and eat it.
Almost as much fun as the water was the sand.It was wet and flat at the waters edge,but grew drier the farther back from the water you got.At the shoreline,my feet would make their mark on the wet surface of the sand,only to disappear with the very next wave.So I would spend a great deal of energy placing down new foot prints while the waves were receding,only to watch them disappear again.Where,I wondered,did they go?A little way back from the water the sand was drier,but not really what you would call dry.It was here that we made castles using a plastic pail and shovel.The best thing about that game was that once you dug a deep enough hole,it would fill up with water from below.That water was very warm compared to the water a few feet away at the edge of the beach.I could sit in the hole I'd dug and it was a bit like a bathtub,only it was outside,and it was surrounded by castles.Building castles was about s close as a three year old could get to doing the sorts of things the men in back of our house at home were doing.It was as close as I could imagine to being a construction worker.
There was a shack at the beach too,that sold refreshments.You could buy fries and hotdogs there,as well as cold drinks.We never went to the beach when we didn't get to eat a hotdog,which is not something we ate at home all that often.Later,maybe a year or so later,my father bought a small barbeque and we would take that with us to the beach and cook hotdogs and burgers.Cooking outside was new to me too,and I loved the idea.I wondered why we didn't do it at home too.But it was a privilege we only indulged in at the beach,something that belonged exclusively to the beach,a sort of beach ritual,like building castles or swimming.
Every time we went back to the beach,it seemed to me,I should be able to find the sand castles I'd built the last time we were there.But I never could find them.They had gone away,and I couldn't understand why.I would be mildly disappointed by that fact,but it would only motivate me to get busy building some more.Still,every time we would return,the castles from the time before were gone,and I couldn't understand where they had gone.They had just vanished,and I never thought of them as being like my footprints in the waves.Their disappearance was simply a mystery to me.
Moving to Moncton gave us the oppurtunity to go to the beach when my father was on his days off.The beach was at Shediac,a bit east of Moncton,on the road to where you used to catch the ferry to Prince Edward Island.Shediac holds itself to be the worlds lobster capital,and everywhere there was evidence of that fact.Big piles of lobster traps everywhere,lobsters painted on the sides of buildings that housed restaurants featuring lobster.There were even lobster shells laying all over the beach and all up and down the roads that were anywhere near the beach.
It took a while to get to the beach from our house as we did not have the roads we have today.You had to drive out on the old Shediac Road,through some farm country and past a golf course.It seemed to take forever when e were kids.When we came to a T intersection,you could get to the beach by turning right.The ocean was straight ahead,and if you turned left instead of right,you would go to where my father worked and where we used to live,after passing through all the little seaside villages along the coast.
The beach was a very new experience for me.I'd never seen this much water before,nor,for that matter so much sand.Everywhere I looked it was either water or sand and I could never decide which I liked more.The water was cool,but good for swimming and wading in.I loved he way the waves would come up on the shore,and made a game out of trying to outrun them.It was a game I could play for hours and I liked it nearly as much when the waves did manage to catch me.I loved the way the cool water felt on my bare feet.There were seagulls overhead too and I believed I could catch them.It never once occurred to me that they could not be caught no matter how much I ran after them,so I ran and ran and ran.The birds were a noisy lot,always squawking and squabbling over the tiniest piece of food.Eventually,I noticed that they would dig up clams,which they could not open,except for an unusual way that they had devised for doing this.Once the clam was on the sand and they could grasp it,they would fly off with it and drop it on some nearby rocks so that it would break open.Then they would descend and eat it.
Almost as much fun as the water was the sand.It was wet and flat at the waters edge,but grew drier the farther back from the water you got.At the shoreline,my feet would make their mark on the wet surface of the sand,only to disappear with the very next wave.So I would spend a great deal of energy placing down new foot prints while the waves were receding,only to watch them disappear again.Where,I wondered,did they go?A little way back from the water the sand was drier,but not really what you would call dry.It was here that we made castles using a plastic pail and shovel.The best thing about that game was that once you dug a deep enough hole,it would fill up with water from below.That water was very warm compared to the water a few feet away at the edge of the beach.I could sit in the hole I'd dug and it was a bit like a bathtub,only it was outside,and it was surrounded by castles.Building castles was about s close as a three year old could get to doing the sorts of things the men in back of our house at home were doing.It was as close as I could imagine to being a construction worker.
There was a shack at the beach too,that sold refreshments.You could buy fries and hotdogs there,as well as cold drinks.We never went to the beach when we didn't get to eat a hotdog,which is not something we ate at home all that often.Later,maybe a year or so later,my father bought a small barbeque and we would take that with us to the beach and cook hotdogs and burgers.Cooking outside was new to me too,and I loved the idea.I wondered why we didn't do it at home too.But it was a privilege we only indulged in at the beach,something that belonged exclusively to the beach,a sort of beach ritual,like building castles or swimming.
Every time we went back to the beach,it seemed to me,I should be able to find the sand castles I'd built the last time we were there.But I never could find them.They had gone away,and I couldn't understand why.I would be mildly disappointed by that fact,but it would only motivate me to get busy building some more.Still,every time we would return,the castles from the time before were gone,and I couldn't understand where they had gone.They had just vanished,and I never thought of them as being like my footprints in the waves.Their disappearance was simply a mystery to me.
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