Sunday 25 November 2012

memoir chapter III-continued.

Regular trips to my mother's family farm became more frequent after our move to Moncton too.We'd visited there before,but not often.I'd been baptized in the United Church at Dead Creek by Reverend Roy White,who went on to become a protestant chaplain with The Canadian Armed Forces.My baptism must have been in the spring of 1961.There is also a picture of me ,that must have been taken during that same trip.In the picture,my grandfather Graham is holding me up on the back of a huge bay horse.His farm was about a mile from the church.But visits likely only happened once a year then,as we still lived in the north.

My mothers people were very different from my fathers.The land on which they lived was not anything like Springhill.There really were no minerals in the ground,hence no mines.They lived a lot farther from the water too,and while they would eat fish,those fish would have been whatever was available in the local lakes.In fact,those fish often included eels..Mostly though,they depended on the forest ,and the crops they could grow on land that was rocky and not all that fertile As a people,my mothers's were English,United Empire Loyalists,unquestionably protestant and much more like their neighbors beyond the nearby Maine border than like people elsewhere in New Brunswick.In fact,some of my mother's family were Americans.Those who were not lived within sight of the mountains of Maine,which were not much different from the mountains of New Brunswick.

Dead Creek could only be called isolated,even then.The nearest town was Canterbury,and it was isolated.I've heard other people call those living in Western New Brunswick hillbillies.I've heard that area referred to as the Badlands and,ever since I can remember I've heard the references,only half joking, to inbreeding and ignorance.Nevertheless,that is where my mother's family hailed from,and,as far as I know they were all decent people.

Travel to Dead Creek from Moncton,in 1965 and before would likely have taken more than four hours.The roads were not straight or wide like they are now and the distance was nearly the full width of the province from east to west.I don't recall a lot about that first road going there,because in those days that road was being replaced with a newer one.A dam was being built above Fredricton,so a higher road was needed.Eventually that old road would be flooded.The first trips up river were visions of a lot of road construction.

The place where we turned off the main highway to travel into the back country was a place called Crow Hill.It was usually dark when we arrived here.Very dark indeed,because we usually arrived at night.If we were still awake,my mother and father would begin to make crow noises-caaaw....caaaw,to signal us that out trip was nearly complete.But I don't think I've ever seen a crow there.

Sometimes we would start back for home during the daylight hours,and I could see what Crow Hill really looked like.But it was many years before the significance of it settled on me.In very few words,let me just describe it as the place comedian Jeff Foxworthy warned you about.I'm eternally glad we never broke down on that road at night-drive faster,I hear banjos.Crow Hill couldn't have put travelers going farther back into the woods at ease.We didn't know anyone who lived there,and we never stopped there.

The road leading from Crow Hill to Dead Creek was Route #122.The town of Canterbury lay about two thirds of the way there.Later,that's the town my grandparents would move to.It is the only town that lies on that entire stretch of road that winds through the forest until it comes to the American border.

In terms of appearance I suppose Dead Creek didn't look a lot different from Crow Hill.It may well not have been,either,except that we knew most of the people living there.There were a lot of abandoned farms there back then,most of them with farm machinery rotting away and buildings starting to fall,while nature started to replace fields with crops of her own.At the end of the driveway where the English's lived there was an old threshing machine,and my uncle Clifford,who lived right across form my grand parents had an old hay rake,plow and a tractor,turning brown and falling apart.All those people had already,or were moving to town back then.My grandparents would soon follow.

The old homeplace,my mother's childhood home was a crude,rough looking place,set on the side of a hill that people referred to as a mountain.It had a front porch,and maybe three rooms inside,but it was very unfinished,with not a single sheet of drywall to be seen.Outside,it was not painted,but covered with brick colored asphalt shingles,which seemed to be favored locally over the tar paper in other parts of rural New Brunswick.

I can't say for certain what my grandfather grew on his farm,but I suppose the bulk of it would have been potatoes and other root vegetables,and maybe some corn.I do recall a lot of hay growing everywhere,even right up to the porch.Inside the barn were the usual animals,but not many.A couple of cows,a pig or two and some chickens.One of the first memories I have of my grandmother is of her chasing away a rooster while she tried to gather eggs into her apron.There were cats there too,most likely feral,rodent eating ones.For some reason.they never seemed to have a dog.

At the time,when I was four,I was too young to have formed any opinions regarding Dead Creek.But I suppose I could have developed an attitude about it had I been a bit older before my grand parents moved.Dead Creek,much like the bogeyman's home place in Nova Scotia was the sort of place that could bring about negative feelings in people who didn't live there.But, by the time I was able to understand comments about the family trees of people who lived in such places looking more like fence posts than trees,my grandparents had moved to town.They were still very different from people in Moncton.They looked,spoke and acted different,but I never really regarded that as a bad thing.

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