memoir writers homework-visiting a historical site.

Being a memoirist,I've a natural inclination towards history.Over the years I've been to many historical sites,and have enjoyed and been edified by most of them:Fort Henry in Kingston,Fort Louisburg in Cape Breton,Head Smashed In Buffalo Jump in Southern Alberta,The Aviation Museum in Ottawa and numerous ghost towns in British Columbia.My favorite sites are Kings Landing,upriver from Fredricton,New Brunswick and the Museum of Natural History in Ottawa.

There are historical sites I've never been to as well.I've never been to the Smithsonian,but can imagine myself getting lost there for a week or more perhaps.I've never been to a city where the whole city is the museum:London,Rome.Jerusalem.Well,thats not strictly true.The village of Frank in the Crowsnest Pass is like that on a smaller scale.One look tells the whole story.I've been told that Gettysburg is haunted.I can't say that it's not,since I've never been there.But the place where the Battle Of Little Bighorn was fought definitely has a lot more going on than just the wind blowing through tall grass. And I've never been to Auschwich I think everyone needs to go there.

But those are the places that are "historical because someone has said so.They build a fence around it,build a parking lot,put up signs for miles around that say something like"yo,dummy...over here there is something you need to see.That will be thirty dollars please."And of course they sell t-shirts made in Phillapines or Thailand.Well,one can hope that Auschwich isn't like that.It shouldn't be.

I might just have my own ideas about what makes a historical site,and those ideas are not likely to be mainstream.I've long had the idea of going on an archaeological expedition to that old place in Western New Brunswick where it is said my grandfather called home in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.How did they live.What sorts of things did they own,what kinds of tools did they use?Only the bears and the moose give that area much though today,so likely no one would be there to hawk cheap shirts.It will likely never be defined as a historical site.But I expect it would speak to my history.

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.

memoir-chapter III-continued

We went to the beach at Parrsboro that day too,behind Ottawa House.It was not peak season for the beach.Really,it was rather cold.My grandfather took a spade from the trunk of the car and dug some clams as we walked out on the sand.The tides there,at the head of the Minas Basin are very high and come in very quickly.When the tide is low,there is a huge expanse of sand,but when it turns,you have to pay close attention and get to higher ground without delay.

In the far distance,out across the sand,I could see a huge structure that looked something like a corral made out of upright poles and some kind of netting.It had a small opening on one side.The purpose of this device was to catch fish.When the tide is high,fish swim in,through the opening or,perhaps even over the top.When the tide recedes,they become trapped on the sand and the fisherman goes in and scoops up his catch.So,with fish still in mind,we set out across the sand.I have no idea if this structure belonged to my grandfather,but there is every possibility that it did not.He may have been raiding it,or it may be that he had permission to take the odd fish out of there.The later would seem most likely,as it would have been nearly impossible to raid one of those corrals without being noticed and confronted.

In the end,it mattered not,as we were not able to make it to the structure before the tide turned us back.I was wearing rubber boots,and,in my mind today,the way I remember it,I somehow lost a boot on the sand on the way back to the car.We visited a few more places on that trip,and I recall my grandfather telling everyone we visited how I had lost a boot.

At last we came to a place that must have been somewhere near Five Islands or Economy,but not up the mountain by the provincial park.It was on the side of the road away from the water too,and the driveway went in in a kind of a horse shoe shape with the house halfway between it's two ends.There was a lot of junk in the driveway.Old cars competed for space with some small boats and various nets and traps and bouys.

We got out of the car,and this time I accompanied the two men.At the door a man appeared and we inquired as to whether he had any fish for sale.Indeed he did.Within the house in a large galvanized washtub was a silver fish,a salmon.To my eyes it was big enough to have been a whale.The tub it came in was of the same sixe and sort that my mother would use to give us a bath when we visited her parents farm,so the fish must have been nearly as big as me.It filled up the entire tub,save for a bit of ice.And,I recall trying to lift the creature and finding that I could not.

By the days end we'd likely traversed fifty or sixty miles.I don't recall in the end what happened to the fish,that seemed so hard to come by.My grandfather likely took the most of it,but it was a very large fish for just one person.He may have given some of it away,but I don't recall that it was eaten at our table.

On that trip I got to see how,when either my father or grandfather wanted fish,nothing was going to stop them from finding it.Over the next few years,attempts to get fish,to coax or coerce them out of the water,would range from a pleasant afternoon by the side of a stream with poles in hand,to a trip to the fish market on the way home from an otherwise unsuccessful expedition,to some downright bizarre and nearly heroic efforts to bring home fish.Eventually I discovered who the best fisherman in our family was and it surprised me when I did.

But,when my father wanted fish he would not be denied.Nova Scotian to the bone!A creature wholly indigenous to a province where you cannot set foot on land that is any more than about thirty miles from the ocean.

memoir chapter III-continued

Sucess,as far as my father was concerned didn't stop with owning a house.By the time we'd been in Moncton a year or two,he must have already been thinking ahead to a time when he could afford a small plot of land with beachfront.That was to be a few years off,but it must have been on his mind even then.

Nova Scotia was the province my father called home.And that is where he had the appearance of being most at home.In fact,by imagining a stereotypical Nova Scotian,you would be imagining my father.He loved the sand and the sea,and claimed you would never starve if you lived by the ocean,as anything therein,including seaweed could be eaten.The only thing that came out of salt water that he ever conceded thatyou could not eat were jellyfish.

Fish was a favorite food of my father,and from early on it was served often in our home.My mother would prepare salt cod in a casserole dish with potatoes and onions in some kind of a white sauce.Later,the onions would disappear as they bothered my fathers stomach.High in the cupboard,there was a green and red box that contained dried salt cod.I once tasted it straight out of the box and it was the saltiest thing I've ever had in my mouth. This was mixed with mashed potatoes and formed into fish cakes which were fried in oil.

Once I recall,and in  fact,I believe it's the first time I recall being on a road trip with my father and grandfather.The trip would have taken us from Springhill,across country via the Lynn Road,to Five Islands and Parrsboro.The purpose of the trip was to get a fish for dinner,and,as we didn't have any fishing gear with us,I suppose the plan was to but it from a fisherman.Or,they may have had something a bit closer to theft in mind.

We stopped at a few different places on that trip.The first place that I recall must have been on the Lynn Road,and there must have been a purpose to that visit other than to get fish,as that streach of road is inland.But I recall the place rather well.It could only be thought of as a shack,though not a small one.I don't recall any boards on the outside of the house.It was mostly tar paper,as were a lot of old shacks inrural Nova Scotia and New Brunswick at the time.

It seemed that my father and grandfather were in the house a long time,and I did not go with them.Really,though,I don't suppose they were in there much more than an hour,but they told me to wait in the car,likely thinking I would fall asleep.

To a three or four year old,a few minutes seems like a long time,so I ended up out of the car and over by the front door of the shack.The shack only had one door,located on the narrow side of the building.It also had only one bathroom,which was located outside,to the right if you were sitting on the front step.It was a little wooden,unpainted house in a bit of a ravine,completely overgrown with weeds and brambles,and there were some hills and some woods behind it.

To this day, I have no idea who lived in that house.But,while I was sitting thereby the front step,playing in the dirt,which along with some thistles,seemed to be about all that the yard consisted of,a man I didn't know came outside with some kind of large black dog.He trotted over to the outhouse and disappeared inside while the dog sniffed around in the bushes.When he returned,I asked him where he went."just over to that little house."

I asked if I could go to the house too and he said"no,you shouldn't go there.When I asked why,he told me that it was because that is where the bogeyman lived.And he said there were wolves in the woods too,which was likely true.I didn't have to go to the bathroom,and,in fact,he never said that that house even was a bathroor.But what else could it have been?

Maybe I didn't have a proper sense of perspective,but I wasn't afraid.I'd heard of the bogeyman,and,of course the Big Bad Wolf,but I don't think I had any appreciation of what either really was.So I wonder,should I really have been concerned that I was sitting just a few feet from where the bogeyman lived?Maybe or maybe not.But I supposed he had to live somewhere,and if I just left him alone,he would return the favor.Nothing happened,except I've always though of that place as the bogeyman's home.

The big black dog was another story.Dogs I was not accustomed to at all.This one scented me with his big,wet nose,and I was neither afraid,nor exactly comfortable either.He got right up in my face,but the man told me the dog wouldn't bite,and he did not.

When I think back that was likely a very early experience with some of those people who would have required a kind of perhaps uncomfortable explanation.What's clear in my mind is that they,whoever they were,had a very different value system than what my parents were trying to encourage at home.We might read about the bogeyman in a storybook,but no one would ever tell you that he lived nearby,much less where.Somehow I think my mother would have been less than impressed with anyone telling such a thing to one of her children.

There is also the question as to just who those people were,and,of course,why my father and grandfather would visit there.The most likely answer is that it was just someone that they knew and hadn't seen in some time.My father knew a lot of people,and we visited a lot over the years.It was no at all unusual to stop by some place for a visit,then never see them again,nor ever have a clear idea as to who they were.Over the years I've done that many times.

It could be too,that we were visiting a bootlegger.I didn't know it at the time,but my grandfather had a fondness fot the bottle,especially rum.Yes,perhaps.Or maybe just an acquaintance withg a bottle of beer or a nip of dark rum.

It might well have been that my father just did not want me to see the living conditions of whoever lived inside.He always said he knew people who kept chickens and calves inside the house,but I'm not certain these were the people.Still,they were very poor,and a single glance of the outside of their house could evoke all those standard and stereotypical images of Appalachia.

Leaving a small child alone in a car would likely have concerned my mother as well.Today,of course,you don't do that.But in those days,both my mother and father would have done so for a few minutes at a time without concern.But an hour or more would likely not have sat well with my mother.Who knows,I might have put the car into gear and caused it to coast through that little monument to organic chemistry located at the side of the main house.My mother may not have known about all the places my father might take me to on a road trip,but I'm certain she never though that any of those visits would involve even the remotest possibility of pissing off the bogeyman.No doubt she would not have approved.

memoir interlude/The World Just Beyond.

By 1965 my parents had achieved a measure of success.Both had been born in the middle of the Gret Depression and must have known hard times.Both had come of age during the Second World War,and the relative prosperity that followed.They had worked and saved and lived within their means until they could afford a house.In short,they had a young family and had attained a level of security.And thus,having known a life with a downside,they were determined to protect their children and give them the possibility of a good life.

Our move to Moncton had a number of practical effects.To begin with,there was simply no comparing the infrastructure of northern New Brunswick with that in Moncton.Instead of driving for miles over bad roads,in all kinds of weather,everything a modern,medium sized city had to offer was within a few minutes from home.Our house was much newer,new streets were being finished,and there was even a new school being built only a couple of blocks away.By the time we were ready for school,we would be able to attend in a modern building,instead of the one room,rundown school with outdoor plumbing that my mother used to teach in.And,rather than a lengthy bus trip,school would be just a short walk from home.

Moving to the city also meant that both of my parents were closer to their childhood homes.Or,at least closer than they had been during the first few years of their working lives.My mother's family still lived about two hundred miles west,and Springhill,my fathers hometown was within about an hours drive.As much as they liked being nearer to family,I'm certain that they didn't want to live in the same town as either of their parents,so Moncton was a comfortable compromise.Maybe the only downside was that my father had a two hour drive to work,instead of the ten minute drive from Redmondville.

Once we were in Moncton,there was a lot of family around for a while.I can recall that my grandmother Graham was around,as was my mothers sister,Ruby.And ,of course Anna English was in River Glade,at the sanatorium,stricken with tuberculosis.Without a doubt,the fact that we lived in Moncton must have made that time a bit easier than it would otherwise have been.Still,it must have been a trying time for everyone including my mother.Even so,no one let on that it was.I don't recall anyone speaking a word of it,and I don't recall that our sense of comfort was ever in question.While my mother worked,other family members saw that we were well cared for.

My father was even closer to his hometown.His father still lived around Springhill,as did his sister,my Aunt Roseanna.So we visited quite frequently and every time we did I was amazed that my father seemed to know everyone in town..

My Grandmother Davis lived in Shubenacidie,deeper into Nova Scotia,but still reasonably close to Moncton,so we visited there too.

Southeast New Brunswick seemed the ideal place for my father,as it was about as close as you could get to Nova Scotia as you could get without actually being there.And my father was Nova Scotian to the bone.

But of course,there was the business of keeping children sheltered from some parts of reality.Our homecoming must have complicated that undertaking considerably,as there were situations and characters that would require some well thought out explanations.

out and about-calgary/november 17

memoir/interlude/The World Just Beyond

We played happily by day and went to our warm beds at night and our mother read us bible stories  for children.Of the world that lay somewhere outside our door,we had little idea.It was a world that lay just beyond and things would happen there that my mother never would speak of.

Bible storieswere selected for us out of two large,beautifully illustrated volumes.But not just any Bible stories.They were very carefully selected.Of course they included the story of Moses,who was discovered floating in a basket,had a close encounter with a burning bush and then went on to lead his people out of Egypt,before going up on a mountain and bringing down tencommandments on tablets made of stone.

They told of a shepard boy named David who killed a really big and a really bad man,a giant in fact.And they told of Samson,whose life seemed to hit the skids after a bad trip to the barber shop,and of Jonah,who got swallowed by a whale,then spit up on dry land because he disobeyed God..

Our Bible stories also told of Daniel who was thrown into a den of lions who were ,as it turned out,not hungry,and of three Hebrew boys who would not burn even though they were tossed into a firy furnace.

And of course,they told of Jesus.They told how he was born with animals in a barn and laid in a manager and how wise men came to visit.We were told of the time he fed a lot of hungry people with very little bread and a few fish,but no mention was ever made of turning water into wine.We were told how he healed sick people,but the words demon or madness were never mentioned.

Just as telling as the stories we were told were the ones we were not.We never heard of Tamar or Jezabel or Hagar or Haman,and it goes without saying that Sodom and Gommorah were never so much as whispered.

And John The Baptist?Well John was,how shall I say,peculiar,and there may have been some concern that we might meet someone like him.It simply wouldn't do to have children who took to eating grasshoppers just because they heard about it in a Bible story,and,moreoverJohn met with an unsightly end that I did not find out about for many years.And,while Jesus was nailed to a cross and stuck in the side,his story was somehow considered more wholesome,or at least more sanitary than the story of John The Baptist.Maybe it had something to do with the fact that he rose out of the tomb and went directly off to Heaven.In any event,there was just no way to send children off to their dreams by telling them about John The Baptist.

The story of Adam and Eve I found very strange indeed.Thats because it begs the question,so to speak.In fact it begs more than one question,even to a four year old.

Adam we were told was the first man andEve the first woman.They lived in a fine garden where they could eat anything,except,of course apples,because God told them not to,so,of course,they did.And this is why we are all bad.well,at least thats the uinderstanding I had of things when I first heard the story.But,of course,a finely tuned sense of the metaphorical is quite beyond a four year olds imagination.And that brings us back to The World Just Beyond.The idea of an apple setting into motion a whole series of events must be problematic when you want to keep The World Just Beyond,beyond.Because,you see,the whole point of the story of Adam and Eve is the selecting of knowledge over ignorance.And once selected,knowledge cannot be deselected.So,once you tell the story of The Fall,it cannot be untold,and you are faced with the immediate need to tell more and more things,which at first gently shake the World Just Beyond,then cause it to shudder and wobble,and,finally send it towards some inevitable apocolypse.But that does not mean that extraordinary attempts will not be made to save that world,The World Just Beyond.

By the time I turned four I had some sense that what I saw all day long was not everything.i knew,more or less that there were things I was deeply ignorant of,without knowing much about what these things were.But not knowing about them did not mean I could not see them.

So what of The World Just Beyond?What did it look like and how did it resonate in my ears and in my mind.How did I know it even existed,and,if I could conceive of it's existance,then why did it exist?

It turned out I think,throughout most of my childhood that there was a benevolent angel trying to create a world,the purpose of which was to deceive me.For if a malevolent diety could do such thing,the why not a benevolent angel to Hold The World Just Beyond at arms length?Why must we accept such things as being only malevolent?