memoir writers homework-trespassers will be prosecuted

There was a small set of railroad tracks separating our end of town from Centenial Park,in Moncton's west end.But,to get to the park without crossing them involved cycling for miles,way down past the locomotive shops then back.So everyone crossed at the tracks.Just on the other side of those tracks there was miles of hiking or biking trails through the woods,but,of course there was a huge sign saying "trespassers will be prosecuted"It was obviously intended to keep us away,but I don't know if they ever really intended to prosecute anyone.

In those days the tracks were quite busy.But since the Canadian National shops have closed,hardly a train ever passes.Railroads,of course could be dangerous places,and that is likely why the sign was there.You could be killed by trying to race the train,but no one I knew was that stupid.There were some switches on the tracks there,and some kids would play with those while no one was around.That could be dangerous too.In fact,it could cause cars to derail.There always seemed to be boxcars parked there and they acquired graffiti though not nearly as quickly as they would today.Some of the kids said you could hide in the boxcars or even ride them if you stayed inside them for a while.The trouble with that was that they could only go to the shops or the switching yard,neither of which was more than a few blocks away,and you were certain to be caught doing that.One friend told me you could steal dynamite from the cars too,but I never believed that,and I've never known anyone to do it.There was a rumor that a wild man lived near that crossing too,but I never considered that to be much more than a lame attempt to keep younger kids away.There could have been the odd hobo there I guess,but I never saw one.

Like most all the kids around,I just wanted to get to the park without having to go all the way to Timbuktu.So,I would wheel up to the track,jump of my bicycle and carry it across the tracks.If no train was passing,it only took seconds,and if there were a train,I loved to watch the cars go by.It was said that the railway police patrolled the crossing,but I never saw a police car there ever.I was not interested in pulling switches,or riding in boxcars or dynamite.I just wanted to go to the park.I'm sure the police did try to catch kids damaging property,but I never encountered them despite the sign.Maybe I was just lucky,but I never knew or knew of any other kid who encountered them either. 

memoir chapter III-continued

Construction began anew in our subdivision once spring came.And this time it wasn't so much about digging holes as it was about paving them over and completing what had not been finished the year before.The tar truck never came back,as far as I could tell,and,after our misadventure of the summer before,I'm sure that was a relief to my parents.It must have been a bit on the annoying side too,getting your car all covered in fresh oil or tar every time you drove home.

Back in 1965,the construction companies never seemed to take a lot of precautions to make sure their sites were safe,or that they didn't make a huge mess.None of the sites around our house were fenced off and there was a lot of construction junk lying all over the place.We used to play in some of the foundations for the new houses that were going in,and I often wonder why no one was seriously hurt or even killed doing that.When the construction equipment was idle in the evening,some kids would even play on and around that.

The street we lived on was already paved,and had been from the time we moved in.Most of the other streets around were not.During the spring,summer and fall of 1965,a lot of pavement was laid down.Trucks came and went all day and there was a new sort of machine going up and down the streets too.It was a large sort of tractor with a hopper like device in it's front end.Into this hopper,trucks would drop hot pavement,then the tractor would spread it out all over the road surface.Behind would come equipment that would roll the pavement out flat while it was still smoking hot.The whole process involved an incredible amount of heat and foul smelling smoke.For a time the whole area reeked of hot asphalt and oil most of the time,at least during the day.

Once there was even a fire in the paving machine,long after the workers had left for the day.It wasn't a very big fire,but it brought several fire trucks,and every kid for blocks around running.By the time I got there,there didn't seem to be any fire.But it was in the hopper of the paving machine.A bit of asphalt must have been left there and since the machine would stay hot for quite some time it caught fire.In a likelihood it would have just burned itself out,but what better excuse for some kid to pull the handle on the alarm box.

Down at the end of our street,across Mountain Road,there was new development happening too.What had been a field when we moved in  was being turned into a new Kmart store.The construction site seemed enormous,and likely was,for it's time.But in fact, when it was finished it wasn't much bigger than a small strip mall with less than a dozen stores.By today's standards it was small.It opened sometime just before I started school.

In the opposite direction,up the street,work was beginning on a new school.It was to have two wings connected to a central part,and was two stories high.It took up the whole of a city block,on Ayre Avenue,between Crandall and Birchmount Streets.It must have seemed huge to my parents who were used to much smaller communities.My mother had taught school for a while,in a small,one room school house that housed children of all grades.I had been in that school once,and I wouldn't be surprised if it would have fit thirty times into our new school.The fact that we could go to a school without using the bus,and the fact that there would be no outdoor plumbing at this school were likely huge selling points when it came time for my parents to decide where to buy a home.

Our subdivision was called the Birchmount and the new school was to be called Birchmount School,after the street of the same name.Except that Birchmount Street wasn't yet completed.There were a few older houses at it's far end,then rows and rows of new but unfinished houses streachin the four or so blocks to the school.Moreover,construction on Ayre Avenue had just started,and only on one side of the street.Once they started building the houses on Birchmount,the subdivision came together quickly,though it took longer to complete Ayre Avenue.All of that started happening about a year after we moved to town.

memoir writers homework/police

We would watch the police come and go,but not much seemed to happen on our street and they never seemed to stop much.Once we were playing street hockey and they stopped to chase us,but we gathered everything and ran away.Sometime when you played hockey on the street they would take all of your sticks and make you go to the police station to get them back.

At times we would see a police car turn on his lights and race through a red light.If it was ten to eleven at night it often meant he was on his way to a fast food outlet and wanted to get there before they closed at eleven.Everything seemed to close at eleven in those days.Seeing the cops do that would make my father angry and he would say he wasn't paying taxes so they could do that.I didn't guess I begrudged them a meal though when they were working to protect us.

One December two cops were killed while investigating a kidnapping.It was a sensational crime for Moncton,and it commanded the attention of the community for a long time.Our neighbor was what we would call today a police groupie of sorts-right wing,no nonsense from anybody,strict law and order.He had a police scanner,which was a radio that could receive police and other emergency frequencies.All week end long,while the manhunt was on for the cop killers we sat around in our neighbors living room listening to the scanner,trying to catch any news of the unfolding events.It seemed very busy,but anything pretaining to the killings was being scrambled,so all we would hear was static.We did get to hear the other call though.Things like loud party complaints,and barking dogs,and people urinating in public,and auto accidents.That sort of thing.

Before Christmas my father bought a scanner so we could listen in to the police too.Our neighbor supplied us with a list of all the police codes so we knew what they were talking about.For the most part,they were talking about auto accidents,barking dogs,loud parties and people urinating in the streets.After the killings,Moncton went back to being the quiet town it was most of the time.Sometimes there were unusual,but not especially serious things going on.Like someone mowing their lawn in the middle of the night,or kids throwing the old paper bag on to someones doorstep on Halloween.There were checks for outstanding warrants and vandalism and routine traffic stops as well.Really,listening to the scanner was not all that entertaining.When I got older some of the names of kids I knew came over the scanner,as they came into contact with police for one reason or another.What really seemed odd though was hearing the police going about their business,but not seeing them all that much.And even though most of what went on seemed routine,I got much more of an appreciation for what it was they did,and how busy they really were.

music by bethany burie

memoir writers homework/something I'd rather not do.

Over twenty years ago I began writing with thoughts of creating a memoir.You see,nobody else was,so our family history was falling by the way.Then,of course a certain family member started trying to alter the picture of that history to suit their own perceptions.Well,to make a long story short,most days writing is a labor of love.Some days,it's something I'd rather not do.

Many things are discovered in the process of writing and research.And not nearly all of it is good.Nearly everyone that I have to present in order to produce a memoir with integrity has a vested interest in some of the stories that might be told.But it's my story,right?Well,yes,but not exclusively mine.

as a writer,I understand that I must sometimes present people who are not always good.They may break wind in church,or perhaps they are not in the habit of referring to African Americans as African Americans.They use words that I'd rather not use because I find them repulsive.Or,they may have a dark secret that still has the power to affect people still living.I've discovered at least one of those.

Now,we should tell the truth,right?Well yes,but not all truth should be told.Sometimes a painful truth needs to be revealed because it has a compelling lesson.And some truth just injures people needlessly.The need to be truthful is never an excuse to do that.That is simple cruelty.If the pen is mightier than the sword,there are some moral decisions to be made in writing.

I try to keep the story of Noah and his sons in mind when I write memoir.When his sons discovered Noah drunk and naked,two of them covered him up,while the third laughed and ridiculed him and had no respect for his dignity.I don't want to do that to anyone,so God help me.

It's an awful responsibility to write history,in whatever form,to hold the power to immortalize some other.Not for the faint of heart.There are stories that I fully intend to take to the grave with me.And there are stories that I think must be told.And,I don't always perfectly know the difference.Moreover,because my memoir is not exclusively mine,there are moral decisions to be made about my right to hold back any particular story.I've never imagined so much risk involved in writing.Some days I wish I'd never started.But most days it's a labor of love.

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.