DOWN MAIN STREET

Two enduring influences in my life have been Main Street in Moncton, New Brunswick, and the Petitcodiac River which runs alongside it. I am blessed to have grown up in a place where we could shop, visit City Hall, conduct business, go to the movies, enjoy a good meal, get a drink, have a haircut, be measured for a suit, do our banking, and watch the Santa Claus Parade without ever having to leave Main Street. Today the people of Moncton work diligently at maintaining a Main Street that is vibrant and alive. Because of their efforts much of what was said above is still true. In fact, it is now even a better place to go out for an evening of music and entertainment than it was in the old days. I remember a time when things did not look so promising but Monctonians decided to work purposefully at keeping Main Street as the vital heart of the city.

The fact that the residents of Moncton attend to Main Street as a center of activity speaks to their recognition of the importance of community. After all, one of the city’s oldest buildings is the Free Meeting House constructed in 1821 so that people of all faiths would have a place to pray. Moncton is a city where the Mayor and Members of Council, the Police Chief, the Fire Chief, Members of the Judiciary, and assorted other dignitaries joined residents from all walks of life to pack a large Catholic church for the funeral of a homeless man who had severe psychological disorders and crippling addictions, and who used to spend most of his winters incarcerated. I remember him from when I was a child. He was a fixture; part of the landscape; a character in a city full of them. He was written about in the newspaper by a friendly and compassionate reporter. Readers felt like they knew him. When I heard about his impressive funeral mass it surprised me for a moment, but then I thought that this was somehow typical of Moncton.

Sometimes it takes unspeakable tragedy to bring people together. Folks will remark on the uniqueness of such times and how out of character it all seems. To my mind, though, Moncton has demonstrated time and again the resolve to foster a strong sense of community that does not depend on circumstances and events, tragic or otherwise; a sense of belonging together as the tides of life come and go, both giving and taking away. It is a city shaped by a tidal river which even at its lowest never fails in its promise to rise again.

DOWN MAIN STREET

The first time that we met was down on Main Street

You said, “You got here fresh from the U. S., eh?”
You laughed at my stupid joke about your accent
Then we watched the tide take the river away

 

We ate at the first place we found open for coffee
You laughed when I tried to describe a poutine râpée
You told me all your dreams for the future
Then we watched the tide take the river away

 

Now surfers ride the tidal bore of the river
Where they built so many ships back in the day
Schooners and steamers would come to deliver molasses
Then ride out of town before the tide took the river away

 

Let’s do the dishes then take a walk down Main Street
To the spot where we met thirty years ago today
We’ll toast the past and smile toward the future
And watch the tide take the river away

 

© 2013 Dale Petley (Moncton)

DAD

It seems I have inherited my father’s sense of humor. My mother enjoyed a good joke, both telling one and hearing one, but she found my father’s idea of what was funny annoying. His humor was based a good deal on whimsy. I called him one day while I was watching coverage of a Papal Election on TV. I asked how he was doing:

“I’m busier than a one-armed paper hanger.”

“Why’s that?” I asked.
“I’m answering the phone all the time.”
“Who keeps calling you?”
"The Vatican; they want me to run for Pope but I told them I won’t do it.”
“Why not?”
“Not enough money in it.”

I laughed and he said, “When I told that to your mother she got mad at me.”

After New Brunswick’s Provincial Liberal Party destroyed the Conservatives by winning every single seat on election night Dad called me bright and early the next morning doing his best Connie Francis imitation as he sung: “Who’s Tory now, who’s Tory now?” I noticed a similar sense of humor in Dad’s older brother, Tom. I well recall driving around the village where he lived while he pointed out various odd looking characters old enough to be Civil War veterans and told me that they were the ‘Mayor’, the ‘Fire Chief’, and ‘Members of the Town Council’. When we returned from that drive to his home where Aunt Jackie was preparing supper he announced out of the blue that he had decided to buy a mule. He cracked me up, and I’m sure that I was laughing, smiling, or eating any time I visited Uncle Tom and Aunt Jackie.

A good example of what made Dad laugh is a story he told about his younger brother, Ern.  One day Dad and Ern were driving on New Brunswick’s Route 126 from Moncton to Harcourt. Ern was behind the wheel. Somewhere near Coal Branch he suddenly pulled the car off to the side of the road, put it in reverse, and backed up until coming to a stop where he sat looking past my father through the passenger side window. Dad turned to see what Ern was looking at and saw a man standing perfectly still in the middle of a field of hay, all alone, his hands down by his side, staring off into the distance. Ern sat there for a moment then put the car in park, got out and walked around to the front, took a deep breath and yelled: “What are you looking at?!” The man, startled, simply stuck his hands in his pockets and walked away. Ern, his mission accomplished, got back in the car and drove on. Dad laughed while he told me about this all those years later. He still found it funny.

Fathers try to do the right things for their children and say the right things to them but we children tend to remember other things. We remember that they were there for us more than what they said to us. We recall their advice and their aphorisms but we recall their voices with greater clarity. We cherish the memories of their foibles and fumbles, their humanity, and their humor, and it’s all because we love them. Happy Father’s Day!