MEMORIES OF CHILDHOOD ON THE OLD BLACK RIVER ROAD


Me, aged 10. 15, and with siblings.

I was born, Darlene Lawton, and went home to the Old Black River Road to join what was to become a family of 10 Kids.



We played outdoors winter and summer, and skating on the pond up the road was grand.




This image flickers through my memory, of two boys, Jimmy Combs, playmate, and Jimmy Lawton, brother.




The Neighbours and The Movies








Bursting House and That Rotten Kid, Albert






KILLING the KIDS





Yes, Albert looked that the clutter and the mess, at the toilet paper roll on the top of the warming oven, at the ugly guts of my life exposed and I cringed. Albert had a beautiful sister, Sylvia, whose black hair and pale complexion made her look like Snow White. One day he had looked at me clear in the face and said," you're dirty."

my sister Patsy, years later came to my house in Kingston and there on the farm, on top of the warming oven of the old black stove, in an unfinished house that was covered in weathered tar paper, she saw the toilet paper roll. she laughed at how I had cried when Albert left she laughed at how I was brokenhearted over the fact of the worst indignity ever- the toilet paper was on the warming oven, out of place and in plain sight. There it was for all to see that we had an outhouse and that we lived in disorder and poverty

After Albert, Darlene saw her family members as others would see them and knew them as no one else ever would. This was not easy, for the family was a fluid like a river, whose waters rushed past one spot on the shore. The kids constantly rushed away. Ten of them, they spanned two generations. Grandchildren addressed toddlers in diapers as Uncle and sisters passed for mothers and daughters. Not often where they all home at once. Even so, the house was full tension and sometimes, riot.

Although the family was never unified,it did stand apart from the outside world, apart from relatives, neighbors and all the faceless others in the world. It stood as an island stands in the sea, in the water, separate, distinct, isolated and distant yet with a good view of all around. My father, Edward Christopher Lawton, came from a large family. He was the youngest of the 11 children. Yet he was very much alone. I was aware of this separateness. The Lawton aunts and uncles and cousins seemed distant, haughty and slightly hostile in a superior sort of way. At least I thought so, or maybe it was only the walls that were built up by the caustic tongue of my critical mother and vague disdain of my father, who supposed everyone else was foolish.

Time and again, bits and pieces of information drifted down from adult words and adult looks and I sensed the reasons for our difference. My grandfather, Frank Lawton, we were told, had been kicked and killed by a horse just before my father, Edward, was born. I loved to hear stories of my poor fatherless father as a boy on the run down farm, cutting wood with a crosscut saw that was bigger than his own six years. I loved to hear of how he waited all day long for his little mother to return from the market in Saint John with the longed for jug of molasses under the wagon seat. Stories of hardships and struggles enchanted me. They made my father,who stayed at home from school because he had no shoes, seem heroic.I imagined how hard my little grandmother worked, alone with 11 children when that bleak Old Black River farm, on scrubby land swept by the Bay of Fundy winds. She became a symbol for me; a beacon for battle.

My mother,Muriel,complained about the Lawton's. Grandfather , Frank Lawton,she let slip,had died chained to a bed in the Lunatic Asylum. She thought that he had died of the brain tumor but it turns out he died of schizophrenia. He starved himself to death. My little grandmother, Phoebe,was a small, weathered old lady, strong and active and independent. We spent many summer hours together, Grandma bending straight over weeding while I watched and listened. How beautiful were the flowers in her garden. There were gladiolus of every color, old-fashioned pink roses on small bushes, great-headed white Daliahs ,double buttercups,delicate white and pink boys and girls,blue bachelor's buttons and masses of sweet Williams.I loved these the best. I loved the deep wine and rich pink clusters of flowers that were softer than velvet and sweeter than perfume. I loved the color combinations and the geometric shapes and patterns. It was magical. There was that long garden border when all around was a scrubby bog-like landscape. That's where I grew- my feet in the bog, and my head in the flowers.

I lingered around that old lady's skirt as it moved from flower to flower. I listened to delightful gossip, to superstitions , to ancient history and to practical advice for this world and the next. Grama Lawton, or was it Grandma Cosman? Why the confusion about the names when the mail arrived? Why did my mother grumble about the name Cosman that Grama went by?

Who were they,the lot of them? It didn't matter, blood would tell which side of the blanket was the wrong or the right. I felt the message of the blood. and noted the difference. I felt the difference. Did they have a secret identity? Did I? Was I a rock on the island with an identity of my own?

Both my father and mother reinforced this separateness of our family. They were smart and their kids were smart. Daddy said so and he was smart. He had spent a day or two in grades 1, 2 and 3 and he could read write and figure. He could fix anything on wheels and rebuild or remodel anything that raffled or moved. He fix everything for the neighbors who forgot to pay. Daddy would never haggle over money. Even though we were often hungry and he worked hard, he never pushed for payment. I don't know if it was pride or strength or weakness. As a kid, I wished he had got the money.

I remember the old truck that Daddy transformed into a tractor. I loved that old machine. I loved to sit on Daddy's knee and steer the thing up the road, across the backfield and into the woods. It was all fenders, bumps, wind and wheels. When it was sold, it hurt like the loss of my scribbler of poems that my mother put aside and mislaid.

The tractor was gone that Daddy had made and soon the money was gone too.. Money always vanished. Soon they had nothing. the wheels and the bumps and the wind and the joy were gone. Hard work remained. Daddy was a cement worker, ditch-digger and mechanic. He had a lively spirit in his younger years. Each Friday pay day, he dropped nickels, one each, into eager hands. We kids, wild with joy and anticipation, leaped and turned and yelled, as we flew from our house to the store. Here we come! Hurrah for the Friday night nickel.


We bought hard or sponge toffee, jaw breakers by the bag, penny candy or the brand-new treat, the Popsicle. When the layoff came, the nickels stopped. We went without but I can still hear that cry -- FRIDAY NIGHT NICKEL !

Daddy was alive in those days. He cooked,when he took the notion, tables full of food . He had learned to cook in the Army. Pies were his specialty and his Irish stew was very good. We have to get out of his way when he took over the kitchen because he flew here, there and everywhere until everything was covered with flour. I can still see the flour fly, the pastries roll out and jump into the plates to be filled with apples or dark and spicy squash filling. I see the gravy bubble around the tender chunks of deer meat and smell the fragrant onions and see Daddy run, his black hair wet with sweat and white with flour, between stove and table in a wild effort to prevent disaster.

Daddy worked and when he came home that was it. He seldom went anywhere. He told stories about hard little boy times and about the jokes played on the men at work. He told stories of struggles with and victories over rattletrap road graders, snowplows or ferryboats. He told stories of the great tomorrow when better things would come, when we might move to a strange and wonderful place- stories that made you ache.

Daddy was smart and his kids were smart. They were something special and GOD, to whom Daddy spoke on a daily and first name basis, knew it too. Every night when Daddy was tired from his work and suffering from his chronic pain, he put out the light with a deep sigh and the slightly ironical, " and God have mercy on the poor and miserable sinners who live on the Old Black River Road. "

to be continued


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