I had been living with my foster parents and foster brothers. A High School Musical 2 blue Volvo 240 wagon pulled into their driveway and there were Marlene and Erin, there to pick me up for my first night with them. I went into the backseat and enjoyed the nice drive, having a nice conversation with my sister-to-be and mother-to-be.
At home in Hillsborough
We went through a narrow, but neat bridge called the Gunningsville Bridge. Then we rounded a corner and passed stores and a gas station. Then we went down a lovely country road past towers and past a convenience store. Minutes later, we entered a beautiful town called Hillsborough, New Brunswick with my school-to-be, a gas station, a convenience/drug store, a post office, a train with a lot of cars known as the S&H Dinner Train, and a couple of beautiful white churches. We rounded another corner and went up a steep street called Taylor’s Lane. Then we rounded another corner, which was the driveway to the house. I finally saw the house. It was odd shaped, like a slide with windows (I’m not putting it down). When I got out of the car, a Golden Retriever that looked like Shadow in Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey named Katie and a Lassie sable and white mongrel named Nicky greeted me. Then out of the house came 3 other sisters-to-be: Stephanie, Melody, and Jennifer. Across from the house was an old barn in which I was told there used to be horses.
Pat and Erin
I went in the house and it was the nicest thing I had ever seen. There were also 2 cats: a scratchy black and white cat named Gloria and a scratch-free Calico named Sally. There was an atrium-like living room, a few couches, a kitchen/dining room, a porch, a bathroom and an apartment for my grandfather-to-be on the middle floor; a bathroom and lots of bedrooms and an attic on the top floor, and on the bottom floor was a room with a piano! It didn’t take me long to figure out how to open it, and immediately I started to play some notes and Melody taught me the names of those notes, and that in Germany there was a note called F. Pretty soon my Dad-to-be showed up home from his work in his High School Musical 1/3 red Datsun pickup. He was very cheerful. Mom and I went back into Moncton to go grocery shopping at this cool store called the Co-op, which not only sold groceries, but there was a bottom floor linked by escalators that sold toys and electronics. I spent the night there and enjoyed it there. There was another night I spent there weeks later.
Chapter 2: The Adoption/Family/Friends/Adventures
At my foster family’s house I was patiently awaiting the arrival of my parents to take me to my new house, or as I called it, “Erin’s house.” Shortly, the same Volvo 240 wagon showed up. We took the same beautiful drive, and we arrived at the house. Dad was already there. I soon met friends and relatives in the family: Our neighbors Sandy, Allen, Ryan, Jeremy, and Jordan McWilliams and their Airedale Terrier Abby; my grandmothers Florence Richard of Toronto AKA Gram (Mom’s mother); Helen McGrath AKA Nana (Dad’s Mother); and my grandfathers Ed Richard AKA Gramps (Mom’s father); and Harold McGrath AKA Granddad; Bill McGrath AKA Uncle Bill, also AKA Ubie; Lynn McGrath AKA Lynnie; other aunts Marion and Betty; uncles Jake and Don; and cousins; our plow operator for snow days Dids Woodworth (if I spelled the first name correctly); school bus driver Mack Woodworth which I will mention later (Dids’ brother); house cleaner Marjorie; school mates which I will mention later; the Wissinks who also had a piano, daughters and a son all of whom were musical, and a Border Collie named Duff who I thought at the time I met her was just another Nicky, only black and white instead of the sable coloring; the Woods who owned a lobster shop quite close to Fundy Park; our priest and people who went to our church when I was there; our friends Norma and Steven and their son and daughters whom I will mention later; and teachers in the schools I went to, also whom I will mention later. Friends who lived near the Hopewell Rocks named The Smiths were friends we visited often, and they had 2 pianos in the house: one like the Wissinks’ upstairs and what looked like a coverless, less than 88-key, and apartment-sized Yamaha downstairs. I forgot to mention in the last chapter that they had lots of nice music tapes that we listened to: Huey Lewis Sports; Huey Lewis Fore; Mike and Michelle; Sharon, Lois, and Bram; Don McLean; Anne Murray; and lots of memorable songs that I like to look back on. Soon I went by school bus for the first time for my first day of school. The aforementioned Mack Woodworth seemed very friendly and funny and sometimes for a joke I would take off his hat. There were so many pianos in that school. I met lots of friendly kids in the school, some of which I had already met before during visits, although some were not as friendly.
We gathered near the end of the day at our neighboring classroom to sing some songs accompanied by that room’s teacher on the piano, which I noticed was 2 notes off key. If she played O’Canada in E flat, it sounded like it was in the key of C#, and if she played Happy Birthday to someone in C, it sounded as if it was the key of B Flat, and if she played Silent Night in B Flat it came out A Flat. There was a music class as well, and the teacher was very nice. In fact, all the teachers in that school and all the schools I went to were nice and friendly, some funny at times. One day I went to school and came back home to a surprise: We got a second piano on the middle floor that looked almost like the one in the school’s music room, only this one was mahogany in color and the one in the music room was black, our new one was a Tadashi and the one in the music room was a Yamaha, ours had 3 pedals: right damper, middle to put fabric between the hammers and the keys to quiet playing, and the left to push the hammers closer to the strings to soften playing. And the one in the music room only had two: right the damper and left the one that pushes the hammers closer to the strings to soften the sound. With the one downstairs, the middle pedal for some reason just raised the bass dampers and left the upper ones down, as did the other ones in the houses and the school that I saw. The downstairs piano, by the way, was a Mason & Risch, the Wissinks’ was a Sherlock Manning, and I never got to read the names on the ones at the school other than the one in the music room.
Soon I met a speech pathologist named Dr. Rubell, who also helped me in school. He was helpful to teach me vocabulary. He had a moustache and the kind of suit I saw my Dad wear to his office (by the way, Dad is a lawyer). After we were finished with him, one day Mom and I ran into him at the Co-op and he was in his tank top as if he was in a marathon. Another time we met him at that grocery store he changed his look. He still had a mustache, but he looked like Jeffrey Jones in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, only black hair instead of red.
Pretty soon, because we grew as a family and we were to take some camping and hotel trips and for the camping trips we were taking our dogs, we bought a brown Ford van from a friend of ours which came in really handy. We went on camping trips, a few times to Fundy Park, and a few times to Cabot Park in PEI. We also went a few times to Halifax and once to Boston and for both those destinations we stayed in beautiful hotels with pools, and in Boston, when you get in the elevator, it’s a glass elevator, and through the glass you can see this grand piano. During the trips to all those destinations, since we FINALLY had a tape player in a car (the Volvo and the Datsun had American Graffiti-style radios with no tape or CD player) and we listened to music like Traveling WiIlburys, Dirty Dancing, Lionel Richie, James Taylor, Paul Simon, The Big Chill, Stand By Me, among other memorable ones. During summers we would have barbecues with our Uncle Bill as the cook, and I also watched him cook pizzas and other fine recipes he did very well at. I would watch him cut up the vegetables, like the green peppers. We also had bonfires in which we roasted marshmallows, and it was then I noticed that mosquitoes flying by my ear would almost always buzz in the same note.
With Nicky.
Some nights Nicky would sleep on a pillow right by my bed and it was his presence there that calmed me and helped me have less nightmares than I did when he was not there. Soon we took one of our “Sunday Drives” to a place between Moncton and Riverview called Salisbury, New Brunswick, and we came to this farm house and when I got out these Golden Retrievers of all colors and styles and spaniels gazed at us and started wagging their tails at us. We went into this farm house and down the steps to the basement in which there were cages, and in the cages were these cute-as-a-button Golden Retriever puppies who came to us and whined at us as if to say “Please, take me home!” We purchased one of the puppies, whom we named Simon. Shortly after we had gotten Simon, Katie passed away, which saddened all of us. Thank God we still had Nicky and Simon. Simon also joined us for camping trips.
Another thing I noticed was that my oldest sister Jennifer was into stories, literature, fictional figures like you see and read about in the Chronicles Of Narnia books and movies like unicorns, fauns, giants, minotaurs, centaurs, and other fascinating myth figures and things from Greek Mythology, horses, dogs, and livestock. Before I ever saw the house, she had horses in the stable in the old barn named J.D. and Leah. Also, in addition to the Volvo 240 wagon, the red Datsun pickup, and the brown Ford van, Gramps had his own car: a Matrix green Grease-style Comet coupe, which he traded later for a Finding Nemo blue Plymouth Reliant coupe. Granddad had a Pontiac sedan. Gram had a Volvo 240 sedan, same year as our wagon, only tan in color. Bill had a matching truck to our red one, only his was re-named Nissan and nickel silver in color, and a newer year, but same shape as our red one. Sometimes Dad and I would go to the dump in the red truck and during the drive Dad and I would listen to the radio and sing I Had A Dog and Swingin’ On A Star. CBC radio had this program called Swingin’ On A Star. Sometimes we would go to Alma and have the Sticky Buns from the bake shop. Sometimes we would play games like Scrabble, Monopoly, Crazy 8s, Go Fish, and this cute board game with cards, game pieces, and dice, called Benji with the dog of the title from the Joe Camp movies in which if you land on Fierce Dog, you have to go back to Start.
Love music.
Another thing we did for fun was just outside of Hillsborough there was a road with 2 covered bridges, 2-3 feet apart from each other, and when we went in each covered bridge, provided there wasn’t somebody outside by it, we would stop, honk the horn, and make a wish. There was a time when we actually took the S&H Dinner Train and it was a lot of fun. Sometimes we went to the Albert County Exhibition and my favorite thing at the time was the cars ride in which you sit in the drivers’ side of sports car replicas and it takes you around like a carousel and you can pretend you are driving the car. If I could go back to that time I could fantasize I am listening to Mumford & Sons and Adele as I am driving and I am going to Halifax or Saint John. There were a couple of times my family and I saw Sharon, Lois, and Bram in concert in a theatre in Sackville. We even visited Gram in Toronto a couple of times, and I was amazed by the size of the city and the speed of the subways and the size of the buildings in that city. During that era I also used to watch this Looney Tunes VHS with Bugs Bunny, Tweety Bird, Elmer Fudd, Pepe Le Pew, Granny, Sylvester, Daffy Duck, and other funny Looney Tunes, in which Elmer Fudd’s house fills with acorns and he attempts several times to blast Bugs with his rifle.. Sometimes I also watched Disney movies like Lady and the Tramp, Mary Poppins, Peter Pan, Bambi, Robin Hood, and lots among classics. I also watched Sharon, Lois, and Bram’s shows.