BILLIE

Everybody has a story. I've always said it and I believe it. My life is an open book. There's a lot of people out there who probably know more about me than I do. My whole life is made up of stories and second hand memories, all strung together like the beads of a Rosary. I have nobody to check with for the accuracies of those stories. I just believe them to be true.

I often thought that my life actually started with the death of my father. It was a catastrophic event in my family, with an even more traumatic outcome, so perhaps my story, this story, will start there.

I realize my kids must think that the details of my life are rather sketchy and I don't have a lot of answers. But a long time ago, I learned to let go of the past. It's a great place to visit, but I don't live there.

So since I find it hard to relax, and I also find it hard to stay focussed sometimes, I'm hoping that this Blog will help keep me on track. I'd like to start putting my thoughts down in an organized and chronological order. My pictures of the past and their stories will all be in one place. I don't expect this to be a short project, it could take all winter. We'll see. I'm still learning this tool and how it can help. I can see how putting some stories down and adding some pictures might help bring some peace. It may be cathartic. I'll put it all out there and then let it go. I don't judge other people and I hope you won't judge me. But for some odd reason, I feel this is the right time. Each weekly Blog will be a story, a chapter if you will. I have a lot to say, and this will make it manageable. I will preface this with making sure my readers know that I am not trying to make comparisons here, or criticize. I'm not out for sympathy or looking for someone to blame. The past will stay in the past. All families are different, and I recognize that families can be complicated. That is my personal belief. Until I grew up, I thought we had the most "normal" family. Now I know that we were probably the most disfunctional of them all.

Because I believe everyone has a story.

And this is mine.

The first picture I have posted is one of my parents, I am assuming perhaps when they were dating. I have very few pictures; all black and white and grainy and out of focus, but I have something to prove they were here.

They look like any other young couple, perhaps posing in front of his truck, as lots of couples have done over the years.

The story goes that my mother, Jeannette Comeau arrived on PEI with a wave of other people to work at Usen Fisheries in Souris. She was from Caraquet, New Brunswick, and along with many other French speaking families, she made her way here and joined the local workforce. This would be the late 40s and early 50s and by this time my father had already spent his youth overseas fighting in World War two.

His name was Billie Chaisson and he was the oldest of nine siblings: next was Kathleen (Mooney) Dottie (Bailey)Freddie, Merlin, Mildred (Doucette) Anna (MacCaughey) Everett and Isabell (Carpenter)

I wish I could go back further, to his childhood, and learn what kind of person he was. I have a few stories told to me over the years, and like a lot of people who died young and tragically, he instantly became a hero in the family and never had a fault. I'm sure that he did, but I never heard of any. He sure smoked a lot, and he could drink too, but apparently he never missed a day's work because of it. Having gone overseas to train and fight in WW2 at the age of 18 would have shaped who he became, so I'm sure smoking and having some drinks on the weekends was perfectly acceptable.

My father was a mechanic by trade and he spent a lot of time working with Gerard Tommy Joe, old Clarence, and Benny Carter. Since I was only 4 years old when he died, my memories are vague and used up, but I clearly remember him coming home from work and letting me go through his jacket pockets and keep all his change.

I can imagine that after the War ended he was restless, like a lot of men were, who could blame them. He tried farming and other things, but always came back to mechanics. And like a lot of people, I am too late to the game to find anyone to ask questions, most of the people who knew him are long gone, since he died 60 years ago. There's no one left to ask, so I am determined to write down what little I know.

Around this time he decided to build a little dance hall on the property, since we had a lot more land in those days. There are few pictures, but I will add them as I go.

It was a simple wooden building and quickly became "the" place to be. It was named "The Seaside Dance Hall" and many young bands got their start there. I clearly remember The Blue Crystals. It got a reputation for being a rough place on Saturday nights, with lots of drinking and fighting going on, but apparently young people in the late 50s and early 60s were pretty much the same as today....go where the action is.

I remember my cousins Linda and Donna grating up blocks of paraffin wax to sprinkle on the dance hall floor to make the dancing easier, and my grandmother and my mother making baskets of sandwiches to serve to the hungry crowd. They sold hot dogs, drinks, punchboard tickets, sandwiches, and I suppose chips and other snacks.

The most fun of the week was Sunday mornings, when my brothers and I would run up the field from the house, open the door, and start the search for any coins that might have been lost in a fight! We gathered up all the empty pop bottles, and spent the rest of the morning searching the field where the cars would have been parked. We always struck gold of some sort! Some memories are so clear.

Most readers by now know that I'm referring to the "Black Rafter" which was the nicname the Hall got, from pieces of tarpaper stuffed in the rafters in an effort to keep the wind out, as it was not winterized yet. My father's family hated that name, but it stuck, and even today, if I meet someone who remembers the Dance Hall, they know it only as The Black Rafter. I'm sure his intent was to continue work on the Hall and keep it going, but his death in Labrador in 1962 halted those plans.

The Black Rafter

This is the front door of the Dance Hall, with some people that lots of my readers will recognize. The woman taking admission at the door, in "the ticket booth" is my mother.

To the far left, behind the door, was a pinball machine.

Looking down the length of the dance hall, to the left is a couple of steps leading up to the band stand, with a piano in place that Clifford Peters kept tuned for my father. To the right is the canteen with a bar for service. Rough wooden benches ran all around the room for seating and there were nails on the studs for hanging coats or purses, I suppose. Hardly up to today's standards, but in all fairness he didn't live long enough to finish it.

Handsome, wasn't he? And that big cleft chin. Butch looks so much like him in this picture, and B.J. is a dead ringer.

More next week.