chp 1---childhood bliss

CHP 1 part 1     chilhood ---1944 to 1948

My father was one of 5 brothers raised in a Presbyterian orphanage in Bendigo (Victoria). The only time he spoke (to me) about his childhood he said, "I'd shin down the drainpipe from the 2nd floor and meet my girlfriend at the pictures. We'd meet inside so I didn't have to pay for her ticket. At interval, she'd buy the lollies." 

Sent to Palestine during W.W.2 as a signalman with the Australian army's eighth division, he thought it a great adventure. Wounded in the ear by shrapnel when an anti-aircraft gun blew up, he returned on leave to Aussie in 1943 and I was conceived. Like my parents, I was thin. After the war, dad hung around Palestine enjoying the only overseas holiday he'd ever have. He sent mum a post card showing an overweight Arab on a rickety donkey. Behind the donkey trudged the Arab's wife, hidden under black veils and struggling to carry their heavy belongings. Mum showed the card to her parents. They had not yet met father. Dad had written on the card, "This is the way a man should live. When I come back to 'Civvy' Street I'll make sure you know your place. These 'Gyppo's have taught me how to really treat a woman".

 

Granny gave a moan of despair and grandpa calculated how fast they could move house to some far off city. "The bugger won't be able to find us there", he mumbled. Mum laughed and tried to assure them, "He's joking." A few seconds later she added, "I hope he's joking." He was. Mum's parents became the first family he'd known. They loved him from the minute they met. 

I inherited Dad's excellent handwriting and sense of humour. He took pride in elegant loops and lettering and his friends loved his jovial manner. Lacking money, he scrounged a green army tent and erected it on a block of land he'd bought in Moss Ave in the Adelaide suburb of Marleston. The area was close to the city but quite unspoiled .The road past our place ran through wild boxthorn bushes. It was once an old train track but had been abandoned to become a stretch of dusty dirt and gravel. To me it was as exciting as Oz's Yellow Brick Road.

 Dad set about building a rectangular 2-room pre-fab hut on the land near our tent. I recall being driven around in the sidecar of dad's motorbike. He bought a cape (like Mandrake had in the comic book) and a set of magician's accessories. Dad practiced daily hoping to be hired as a magic act for RSL clubs.. I was too young to know where he went on weekends, so I'm not sure if he succeeded .We moved into the tent,. Dad dug a deep pit to serve as our dunny (Aussie for toilet) and started work as a barman at the Richmond Hotel. He took me with him to visit "Auntie Lonnie", a buxom platinum blonde who wore a satin wrap. She looked like Carol Lombard. Dad told me her husband's name was Humphrey Bogart. From the time I feasted my eyes on Auntie Lonnie (or maybe the wrap) I've been nuts about women in satin.

 Uncle Humphrey took me to Semaphore carnival one night and we slid down the giant slide on a mat, He told me, "You're Peter the mosquito". He said "mosquiter" to make it rhyme. "If you don't be good the dunny-cart man'll put you in the s**t-cart." I began to keep a look out for the dunny-cart man and made sure he never saw me.

In the 1940s, pit dunnies were common in newer suburbs. We'd sit on a wooden plank with a hole cut in it. Turds fell down (aided by of gravity) and collected beneath in a big tin "s**t-can." It was usually half full of piss .A couple of times it was so full I'd get my bottom splashed when I voided my stools into the liquid darkness .There was no light at night so I pretended I was a bomber dropping bombs on Nazi submarines. Shitcans were collected every week and emptied into a "s**t-truck" by a mysterious bloke known in genteel circles as "the night soil man".

Once I awoke early and saw a giant like the one in "Abbott and Costello Meet Jack and the Beanstalk". He dressed in a long leather coat with a head and neck covering to prevent slops from the can raining down onto his short back and sides – a haircut that was de rigueur in those days. Those cans must have weighed close to 45 kg.

 Our front yard was a tangled jungle of 2 foot high uncut grass. I'd crawl around in it daydreaming and making little tunnels. Mum warned me not to play in the grass. She said there were lots of snakes and centipedes but I only found a small snake and 2 centipedes. I carried them to mum to show I was a brave hunter. She screamed, chopped them up and put them in a lemonade bottle. Our tent had a grass floor and we slept in camper beds. I'm not sure what mum thought of keeping tent instead of house. I was so absorbed with the surrounding pleasures I took no notice of mum's feelings. Maybe I was as close to autism as a kid could be without it being obvious.

 

Dad and two of his army mates finishing erecting our hut then built me a sandpit. It was 2 X 3 meters and 30 cm deep.. Near the sandpit grew an almond tree. Besides supplying almonds it allowed me to sail an open boat across a sand seascape .Pretending my littlest finger was me ,and half an almond shell was my boat , I'd stick my finger into the half-shell , lower my eye-line down to where I saw the ocean ahead and travel to Timbuktu and Bali. I was the only kid in our street except for Rosemary Carter who had ringworms and was considered "dirty", so I was not allowed to play with her. Dad looked a bit like a thin Robert Mitchum.

He went up to Woomera Rocket Range to work as a linoleum-layer. While he was gone I slept with mum. She looked a bit like Virginia McKenna in "A Town like Alice". She smelled nice and we didn't need a hot water bottle. Mum began working in a small musty book-lending shop in North Adelaide. It cost 3 pence to borrow a book. They had hard covers and I used them as building blocks. I loved those dusty old shelves and "working" with mum. One day kids came running past the shop. "What's happened?" mum asked a little girl a bit older than me. The girl answered, "There's a motor car parked on the footpath!" . 

Mum let me go with the big girl and that nice girl held my hand as we stood looking at the marvelous car that dared to park with 2 wheels on the footpath. We held hands and watched it for a long time. I was very happy. When dad came home I was relegated to my little bed. I missed mum at night but it wasn't much of a tragedy because I had my big strong dad at home and he'd take me out perched on a seat of wood he'd attached to the crossbar of his bike . He bought me a red Cyclops pedal car I drove it 5 hours a day. Life was pure joy.

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Reviews

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nice writing, really captivating, i wanna read more!