Working Class Boy

by Barnes, Jimmy

  * * *

  I was in trouble quite a lot and my folks were starting to crack down on me. Well, they were trying to crack down on me. I didn’t respond well to being kept in line.

  ‘You’re grounded, boy,’ Reg would say and I would walk straight out of the door. ‘Your mother is going to give you a good belting when you get home.’ This was desperation on Reg’s behalf. He didn’t like violence and I knew he wouldn’t even tell her.

  ‘Yeah, Dad, I love you too,’ I would say as the door slammed behind me. At times like this I felt funny calling Reg ‘Dad’. He had been a real father to me for quite a while now and I loved him, but treating him with so little respect made me think about how little my family really cared for one another. We always said we loved each other and that we would never do the wrong thing by one another. Then we just did whatever we liked. This wasn’t the way you spoke to someone you loved. I would never have spoken to my real dad that way – not because of respect or love but because of fear, being afraid he would knock me out. Mum tried to threaten us like that but it never worked. Reg would never really threaten me. Families are very confusing.

  Anyway, I was fighting with them all the time, but they were used to it, as all the kids fought with them. They were fighting a losing battle as far as we could see. We were wearing them down.

  At that time, in 1971, Myponga Festival was staged on the Australia Day long weekend. Black Sabbath were the big headliners and I was desperate to see them. I was a huge fan, along with most of the teenage guys in Australia at the time. My brother was going and my sisters told me they were going, so I presumed I would go along with them and their mates. Not a problem, they said, so all I had to do was run it past my mum.

  ‘Mum, there’s a little rock show on this weekend. I’m going to go with John and Dot and Linda, okay?’

  Mum was dead against it. ‘You’re goin’ nowhere. You’re grounded. You’re stayin’ here wi’ me.’

  I had been a little wild at the time and probably needed to stay home but I wasn’t going to make it easy. ‘This is the only chance I’ll have to see this show. I’m going.’

  The house was quiet except for the sound of Mum’s fuse burning down. ‘You’re goin’ nowhere.’

  Mum sat in the corner. Her lips had disappeared and she was waiting to strike out at me. I continued to push my luck.

  The fuse had burned to the end and Mum exploded. She screamed and tried to grab me so she could give me the slapping I deserved.

  I was out of the door before she could get to me. ‘I’m going and you can’t stop me.’

  I was gone down the street. I had already planned to meet Linda and her mates later that night. I would climb out the window.

  I came home after a while, having left enough time for Mum to cool off. She was sitting in the lounge room saying nothing so I went to my bedroom. I put on John’s best clothes and I had one leg out of the window when suddenly Mum was standing there, waiting for me. She must have been getting wise to me running away by that time.

  ‘Get intae that hoose, right now!’ she shrieked.

  I could see Linda’s friend’s car speed away into the night. I knew I’d be going nowhere. I was shattered. This was one of the bands I really liked and I wanted to see them live. But there was no way I could talk her into letting me go without a physical fight. I decided for once that it was better to be cool and do what she said rather than just fuck off and cause trouble for everyone, including Reg.

  My sisters came home after the festival absolutely raving about this band. I didn’t want to hear about it. ‘Yeah, I know. Black Sabbath are great.’

  But it wasn’t Black Sabbath they were talking about. It was an Australian band called Daddy Cool. They were raving about this singer. ‘He danced around with a fox tail attached to his arse and a guitar player who had a propeller on his head. It was the best.’

  Sounded weird but I guessed you had to be there. They said Daddy Cool was the best band they had ever seen. I was so pissed off that I had missed this chance to check out a new band. I’ll never forgive my mum for making me miss that festival.

  I soon found out I had some advantages over the other guys, one in particular, which had helped me earlier in school – my brother John. Like I’ve said, John was wild, but by this point in his life he was absolutely out of control. We all were, but he was wilder than anyone I knew.

  All the older guys hung around at the Elizabeth shopping centre, fighting blokes and shagging chicks. Anybody our age who went there would be roughed up and sent packing, but John was one of the craziest and most violent members of the gang and this, I soon worked out, meant that I could do almost anything I wanted. No one wanted to touch me or hit me because they knew that John would kill them.

  John was one of those guys you could never win against, even if you beat the shit out of him. He would wait. It didn’t matter if he had to wait months. He would wait until you least expected it. Maybe one night, six months later, you’d be getting home late at night and there would be John behind a bush holding a lump of wood with your name on it. You had to kill him to beat him. My dad taught us that. Never give in.

  I found out later that John was even more frightened than I was. This is what made him such a very dangerous person. If he was cornered, he would take on anyone. To top this off he was also drinking a lot by then and taking copious amounts of drugs, and that made him very unpredictable. No one messed with him. Even the most vicious guys in Elizabeth thought twice before they would go up against John.

  Around that time, I fell in love with an Irish girl from Elizabeth High. She was beautiful. She had black, black hair and green eyes and wore the shortest miniskirts and the highest shoes I’d ever seen. Her legs seemed to go on forever; she was breathtaking. I used to look at her shoes and work my way up. I could only dream about her. She was the same age as me but used to go out with the much older guys in the area.

  But I was lucky. I was always hanging around with John’s friends. I was a part of the older guys’ gang. Every night around the pool hall I would hang out with them. Slowly but surely some of my younger friends joined me, so it became more normal for us to be included in the things they got up to. We would tag along to their parties and even get involved in their fights.

  She was always there and I was always watching her. She would smile at me and talk to me whenever we had the chance. I knew she liked me but I was too young. I didn’t have a car and I wasn’t allowed into the pubs yet. So that love affair didn’t last long but I felt a lot for her and I thought of her all the time. I would see her in the back of some idiot’s car with his hands all over her and it would break my heart, but I never let anyone see it. She saw me looking at her a few times and I could see she was hurting too but we could never talk about it. It was over for us before it started.

  As we got older and my mates got cars, we began to hang around the centre more often with the other guys, but if the word came that John had left the pub, my mates would scatter, terrified that he would see them and slap them around just to keep them in line.

  He was frightening but he never hit me at all. Never in my life did John even raise his hands to me. He was always there to protect me. He made me feel safe when he was around even when he was totally out of control. For many years I wanted to be just like him.

  I remember one night at the shopping centre, John was walking through the car park on his way to a mate’s wedding. This car park had been the scene of many a savage beating. He was dressed up in a suit and looked very sharp, but no one dressed like that around the shops, not even John, without getting some sort of attention.

  A couple of bikies had just got off their bikes as he walked by. They made the fatal mistake of commenting on his clothes. ‘Hey poof. Where do you think you’re going?’

  John stopped and turned towards them. He didn’t react, he just started a conversation with them. Pretty soon they were laughing and chatting along with him. I told you he was charming. After a litt
le while John started commenting on their bikes.

  ‘Wow, they look good. Did you paint them yourselves?’ he asked, sounding really interested. ‘Really good job, guys.’

  Soon these poor bikies were completely sucked in. They were so proud of their bikes. Then John said, ‘I noticed that your helmets are painted really well. Could I have a look at them?’

  They, by this point, thought he was a funny guy who posed no threat to two big blokes like them and without hesitation handed over their helmets.

  As soon as John got the helmets in his hands he proceeded to beat the shit out of these guys with their own helmets. He didn’t stop until they were on the ground bleeding and pleading for mercy.

  John then kicked over both bikes and spat on them. As quickly as he had turned, he regained his composure and straightened his tie. ‘Get some fucking manners, boys. And sharpen up your dress sense a bit while you’re at it.’

  Then he just walked away and on to the wedding. Myself and a few mates were sitting maybe twenty yards away on the steps of the pool hall, watching the whole thing and we couldn’t believe it. It was like a scene from a movie. John was my hero again.

  Mum and Reg got to the point where they never left anything to drink around the house because one of the kids would take it, which was fine for them because they hardly drank at all. But Mum always had something hidden somewhere in the house, saving up for Hogmanay, and John knew it. So John used to work out inventive ways to make them get out the alcohol. Some of these cons were very funny.

  One night he came home at about two in the morning with a few mates and what appeared to be a very nice girl, called Sally. He woke up Mum and Reg and most of the household. ‘Mum. This is Sally and we’re gettin’ married. I know I’ve just met her but I love her.’

  Mum was ecstatic and immediately went to her cupboard. ‘Oh my God, that’s great. This calls for a wee celebration. Get the other kids up.’ She then produced a few bottles of nice whisky she was saving for Hogmanay and we had a party.

  ‘Alan, you move into the girls’ room and Jim you’ll have tae sleep on the couch tae gie the lovebirds some privacy,’ Mum shouted after a few drinks.

  The next day Mum got up and asked John, ‘Where’s Sally, son?’

  John looked at her with bloodshot, glassy eyes and said, ‘Who are you talking about?’

  He had forgotten her name. It was only then that Mum realised she had been conned.

  John had met this girl at closing time and told her, ‘Hi, darling, do you fancy a wee drink when the pub shuts? I’ve got nice things to drink at home if you want to come with me.’ It was only when she got to our place that she worked out what role she would be playing in this elaborate hoax.

  Luckily for John she was a good actress and loved to drink. The two of them had a great night all round. We never saw her again. Mum cleaned up the mess and never said another word about it.

  The pool hall was a meeting place. Most nights started out there. The girls would be there with the older guys, and all of our younger gang would be hanging out there too, hoping the girls noticed us.

  The smoke hung heavy over the tables. The whole place smelled like an ashtray. One guy ran the place at night. He was a hard-looking bloke who wore a sort of butcher’s apron. In the front pocket of the apron he kept his money that he collected from the tables, the keys to the office and to the pinball machines. He regularly had to open up the machines to free the balls that had become jammed from one of us banging and shoving the machines around.

  ‘Hey you. If you bang that machine again I’m going to toss you out of here on your arse. Okay?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. It was an accident, mate. I fell on it.’

  ‘Well, don’t fall on it again or my fist will fall on your face. Understand?’

  ‘Yeah mate, I understand. Can I get some change? This machine is a rip-off.’

  The front of the hall was where the younger guys hung out. Playing pinball and watching to see who was coming in and out of the place. Towards the back, where the light was dim, the real pool players hung out.

  On the weekends, as it got late, groups of people would drift off to the pubs or to parties. Some of us had nowhere to go and we would wait in the pool hall. Waiting to find out where there was a place to go. Us younger ones would get one of our mates who looked old enough to go to the bottle shop and buy us booze so we could get drunk and act like the older guys. Someone would turn up with an address of a party that none of us were invited to and the place would empty. These parties always ended up as bloodbaths.

  Fights often broke out in the pool hall too. Money was usually the reason for fighting but sometimes it was over one of the girls who would be standing around in short tight skirts. Most of the blokes played better when the girls were there. Letting them take a shot or two as everyone watched as the girl leaned over the tables, struggling to keep their dresses below their waists. The girls weren’t there for the pool. They would smoke cigarettes and laugh as they waited for the real party to get started later on in the pub or in the back of someone’s car.

  The police would visit the hall some nights and the place would suddenly go dead quiet. Everyone would stop playing at once. The bells on the machines would go silent and all eyes would be on the cops as they walked through the place trying to get their eyes to adjust to the light, squinting to see the faces in the darkness. Blokes would be running to the back door or lying down under the tables in the dark, waiting for them to leave. Sometimes someone would be dragged out swearing and kicking to the cheers of their friends. The cops knew that if they needed to find any troublemakers, this was the first place to look.

  I began hanging out at the pool hall more and more and became a pretty good pool player myself. I tried to make a bit of money, beating the odd sucker who came into the place after work.

  Kelly pool was the game of choice. Each player pulled a marble out of a bag. This marble had a number on it. Each number corresponded to a number on one of the pool balls. The idea was to place your small ball on the side of the table, not letting anyone else see what number was yours, along with a sum of money, whatever you’d all decided to play for. You had to pocket as many balls as you could until you got the chance to pot your own. But if someone else potted your number you rolled the small ball over and you were out of the game and had lost your money. The first person to pot his own ball took all the money.

  Before too long I owned my own pool cue, which was kept behind the counter with the real pool players’ things. Some nights I could hustle enough money to buy drinks. One of us always found some money for drinks.

  One day I did lose but not to another pool player, to my mum. I took my pool cue home for some reason and had it sitting in my bedroom. That day I had a fight with my mum over something unrelated and I was giving her a bit of lip. Mum came into my room to have a swing at me and I made some smartarse comment. Now Mum wasn’t afraid to grab herself a weapon when she was ready to fight and she looked around the room for something to belt me with. She spotted my prize possession, my pool cue, and she grabbed it and swung it towards me.

  ‘You gie me any more o’ yer lip and I’ll murder you.’

  Bang! She broke the cue over my head, smashing it into pieces.

  I just laughed. ‘Do you think that hurt me? It didn’t. You can’t hurt me.’

  She was crying her eyes out because she couldn’t hurt me. I was a bit unhappy because she had broken my pool cue. And as she ran from the room crying, I kept laughing. I had worked out a few years earlier that if Mum was really trying to hit you hard, all you had to do was laugh at her and she would fall apart. It was a bit cruel but so was life and she didn’t have to smash my cue. I never bought another one and my career as a pool hustler was over.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  cheap speed and beer

  It sounds clichéd but the booze led us straight to harder things and we were soon chasing any drugs we could get our hands on, just like the big guys we looked up to
. The older guys became noticeably more dangerous as harder drugs came into the picture. And so did we.

  All my mates started out as potheads, happy to smoke weed and sit around and laugh at each other, but that didn’t work for me. I was watching the older guys taking cheap speed and acid and I noticed some of them doing smack.

  I wasn’t a fan of weed as it made me too laidback and a bit more introverted, which was the last thing I needed in Elizabeth, so I started swallowing handfuls of cheap speed tablets, washing them down with beer or spirits.

  I found that I could drink all day and night if I took these pills and as drinking was our main pastime this suited me down to the ground. Instead of getting drunk and sloppy, I would get drunk and aggressive, which was a dangerous thing for anybody who messed with me. We all started doing this, which led to us getting into fights with any strangers who walked near the shopping centre.

  * * *

  The gang would grab girls and some booze and head up to Uley Road Cemetery, an old place up in the hills above Elizabeth Downs. Now, Uley Road had a few benefits. It was out of the way of anything or anyone, and it was a bit scary so it was a good place to take girls because they wouldn’t leave your side. We would sit up there and take drugs and drink and tell stories and make out with chicks.

  A lot of the guys used to tell the girls to put out or walk home but I thought this was all wrong. I didn’t want the blokes to think I was soft so I would pretend to do the same but let the girl know what was going on. We seemed to get away with it. I never really liked going up there for that reason and I thought that it was fucked up to have parties on people’s graves, but I quite often ended up there. It was one of the few places we could go without being hassled or having to fight anyone. Sometimes we ended up fighting each other but not often and only when we were very drunk.