Civilisation

by Steve Braunias

  The death of one parent, and the other parent abandoning his children to remarry and live in a strange house in an amazing village on the other side of the world… Te Aonui Dennan died in 1942, but the way Jim told it he didn’t even know for four years. ‘It was after the war, 1946, when I got a letter and some bits of paper to say my father had died.’ The papers were on behalf of Guide Rangi, asking Jim to sign documents that would give her the right to live in the whare. He said, ‘In those far-off happy days I believed that marriage was due to all the good things of love and passion and all that crap, so I thought I’d better give her a hand. I signed a paper saying she could have the use of our land for her lifetime. That’s what I thought I was doing, but I wasn’t. I’d gifted the land to her.’

  I flipped the pages of his memoir until I got to the beginning, where there was a faded photo of a serious little boy perched on a tricycle in 1925. The three-year-old from Oddington Grange in Oxfordshire had the same round anxious face as the man who was a year away from turning 90 in the whare in Whakarewarewa. I closed the scrapbook. His life had passed before his eyes. ‘So here we are,’ said the author, ‘and here I die.’ He said his ashes would be buried between his father and Guide Rangi, beneath the monument to his spectacular grandmother.

  Jim sat in front of the window while we talked. All the while, tremendous gusts of white steam whisked past, danced and played and teased, lighter than feathers, mocking his silly tirades. It came in thick and hid the view from the window, and then it ran off and you could look out beyond Jim’s head and see the bridge where tourists threw coins to beggars.

  Beyond was the city, which got on with its business while the tourists stopped and stared. Beyond was The Grumpy Mole Saloon next to the army recruitment office, and the Matariki Cultural Centre (hāngī, painted Māori, tea and coffee) next to Pizza Hut; massive Chinese radishes and bags of the world’s tastiest popcorn, Ka Pai, made by Rotorua man Carl Neville, at the Saturday markets; the one hundred and second annual Rotorua A & P show at Riverdale Park, with the headline attraction: ‘Sheep Racing!’

  Beyond was the big screen at Shed Bar for live coverage of the fight in Newcastle, Australia, between All Black boxer Sonny Bill Williams and Scott Lewis. Beyond, at the supermarket, were boneless chicken breasts for $2.49.

  At Kuirau Park there were shocking things going on beside the hot springs. A grandfather and his two children had seen men engaged in sex acts in broad daylight. ‘All I wanted to do was throw up and run like hell,’ Grandpa told the Daily Post. Rotorua district councillor Charles Sturt said, ‘Sexual activity seems to be rampant and needs to be stopped.’ The newspaper’s editorial said, ‘It’s a terrible look for a tourism town.’ Also at Kuirau Park were rampant, unstoppable workings of tūrutu, a flax-like plant with starry white flowers and deep blue berries that oozed an inky juice.

  Rotorua, forever humid and fuming. Rotorua, drunk and stoned, hanging in as one of New Zealand’s most popular tourism attractions, with the occupancy rate of hotels and motels 53 percent, the third highest in the country behind Auckland and Queenstown. Did that make the town half full or half empty?

  After I said goodbye to Jim Dennan I looked in on an outdoor concert down the road from his house. A crowd of about 300 had gathered to watch. The performers poked out their tongues and rolled their eyes. The audience roared with laughter. When the performers did it again, the laughter rose like a wave. Braying and paying tourists had reduced Māori culture to a comedy act. I looked at my watch in case time had moved backwards, to about 1950.

  And then the audience was told the love story of Hinemoa and her lover Tūtānekai, how she swam across Lake Rotorua to Mokoia Island to be with him. When the story finished, a young man and a young woman sang ‘Pōkarekare Ana’. The audience went completely quiet. They were entranced by the slow beautiful song, the beautiful crystalline singing. I wept. I stood in the sunshine, wanting to rub the music and the smell of sulphur into my skin, to have it always, to keep some trace of the rare loveliness of the moment. Standing in the sunshine at dusty steamy Whakarewarewa I thought back to bubbling lakeside Ōhinemutu, to the love story of Ata and Nathan, a modern Hinemoa and Tūtānekai, swimming in alcohol, afloat.

  Hauraki Plains

  Country Roads

  Keith Berry turned his teal-blue 1972 Ford Falcon 500 into the driveway of the dairy farm in Elstow he had worked for 38 years. The satisfying crunch of gravel, the deep breathing of the motor: it had 150,000 kilometres on the clock but was in beautiful working order, plush and polished. He had bought it brand new in Te Aroha. For 30 years it had sailed the long straight roads of Piako County and the Hauraki Plains.

  On family holidays the Falcon hauled a lightweight Chevron caravan. Keith and his wife Lesley, whom he met at a table tennis club in Walton, had six children. Their eldest daughter belonged to a Baptist church, and her daughter, who was to turn sixteen in October, was going to Ethiopia to perform missionary work over Christmas.

  Keith talked about the storms of late July and early August, which uprooted six native wattles on the farm. Then he told a story about his neighbour, Cliff Strange. As a boy, Cliff had planted oak trees on his farm. He was 78 during the storm of 1972, when the wind dropped off Mount Aroha, dived down, and whirled around the oak trees like a corkscrew. The trees popped out of the ground. Next day Cliff drove his Leyland tractor to have a look. Hundreds of oaks, an entire fence line, had been ripped out – a lifetime’s work destroyed. No one knows how long he sat there and surveyed the damage. He switched off the engine and died.

  Keith, 74, told this story in the kitchen. He had put his car keys on the dining-room table, which was actually a round snooker table with pockets, an oddity bought at an auction in Waihī. It was a cold Friday afternoon. Lesley, 67, planned to drive next afternoon to Morrinsville with her neighbour Lyn Pendergrast, 78, so they could catch a bus to go to the National Country Music Awards at the Founders Theatre in Hamilton.

  Keith said he’d rather stay home. ‘He doesn’t tie me down,’ Lesley said. She admitted to an independent streak; while raising their six kids she had always set aside time to enter baking contests at the Te Aroha A&P show. Her portfolio included scones, muffins, shortbread, melting moments, iced biscuits, sponges and fruit cakes. The results were spectacular and legendary: she won the baking trophy every year from 1975 to 2004. Rhoda Rosewell dared to win in 2005 but Lesley fought back and won in 2006, and then retired. She took her pikelet recipe from the 1961 Country Women’s Institute cookbook, which advises, ‘A tablespoon of hot water and a tablespoon of soft butter is the secret.’

  Lesley’s interest in country music started when her 14-year-old granddaughter Kyla, who sings and yodels, joined the Morrinsville Country Music Club. ‘I follow her everywhere; there are a lot of clubs.’

  Morrinsville, Whangamatā, Pirongia, Tokoroa, Te Awamutu, Cambridge, Matamata, Te Aroha, Morrinsville, Cambridge, Paeroa, Ngāruawāhia, Kerepēhi – country music is vital to the New Zealand way of life. It was the music I heard most during my travels, a high, lonesome, warm sound, twanging in the telephone wires, as rural as floods and saw doctors. Country music clubs travelled like a subterranean river all over the land. There were handwritten signs on bakery and library windows for the next meeting, the next event: in Golden Bay, where yodelling was strong; in Hastings, where the annual awards would be held in October at Lindisfarne College – accommodation available in the school dormitory, $25 per night, please bring own bedding.

  It was the music of recession, company, loneliness, broken promises, good times, truth. It swept across the plains and filled the valleys. It was homely music, road music. Death notice, 2011: ‘Condolences from the Fountain City Country Music Club, the Mt Pirongia Country Music Club and the Te Awamutu Country Music Club.’ Graeme Fitzsimons had died instantly when his car was sliced in two by a double-decker truck in Taranaki. Half of the car was jammed between the bank and the truck; the other half was further up the road. Fitzsimons and his wife Janic
e were described as regulars on the New Zealand country music scene. They sang harmonies, and travelled to country music club meetings in their mobile home.

  Other regulars worked behind the scenes. Merle Howarth, QSM, 84, a life member of Te Aroha’s club, could be found behind a stall at the Paeroa market, selling her plum sauce and grapefruit marmalade for three dollars. Vilma Berger, treasurer of Paeroa’s club, said, ‘That’s V–i–l–m–a. I’ve met one other lady with that name. She said, “D’you know where it’s from?” I said, “No, but if I ever find out, I’ll tell them to put it back down from wherever they found it.”’ The name of Ngāruawāhia’s club secretary was Daisy Rangi.

  But the country music river was changing course. Bernie Eva wanted it to go ‘mainstream’. As president of the Pro-Am supporters club and convenor of the national awards, his great mission was to eradicate the word ‘western’ from country music. Last week, he said, he’d called a special general meeting in Morrinsville and got approval from members to change the club’s name from Morrinsville Country & Western Club to Morrinsville Country Music Club.

  He was a stocky man, 62, with a broad gentle face and a fear of flying: ‘A pity. Aeroplanes fascinate me but I won’t fly in them.’ His son Paul had just gone in for his seventh skin graft – he’d burned 70 percent of his body in a roadworks accident and had no sweat glands in the lower half of his body.

  There were two freshly baked and iced carrot cakes by the front door of the house: Bernie’s wife Rita was one of the caterers for the awards night. The couple had met when Rita was waitressing in Hamilton. ‘She’s a Mormon. Both our kids were brought up in the church. I’m not a believer but I harm nobody.’ Their bookcase included The Lives of Our Prophets, Trucking 2005 Diary, Rugby Greats and Living Well in Retirement.

  For over twenty years Bernie contracted a trucking business to a mushroom producer. ‘Only small trucks, six-wheelers, 14 to 17 tonnes, single units. We had very comfortable trucks with air suspension and parabolic springing, because mushrooms can’t vibrate around on the back of the truck. Mushrooms have to be looked after.’

  There was a falling-out with management. ‘I packed it in under principles, and then I paid the price. My loyalty and service never mattered a razoo to the new CEOs. It was very disappointing. I was angry. I was angry for nearly two years. We argued over $35 in the end. I drove both trucks off the yard that night. Told them to go get stuffed. And then I couldn’t sell my trucks, and I struggled, and… Awww, that’s another story.’

  Now he worked in liquid fertiliser. ‘I like the product,’ he said. ‘It’s interesting. I did an adult apprenticeship in golf course greenkeeping, so I appreciate that greenkeepers deal with the biology of the soil. They put a lot of selenium, molasses and sugars into it.’

  It was Friday morning. He had already driven to Hamilton and back to deliver stage gear to Founders Theatre for the awards show. He said, ‘It’s an amazing amount of work. Thirty-five or so people are involved with running the show. It’s big, big. Our show is budgeted up to $67,000.

  ‘Money like that never gets spent on country music! Country music club people will not spend money on country music. Country music club people get their country music very cheap. We want the general public. The Golden Guitars show in Gore – they do an extremely great job. Gore is acknowledged as the home of country music, and rightfully so, but basically that’s amateur. We consider ourselves professional. We’re the next step up.’

  He talked about the Pro-Am supporters club. ‘We want two thousand members. It’s around two hundred at the moment.’ He had dreams, good intentions. The awards show had the Hamilton City Council on board, funding from Creative New Zealand, generous sponsorship. He was making country music respectable; as such, he had to stay vigilant and remove all trace of country and western. ‘We do not want the word “western”,’ he said. ‘We do not use the word “western”.’ He urged, cajoled, nagged clubs to drop it from their name.

  The word frightened people, he said, put them off. The general public looked on country and western music as a joke, kitsch at best, ridiculous at worst – ‘the whole cowboy thing, yee-ha and all that’. Country and western music was old hat. Country music was new hat. I asked what sort of artists wore the new hat. ‘Shania Twain,’ he said.

  The drinking mood was stern and stand-offish at the Grand Tavern in Te Aroha, but merry at the RSA. There was a good-sized crowd under the bright lights; a poster read, ‘We are looking for a guitar that can be kept behind the bar for those party nights.’

  Club president Russell Smith stood at a table near the bar. A former army man, he still had a military bearing. He worked as a purchasing officer for Fonterra. His sons Greg and Shane were outside on the smoking balcony. Shane was in the navy; he had returned home for his twenty-first, which was the next night at the RSA. Greg had stayed in Te Aroha as a training jockey. His hours were six a.m. to ten a.m., racing 20 or 30 horses, contracting his services at ten dollars a horse. He said, ‘Mum’s into country music.’

  Mum was Jean Smith, tiny, blonde, very pretty. She had an unusual quality about her. It was as though she carried a secret, was hiding something. Russell said Jean had a story; he suggested I come to their house in the morning.

  The next morning Jean said, ‘We were brought up on country music. We had a family band – banjo, piano accordion, mouth organ. It was just part of our everyday life. As a kid I thought, Oh god, here we go again! The instruments would come out, and so would the booze. But boy could they play. Country music is a beautiful thing. I realised how special it was as I got older. The melodies, the words – I often think country music can relate to your own life.

  ‘But it was my adopted grandfather who got me into it. He was an amazing old man, George Scanlon. He took me all over the countryside – talent quests, country music clubs. I really liked to sing and I started writing songs.

  ‘I was spotted one night at a club and taken to see Jack Riggir, Patsy Riggir’s dad, who was a singing tutor in Cambridge. About fifteen of us went to him for lessons. He would listen and give advice. He was a quiet, well-spoken man. Blind, but you could walk into a room and he’d know who you were, just like that.

  ‘At fifteen I was chosen to make a record in Australia. It was a contest: I made a demo tape at 1ZH in Hamilton and I was the one they picked. People had so much faith in me and that was really important because I was quite shy, had low self-esteem and all that rubbish. I had been raised in foster homes. Mum had died when I was five. Dad’s whole life had crumbled and he had turned to the bottle, but he took me back when I was eleven and he got a job at Waitoa.

  ‘When I won the contest, he said, “Wonderful, wonderful!” But then he had one of his moments and decided that no, I wasn’t going to do it. “Waste of time.” Maybe it was resentment. Jealousy. His drinking. I don’t know.

  ‘I lost all my confidence. He crushed my whole world. A month later I left home and that was that. I’ve never played in public since. I sing for my daughter and I sing for myself.’

  Russell said, ‘Go on, Jean.’ He handed her the Epiphone acoustic guitar she had owned since she was twelve. She said, ‘No. No.’ But her husband persisted, gently, and she picked up the guitar and sang in a pure beautiful voice for three intimate and exquisite minutes ‘Dust on Mother’s Old Bible’, a sentimental country ballad about a child who has lost her mother: ‘The night the angels called her…’

  That afternoon, while Bernie Eva and his crew were running around backstage setting up the national country awards show for the benefit of the general public, the Hauraki Country Music Club held its monthly show at the war memorial hall in Kerepēhi. Kerepēhi has a marae, a general store, a creek. A little boy said, ‘I go eeling, eh. They like sheep guts.’ The dairy factory closed down about 20 years ago. There were boarded-up shops, abandoned houses, an empty fertiliser shed. But it was hard to find a park outside the war memorial hall. The club was hosting South Auckland country music club members, who had chartered a
bus. Inside, the hall was packed, every seat taken, only a bit of room at the back for four women who line-danced, scuffing the wooden floor with their boots.

  The door fee was three dollars, the raffle tickets two dollars. First prize was a small hamper that included saveloys, a packet of chicken coconut rice, and dishwashing liquid. It bore out the unkind words of Bernie Eva: ‘Country music club people get their country music very cheap.’

  On the low stage, a tight five-piece backing band played behind a succession of nearly 30 singers. It was amateur hour for about four hours, music from the wide open spaces inside a hall full of workers and beneficiaries. The applause was vast and noisy – it was an afternoon of country and western. Kerepēhi raucously defied Eva’s edicts and yee-ha’d. There were rhinestone and rawhide, cowboy hats and cowboy boots, plus a lot of black.

  First up was Dave Carson, 85, in black hat, black trousers and black checked shirt, who wheezed out a melody from his squeeze box. He said from the stage, ‘This’ll set you right for the day. Or wrong. One of the two.’

  There was John Randolph, 62, a large, sombre man dressed entirely in black, who said, ‘I sang with a rock band. Then a mate asked me to look at country music. I never looked back. That was 35 years ago. The way I see it, he introduced me to the fellowship.’

  There was Brendon Ramsay, 29, who worked as dairy products inspector for Progressive supermarkets. He held on to his guitar as if it were a church icon, something precious and dear. ‘I’m on the road most of the time. I’m always playing country in the car. Hank Snow, Joy Adams, Hamilton Bluegrass Band – did you know they’re originally from South Auckland?’

  There was Eddie Reidy, 90, who arrived with his third wife Irene, fifty-seven. She said, ‘All except one of his six kids are older than me. He’s had a full life, New Zealand national umpire for bowls, a calf judge, St John’s volunteer. When he gets up singing in the morning I know he’s happy.’