Christmas
In the months leading to the end of First Class, we counted down the days to Christmas Day on a large painted calendar to one side of the blackboard, a banner above it reading: ‘Christmas Day is the Special Day, but counting down to the Special Day is half the fun!’ We must have crossed off a day every day for three whole months.
When the special morning finally arrived, my grandmother surprised me by being even more excitedly impatient to open the presents than us kids were, insisting I go in and rouse my parents so the ceremonies could begin.
‘Go on! Go in and wake Joseph and Barb!’
Josie had brought my mother up through the end of the Great Depression and, as our presents were handed out and opened, she’d always insist we keep the wrapping paper. During the Depression and Josie’s own childhood way before it, the same pieces of Christmas wrapping paper had been recycled for use year after year.
At Christmas 1975, aged seven, I had a strong sense, even as I was opening present after present, that I was being given too many. It was the year I received ‘Mouse Trap’ and so many others that, even though I was eminently grateful to my parents, I felt they’d actually overdone it; however, I knew in the same moment that my parents were showering me in this way to show me how grateful they were. I could see it very distinctly in Dad’s face as he looked to Mum then back to me. He was proud of me.
Though I still couldn’t stay out of trouble at home, here I was, having made it through my first and now my second year of school where, somehow, I was never in trouble. And I wasn’t just doing well at sums and reading; I found them easy. I’d even won first prize for something. I’d forgotten all about the picture I’d drawn of the Nativity scene, I didn’t even know there’d been a competition, nor did I think it was a particularly good drawing, but it was highly complex. Sort of like Round John Virgin had brought along a few mates. Bazza phoned Gazza phoned Shazza, the manger was so crowded there were people up in the rafters. Nevertheless, on the last day of the year, Mother Superior megaphoned my name in front of the entire school, commanding my presence on her high balcony where she shook my hand and presented me with my certificate.
That year I was given the best Christmas present I ever got, a semi remote-controlled plane. It was marvellous, a petrol-powered thing controlled by wires, and something I’d wanted really badly. You started it up and it flew around you in a circle. At least, that’s what the exciting TV commercial had claimed and what it said on the box. In fact, once you got really good at it, you could even fly it against your friend’s plane, chasing each other around the circle, the object being to cut each other’s tail ribbons off with your propeller!
Dad and I never got it going once. Thus it became my best present ever for about ten minutes. So, I suppose my actual best present ever had been my first bike – the second-hand one with the cushion tied on for a seat – closely followed by my ‘Etch-a-Sketch’. On the point of my ‘first bike’, it was in fact my first and last bike, as a present, that is. My next bike was my brother’s old bike, a Speedwell, the deeds of which were transferred to me according to the ancient laws of ‘The HandMe-Down System’.
I suppose I should add that, at the time, I also very definitely considered the whole thing as Jesus’ birthday. I really did. It made the whole presents thing even more wonderful and it was such a thrill to be taken to Midnight Mass in my pyjamas. Imagine! Staying up till midnight! And not even being in trouble for it! Jesus must surely love me. This was some kind of holy miracle.
Chapter Four
Simple Times – Simple Pleasures
My personal idea of Heaven? Those holiday moments riding bikes everywhere with Juliette and particularly down the alleyways of Prahran! I loved those cobblestoned alleyways of Melbourne. They held a mystique for me, something ancient and special and so deliciously different to Epping.
We scared ourselves shitless one time when, sneaking into a storage shed down an alley, we came across what we only later realised were dress shop dummies all wrapped up in plastic. At the time they were Egyptian mummies!
This incident seemed to have a profound affect on Juliette as, from that day on, she was not allowed to watch horror movies. (Wimp, Juliette.) In fact, she gained a bad reputation for having a vivid imagination. She told me a ghostly white witch with goblin companions lived in the toilet at night and there were definitely monsters (and a wolf) under her bed.
In the hours of daylight, however, Juliette knew no fear. Swimming at the beach, I suspect she actively sought the undertow. One near-death episode I actually shared with her. Now, I’d never been that far out past the breakers. I’d never been past them at all. Okay, I’d never even been near them. But I was determined not to let Juliette call me a sissy for once. After a while I got used to the swell and started enjoying myself.
I felt exhilarated and, secretly, bloody proud of myself. As the shark-spotting plane flew overhead and someone’s car horn started honking madly for some unknown reason, I could just make out Juliette’s mother waving in wild glee at all the fun we were having on our rubber surf mats. Though, somehow, I’d never seen anyone’s mother quite so frantically happy for them. We waved just as frantically back and, as we found out later, continued swimming with the sharks.
We also liked climbing fences and trees, but I had to draw the line at jumping off Juliette’s garage roof. Juliette was a giving child and tutored her little brother in this art at the age of five. Accuracy was the key, the target a pile of raked leaves, yours truly taking it upon himself to keep the pile raked as high as possible between their jumps. The boy was a reluctant learner but pretty quickly mastered landing. His initial jump was not something he had consciously planned to do, though he didn’t dob on Juliette and soon there was no stopping his leaps.
Another thing I drew the line at was skateboard riding. It just looked a bit suicidal for my liking. My friend Steve was a champion. His favourite direction? Downhill. The catch was that his favourite hill had gravel at the bottom, so the dismount was very important. I was content just to watch. If he got the death wobbles outside No. 14, by No. 20 I knew which section of gravel we’d be picking out of his palms and his knees.
I much preferred our runs up and down the street with Steve’s labrador, Sam. Steve would let him go up to the neighbours’ pond and bark at the goldfish. More than once the owner of the goldfish had to come down and talk to Steve’s parents as Sam was giving the fish heart attacks: WOOF-WOOF-WOOF! (Another fish floats to the surface.)
But most of all, Steve and I loved exploring! Steve’s house backed onto the bush and we would strike intrepidly into it. We’d be gone for hours scaling cliffs, plummeting gorges, crossing creeks, and all without mobile phones to contact Mum and Dad in case we got into trouble. When Steve and I explored, a ‘Two-Way Wrist TV’ was something only Dick Tracy had.
For me, a state of high excitement was induced by the mere invitation to go over to a friend’s house to ‘play under the garden hose’. Better still if they had a garden sprinkler for you to dance around. Out-of-Body Happiness!
Steve had a little saying, something he used to come out with in quiet moments. One day, we were sitting on the street gutter, not saying or doing anything other than sitting there, both looking straight ahead. Neither of us had said anything for a while when Steve pronounced, ‘It’s good, isn’t it,’ by which I knew he meant ‘being alive’.
As a friend, by contrast to Juliette, Steve was exactly what I needed. I felt safe with him. But it was a thrilling security. It wasn’t something he did, or said one day, or many days; it was in his smile, serene and infectious. That look in his big, hazel eyes that said, ‘Today is for us. I don’t know what it might bring, but it will be excellent.’
We never argued let alone fought, or even really ever disagreed. We were as one, and as one, our only priority was fun, our sole professional concern. It ruled out all else and governed the agenda. Unlike me, with all my nervous energy, Steve was calm and quietly confi
dent. He wasn’t a big talker, like me. The bond between us was unspoken and constant, and he turned into the best friend a growing boy like me could ever have.
The Valiant
Milk came to Howard Place in glass bottles with cream at the top of each. Mothers were where they should be – at home – hence the daily bread came around in a panel van. It had to. In the suburbs, the nearest shop could be a mile away and mothers had no car. There was only one per family and father drove it to work.
Dad had an olive green 1967 Valiant Regal. In fact, we all had Valiants, Juliette’s and Steve’s families included. The interesting point about my father’s, however, was what he did to it. These were the days before fathers traded up the car every few years. They just kept the car they had for a long time instead. So, when its paint faded, my father hand-painted the Valiant, not in olive green, but lime green. I honestly don’t know how he chose that precise shade. It was hideous. A really bright lime green, almost fluorescent. Now, let me think …
He couldn’t have been radically colourblind. As a young man he’d passed the medical for the navy, so I can only assume he went into the paint shop, thought: Now, what colour was the car again? Ah, yes. Green. I’d like some cans of green paint, please. What shade of green? Oh, what’s cheapest? That stuff you’re trying to get rid of because nobody would want it in a pink fit even though this is the mid seventies, a decade infamous for its disgusting colour schemes? Yes. Yes, that’ll do nicely.
Then he went and hand-painted it. With a house brush. With house paint.
Word went around the cul-de-sac like wildfire. One resident was an amateur race car driver with a bunch of snazzy sports cars in a huge garage he used as a mechanical workshop. This man had never been to our house before, yet there he was, standing in our garage, aghast. ‘For God’s sake, Joe, what on
Earth are you doing?! I’ve got a spray-gun, the whole kit. I’ll get it for you, man! Stop what you’re doing and use that! Please!’ Dad thanked the man but declined the offer. He was half finished anyway.
The finished product of Dad’s work was stunning. Now Bridget’s constant mortification at being seen in ‘The Wog Chariot’ at all had been rendered even worse, if that were possible. Not my grandmother though; old Josie loved being driven around in the Valiant. It was a big, comfortable car. She was a big, comfortable woman. To this day, I think the old Valiants you see around are great. Steve drives a 1965 model, in fact. But in the 1970s, for some reason the sole element within the Australian population who considered the Valiant to be an enviable thing (with the exception of my grandmother) was the Greek community.
This point raises what must surely stand as one of the most mysterious social contradictions of 1970s Australia: The ‘Valiant/Charger Dichotomy’. Whereas the Chrysler ‘Valiant’ was, to Anglo-Saxon children, the very nadir of embarrassing, the Chrysler ‘Charger’ was the epitome of cool, undoubtedly due to the swingingly catchy advertising campaign that promoted it. Even from the family Valiant, if a Charger went past, kids would hang out the windows and make the ‘V’ peace sign with their fingers while yelling out the ad campaign slogan, ‘Heyyy, Charger!’ Driving anywhere, we were on constant surveillance for a Charger just so we could do it. Every kid wanted one and would have passed on Christmas if only Dad had brought one home.
The other distinctive thing about our Valiant was that it had the most God-awful vomit smell inside it. The odour in question had stemmed from …
‘The Dubbo Incident’
This was said to have occurred, by that country town’s local police, as a result of parental neglect, the facts of the case being as follows.
I had been kidnapped to Dubbo in the Wog Chariot. Some old friend of my father, schooled at the place I’d end up being sent to at the end of my childhood, met my father at uni becoming dentists. First and terminal stop: Dubbo. Thank Christ. The sign on the Zebra Motor Inn, main street Dubbo, proclaimed ‘COLOUR TV’, a boon to any young kid from North Epping. Arrived in motel room, checked TV guide: ‘4.30pm – Batman’. I switched it on. The intro to the show promised ‘BATMAN – IN COLOR!’ My father immediately directed it be turned off. So far, so bad.
On that Dubbo night, with my parents whipped away by their country friends to a country function, my older brother and sisters to a country dance the country friends had lined up for them, I was told I would be staying in the motel room. At that time I was a pretty obedient little boy. I would have liked to have had something excellent organised for me also, yet accepted it hadn’t been. Actually, it was quite a milestone for me. This was the first night of my life so far that I was to be left all by myself. I was a ‘big’ boy now. At least that was something, and it felt good.
The next day, having been gauged by now as an altruistic little Catholic soul for age seven, I was set the fitting chore of minding the youngest child of the Dubbo family while all the older people did something undisclosed. My reward would be that, later in the day, I would be taken for a flight in the aeroplane which the father of the Dubbo family owned. Seemed like a good deal to me! All I had to do was patiently look after their youngest the whole day, and the little tacker and I were shunted out to the sandpit beneath the porch at the back of the house.
I didn’t like being in that sandpit. We were there for hours and the kid couldn’t even talk properly yet. So, I pretended I was as junior as he was, just playing in the sandpit and guiding his castles within it. In a nutshell, it was my first experience of a total imposed drag. But it was okay, for I had been promised my first ever major reward at the end of my first ever banal appointed task.
Finally the magic hour came. I was driven to the Dubbo Aerodrome to have the promise of my first flight fulfilled. But the light was strangely failing. It was coming on dark, yet it must be all right; the adults knew what they were doing. They were responsible enough to fly an aeroplane! They’d made me a promise and would stick by it. Hell, at the age of seven, I’d kept my part of their bargain, and gladly. There could be no question that they wouldn’t also. It was their idea. Why should I question it?
I waited at the wire fence gate by the aerodrome apron as the Piper Cherokee landed and taxied past so close that I could see the beaming faces of my parents and big sister within the cockpit. They must have been beaming either because they’d just really enjoyed themselves, or so as to ease my first ever experience of adult betrayal in advance. As they got out of the aircraft, I said to the ‘big’ person minding me, ‘So. Now it’s my turn.’ Only then did someone say no as I remember completely losing it at them. Even Juliette would have been impressed.
The next day was a brilliantly blue and sunny one. Having been taken to the aerodrome again, I turned to the Dubbo father slash alleged promise-keeper slash pilot. To this seven-year-old, the necessity for an aviator’s system of pre-flight double-checks had become crystal clear.
‘Are we going up in the sky today?’
Plainly, this man had, in all his children, known no precedence of righteous challenge, for he answered me as if I was a bomb that could re-explode at any second.
We took off in the Piper Cherokee with the pilot’s son whom I’d ‘minded’ the previous day strapped in next to me. We promptly had to come down again as, going into a steep sideways bank, high above the fields of Dubbo, the little kid started crying. I could have stayed up there until night fell.
The next day, a country tennis day had been organised! I didn’t play tennis, I’d have been too young to join in even if I did, I didn’t know any of the other children there, the little kid was too small to communicate and the day was going to be a long, hot one. I tried to find some way of amusing myself and had a damn good look around seeking what that might be, only to find the place was a complete fun-vacuum. I put this to Mum. She was busy chatting with all the country people and suggested I have a sleep on the back seat of the Valiant. Which I obediently tried.
I’m not certain how long or how deeply I slept, but I awoke having vomited so resoundingly all ove
r and down the crack of that back seat that they never completely got the pong out of the leather.
In any case, ‘The Dubbo Incident’ had sent a clear message to my family. Ignore Justin again at your peril. For the car had no airconditioning and the drive back from Dubbo to Sydney was long and hot.
My sister Bridget is a primary school teacher and to this day has a morbid fear of vomit. Ah, the Wonder Years … Anyway, she deserved it. She used to terrify me by talking into the fan to make her voice sound like the Darleks from Doctor Who. (I’m all right now, but me nerves are bad.)
Dubbo was the site of various scarring incidents …
Now, these country parents were good people. Though they seemed to regard everything, as did their children, as unconditionally sewn-up wonderful. They loved their children deeply and were loved right back. I suppose, as these kids were away at boarding school the majority of their young lives, they sought to make every family moment count. Unlike these kids, that was one hell I never had to endure. Unlike these kids, I had the constant daily sanctuary of home. Also unlike these kids, I never had to endure an existence of boarding school food. Though, unfortunately for me, I suffered the flow-on effect of their exposure to it.
One Dubbo morning at breakfast I asked one of them what this substance was before me. ‘Yeah, porridge. It’s beautiful!’ came the enthusiastically gobbling reply.
I didn’t return with: ‘Then how come it tastes like warm shit?’ I just said something like: ‘Thank you’. Man, was that ever a mistake.
Don’t get me wrong, they were an excellent flock of kids, a fact that became all the more apparent as they grew older. It’s just that they never seemed to ask ‘but whyyy?’ like I did. I suppose they could hardly afford to, if they wanted to survive the ‘group-think’ jungle of boarding school.
Goodbye Crackernight Page 6
