Chapter 5: Maryborough Still - Last of the Loose Ends

Chapter 5: Maryborough Still – Last of the Loose Ends.

Prelude to Chapter 5

Dear Readers,

Sometimes I start something with a definite plan as to how it will proceed – so it was with this seemingly short account of my experiences thus far in the world. I have in the past begun what was to be a happy, hilarious story or poem, and, almost without my noticing, it has turned into something sad and sort of serious.

I find, too, that I often change direction as interesting little tracks emerge off to the side of the road I am travelling.

So it is with this ramble through my life. I have always been interested in looking at how certain people and incidents have shaped my character, my beliefs, my values and my life’s direction at times. This current project has evoked memories I thought I had forgotten (or hoped I had), and small incidents which I now see have made me who and what I am and do.

So, I feel you should be aware that this will be a much more meandering journey than I had intended, and will not be as structured as first thought. Please let me know if you would like to exit the roller-coaster at any time because it is not the ride you signed on for, or for any other reason.

With much warmth,

Norm

I Am the Breadman – Creativity without Logic: By the time I was four, I was often sent to the local bakery, two blocks away, to buy a loaf of bread. On my way home, I would always take a few judicious, undetectable nibbles at the end of the warm, crisp crust. One summer’s day, I nibbled more than I ought, which could have serious consequences when I returned home. Even at that early age, my unique problem-solving creativity provided what seemed a satisfactory solution. The sense of contentment I felt on my return home was soon shattered by several harsh words, a belting, and bed without my dinner. Apparently my Mother quickly realised that the grass clippings with which I had stuffed the middle of the loaf had NOT come from the bakery. Another lesson in life – when taking action, one should look beyond the desired consequences for possibly undesirable outcomes.

Saturday Morning Rituals: Every Saturday morning brought pain and pleasure. The pain was the weekly dose of Epsom Salts that Les and I drank under Ern’s watchful eyes. After that did its work in cleaning out the system, I completed my household chores to the delightful background (at definitely foreground volume, because Mother and Ern were at work in the shop) to the Hillbilly Hour on Radio 4MB Maryborough. Thus I gained my passion for country music, much to the sorrow of many friends (and family) who just cannot see the beauty in Kris Kristofferson’s  … music.

The Failed Entrepreneur: I arrived home from school one sunny afternoon, with joy and ambition surging harmoniously through my veins. That very day I had learned how to make glue by simply mixing flour and water together. Mother and Ern were at work until at least 5:30, I raced through my chores in forty minutes. By the time the folks came home, I would be RICH! I raided our store of little empty jam bottles, mixed up some glue, wrote a most attractive cardboard sign (with the words “Glue for Sale – sixpence”), and set up a small table in the middle of the front yard. Unfortunately, the first potential customers drove up in a van emblazoned with “Ern Saunders – The Mattress King”.                                            

I learned two major lessons from this: NEVER trust your folks when they say they will be home at a certain time; it will ALWAYS be earlier! Secondly, quiet suburban streets, even in bustling cities such as Maryborough (population at that time – 24,000) are not usually the best places to set up stalls selling home-made products. I would suggest art/craft/produce markets to the budding young business tycoon.

Mr. Magic - Horrie Davies, M.L.A.: When I was in Grade 4, our local member of Parliament visited Maryborough West State Primary School, and, to the joy of all students, he told us that the following Monday would be a holiday, in honour of his visit. What a rousing cheer he received! When I mentioned it, with great excitement, at the dinner table, my Mother and Ern laughed – the following Monday was actually a Public Holiday. Right then and there I decided that politicians were not to be trusted. How perceptive was that?

Christmas Morning at Cunningham’s Gap: We were on holidays, and travelling early on Christmas morning from Warwick to Brisbane. Ern stopped the car at a particularly lovely look-out spot on a fine, clear morning, and we stopped quietly admiring the scene, listening to the crack of the whipbirds. I was eight, and a few days previously I had broken one of Ern’s inflexible rules. He had caught me, in his rear vision mirror, reading in the car while he was driving. The punishment for that was a belting, but I was allowed to choose when the punishment would be administered. So, on this Christmas morning, after we had duly admired the scenery, he said, “Well, Norman, when do you want your belting?”  I thought, a belting will be gentle on this day, so I said, “Now, please Ern.” (I always had to say please when asking for my beltings). He thrashed me with his belt. The lesson? Never ask a complete atheist for deferred belting on significant days in the Christian Calendar.

That’s Entertainment!: We had an old valve radio at home, which Les and I listened to when Mother and Ern went out at night, usually to the movies (Maryborough boasted three cinemas – the Wintergarden, the Embassy, and the Bungalow).  We had to be very careful, because Ern had an uncanny knack of knowing when we had been into mischief while they were out. Les or I (usually me) would peer up the street through the lounge room window to spot the van as it came round the corner. Then it was off with the radio, and back to bed as quick as quick! Ern would sometimes catch us out by feeling the radio valves – if they were warm, we were in trouble. Ah, but the joys of radio back then. On clear nights we could pick up Radio 2UE in Sydney, where legendary DJs such as Bob Rogers, Wade, ‘Pally’ Austin, and a young man named John Laws would play the latest hits from America. John Laws, who had a really deep voice, made his own version of a hit song by an American singer, Robin Luke.  I can still sing what I remember of that song, “Uh, oh, Susie, Darlin’” for those who ask.

Occasionally we went to the pictures with our folks, usually, for some reason, on Sunday nights, to the Embassy. I remember seeing ‘Joe Palooka’ and ‘D.O.A.’ (Dead on Arrival), and lots of westerns. But not much else.

Very occasionally Les and I were allowed to go the Wintergarden on Saturday morning to see the Cartoon Carnival and the weekly serial.  

The radio was switched on after dinner, and we listened to classic (?) Australian drama, humour and game shows, including: Here Comes O’Malley (Police drama); Portia Faces Life (soap opera); Life with Dexter (comedy); When a Girl Marries (for all those who are in love and  those who … can remember); Pick-a-Box (Game Show with Bob and Dolly Dyer); It Pays to be Funny (Bob Dyer game show) the Jack Davey Show (game show), and Laugh till you cry (comedy).

Once or twice a week we walked around the block, saying hello to neighbours out in their yards (no high fences in those days).

Les and I were allowed to buy a magazine for children, ‘Chucklers’ Weekly’ for about six months, after which it went broke. Les also joined the Red Ryder Fan Club (a Western comic strip written and drawn by an Australian). He had a Red Ryder Sheriff’s badge with which he taunted me  .. until .. the creator of Red Ryder was convicted of a violent murder  and jailed for life in New South Wales. He who laughs last …

Sunday afternoons were the highlight of my week, for I was allowed to sit in the lounge and listen to the radio, which played the hit music of the day. My passion for creating numbered lists stems, I think, from listening to Gillespie’s Top Six Hit Parade (later expanded to Top Eight). It the time bridging the music of the older generation (Naughty Lady of Shady Lane, Red Sails in the Sunset; Kid McCoy, Sweet Violets, Hi lily, hi lily, hi lo, Mocking Bird Hill, You are my sunshine, Irene Goodnight, and Doggie in the Window) and singers such as Doris Day, Patti Page, Perry Como, the Platters, to the advent of rock/pop music (Roy Orbison, Johnny Horton, Johnny O’Keefe, Col Joye, Elvis Presley, the Everly Brothers, Connie Francis, and all the other Bobbys and Johnnys) I loved it! Except for Elvis. My brother’s wife Peggy adored Elvis, and to me, she was a generation older, so it was not my music. For me, it was Only the Lonely, Bird Dog, and Battle of New Orleans (which included the line ‘and we fought the bloody British in the town of New Orleans’, and radio stations all bleeped the ‘bloody’ out I especially liked Roy Orbison, Jim Reeves, Col Joye, and Johnny O’Keefe.

My Pet: The only pet I ever had was Kingy the Budgerigar. He was a beautiful blue-grey bird, and I got him when I was 15. We clipped his wing, so he could be out of the cage without flying far away, and he rode on my shoulder to the shops, and helped us in the garden - when we were weeding and seeding, Kingy was feeding. I sang him to sleep every night with his three favourite songs: He’ll have to go (Jim Reeves); Bye Bye Baby (Col Joye) and All for the love of a girl (Johnny Horton). It was a terrible parting when I went away to Brisbane to work, and I never saw him again. My brother Bert phoned me one day, and, over a bad connection, I though he said, “Jimmy’s dead”. O no, thought I, my eldest brother, dead, and so young! So I asked Bert, “How did he die?”, whereupon Bert replied, “Ern stood on him in the garden’. It was my poor little Kingy, crushed under the tyrant’s heel![1]

Foods of my Childhood: I won’t bore you further with details of the 437 vegetables and fruit we grew, many of which I was force-fed (eggplant, sweet potato, turnips). Our income was not large, so the meats we ate mostly consisted of: tripe, kidney, oxtail, liver, brains and mince. I loved mince! Occasionally we may have had stewing steak, and sometimes my Mother bought a hambone and we had pea and ham soup. I think we had roast beef occasionally, on special occasions, and roast chicken several times a year. The meal always included four or five vegetables, and Ern insisted that we ate what we liked least first, a habit which I still have, as anyone who has ever watched me dissect a hamburger with the lot would have noticed.

Why I do not like the Gardens in Alice Street Brisbane: Margaret, the Love of my life, wondered for many years why I never enjoyed visiting the Gardens in Alice Street, until one day I told her the reason.

When I was eight, we were in Brisbane on holiday, and, as often happened, Mum and Ern went off to do some business, and Les and I were left to wander throughout the gardens looking for empty soft drink bottles, which we cashed in at the kiosk. Les always got more money than I did, except this once.

A man came up to me, and asked me if I would like to have two shillings. Back then, there was no Stranger Danger program, and we had always been taught to respect our elders. So, I innocently said ‘Yes.’

He took me into the toilet and, simply masturbated with me sitting on his lap. I knew there was something wrong, but, I knew nothing of sex, and had never experienced ‘bad’ people. Afterwards, he gave me two shillings, and went away.

Les was peeved that I collected lots more money that day, but I never told him how I got the money.

Here is the important point: I never told my mother or my stepfather, either, because I knew without doubt that I would get a belting. The first person I ever told was Margaret, nearly forty years later.

Normie of the Magpie Patrol: Most boys joined the Boy Scouts when they were 11, and many of those graduated from Cub Scouts that they joined when they were 7. Les joined when he was 14, and left after a year. I was allowed to join when I was 14, and remained a scout until I left home just after my 16^th birthday. I thoroughly enjoyed myself in my scouting life, and became responsible for our troop’s entertainments at district camps. (My major success was to recite Banjo Paterson’s ‘The Geebung Polo Club’, while the other troop members acted it out. To make the moment of fame last longer, I wrote an advertising song for Burpington’s Bubble Gum, sung to the tune of ‘Running Bear’, by Johnny Preston, and we sang it before and after the dramatisation).

What surprises me most, looking back across the years, is that Ern, that anti-Christian, anti-war man, allowed me to join, and stay a member, of a Christian, military-style youth group. He even allowed me to sell programs for the film ‘Bridge on the River Kwai’, for which our scout troop received a donation, and all uniformed program sellers were admitted free to the film.

Great Literature – Meet Norm: As almost all of my past students know, we gather many of our habits, preferences, beliefs, values and likes/dislikes our family in those first critical years of life. My mother and stepfather were voracious readers, and Les and I were allowed to read any of the books in the in the large, glass-fronted bookcase in the lounge room. This meant that I grew up on a diet of paperback Western novels written by Australian authors. They all had similar storylines, with authors named Brad, or Johnny, or Reb or Marshall. I continued to read these books until I was into my 40s, then finally they lost their appeal. The other genre that packed the shelves was, again, paperback novels by Australian authors who wrote about hard-boiled American private detectives. Three names come to mind particularly – Marc Brody; Carter Brown, and Larry Kent (I Hate Crime!). Carter Brown novels always had a lovely blonde or brunette woman on the cover, in low-cut dress, either smoking a cigarette or falling down dead.

I won a bursary in primary school (have I mentioned this? If so, well, I never won many prizes at school, so I’m proud of this one). It allowed me to borrow any books I liked from the adult section of the Maryborough City Library. Naturally, I borrowed a huge number of westerns (Pocomoto was a series I liked) and what detective stories the library held – they didn’t stock Carter Brown or the others we had at home.

The High School library had lots of adult books, but I followed Les’ lead, and mainly read the Billy Bunter books; Tarzan, and the Billabong books. The only adult book I recall reading was ‘Advise and Consent’ by Allen Drury, about American politics, and I enjoyed it immensely.  

Norm the Young Writer:  The only subject I excelled in throughout all of my schooling was English. (or should that be ‘is English?) My first story was “The Magic Gun”, but no trace of it remains in my memory except the title. I also had ideas for stories (westerns or murder stories – ‘Murder on Pleasure Island’), and I started to write a musical with a goodies vs. baddies western theme. This lasted until someone told me that my first song, words and tune, were taken from the hit musical ‘Oklahoma’. The opening line was” ‘Oh, the sheriff and the badman must be friends”, and even I could see a faint resemblance to “The Farmer and the Cowboy should be friends”.

The reason I mention this is that writing was about the only thing that Ern ever thought I was good at. He even constructed a simple ‘story-starter’ device. It consisted of several cardboard circles ranging from about six inches to two feet in diameter, all slotted into a spindle. Each circle was divided into different headings. The little circle was the type of story (humorous, western, mystery, murder, etc.); another was for the setting) island, city, farm, outer space); others for the characters and their roles (in the plot – murderer, victim, hero…) and occupations. When I span the circles, I would have a random selection that gave me all the important bones that I could build my story on.  

I think that is sufficient for this chapter. The next one WILL cover Brisbane – 1961 – 1965.

[1] I am contemplating attaching a short story I wrote about another pet I would have liked.

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