Usher Nazis and Choo Choo Bars

Nana and Grandad Smith lived at 25 Davison Street, Brunswick when I was growing up.  It was a single fronted brick terrace house with blue stone cobbled gutters on the street and in the lane that ran down the back of the house.

As with Dad's family many of Mum's relatives lived in the same general vicinity and so when we visited their were always other members of the family present.  When I was a toddler my great-Grandmother Janet Woolley lived there and I still have memories of playing hide and seek where she would let me hide my head under her apron. It was out of sight out of mind, if I couldn't see anyone then obviously they couldn't see me either.

Nana's brother, Uncle Alf, who won the Military Medal in World War 1, had lung cancer and Nana nursed him until his death which seemed a long time coming at the time.  I don't remember too much about him but I did inherit his 3/4 size bed [a bit smaller than a double] and thought I was a king when I got into it.  It was the bed I slept in until I got married in 1982.  It never occured to me at the time that it was the bed an old uncle had died in.   Incidentally the citation for his medal states that it was awarded when he entered the trenches and captured thirty Turks alone.  Must have been a pretty gutsy effort.

That bed had one other unfortunate accident.  At my 21st Birthday, Dad had invited a young bloke he worked with.  He was always bringing home people he'd met for meals and the obligatory sharing of the beer.  Unfortunately this bloke got absolutely paralytic and was put to sleep in my bed which he promptly wet.   Took days for the mattress to dry.

But as I sometimes do, I'll move from the digression back to the topic at hand, which I should have said early on is about what we did in Brunswick on Saturday afternoons.  Often if we weren't at the footy watching our beloved blues play at Princes Park, we would be sent off to the pictures at the Padua Theatre in Sydney Road, Brunswick.    It was a big deal for little kids to walk to those places by themselves in those days and generally there were at least four of us, Karen and I and our cousins Gavin, Kerry and Phillip at various times.

This was a typical art deco theatre of the time, the stalls down below and the expensive seats where the more well off could sit up top in the dress circle.

The Padua had been built by Hoyts in 1937 and was closed in 1968 much to our sorrow.   It was then leased to a couple of Itialian blokes Tony and Franco Zeccola who re-opened it in August 1969 as the Metropolitan playing Italian language films which wasn't much help to us.    This continued until December 1981 when the doors closed for the last time before it was demolished in January and February of 1982.

A full page article in The Argus Newspaper in Melbourne was published on 23rd July 1937 announcing the opening.   It seated 2000 people, had such luxuries as foot warmers, air conditioning and a crying room for children.  The first weeks entertainment included Charles Rainsford and his Swing Orchestra on stage with screening of the Errol Flynn and Olivia De Haviland movie The Charge of the Light Brigade.   The paper also announced that there would be short screening of the Walt Disney Mickey Mouse cartoon Mickey's Circus in full colour.

In 1954 a cinemascope camera system was installed which allowed the display of wide screen movies and I can remember one in particular that stuck in my mind.  How the West was Won was a mind blowing movie on the big screen at the time.

But I had other favourites that still stick in my mind to this day.   Such classics as Snow White and the Three Stooges.

Ivanhoe.

The Black Knight

And what was a trip to the pictures without lollies. Favourites were White Knights and Choo Choo Bars which turned your entire mouth black and which would last almost the entire movie they were so chewy. And of course there were the boxes of jaffas. I wasn't one for rolling them down the aisle, much better to eat them but maybe the reason for rolling them was in the hope that an usher Nazi might step on some and fall over.

When the theatre opened in 1937 The Argus reported that the entire work force was male.  Certainly by the time we were going in the mid sixties many of the usherettes were women.  I am pretty sure that they were women, but some of them had mustaches that would have made Groucho Marx proud, and voices that reminded me of the bad guys in the World War 2 movies.  "Feet off Seat" and "Quiet Down" were growled at the kids whilst London Blitz Spotlights were shone into our faces.  I truly thought they may have been Nazis in disguise and I feared for the lives of the kids who were occasionally grabbed by the ear and escorted out never to be seen again.  Woe betide anyone who was actually found to be in the wrong seat.  I was pretty certain that such a heinous offence must have meant the gas chamber or hanging for them.

What movies stick in your mind from your childhood?

Of Chow Food and Other Things

Shopping was very different when I was a kid.  There were no large suburban shopping malls, no Friday night, all day Saturday nor Sunday Shopping.  In fact it was even hard to find a petrol station open on a Sunday or a milk bar open after midday if they were open at all.

In the sixties much of the shopping was done at local strip shopping centres.  For us that meant Bennettswood on the corner of Station Street and Burwood Road, well before it was divided and became Burwood Highway.  Everything we needed was there, a Foodland grocery store, a green grocers, a butchers, a newsagent, a milk bar, a fish and chip shop and a Chinese food shop.

There were no supermarkets.  Grocery stores were where you went to buy bottled, canned and packaged food and if Mum didn't go to Bennettswood we'd go to Box Hill and go to what I think was Permewans in Station Street.   The groceries were brought home either in string bags that Mum had taken with her or in a box collected from a pile inside the store.

It was usually a bit of a rush because the shops closed at 6 O'Clock.  Friday nights were also Fish and Chip night which were always bought at Bennettswood in a store run by a Greek Family just as the Green Grocers was down the road a bit.   Always there was a visit to the newsagent and Mum would buy herself Best Bets and Truth for the form guides so she could study them and before putting her bets on at the TAB on Saturdays and we three kids would get a comic.   I loved going home and scoffing the fish and chips while we watched Zig and Zag on TV then curling up in bed and being allowed to read my comics before Mum would come down and tell us to turn off the light.

Sometimes we would buy Chinese (Chow) food usually just dim sims and spring rolls for me because that was in the days before I liked fried rice and other Chinese cuisine.  But in those days you took your own saucepans into the store for the cooks to fill up.

In the days before Dad went to work at Uncle Ivan's Stockade Hotel as a second job, Saturday mornings were haircut day.  We'd drive down early park at the back of the shops near the Town Hall and then we'd have a footrace to the shops.  Me and Dad, just the two of us, him striding out like the professional sprinter he had been and me scurrying along flat out keeping up but always managing to beat him.  Thanks Dad for letting me win, but why did you insist I got the "college cut" haircut?

There was always a visit to the TAB in those early days too.  Later on when one opened in East Burwood on the corner of Middleborough and Burwood Roads we would head up there late on Saturday mornings.  Mum would usually also but Dad a dozen bottles of VB and herself a flagon of sherry in the bottle shop that opened near the TAB.  And if we were very lucky we might end up with another comic for the weekend as well.  As I got older and earnt some pocket money, or saved my lunch money from school [and that's another story] I'd buy a few more myself, keeping in mind that they were only 15 to 20 cents back then.

I remember Dad getting very excited when the first Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet opened in Station Street Box Hill and sometimes we'd head down there and buy a bucket - no fancy burgers or wraps in those days, in fact, if memory serves me well, I'm  not even sure that you could get chips, so we'd also stop at the fish and chip shop and order a dollars worth there before coming home.  Dad would always say it was finger looking good.

At some time in the 70's Dad decided to change fish and chip shops after finding a Chinese owned store in Canterbury Road near the Middleborough Road corner.   For some reason it seemed fresher, certainly the batter was different, fluffy and crunchy.  I think Dad may have supplied the store with paper when has was a commercial traveller (or a salesman for those unfamiliar with that term).   Even there though, whilst the food was encased in clean white butchers paper the outer wrapping was always yesterdays newspapers.

Butchers, were different in those days too.   They were the only place you could get meat, none of it was pre-wrapped and the floors were always covered in saw dust.   The cool stores inside the shops held whole sides of lamb, beef and pork.   If you wanted chops or a leg of lamb it would be cut straight of the carcass in front of you.  No hiding out the back, sliced or sawn off, wrapped in paper and carried out in a string bag.

Home deliveries were done.  You could get your groceries delivered at little or no charge, the Loys man delivered lemonade, Mr Peowrie delivered our briquettes.  At some stage in the 60's, Mr Whippy appeared on our streets and we were often lucky enough to be given some money so we could rush out and get a choctop ice cream while the familiar tinny sound of Greensleeves was played over his loud speaker.  The doctor even did home visits in those days and I can remember Mum being laid up with migraine headaches and needing Dr Hewitt to visit and give her an injection.   On those days Aunty Hazel would sometimes look after us until Dad got home.

In October 1960 Chadstone Shopping Centre opened and it was at that time the first regional shopping centre in Melbourne and the largest in Australia.  Myer was down one end and Coles New World Supermarket at the other end of an open aired double sided strip of shops.   The thing I remember most about it was that it had escalators and they were the only ones outside the city.  At the bottom of them, up the Coles end was Tim the Toyman's, imagine a whole store dedicated to toys.  Karen and I collected little ceramic Disney characters.  I also got cowboys and indians, match box cars and lego on occasions and Karen got clothes for her Barbie dolls.  As I got older I graduated to Airfix models, firstly model aeroplanes and later on plastic model soldiers which I would spend hours painting in my bedroom.

Life somehow seemed less hectic then.  We didn't need 24 hour shopping.  We didn't need to have everything in one spot.  You knew the local shopkeepers by name and could find what you needed when you needed it without having to rush, even though things weren't open for as long.  Explain that one to me :)

Woolen Trousers, Levis and Bum Cracks

Must admit that my favourite jeans are Levi 101's.  Pulling on a pair with button up fly is like meeting an old friend.  Of course these days the waist has gotten somewhat bigger than that of my first pair circa 1974.

It was a long time before Mum agreed to let me wear denim.  She'd send me to the snow in shorts in winter and off to school in grey woollen sorts all year round but there wasn't a pair of long legged trousers to be seen anywhere in my single wardrobe at Box Hill South.  Until Form 1 that is.

That year, 1969, we had an excursion at the end of the year to the gold mining town of Maldon and I was the somewhat embarrassed wearer of the only pair of long pants I owned - brown checked woollen trousers.  At least I was warm but when everyone else is wearing jeans it was a bit hard to take.

Mum eventually realised that maybe denim wasn't so bad after all and I got a pair of Stirling jeans - the ones with the checkered flag logo and a really cool pocket on the side of the leg where you could fit a comb.  Not that I needed one because they were the years when Dad would take me up to the barbers on the corner of Middleborough and Eley Roads for a college cut.   These days it would be called a number one.

After the Stirling jeans came my first really expensive pair - Amco Heavyweights with a suede patch on the back.  Not quite Levis but I was getting there.  Of course as I got older and graduated to Lee Jeans which were bought at a mens wear store in Flinders street in the City next to Lindrums Pool Hall.  If you read this Andrew help me out here.

And as we got older the jeans were pulled down a little further exposing both the few pubic hairs we had at the front and the bum crack at the back - unless Mum was around of course.

Mid to late 70's the fashion changes again.  The legs got wider and Juz Jeans and Staggers were the brand of choice.  I bought a pair of Staggers that were so tight I could barely move.  The sales girl told me they would stretch but after a couple of wears I gave them to my sister Karen because my voice kept getting higher.

Another thing I remember about the jeans of Burwood High days were that for a while there is was really cool to wear them as low down as possible, showing a few pubic hairs if you had them or exposing the bum crack if you didn't.  Of course we had graduated from y fronts to jockettes in those days which were pretty brief and not big enough to show above the waist of the jeans anyway.

Jeans are still my trouser of choice these days and over the years I've gone through the plain navy denim, light blue denim, brown denim and white denim.  The there were the acid wash and stone washed versions in black or navy mostly with legs that varied from stove pipe to wide flares.  But through all that the 501's have remained the favourite.

Meat and Three Veg

I'm writing this post on Sunday night with the smell of a beef casserole simmering on the stove in the background and remembering that as I was growing up the food we ate was very much a part of the daily and weekly ritual.

I wrote in the post Of Chow Food and Other Things about our regular Friday night feeds of Fish and Chips but there was a fairly standard menu served in hour house when I was growing up.  One night would be chops, sausages, mashed potatoes and peas, another sausages eggs and chips, yet another spaghetti bolognese,  and of course the Sunday lunch time roast when we weren't out visiting relatives or having barbecues.

Karen and I had to either set and clear the table each night or dry the dishes. For some reason we used to fight over the former, mainly because it meant we could sit down earlier in front of the TV and watch the Flintstones or Gilligans Island.

Most nights, Dad wasn't home.   Most nights he wouldn't get home before we went to bed but would come in some time later, under the weather and smelling of the front bar and any of several pubs he frequented over those years.   But this is a post about the food we ate, not the bad times, I'll leave that for another time.

Sunday nights we usually had something light, usually toasted sandwiches in front of the telly.    A night without having to set the table was bliss.   I know there are families who share meals around the table and Raels and I try to do that now.   Maybe it was the fact that eating at the table reminded me too much that Dad was absent that it wasn't a tradition I had with my own kids as they were growing up, but is something I enjoy now when they do come around for meals with us.   But I digress again.

Mum was a good cook, but not an adventurous one and that may have been because we had fairly spartan tastes and any time she did stray from the meat and three veg, like the time she tried to serve us sheep brains and I came very close to vomiting, or when she regularly tried to serve up Brussels sprouts.  To this day I don't like them.

But the roast potatoes, ahhhhhh, I still haven't tasted better, even after all these years.   And Dad's barbecues were as good as anyone could ever cook, charcoaled chops and snags, and best of all, flat round chips fried in dripping over a wood BBQ in the back yard.

Another memory from the kitchen table is of my sister Deb, sitting in her high chair breaking up bread crusts and stirring them into a bowl of ice cream.    She still makes her cakes the same way even today.  Just kidding.

Rabbitting, Fishing, Yabbying and Mushrooming

Not all food was found in supermarkets when I was growing up in fact a few times a year we'd have family expeditions somewhere up the Hume Highway on hunts for food and I'm guessing this was a family legacy born out of the necessities of the Depression.

Mum used to tell me about how her uncles used to visit the Vic Market and bring home vegetables and fruit that were beginning to turn.  We didn't need to do that but old habits die hard and we'd often meet at Nana and Grandad's in Brunswick and head off up the highway looking for suitable paddocks we could wander through looking for mushrooms or finding dams where we could through a piece of meat tied to a string and pull out yabbies.

Both Grandad and Uncle Phil kept ferrets so some of those trips involved finding rabbit warrens, putting nets over the outlets and waiting for the ferrets to chase the rabbits out of the holes.   I still love to eat roast rabbit and usually after we got home and the rabbits were scunned I'd be given a rabbits foot for luck and I have to say it was much luckier for me than it was for the rabbit.  I'd carry it around in my pocket for a few days until I suspect it got a bit woofy and Mum made me throw it out.  My sisters would get a rabbits tail.

There were times when we'd spend school holidays away camping. I remember one time Uncle Phil took me with him, my cousin Phillip and a couple of others to the Barmah State Forest near Koondrook for a week.  And that was real camping, fishing every day, a bush dunny consisting of a 9 gallon drum with a canvas screen pulled around three trees to give an illusion of privacy.

Those Christmases spent camping on the Murray River at Corowa, long hot days and early morning treks down to the riverbank before dawn are great memories for me.   Later as I had kids of my own and tried to re-create those times I found that my sons never really got into fishing and I think that was because I wasn't all that good at it.    When I took them out as kids and never caught anything they just got bored with it until there was actually no point asking if they wanted to go because I knew the answer would be no.  Diffierent times, different places.

...comes great responsibility

Something very special happened yesterday, I became a grandfather for the first time.  I didn't really expect the depth of emotion that came with knowing that the baton passes again and that new life carries on the unbroken chain that reached back to that man who stood on the shores of Lake Tanganyika 60,000 years ago.   He whose descendants spread around the world with the sons of his sons passing on that YDNA right down to young Parker Alexander Joyce yesterday.

I was unprepared for the overwhelming feeling of love as I held my Grandson for the first time and realised that for me another entirely new chapter in life is beginning.  

Welcome young man.  You don't know it yet but you have many people who love you and will look after you.  Your journey through life will be full of ups and downs but we'll do our best to make sure the ups are great and the downs don't last too long.   I don't pretend to be wise but my knowledge is yours to ask for.    I look forward to reading to you, to telling bad jokes, to the laughter and the tears.  I will be there for your first basketball game and football match, should you choose to play, I'll give whatever support a grandfather can in whatever way I can.

I joked yesterday with your Dad about your name and the connection to Peter Parker who was burdened with the wisdom from his uncle that "with great power comes great responsibility" but I realise now that it is my great responsibility to love and support you.    Not alone, but with all of those other people who will share your life and watch as you grow.

I hope I am around one day when you too become a father just like I was for your Dad.

What were they thinking???

I wrote in an earlier post about my first real bush walk but what I didn't write at that time was why I didn't think that I would enjoy it.

I was a cub and then a scout; a member of 9th Box Hill Troop. I'm not sure why, but the troop I belonged to was full of kids I didn't know and I guess like my Sunday School experience, I didn't really enjoy it. In fact I really went under sufferance and in many ways because I was forced to go.

I enjoyed some of the suff we did - chalk chases and some of the other games - I never really saw a lot of point in learning how to tie knots or do some of the other stuff that earnt competency badges and I put a lo of that down to an incident that happened fairly early on in my scouting career.

One weekend the troop headed off to Mt Ritchie for a camping adventure. Most kids had packs and sleeping bags, but not me, I carried a suitcase, complete with blankets and pillows. Anyone who has experienced the badge of outcast will know how stupid I felt having to lug a suitcase up a mountain track for a few miles until we got to the campsite. I have no idea what Mum and Dad were thinking sending me off like that. I'm certain they didn't mean to humilaite me or to isolate me, and I know that we didn't have access to things like proper hiking gear. No matter the reason it put me off wanting to hike for a long time.

A suitcase for crying out loud! What were they thinking?