Youth And Childhood Days

Although I always knew that I was not a wanted baby it never bothered me. Having got me my parents accepted the fact. It was a family joke that at about the time I was born my mother worried about the size of the family went to Town and visited every chemist shop in Queen St. in search of knowledge of how to prevent getting pregnant. Unfortunately every shop she went to had a male assistant. She was too shy to ask a man and came home with an assortment of toothpastes and cosmetics but no knowledge at all.
My earliest memories are of living in Egremont St in Belmont. I would have been about two years old and used to play with the little girl next door. Our only plaything was a pram axle and wheels which we used to take turns at pushing up the path into our place. She used to wet her pants quite a lot so that she mostly went bare bottomed and I can still picture her bent over pushing the wheels with her rear end on display. It is surprising that with such an early familiarity with female anatomy I was so shy with girls later on. I was still only two when we moved to Milford and we lived on a farm of about 45 acres stretching from the foot of Crown Hill to opposite the Pupuke Golf Links and running down into the gully of the Wairau Creek part of which rose on our property.
My father Alf had led a varied life since being born in Ballarat Victoria in 1880. The family had come to N.Z while he was still a youth. They had lived first in Wellington in Oriental Bay and had then split as the boys grew up. Alf lived in Greymouth as a young man and helped his brother Albert in Gilbert Bros Watchmakers and Jewellers,  where he was the salesman. This would have been around the turn of the century. At some stage Bert sold the shop which carried on the name for many years under new owners. He went to Stoke in Nelson and owned an orchard while Alf went to Karamea where he went into business with his brother Tom as Gilbert Bros Sawmillers. Alf was the tally clerk handling the orders while Tom managed the sawmill.
It was there that he met Evelyn and they were married in January 1912. In December Alfred Willie was born and soon after that the mill changed hands. Tom went to Timaru as manager of John Chambers Ltd and soon after that to Invercargill to open a branch there and his brother Dick worked for him as a car salesman. In August 1914 Evelyn produced Peter Wynne in the King Country at Mangapehi while on Christmas Day 1915 she produced Noel Glendower at Kohukohu on the Hokianga. Alf was then a tally clerk for a mill producing kauri timber for export to Australia. This did not seem to last long as the next reports have them growing strawberries a Glenfield and then Evelyn teaching school at New Lynn. While there she helped to persuade the family of the later Professor Eddie Blakelock to let him have another try at University Entrance after having failed at his first attempt. His father wanted to put him in the brickworks to earn his keep.
Alf next tried his hand at building houses and the house in Egremont St was one of them. He built it and financed it only to find that the owner couldn’t raise the money. He signed the whole property over to Alf and the family moved in and lived there. Next he built the house on the farm at Crown Hill and the same thing happened. Times were tough following World War 1 and Alf would have been better keeping his money intact. He moved to the farm and rented the Belmont house. Unfortunately the tenant lost his job and couldn’t pay the rent. Alf with three growing lads decided to become a dairy farmer and start a milk supply business for the increasing population of Milford and Castor Bay. The land was not good and much work was required clearing it of ti tree gorse and blackberry. As the depression deepened Alf with accumulated debts from Egremont St. was forced off the land.
I had quite a happy time at Crown Hill. I was six years younger than Noel and although my older brothers sometimes gave me a hard time I spent many hours on my own and learned to enjoy my solitude. I had a vivid imagination and invented a private world full of interesting and honourable people. I had my first romance when I was eight. A pretty little girl in Standard 1 took my fancy. I was too shy to speak to her so I wrote her a letter. I had seen the postman delivering letters to our letterbox and assumed that he would also take letters from it and deliver them so I put the letter into our box. The family read it when the mail was cleared and I had to put up with a lot of good natured chaff. I got it back and handed it to her at school but she couldn’t read it and had an older girl read it for her while I stood by watching. It was very embarrassing and the romance came to nothing in the end. She later married a fellow I knew in the Artillery and died two or three years ago.
I learned to read very young and could understand the news of the world. I got into serious trouble with the headmaster at Milford school when I was in Standard 2 by questioning his version of the War when he spoke to us one Armistice Day. He was so incensed that he found an excuse to fail me at the end of the year. It may or may not have been a good thing that my parents took my part. Perhaps I should have learned a bit of humility but my mother particularly saw something in me that should be encouraged. Later she was to revise this opinion when I began to disagree with her on other matters.
Her sister Venus and her husband Les Hill had a small town milk supply farm in Mangere and it was arranged that I should live with them for a year. The headmaster at Mangere Bridge School was approached and he agreed to put me up into Standard 3 on trial. I was fully vindicated by coming second in the class at the end of the year. By now it was the depths of the Depression and both families were feeling the pinch. It was decided that they should pool their resources and they rented a farm on what is now the Auckland International Airport. The Auckland Aero Club had an airfield and flying was very popular not only for those who could afford to fly but also for those who could watch. The Chief Instructor was wartime pilot and he was an expert at aerobatics. At weekends they would have an air pageant. Passenger flights were available and hundreds would come to watch the biplanes take off and land. The farming enterprise did not pay off but Auntie Venus first became the cook at the Aero Club clubhouse and then the Manageress. By now the older boys had left home for poorly paid work on farms and Alf, Evelyn and I went first to a fruit shop in Ponsonby which only lasted a short time and then we rented a house in Edinburgh St which is now in the industrial area of Te Papapa.
Alf still had the old Chevrolet car that he had bought to use on the town milk supply round at Milford. He now started a fruit round hawking fruit door to door and on Saturdays I had to help him. I really hated it especially as I had to carry a wooden case filled with bags of fruit already weighed out. It was very heavy and we would go to the wealthier areas of Auckland such as Remuera and Herne Bay. I had to knock on doors and say my patter about choice apples peaches etc and put up with the refusals that were not always very polite. Edinburgh St was close to the Manukau harbour and the salt laden air was rusting the car so we shifted to Waitangi Rd where in those days we had a choice of about four empty houses.
In the end the car was repossessed and Alf went onto Relief Work at 27 shillings a week. Gangs of men were laying concrete footpaths around the area and some of them had once been in responsible jobs. The Government retrenched even further and after a while Alf was paid 14 shillings a week to stay home. He had reached rock bottom at last and was on the Dole. He busied himself that Summer thrashing grass that he cut on the side of the road and selling the seed to a grain merchant. Our rent was supposed to be fifteen shillings a week and many weeks when the landlord called for the rent he could not be paid. Alf always claimed that over the period we paid around ten shillings a week on average. As the alternative was to have an empty house the landlord accepted the position.
I went to Te Papapa School and in 1934 had reached Standard 6 and gained my Proficiency Certificate. The other boys had been allowed two years secondary education and in spite of our financial position my mother was determined that I should have the same. She had been school teacher before she married and for some time after they moved to Auckland she took it up again. However early in the Depression the Government as an economy measure had raised the school starting age from 5 to 6. At the same time it decided that all married women teachers should be dismissed so she lost her job.
However she kept up her contacts and early in the 1930s as she had always been interested in writing she joined a writers club to which many prominent woman writers belonged. She was an efficient secretary and became indispensable as the rest of them although able to write stories were hopeless at organising. Many of the members were affluent and it was common knowledge that their very efficient secretary was extremely poor. When it was found that her youngest son needed a school uniform to be able to go to Auckland Grammar one of them paid for it.
At the same time I landed a job at the Triangle Service Station at the Harp of Erin during the school holidays filling radiators and cleaning windscreens as a service to customers. This paid for my books with a little over as a present for my parents. I felt awkward at Grammar among so many boys from well to do families especially as my good marks at Te Papapa put me in the second highest class.  I was a careless scholar relying on a good memory rather than hard work and swot. My homework must have been atrocious and this was not helped by my having underestimated the cost of my books and I had to go to a friend’s place and copy out the French lessons each time. During 1935 Alf got work as of all things a sawmill manager. From being on the dole at 14 shillings a week he was to be paid 5 pounds a week.
Unfortunately business was slack and the mill was only working three days a week so he only got 3 pounds. He had to live near what is now Kawarau close to Mount Tarawera. He wanted Mum to join him but after the years she had spent at sawmills in the King Country and on the Hokianga she flatly refused. On top of that there was my welfare to be considered. There was a period of tension and I believe that he tried to starve her into submission. However she herself managed to get a job so the problem was solved. The new Labour Government  lowered the school starting age to 5 and there was a great demand for teachers. She became a relieving teacher and for the next few years had a marvelous time living in country areas for several months at a time before moving on when a permanent teacher was appointed.
Our finances rapidly improved, Alf was soon driving a near new car and he and Evelyn spent many week ends at holiday resorts. It did not however do much either for my discipline or my work habits. They bought the house for about seven hundred pounds and it remained in the family until Mum died in 1970. We had married couples looking after me and two of my brothers who had come home and were working at Westfield. I continued to gloss over my school work only doing enough to get by. I did some of my homework in the train going to school and really wasted what was a golden opportunity to prepare for a career. At the same time I did rather better than I deserved. After being told by the form master that I would probably have to spend two years in the thirds I just missed going up to the A form at the end of the first term and also at the end of the year.  I also won the form certificate for first place in both Latin and French.
In Form 4, I won the certificate in French and was put up to form 5A the next year. I had only been promised two years at Grammar but with this good result and the improved family fortunes I was given another year. In 5A the form master was quite convinced that my promotion was a mistake and predicted that I would fail University Entrance. I was quite unimpressed and rather than knuckling down and working hard to prove him wrong I even joined in some advanced maths study that wasn’t needed for UE. I learned about differential calculus and analytical geometry which are no longer important having been absorbed into the electronic world along with logarithms and trigonometry. However at the time the knowledge made me feel quite superior.
Half way through the year I was knocked over by a car in Newmarket suffering a broken leg and lost some school time. The family was now reconciled to my not passing UE and I was promised a further year. My mother had her heart set on my becoming a school teacher. I would need an extra year as I couldn’t enter Training College until I was seventeen so this suited her plans. In the event I passed quite easily and so got a year in the 6th form in which I had no outside exam to pass. I was granted a Higher Leaving Certificate which entitled me to a Bursary giving me free enrolment at University. It was a very enjoyable year and  I probably learned more in a relaxed atmosphere than I had in the lower classes. I had taken part in Track Athletics and of course at Grammar we were all part of the Cadet Battalion.
War seemed inevitable and for a couple of hours each week we engaged in military training. It mostly consisted of  ceremonial parades culminating in an impressive march past in review order. Most of the masters were territorial officers and looked grand in their tailored khaki uniforms and Sam Browne belts with swords attached. We had a rifle range and did some shooting with .303 rifles that had the bores cut down to shoot .22 bullets which were much cheaper.
When I broke my leg I was excused parades and decided to become a Laboratory Assistant to overcome the boredom. This led to my failing to become a school teacher. In my last term in the 6th form the Head Lab Assistant gave the job up to concentrate on swotting for a University scholarship. I became the chief although I had too little experience and often when I set up equipment for the experiments for the science masters they didn’t work.
To be selected for Training College we had to be interviewed by a panel at the Education Dept building in Town. On the day of the interview I had to set up the experiment that demonstrated that hydrochloric acid consisted of one part hydrogen and one part chlorine gas. As I remember it the gases were fed into a narrow tube and an electric current ignited the hydrogen resulting in fusion and the production of the acid. It was prepared in the gas cupboard which was designed to carry the fumes out of the lab but the tube was too long for me to shut the door to the cupboard and I got a good whiff of chlorine.
We were expected to go to the interview in mufti  and I had already made a mistake by dressing quite casually in an open necked shirt and slacks whereas the others were in their best clothes. In my gassed condition I walked to town and when interviewed showed little interest in the matter. To make matters worse the chairman had taught in Nelson as a young man and knew my mother. I hated the thought of using family influence to achieve my ends and declined to admit the connection even though he knew that I had a relation who had been a teacher. I of course missed selection. My mother was furious and rang the chairman who apologised and undertook to give me a second chance.    
It is obvious that I was not meant to be a teacher and my subsequent career bears this out.