G'day ALL ...
Here's dad with the next installment of his current yarn:---->
During that period when I broke my arm, there was no way I could manage
the work bike with the big carrier, because I needed two arms. One to
hang onto the steering and the other to grab the papers. That put me out
of action as a delivery boy, but I still needed money. I was still
paying off work bike and wanted some spending money as well. I liked
sweets. They rotted my teeth and cost me a lot of money since, but I
used to get cream buns from the school tuck shop. So I needed some money.
I decided the only thing I could do with one arm was sell lollies at the
Waverley picture theatre - it had just been built over in Waverley Road,
East Malvern. My arm was in plaster, but I got a job there. They gave me
a suit and a cap and some pretty smart trousers. The coat was what I'd
call a waist coat now. That was my uniform and I'd go over just before
the pictures started and join several other boys and sell lollies. We'd
walk up and down the aisles with a tray, wearing our uniforms and caps.
They were a flat cap, a bit like a little drum, and sat on the head with
a strap around the chin. There were two types of trays - one had sweets
in it and the other had ice cream in it. One of the things we often
laugh about these days is that as lolly boys we would walk backwards
down the aisle if we had the ice cream tray and we would say, "Peters
Arse, Peters Arse." I don't know if the patrons thought it was so funny,
but we thought it was a great joke.
Anyway, we sold ice creams and sweets that way. Then we would hang
around until interval when we'd go in and sell again. If we were lucky,
we could get into the theatre after the picture started and stand in the
back and watch the show and duck out just before interval to get our
tray. The fellow who had the contract for the sweets and ice cream at
the Waverly theatre also had the contract for the Crystal Palace up in
Caulfield, just beyond the Caulfield station.
If he was short of someone up at the Crystal Palace and if the intervals
at both theatres weren't at the same time, he'd ask for a volunteer to
work both on the one night. We only got commission on what we sold, so
that was a good chance to make some extra money. On those occasions,
we'd do the Waverley before the show and at interval, then we'd jump in
his car and he'd take us up to the Crystal Palace. We'd change into a
new uniform and then do the interval at the Crystal Palace.
It took about a year to get my arm right again, but as soon as it got
better, I went back to the paper round.
After leaving school, I started work as a messenger boy for P. Lewis and
Co. in the city - that's where my father worked before he died and where
my brother was just finishing his apprenticeship. I started as a
messenger boy and the war started shortly afterwards and brought about
lots of changes.
The war started in late thirty nine. Len and I both worked at Lewis's
during the war and we worked long hours. There was generally overtime of
a night. We were glad to get the extra money - but it was a tiring
business. We rode our bikes into the city each morning and often rode
home at nine o'clock at night. Then we worked on Saturday mornings. That
was before the forty hour week and it was a pretty busy time.
Things changed quite a lot in those times. A lot of our friends went off
to the war. My cousin Wes was three years older than me and got
permission from his parents to join the Air Force. He became a pilot and
served in England with the RAF. He flew Liberators out over the
Atlantic. His sister, Laurice, joined the Land Army and worked on farms
around Victoria.
My mother still had the borders, but the scene changed to some extent as
some of our borders left to join the services. I remember a New Zealand
couple who joined us at that time. They had children in the services
back in New Zealand, but were stranded in Melbourne and couldn't get
back home. They must have been on holiday and someone must have told
them about my mother. They used the smaller of the two sleepouts and
were with us for quite a while. I don't know how they got back to New
Zealand, but it must have been by ship as aircraft weren't flying at
that time.
Food rationing came in during the war years and was a major problem for
my mother. To get enough food to cook, we had to pool our food rations.
In one instance, I remember, each of us had a little glass jar which
held our sugar ration, and that would be the sugar we would use - our
own sugar. They were kept on a shelf with our names on them and we'd get
our jar down to put sugar on our weeties, or we might have opted to save
it up for our tea or cocoa or something.
<----< to be continued >----
Cheers, ROB!
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Genealogy: Tracing yourself back to better people
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