Chapter 3 – 12 Kenilworth Road, Parkside

My first memory of ‘living’ anywhere was at 12 Kenilworth road, Parkside, Adelaide, South Australia, the little house where my parents lived from around 1943 to 1950. I don’t remember either Halifax street, Adelaide, or Maud Street, Unley, only Kenilworth road, Parkside. Our house was the second in a row of attached cottages that ran from the Robsart street corner up to the grocery store at the junction of Kenilworth Road and Glen Osmond Road. 12 Kenilworth road Parkside was my home for the first twelve years of my life and my memories of the street are people with the colorful array of humankind that lived there. Kenilworth road runs at an angle from Glen Osmond Road right up to Wattle Street in the south. On one corner was a grocery store where Mum did most of her grocery shopping and on the other corner, was Lecher’s the Chemist shop (later Tiver took over this shop). Then there was the old institute hall and the library whose frontages were on Glen Osmond Road and their rear entrances were on Kenilworth Road, just opposite our house.

A kindergarten was held in the Institute hall and this could be entered from Kenilworth road via a little lane which ran down the side of Cheesman’s Joinery Factory.  Further along Kenilworth Road  there were a couple of houses and then a large paddock which was at the back of Mr Price’s home which was beside the Institute but had no access to Glen Osmond road and could only be entered from an entrance on Kenilworth Road. He was a male nurse at the mental asylum at Glenside and in his free time he trained horses for harness racing at his stables. Years later he sold the paddock to a night cricket club and in the years we lived at 12 Kenilworth road we used often to play cricket there. There were houses on each side of the road, right the way to Wattle Street in the south where the street ended.

Our house was one house north from the Robsart street corner and directly opposite the Institute grounds and it backed onto Parkside Primary School. On the other corner of Robsart street and Kenilworth Road there was a little shop that sold lollies and sweets and icecream. It must have sold other things, like bread and milk and such, but I never noticed because the lollies and sweets and icecream were all that interested me. We had a little lane down one side of our house that serviced our house and the Wilkes’ house next door. There was room for one car to be parked there, and as we had a car and our neighbours did not, we parked our old Chevrolet there. The Chevy had a cabin at the front and a covered tray that Dad had built on the back. Dad had built benches on three sides of the tray for us kids to sit on when we traveled, and from the roof he had suspended a table which was hydrolically lifted up or down. Dad would let the table down and Mum would set out a beautiful picnic dinner on a crisp floral tablecloth and we would eat fresh salad and sliced meat and crusty rolls. Then Mum and Dad would take blankets down onto the beach to  sit on whilst we kids used to wander off to find our friends and see what was happening on the beach.

Houses didn’t have air conditioning in those days and there was no TV either, so most of the population seemed to head for the beach on the hot summer days. There were multitudes of people on the beach including hundreds of kids on those balmy summer evenings. We were free to wander off and watch the fishermen pull in their nets and help them with their catch. It was such fun! Somerton Beach was our beach of choice in those days.  The old Chevy Dad practically built from scratch; the hydrolic table, the bench seats, the canvas top. all those things would not have been possible within our finances if Dad had not been so innovative.  How lucky we were to have our Dad for a Dad. I never appreciated him then, but I do now, now that my Dad has been dead for so many years.

My father was a conscientious, truthful, hardworking man, dedicated to supporting his family to his very best ability. Everyone in Parkside must have been poor. It was generally a poor neighbourhood, but our family was the first to get a car and a refrigerator, a huge 20 cubit monster that Dad got second hand from a shop that was getting rid off it for a newer one. We were considered to be “the have’s” amongst many “have nots” in our street, and Mum felt the bitterness of some of our neighbors when we got something new.

“How come you can afford a refrigerator and we can’t?” some of the neighbors would say to Mum. Mum would answer them,

“Well, my husband doesn’t drink or smoke, so we save that money and we buy a refrigerator with it. If your husband stopped smoking and drinking, you could afford one too.”

I’m sure that response didn’t make Mum very popular with the neighbours, but that was the truth of it. Dad was diligent and really looked after us all. I guess that’s why for me, even though we were poor, I never felt poor. I loved our little semi-detached house, (in spite of the proliferaton of cockroaches that infested our floors at night).  I loved the neighborhood, the school next door and the sheer excitement of living where we did. My school friends didn’t have anything more than I did so our poverty was not intrusive, at least not to me.

In my mind’s eye I see myself standing in front of our front gate at 12 Kenilworth Road. I open it and enter our small front yard. On either side of the concrete pathway are two pocket handkerchief-sized lawns and in the centre of each one I see the rose bushes Mum planted. These bushes weren’t always there because I remember that my brother’s and I used to hold wrestling matches on these lawns which we couldn’t have done when the rose bushes were in the centre of each lawn. With three older brothers I was a “tomboy.” How could I not be a “tomboy?”

On hot summer nights we used to put blankets and pillows on the grass and sleep out there to beat the oppressive heat. After a while, If we thought it was just as hot outside as inside, Mum and I would go back inside to find a better way of keeping cool. Mum and I would lay on her bed with wet towels over us and a fan blowing over a bowl of cold water onto our heated bodies, but Dad would stay out on the lawn with the boys.

The original bull-nosed verandah of our house was enclosed to create two tiny additional bedrooms at the front of the house. On the south was my bedroom and on the north was my brother Graham’s room. Once again, in my mind’s eye, I see myself move aside the curtain which hung between the front wall and the white painted wardrobe which acted as a partition to separate the rooms and to give me and my brother some privacy. Under the window on the inside wall was a narrow iron bed. In my mind’s eye, I see myself lie down on it and bounce up and down a couple of times. My little room is very cozy, if breezy. From my bed, if the canvas blind on the outer wall is rolled up, and it is night time, I can see so many constellations in the sky. I can see the moon and I have a special relationship with old “saucepan” hanging there, looking down at me.

Most evenings were spent sitting in the lounge which in winter time with a fire in the small grate was the warmest room in the house. It was only a small room. Dad would sitting in one of the big green chairs in front of the wood fire with a Bible on his lap. He would light a fire in the small grate so that the room would be warm as we all did the readings together. Dad did the Bible readings with us almost every night. Before we began he would ask one of the boys to say the Lord’s prayer. For a long time I was too young to be included because I couldn’t say the words. My proudest moment came one evening when Dad  said,

“Fay would you like to say the Lord’s prayer?”

With Dad’s help I said most of the prayer.

“Our father,” said Dad and I repeated, “Our farver.”

Then dad said,

“Who art in heaven,” and I said “who aren’t in heaven.”

My Dad is such a good dad. These years are so hard for Mum and Dad and I am so grateful to them for making me feel safe and comfortable and loved. Dad was definitely the head of our house and he worked hard for us all. Again, in my mind’s eye I survey my world in that little room. In the corner of the lounge near the window is Mum’s piano. When times become really tough I know that Dad will sell the piano. I love to hear my mother play. I see her sitting there, frowning in concentration, her soft pretty face and wavy hair are outlined against the maroon velvet curtains at the window. She is playing a familiar piece of music; the one she always plays. It is called “Que Vive” and she is about to make the same mistake in playing that she always makes. Mum has never been an accomplished pianist, but I love to hear her play anyway. In winter Dad puts some extra Mallee roots in the grate and we all sit and talk and play games together. I love to crawl around behind the settee on the green felt carpet, growling and pretending to be a lion or a tiger. Often I become very quiet, hoping that everyone will forget that I am there so I can dream my dreams in the mysteriousness of the world behind the long curtains at the window.

Apart from the two little “makeshift” bedrooms at the front, our house had two main bedrooms. In the centre of Mum’s and dad’s bedroom was a large wire-sprung double bed, a dressing table made of dark wood with a glass top and winged upright mirrors, and a number of drawers for all of Mum’s undies. My Mum did not have good health in those early years. On a number of occasions I can remember standing beside her bed first thing in the morning as she got out of bed to dress. As she stood, a large pool of blood would appear at her feet. Mum told me that she had just “got her period” and it was nothing to worry about. Nothing to worry about? I now know that was not normal at all and it was “something to worry about.” It has never happened to me even once in my whole life, so it wasn’t “normal” for it to happen to my Mum.

The kitchen came next, and this was Mum’s domain. It had a big wooden table in the middle of the room and a gas stove set in the chimney area where once there would have been a wood stove. There was no running water in the kitchen but there was a tap and a drain in the floor in the back veranda-laundry area. The dishes were washed up using a bowl and tray on the kitchen table. Mum was a good cook and we had the very best food that Mum and Dad could muster. Dad used to go early in the morning to the East End markets to buy our fruit and vegetables and meat at the best possible prices. Even so, there were times, Mum said, that if we had visitors, Mum would put a piece of bread on her own plate and cover it with gravy. This was done to hide the fact that there was not enough meat to go round for everyone to have a piece.

Our biggest luxury was a roast chicken. We had a chicken run in the backyard and Dad would chop one of the chicken’s heads off on the chopping block and hang the decapitated chook on the clothes line to drain. Mum would scald the chicken in a bowl and pluck off its feathers. She would clean out the stomach cavity and pack it with a beautiful bread stuffing. I can still remember the smell of the chicken as it cooked. Mum would serve it with baked potatoes, trombone, carrots and peas and and any other vegetables that were available in our garden. It would be cooked to perfection. Food was valuable in our household, so Mum took a lot of care with everything she cooked. All our meals were taken together at the big kitchen table and there was lots of laughter and stories and fun around our table and we enjoyed our meal times. It was the era when ‘punning’ was fashionable, and we would all try to keep a pun going and long as possible. It was a crime in our family not to eat everything that was put on our plate. My father loved to fish and he became an excellent fish cook. He also wanted us to eat lamb’s fry because it was a cheap meal and so he became an expert at cooking lamb’s fry. Mum was an expert at cooking tripe which was another cheap meal, so Mum cooked the tripe and Dad the fish and the lambs fry. How Mum made tripe taste good is beyond me, I never could. Sometimes we were so poor that Mum would go to the butcher and ask for sixpenneth of cat’s meat and that would be the stew for the family’s dinner.

The laundry was in a lean to at the back of the house and we had an outside toilet near the Osborne’s side fence. There was a copper in the laundry and mum used to boil the clothes each Monday and put them through the hand wringer. We had a double cement sink where mum would soak the clothes before putting them in the copper. There was a bath in the bathroom and a chip heater to heat the water. On Sunday morning, whilst Mum and Dad were at the memorial meeting in the city we would have to chop some kindling and light the heater for the bathwater. We would fill the bath to about six inches deep and take it in turns to have our baths. Mum and Dad used to give us a whole list of chores that we were supposed to do before they got home at lunch time. We had to chop the kindling, heat the water for the bath, have our bath, then peel the vegetables for the roast and put them in water ready to cook when mum and dad got home. We were supposed to be dressed and ready when mum and dad arrived home, so that there was plenty of time before we had to leave for Sunday School in the afternoon.

Dad built a pergola the full length of the house at the back and grew a vine on it to provide shade in summer and a dryer access to the toilet in winter. He built a freestanding bedroom in the back yard for Maynard and Charlie to sleep in. It was made out of pine slats with the bark still on it. This timber would have been cheap off-cuts he would have scrounged from some woodyard somewhere. He lined the inside to keep the breezes out and make it snug. The room was big enough to house two beds, one on each outside wall with a walk way between the beds. These were the kinds of things Dad did to make life in our little row cottage more livable for the family. He built a wardrobe and a small chest of drawers for the boys clothing and nick nacks.

We used the boys’ room not only as a bedroom but as a playroom. Maynard and Charlie built a crystal set and we used to listen to that, but later there was a small transistor radio which sat on top of the wardrobe. I loved to jump up and down on the beds and sing along with the Andrews Sisters, “The boogie Woogie Bugle boy from Company B.” I have a photo taken beside this little room, one of my mother and one of my Auntie Ronda and Uncle John and in the background you can see my brother Graham and me in dress up clothes and laughing because we weren’t supposed to be in the picture.

At the rear of the long narrow back yard there was a chook run, and a high fence separating our yard from the Primary School at the back. Dad grew all sorts of vegetables in our back yard. I remember one year he grew corn ears and I was most impressed with these. Behind our fence was a row of peppercorn trees which gave good shade to our back yard in the afternoons. My brothers used to make “shanghais” that were made out of strong wire bent to shape and with rubber bands made out of sections of bicycle tubes. We all became very good shots and could hit the birds that were sitting up in the branches of the peppercorrn trees. At one stage or another each of us tried to “fly” by jumping off of the top of the chook shed. We all lived, but we had plenty of scars to show that gravity is defintely a law of nature.

My first and most vivid memory in my early life was of my first day at kindergarten when I was four years old. The kindergarten was held in the local Institute hall on Glen Osmond Road, Parkside. Behind the hall was a yard containing a playground and a toolshed and a couple of peppercorn trees and this yard was entered from Kenilworth road, just across the road from where we lived. Earlier in that week I had returned home from an extended stay with my Grandma O’Connor, my father’s mother who lived in the country town of Lamaroo. Mum had sent me there because she was still unwell and so Grandma looked after me until Mum could cope with me again. My Grandma O’Connor was a very strong, severe kind of woman. She had not had an easy life, caring for my crippled Grandfather and eking out a living in hard times. She quickly decided that my beautiful long hair was too much of a bother for her to look after, so she took a pair of scissors and cut my hair into a severe square cut bob and fringe. Even though I was only four years old I really loved my beautiful long hair and was completely devastated at the mutilation she had made of it. My mother always took great care of my hair. My Mum would wash my hair in the laundry sink and pour over rosemary water she had boiled. When my hair was dry she would sit me on the kitchen table and brush my hair with a pig-bristle brush until it shone. At night time she would put my hair up in rags so that it would be curly when I woke in the morning. Then she would carefully brush it into thick sausage curls and tie it on one side with a ribbon. Mum used to make most of my clothes as well so I was always well-dressed. I felt like a “little princess.”

For my first day at Kindergarten Mum dressed me up in a new dress she had made for me; a little blue cotton dress with a smocked bodice. She didn’t take me into the kindergarten herself because we lived just across the road from the kindergarten and there seemed to be no need. Instead she gave me a little push to start me walking across the road towards the Institute Hall gate. I entered and looked cautiously around. Just inside the gate there was a toolshed and to the right of that there was a big see-saw swing. I solemnly regarded the little girl who was sitting on the big swing. She was very pretty and about my age but it was her hair that took my attention. She had long blond corkscrew curls tied back with a wide yellow ribbon. I could see the sun shining on her hair and her golden ribbon and I suddenly felt a wave of misery which completely engulfed me. I reached up and touched my short brown bobbed hair and promptly burst into tears. I rushed to the corner of the yard and hid behind a peppercorn tree. I rested my arm on the iron fence and thrust my face into the crook of my arm and began to wail, sobbing and hiccuping broken-heartedly. A teacher hearing the commotion came rushing out of the hall. She picked me up,

“Whatever is the matter?” she asked, but I could not tell her and continued to wail.

She looked me over to see if I were hurt, but finding no bumps or bruises, she carried me into the hall. In the centre of the room there was a large square of carpet and on the carpet sat a group of little boys and girls. The teacher sat me down on the carpet and a little girl put her arm around me to comfort me. After a while I stopped my crying and sat there looking around absorbing my surroundings with wonder. In the corner of the room I could see a little boy, sitting with his face to the wall and wearing a dunce’s cap. That dunce’s cap has puzzled me ever since that time. Why would a little four year old boy be sitting wearing a dunce’s cap?

That is all I remember about that day, but in later years I discovered that the Kindergarten teacher who picked me up and took me into the Institute Hall was a Jewish lady who had come to Australia to escape Hitler’s holocaust. Her name was Hilda Hines and many years later she became my husband’s and my good friend. The vivid memories of that day remain with me and it was only years later that I was able to tell my mother what had caused my tears on that day.