Chapter 4 – My brothers

My brothers were, all three of them, very intelligent inventive people. Mum told me stories of when our family lived on Halifax Street before I was born; how that Charlie from a very early age, was always thinking up schemes, things he wanted to achieve, and Maynard would always work out how they could be accomplished. Mum said that one day when Charlie was still only a toddler, he wanted to get out of the back yard and into the world. He managed to convey his wishes to Maynard. The yard was surrounded by a high wall, and the only way out was through the gate, and that was “childproofed” and could be opened only from the outside. An adult could reach over to open the gate but a child could not. Maynard pondered the problem and solved it by looping an old rubber bicycle tube over the gate and using this to climb up and lift the latch and open the gate. He put Charlie into his pram and off they went for a lovely summer day’s walk. They were found 2 hours later some miles away, still happy and contented with Maynard pushing Charlie along in his pram.

As kids, actual money was scarce. There was no such thing as pocket money for us until we were somewhat older, and Dad’s earning capacity had improved. So how to get money was always in our thoughts, especially when it was nearing Royal Show time. We needed money to get into the show and money to spend on the sideshows. We used to sit side by side in the gutter, with instructions from Charlie to “think about how we can earn some money.” One of us, usually Charlie, would have an idea, and if it was a good one, Maynard would work out how to achieve it. One idea was to follow the milkman’s horse and cart with a dustpan and small spade and pick up the manure the horse dropped and sell it to people to put on their gardens. We all got up at 6.00 a.m. the next day and followed the milkman on our push bikes. That proved not to be a very lucrative idea, but other more rewarding ideas followed.

We collected bottles and sold them to the bottle man. We picked olives and sold them to Woodroofe’s, the cool drink people, whose factory was further up Glen Osmond Road. Charlie’s best idea was to make balsa wood gliders and sell them to the boys at our school. Maynard designed the planes and we formed a production line and cut out the wings and the body and stuck them together with glue. They flew so well they became an instant hit with the children at school. Every night after school a bunch of boys would pound their way up the street to our place and pay a shilling to buy one of our gliders. Years later Richard Collett told me that he remembered our balsa wood planes and was one of the boys who frequented our house to buy them. Soon there were gliders flying in and out of classroom windows all over the school. Our long suffering headmaster eventually banned them from the school grounds. We didn’t really mind by this stage because we had earned quite a bit of money, enough for the next show, and we were tired of making them anyway. Our last effort was a beautiful plane that was over a foot long, all made out of balsa wood with rice paper windows and powered by rubber bands. Maynard finished building it one Sunday morning and so whilst our parents were at the Sunday morning meeting we took it to the Parklands for its maiden flight. It flew so high and so well but landed up in a big gum tree and we couldn’t get it down. It was such a sorrowful bunch of kids that walked home that morning without it. The one thing we were glad of was that Mum had taken a picture of Maynard holding the plane.

My mother was a pretty good dressmaker, and as I was the only girl I always had very pretty dresses. I expect I was as vain as could be. I was vain about my clothing and I was vain about my hair. and this was from a very early age. Mum used to sit me on the kitchen table and put my hair in rags to curl it and I would sleep with my hair in the rags overnight. In the morning Mum would undo the rags and brush my hair. She would tie some of it to the side with a ribbon and brush the rest into ringlets. Every night she brushed my hair with a good pig bristle brush – 100 strokes. I never forgot or forgave my Grandmother, my Dad’s Mum, for cutting my hair when I was four. I always was a little afraid of my Dad’s mother and avoided her when she came to visit. I think that was partly because my Mum did not like Grandma O’Connor either. Mum said she was a very hard woman and life had not been easy for her, but that was no excuse for her constantly interfering in her children’s lives. Mum used to tell me that that Dad had to work very hard when he was a boy and all his money until he was 18 years of age was given to Grandma, He was only allowed to keep a few shillings each week from his earnings. I thought that was very unfair, but I realise now that times were very bad and Grandma probably needed Dad’s money just to survive.

When my Dad began to court my Mum both their families, the Dangerfield family and the O’Connor family were not happy with their relationship and forbad Dad from courting Mum. The Protestant Dangerfields were not happy with Mum going with a Catholic boy and the Catholic O’Connors were not happy with Dad going with a Protestant girl. At the time Dad was helping his father to build a road in front of the school at Pinnaroo, but when, in 1934, Dad married Mum his father refused to pay him his wages from building the road.This meant that Dad and Mum had to go to the city with almost no money to start their married life together. If members of the Adelaide Christadelphians had not helped Mum and Dad with baskets of groceries at that time they would have been in dire straits. Those early years were pretty hard on both Mum and Dad. Mum’s continuing sickness resulted in all of us children having to spend extensive periods away from home being cared for by others. This had a profound effect on all of us children in one way or another. Auntie Jean and Uncle Alta Wigzell were very good to me, but still, being separated from my mother for a long period of time could not have been a good thing.

From an early age I loved to read. I had a book which was one of my favourites called “Robbie’s trip to Fairyland.” I couldn’t read the words very well, but the pictures were lovely. There was one of the Fairy Queen retiring to her “boidoire” to sleep and she was the most beautiful fairy in the world. When I closed my eyes to sleep, I consciously used to conjured up that picture and imagine that I was the Queen of Fairlyland in a beautiful gossimer dress. I would see myself flying around in a beautiful grotto by the sea. Soon my “dreamed up” dreams merged into real dreams and this was how I avoided the nightmares to which I was prone.

My Mother was a very comfortable and comforting person. She was not very tall, about 5’4″ I guess. She had a pretty, soft face and she had what people termed a “mature figure.” When she was young, my Dad told me that she had won a beauty competition. She was crowned “Miss Pinnaroo” and I have photos of my Mother all dressed up in a pretty pink lacy dress with a handkerchief type hemline. It looked lovely but I always thought it a bit strange because it looked like she was just wearing a lacy petticoat. When I began to get to know my Mum she was no longer thin. In those days she used to wear corsets, the boned kind. Her corset fascinated me. It had strips of whale bone in it and she used to wrap it round her and then do up a series of hooks and eyes right down the front. She must have been so uncomfortable wearing it, particularly as I think she must have bought it at a time when she was somewhat thinner.

My brother Maynard was a very kind boy and I loved him very much.  My brother Charlie, on the other hand, was a very strong, harsh-natured boy. My Dad worshipped Charlie right the way through his life. I would say I respected him more than loved him because his efforts to educate me, which for some inexplicable reason he seemed to want so badly to do, were too advanced for me and put me under such stress.

Charlie had been born with a hole in the heart and for the first year of his life, so my mother told me, he cried and screamed constantly. They didn’t find out about his hole in the heart for some many months after he was born. Mum and Dad couldn’t afford doctors and so they just endured his crying until “something had to be done.” The doctors finally found something rather strange had happened. Charlie’s heart had grown something almost like a second heart which grew to almost the same size as the heart itself. The doctors told Mum and Dad that this “lump” attached to his heart seemed to have compensated for the hole in his heart in some way and so they decided not to operate, but just leave it to “take it’s course.” They told Mum and Dad that Charlie would probably only live to be about 40 years of age but in actual fact he lived until he was 52 years of age and died in Sydney in 1988.

Graham was the “black sheep” of our family and had a very troubled life. He is 76 years of age now and we keep in touch by phone. He adored my brother Maynard who was so kind to him while he lived, but he never got on with Charles at all in his life time. Charlie’s harsh nature affected all our family.