Chapter 8 – Parkside Primary School again – Grade 6 – 1950

The Blacksmith and his family

When I returned to Parkside Primary School in 1950, I was 11 years old and in Grade 6. It was so nice to be able to walk to school again and to be able to just climb our back fence to get into the school yard when I was running late. No long ride to and from school each day! No sitting in a cold classroom freezing in wet socks and shoes in winter. How much simpler my life would have been if I had continued at Parkside Primary School rather than transferring to Unley Primary for grades 4 and 5. I guess it did broadened my experience through attending the two different schools.

Pauline Viney, my old friend from Grade 3, welcomed me back into her class and company with open arms. For a while it was very nice to be so welcome but I soon found her possessiveness rather suffocating. Pauline was now tall, thin and gangly and still physically immature. During the school holidays Pauline and her family, father, mother and sister Joan, took me to Port Willunga to spend the holidays with them in their holiday home. I was supposed to be company for Pauline and to make her parents’ life easier while they were on holiday. I am afraid I must have been a disappointment to them because I wasn’t really as friendly or companionable to Pauline as her parents hoped I would be. The holiday houses at Willunga in those days were randomly scattered over the fields of yellow grass. Pauline wanted to play the childish sort of games we used to play and they bored me. She wanted to pretend that an ogre lived in one of the houses that we could see way across the waving grass. I felt “too mature” to play such games and said, “There’s no such things as ogres.” I must have been such a spoil sport. There was another factor that interfered in our friendship and that was that because Pauline was not a Christadelphian our friendship was confined to when we were at school or during school holidays, otherwise we probably could have maintained a friendship over the years. There were other times when Pauline would happily have included me in her family outings and events, but my parents discouraged me from becoming too involved with my school friends. They were afraid that I would be “drawn away” from Christadelphia.

By now I had matured considerably and my body had taken on a more rounded and feminine shape. I feel a little better, looking back, when I realize that to a large degree, it was Pauline’s continuing physical immaturity and my developing maturity that was the real divider between us and not just unkindness and selfishness on my part. There were not many girls who matured early in my Grade 6 class, but I soon gravitated towards those girls who did. I found myself looking with interest at a girl named Prudence Parker. She was a slim, pretty girl and she wore the latest pointy shoes. I was enamored with her! I gradually became tired of having Pauline as my close friend and moved towards the “elite” group of girls who courted Prudence Parker. Today, they would have been called the “In” group.

My friendship with Pauline finally came to an abrupt halt due to one particular incident that occurred at this time. Our teacher had asked us to decorate the hessian pinafore that the school provided each student for use in art classes. It was important to me that my pinafore look good and my mother embroidered a beautiful rose on mine. I was delighted and very proud of it. Pauline asked if she could take my pinafore home to show her mother. I was flattered and gave it to her to take home that night. However, when she returned the next day I found that her mother had made an exact copy of my beautiful rose on Pauline’s pinafore. I was furious with Pauline. My Mother tried to persuade me that it was only because Pauline liked me so much and wanted to be like me that she had copied my rose. I was not to be won over. From that time on I had little to do with Pauline and spent my time in the company of Prudence Parker and her friends. What a spoiled, selfish little miss I must have been. So often, I am finding, when I look back over the years that I don’t like myself very much. I can see that I was so self-centred and self-serving.

I did sometimes feel a pang of guilt when I saw Pauline sitting by herself on the school yard bench after I had stopped being her friend. Some years later after we had all left school, Pauline came to visit me. She had married and was expecting her first baby. She had matured considerably and now she was tall and graceful, not tall and gangly. She showed off her small baby-bump and so obviously felt no animosity toward me. That made me feel even more guilty. Pauline was no longer an ugly duckling but a beautiful swan. After that Pauline moved to Sydney and wrote to me once or twice. She lived for a time in the same street as Bruce and Elaine Philp in Loftus Street, Loftus, NSW. After that I lost complete contact with her until the late 1990s when I discovered that she lived at Port Noarlunga where I visited her one or two occasions.

Grade 6 Primary school was a very stressful year for me. Maybe it was the constant teasing my brothers subjected me to or maybe it was due to changing schools for the second time. At any rate, one day I was standing in the classroom after a class when one of the boys said to me,

“What’s wrong with your face?” I thought he was being rude and quickly retorted,

“What’s wrong with yours?” Then he said,

“I’m not being rude, there IS something wrong with your face.”

I ran to look at myself in a mirror and screamed with horror at what I saw there. The left-hand side of my face had dropped and the muscles in that side of my face simply were not working! I turned and ran out of the classroom and pelted down the street towards home, screaming and crying as I went. Later, Mum said she could hear me coming five minutes before I actually arrived. When Mum saw my face, she  called an Osteopath called Dr Nunn who had helped my father when he damaged his spine in an accident some years earlier. We visited Dr Nunn in his rooms and he explained that I had “Bell’s Palsy.” He said that this palsy occurred when the nerve down one side of my face became damaged, perhaps by a virus or by being in some way constricted. Such constriction was often associated with stress. He manipulated my neck and my spine and told me to wear a warm scarf to keep my face warm. I was also advised to chew chewing gum all day and get lots of rest. We did as Dr Nunn said and over the next 6 weeks I had regular manipulation by Dr Nunn. My face soon began to improve until eventually it was almost back to normal. It never went quite back to normal, though, and ever since, my smile has always been just a little lop-sided. The one thing that I took pleasure in at that time was that I had my doctor’s permission to chew chewing gum in class, particularly as I knew that my chewing gum in class annoyed my teacher immensely!

It was in grade 6 year that I “fell in love” with Richard Collett. He was the same age as me and in my Grade 6 class. Our school photograph that year shows Richard sitting in the front row and me on the right in the second row from the back. I really liked Richard, but my attraction didn’t last long, nor did my friendship with Prudence Parker. One day after school Prudence and a group of girls and boys from our class decided to walk to a place near the top of Glen Osmond Road that we called 40 acres. 40 acres was located at the commencement of the Adelaide foothills at Glenside and was a very pretty place, all green grass and shady trees. All the girls and boys sat around on the grass and one of the girls suggested a game of “spin the bottle.” This, of course, was a kissing game. I was not comfortable with this sort of game and hoped that Richard would feel the same way, but he didn’t. He was right into it! I felt embarrassed and jealous all at once, and so I climbed up a tree and sat up in the branches where I could watch but not be involved. My infatuation with Richard ended right there. What does interest me now is how easily I was able to move from being “undyingly” in love to a state of complete indifference to that same boy, all in one afternoon. In later years, Richard became a Christadelphian and a good friend. He eventually married Julie Broadbridge from the Adelaide meeting. In his later life Richard also suffered “Bell’s Palsy.” By this time Dr Nunn had retired and Richard didn’t know about him anyway, so his Bell’s Palsy was very severe and never completely got better. Brian Luke also got Bell’s Palsy, so did my brother Maynard and his son Ronald and Dianne Hall and none of them ever got better. To my knowledge I was the only one whose face went pretty well back to normal after having the Palsy, and I think it was because of Dr Nunn’s treatment.

In 1950, our family was still living at 12 Kenilworth Road, Parkside, but we were all growing up and had really outgrown our little home. My father’s blacksmithing and ships’ chandlery business was thriving in the small garage on Glen Osmond Road at Glenside. Dad had a way with horses and could shoe the most difficult and temperamental of beasts. Everything my Dad did was meticulously and professionally done and so his business was destined to grow. So it was that in 1950 Dad decided that he needed to find larger premises to grow his business. It was unlikely that Dad would have qualified for a loan from a Bank so he approached a Christadelphian brother called Arthur Cobbledick and rather tentatively asked him for a loan. Arthur owned apple orchards at Uraidla in the Adelaide foothills. Arthur  agreed to fund Dad’s venture so Dad began looking around for a suitable property and found one further west along Glen Osmond road from his current premises. The property consisted of a house, large return-veranda villa, and vacant land which extended all the way through to Macklin Lane at its rear. The house was large enough to easily accommodate our family and there was more than enough land to build a factory. Bro Cobbledick loaned Dad the 3,500 pounds required to purchase the property. Dad very quickly moved us into our new home and commenced building a new factory at the Macklin Lane end.

We were all so delighted with our new home. I can remember how excited we kids felt on the day we moved in. We ran up and down the wide central passage, jumped the step down into the lobby area, ran up and down the cellar stairs and then outside to the beautiful old English garden at the rear. From there we ran to the almond orchard at the Macklin Lane end of the property. We laughed and squealed and played tag together. We were all so very happy. The vacant land at the rear of 118 Glen Osmond road was already familiar to all of us children. We had often spent time in its almond orchard and in the large mulberry tree in the adjoining vacant block. The old English garden, however, overgrown and mysterious, was new to us and for the short time before Dad started to build the factory, I roamed its winding paths and ducked under hanging branches laughing in delight. It took me some time to forgive Dad for bulldozing that beautiful garden in preparation for building his factory.

The factory was built in 1950. I have photographs of the foundations being dug. Barbara Foulis visited me whilst the factory was being built and there is a photo of the two of us on that day and also one of myself and a schoolfriend, Lyn Williams standing in the doorway of the new building. I remember the day Barbara came to visit me for the day. We were in the lounge playing a game of chess. Barbara said that the Knight could only jump from a white square to a white square. I said that the Knight could jump from a white square to a black square. Barbara was a very definite person and things had to be RIGHT. She said that she would find out which of us was RIGHT and the one who was WRONG would have to kiss the foot of the one that was RIGHT. I said, “Would you like me to wash my feet then?” Well, she found out who was right and who was wrong and so she kneeled down and kissed my feet, both of them!! When the building was completed we were left with the house at the front with a small fenced backyard with enough room for a few trees and a vegetable garden and the factory behind the fenced garden with its entrance into Macklin Lane at the rear.

The factory was completed and still empty of machinery when Dad decided to have an opening ceremony for the factory. He invited all of the Adelaide Halifax Street Young People to an opening games night and barbecue at our place to be held in the new factory building. It turned out to be a great night and everyone really enjoyed being there. We played games like “Simon Says” and “Musical Chairs.” Maynard Jnr and Keith Kennet played their mouth organs and at the end we had a big barbecue. Frank Russell Jnr and Dad and Maynard cooked chops and sausages and onions on a big barbecue hot plate Dad had made in his forge, especially for the occasion.

Dad erected a big sign in our front yard facing Glen Osmond Road which read “Maynard O’Connor BlackSmith.” Later on it was amended to read “Maynard O’Connor and Son Blacksmiths” when my brother joined Dad in the business. Maynard Jnr had completed 2 years of his teacher training but gave it up when Dad needed him in the business. Charlie also was training to be a teacher but gave up in his second year to go to Sydney where he took up Accounting.

1951 was my Grade 7 year at Parkside Primary School and I turned 12 in November of that year. Miss Karoczkai was my teacher and our classroom was the temporary room in the corner of the school yard behind our house at 12 Kenilworth Road. I was now one of the “big” girls similar to those I had watched through the windows in earlier years as I climbed over the fence at the back of our house to go to school each day. Miss Karoczkai was a very tough little lady and ruled her domain like Queen Boadicea. Just before recess time each day, Miss Karoczkai would give us mental arithmetic problems to solve. If we knew the answer then we could take “an early minute” and go to recess before the rest of the class. This was great for those who could do mental arithmetic, but since I couldn’t, I was always a few minutes later that the other children in going to recess. I don’t remember much about the school work we did. I remember doing some basket weaving and other handcrafts, but I think I was very average in most of the work I did. I remember I had very untidy and messy handwriting. I also often had dirty hands! Misss Karoczkai would line us up each day to inspect our hands and slap the “dirty-handed” in the group, which often included me.

My one saving grace at academics in the school was that I loved to read and by the end of Grade 7 had read just about every children’s book in the Institute library and had begun to read books in the adult section. I remember reading a book about Marco Polo which nearly raised the hair on my head. I didn’t dare take that book home but read it in the library because my Mother would not have approved of it. The librarian was a rather strange old man who was very abrupt and unfriendly and no one liked him. One day the rumor circulated at school that the librarian had committed suicide by hanging himself from one of the rafters in the library. It must have been true because we never saw him again. I generated a mental picture so vivid in my mind’s eye that it is still hard for me to believe that I did not actually witness that poor sad old man actually hanging there in the library.