The Blacksmith’s Daughter by Fay Berry 2013 © – Chapter 27 – 19570902

The Blacksmith’s Daughter – Chapter 27

On the 2nd day of September, 1957 I commenced a new diary. I had found that the red one with the gold lock was too small for me and didn’t hold sufficient information. I decided to use a lined book from now on so that I wasn’t limited in how much I could write for each day’s entry. As usual, I started my diary with great enthusiasm but then began to find it hard to keep up to date. It was Thursday, and yet I hadn’t even written what happened on Monday. There is so much discipline required to keep a diary and so often I found that when things got “interesting” I wouldn’t write my diary up because too much was actually “happening” for me to get around to writing about “what” was happening.

 

Graeme Mansfield, HPM’s son and Joan Foulis’ had their kitchen evening Thursday night. It was an okay evening but nothing different or special from other kitchen evenings. Afterwards, Charles and Beth talked to HPM for simply ages and so I spent my time talking to Peter Mansfield, Roger Stokes, and Don McColl.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I noticed something about Peter Mansfield that interested me. He is a very shy person and so when he is not talking to someone he stands there holding his wide-margined Bible under his arm, and staring off into space. If someone talks to him, he galvanises into action, and his face becomes animated and smiling, but the moment the person he is speaking to stops talking, he goes back to gazing into the distance again.

 

 

The Royal Show had come again and I knew that all the Wurfels would be down again to show their Clydesdale horse. I managed to persuade John Greathead to go to the Show in the lunch hour and take me with him. I rang up the garage and asked if The News Ltd Number 60 car was available. It was, so John drove me to the Show and using the one ticket we had managed to get, we both gained entrance using the same ticket. I met Jeff Clift at the Wurfel’s locker and we went looking for the Wurfels and found them watching the wood chopping. I only had time for a short chat and then had to rush to the gate to meet John Greathead and return to work.

 

 

So much happened between September and December this year. It was my brother Charles’ 21st birthday which turned out to be more like a study class than anything else, Charlie being Charlie. I went to Melbourne for the weekend to attend the Commonwealth games. I don’t remember much about them now. Somebody was racing, but I can’t remember who now. I do remember that I sat next to Des Manser and some of the other young people, because we had managed to book seats together.

Then there was my 16th birthday party which we held at our place on the 28th November 1956. I was now mostly attending the Woodville Sunday School and so had decided to invite young folk from Woodville rather than my old friends from Adelaide.

Over the years I had become accustomed to the many wonderful suppers my brothers had hosted at our place whilst Maynard and Charlie and Graham were members of the Adelaide Sunday School and Mum was so very accommodating to us all. Maynard or Charlie or Graham would come home from a picnic or an outing bringing with them a hoard of noisy, hungry young people. Maynard or Charles would say to Mum, “Mum, we hope you don’t mind but everyone had nowhere else to go this evening, so we invited them to come to our place. Can you cook a supper for us, please? Everyone’s starving.” We were all so proud of our Mum and particularly proud of the fact that she never kicked up a fuss, she would just set about cooking up some beautiful sponge cakes and some butterfly cakes and all sorts of other goodies.

 

In our early teenage years, from about 1950 on, we were no longer “poor.” Dad’s business had flourished and he was an excellent shopper at the East End markets so there were always cases of seasonal fruit in our oversized fridge, so the makings of a good meal seemed always to be there. Mum was a great cook and her sponges were the lightest I have ever tasted, always covered with lashings of cream and strawberries and she could produce a “feast fit for the gods” while we were all in the lounge having a wonderful time.

 

Our house at 118 Glen Osmond Road was a big sprawling place and our lounge was very large. We had a lounge suite but no smaller chairs, so everyone used to sit around on the floor. Elaine Luke would play the piano and those who wanted to would sing hymns or pop songs. I never remember any of us worrying about how to “entertain” our guests because they just entertained themselves. Charlie would recite one of his poems, “Runcorn Ferry,” or “Little Albert.” Elaine would sing “When you were sweet sixteen.” Gordon Turner had a whole lot of boy scout songs he used to sing, with the young folk singing the choruses. We always had a great time and I for one just simply took it all for granted.

 

 

Then came my 16th birthday. Dad had lined the lounge with chairs he had borrowed. Mum had prepared a veritable feast including her famed sponges and fairy cakes. Walter Pearce from Sydney was there, so we had as much music as we needed, but in spite of that, as the evening progressed I became painfully aware that this “supper” was very different from past “suppers” when my brothers were present.

 

 

 

The Woodville Young people were so different to the Adelaide Young People. The Adelaide Young People were loud and noisy and happy and they all knew each other so well, there was no embarrassment, no shyness, lots of laughs and practical jokes. This group that I had invited to my party were very polite, and quiet and completely subdued. I hadn’t organised any items, or games because I hadn’t thought they would be needed. I had provided music, from the radiogram and the piano, but it became apparent to me that the “Woodvillites” didn’t know any of the songs we were used to singing, and certainly didn’t know any pop songs, so Walter and his music was completely wasted. I had the expectation that everyone would just entertain themselves as they had always done on past occasions in our house.

 

I hurriedly consulted with Mum and we quickly thought up some games which we managed to get some of them to play, and we played the radiogram and Walter played an item or two, but no-one sang. I felt sick in my stomach and was sure the night was an utter disaster. We finally had Mum’s lovely supper, and that, at least, was a hit. When they all left, I went to my room and threw myself down on my bed and wept tears of utter misery.

The next day, to my utter amazement, as the feedback began to flow through at Sunday School, my party had been the best thing any of them had “Ever been to!!!! ” I realised at last that I had been comparing two completely different groups of people and two entirely different cultures and set of expectations. The two groups could not be compared to each other. The Woodvilleite’s had genuinely enjoyed the evening because they had never attended the kinds of suppers that the Adelaideite’s were used to.

 

 

 

What I did realise was that what I had enjoyed from my birth to mid 1950s was a unique period in the history of Christadelphia in Adelaide, and that this wonderful era was, at least for me, quite over and would never return again. It was a time when there were only two or three ecclesias in Adelaide. It was a time when everyone knew each other. There were no air conditioners, no TV (mostly), few cars, everyone traveled by public transport and we lived in a smaller, kindly, comfortable world with lots of outings and sports.

 

 

When HPM came on the scene, there developed what I can only describe as a war between Law and Grace. HPM was promoting study of the word of God, (Law) and the Adelaide ecclesia was trying to retain the atmosphere of “Love and good works,” (Grace) and neither group understood that they were simply two sides of the one coin.

HPM encouraged the young people to study the word of God and discouraged all the things we young people used to enjoy so much as being “frivolous.” and we followed him like the “Pied Piper.” Well, in hindsight, I remember those early years before HPM came on the scene as being so happy and carefree and fun-loving as well as worshipful. The subsequent battles we all engaged in, were really so unnecessary, I feel, looking back, but like all the other young people at the time I threw myself in behind HPM and the work he was doing. It was a wonderful and exciting time, but in spite of that, I remember those early years in the Adelaide ecclesia as one of the happiest periods in my life, if not THE happiest period in my life.

What was the outcome of that “revolution,” however, was the explosion of new “suburban” ecclesias that sprung up throughout the suburbs, and that has to be a good outcome when all is said and done. When I think of HPM, I have so many mixed feelings, but there is no question, he changed my life and I have him largely to thank for the rapid growth in my Bible knowledge, and my baptism into Christ when I was just 16. Well, I will see him in the kingdom and I am sure we will both have a lot to say to each other about all that happened in the 50s, 60s and early 70s, and especially in 1974!!

Continue Reading . . . Volume 1 – Chapter 28