The Blacksmith’s Daughter by Fay Berry 2013 © - Chapter 50 - 1959 11 - Fay Berry

The Blacksmith’s Daughter by Fay Berry – Chapter 50

In November of 1959, My lovely and rewarding job at Associated Public Relations Pty Ltd (APR) had undergone some changes. My boss, Rod Martindale had left the company and taken up work with the Australian Timber Association. This meant that I now became Bob Muller’s secretary. This should have been a really good change, because RJM had begun “hitting” on me and when he left that was no longer a problem, but Bob Muller was a very soft and gentle guy which should have been a good thing, but it too had a downside. RJM had been kind of “stern” with the staff at Macnamara’s Advertising Agency and so when I needed anything from them or was sent by RJM to do or get something, everyone had always jumped when I spoke and whatever it was I wanted, I got it straight away. Bob Muller on the other hand, being such “a nice guy,” meant that nobody took him seriously at Macnamara’s and so they didn’t “jump” for him or for me, which I hated. What I hated most was interaction with Derik Ward, the new employee of APR. He was arrogant, lazy and sloppy and I despised him. I stuck it out for the next couple of months, but by November I’d had enough. I resigned and began looking for another job.

I found one almost immediately and started work at the beginning of December on the condition that I could take holidays over Xmas. North American Vending Machines were a company that purported to place vending machines on sites around the Adelaide CBD and metropolitan areas. These machines dispensed cigarettes and food and drinks and chips etc. My job was to look after the office and do some basic bookkeeping. People used to invest in the Company and they got 20% interest on their investment which in those days was simply huge as the interest on most things was around 4-5%.

My boss was a man called Kempney. He was tall and bald and came from some eastern European country. There were two other girls working for the company, one was a blond girl with bright red lipstick and the other was a brunette, also with bright red lipstick. I, of course, had no lipstick at all. Sometime towards the end of my time with NAVM I discovered that that both girls were the mistresses of the boss and that I (without the lipstick) had been hired because “somebody had to do the work.” I can pick them, can’t I!!!

Almost in my first week there my new boss, Mr Kempney, had a photo shoot and used me as the model to advertise one of the Vending machines. I remember the dress I was wearing at the time. It was a green wool suit dress, with a wide collar and fitted waistline and flared skirt. I had a cutting from the newspaper which showed the ad but can’t find it in my files. It probably got thrown out when I sorted my boxes in later years.

Well, I worked away pretty happily at first. I remember one day at lunch time I was walking down King William street with the blond girl, I am sure somewhere in my files I have her name, but can’t find it just at this moment. Anyway, this girl had just had her hair done and something had gone wrong with the bleach and her hair had turned a very interesting shade of green! She was completely unfazed by this fact, and as we walked together down the street everyone looked at her in amazement and she loved it!! The next time she needed her hair bleached, she asked them to repeat the process if they could because it had been so effective for her purposes!!

There were two salesmen with the company and they were not very nice either. One was a younger guy who just did his job and never said much. The old guy was a bit slimy I thought, but he did his work too, and didn’t bother me too much. As time when on, and I think I stayed with the company for three or four months, there were other things that did bother me. I used to listen to Mr Kempney selling his “product” to investors who came into the office. There were people from all walks of life, obviously after a “quick buck” and many catholic priests came in and invested “whose” money?? I thought.

One day I went into Kempney’s office and saw him sitting at his desk and he was cleaning a gun!!!??!! He saw my amazed look and he said, “I killed a man once.” I said, “Oh?” He said, “Yes, well I was crossing the border from…………to………. (I don’t remember the country names, probably the Ukraine or some such place) and I killed a border guard.” “Oh!” I said again. I left his office trying to digest this new information.

One day I turned up at work and Mr Kempney was holding a huge model plane over his head and pretending to fly it round the office. He said, “I can’t wait to fly this little beauty.” Then he said, “In fact, I can’t wait!” He sent me downstairs to the Chemist’s to buy a hypodermic syringe which he said he would need to inject fuel into the plane’s fuel tank. I did as I was told and went downstairs to the Chemist. “One hypodermic syringe, please!!!” I brought the syringe back up to Kempney and he injected fuel into the fuel tank and started up its engine. The plane flew wildly around the office, spraying engine fuel all over the walls and the desks and the floor. I jumped out of the room into my office for protection from this crazy man and his missile. When he managed to capture the plane again, the room was an absolute mess. There was engine fluid on the walls on the floors on the desks. Kempney was completely unperturbed. He called in a maintenance man who set about cleaning up the office.

At Xmas time, Kempney took us all to a night club for the Xmas party. I don’t remember where it was, probably in Hindley Street. I wore my blue satin dress and this time it was COMPLETELY suitable for the occasion, but I was just as uncomfortable on this occasion as I had been at John and Phyl’s kitchen evening, but for an entirely different reason. Mr Hough, the Manager of the Perth office was over too, so that meant there was Kempney, the two girls, Hough and me. There was dancing on a small dance floor and the twist was the dance of the night, it seemed. I felt like a thorough wet blanket. I didn’t like either of the men and I didn’t like the girls either and I wanted to be anywhere but where I was. Photos were taken of us on the night and I was given two photos to take home with me. The first thing I did when I got home was to take a pair of scissors and cut myself out of the picture I was in with Kempney and throw the rest of the photo away. I had a second picture of Hough and the two girls, which I kept. I have pasted myself back in this picture using the cut out of me from the other picture, so you can see what it was like on that night. You can see the “line” around me which shows that it was cut out.

It was the keeping of the books that finally showed me that something was really drastically wrong with this company. I was not an accountant and I had never worked as a bookkeeper before, but I knew that people were supposed to pay income tax and yet I had strict instructions to tax the salesmen but not to tax Kempney??? There was this and other irregularities that were obvious even to me. One day I rang up Hough from the Perth office. I didn’t know who owned the business, but I could tell that Kempney was crooked and so I spoke to Hough and told him of my suspicions about Kempney. Next thing I knew Hough hopped a ‘plane and came to Adelaide and soon I began to realise that Hough was as crooked as Kempney, and Bamford (the older salesperson) was obviously in on it too. I gave notice that day and left the company immediately.

And that was the end of that, I thought, but it was not the end. A few months or so after I had left the company there was a huge front page newspaper “Scoop,” in The News, I think, about a massive fraud by a company called North American Vending Machines, and the two owners, Kempney and Hough had tried to flee the country. They had purchased a big sea-going boat and fitted it out with extra fuel tanks and tried to escape in this boat. They had engine trouble on the Brisbane River and were overtaken by the police, arrested, charged and imprisoned. Don’t know where either of them are today, but I was very glad that I got out before anyone blamed me for my part in keeping the Company’s books. (If anyone can find the story, it was probably in the paper in March to June of 1960.)

So that was my job with North American Vending Machine Company. This of course was another drama in my very drama filled life at end of 1959 and beginning of 1960.