Chapter 3 On the Move

Chapter 3  On the Move

It wasn't long before George realised it would be more practical for the family to live in Brisbane, where Peggy would have access to better hospital care. 

She was always blessed with rich black hair, which she wore in two long, thick plaits, and after they moved to Brisbane, when she was about 12, George finally relented and allowed a hairdresser to cut off the heavy braids.

 She says,“The hairdresser told Mum to take me home and wash my hair. As it dried it was  just a mass of curls.”

Peggy was hurt by Annie’s neighbour at the back of the house snorting to her mother, "You had her hair curled!" Once again the remark left an imprint on Peggy's mind.

Many times Peggy told me about the clothes her mother used to make for her to wear to school She and her school friends must have been discussing money one day when one of the little girls remarked, "Oh, we know you have money; we can tell by all the lace on your pants."

 “If only they knew,” Peggy told me, “I hated that lace. It itched me constantly.”

Annie made her own and the girl's clothes on the sewing machine. Surprisingly, they were not simple styles. They usually included an abundance of fine tucks or pleats, and almost always a profusion of lace or frothy frills. The sewing machine was not even a treadle worked by the foot. Instead it had a little handle on the wheel which had to be turned by hand. Peggy described a bedspread that Annie made for Bill one time when Peggy was a little girl. The whole spread was made from braid, sewn edge to edge, and Peggy helped her mother by turning the handle. It must have been a magnificent bedspread when it was finished, but according to Peggy it was very heavy, and a nightmare to wash.

 “We lived in a big airy, rented house that Mum and Dad  wanted to buy,” Peggy said.  “But by that time, Molly was going with Dickie Jorgensen. They lived in the next suburb.”

Peggy could attest to her sister’s friendship with Dickie because, “I listened from under the stairs one night in the dark when Dicky was kissing Molly good night.”

When the house next door to the Jorgensen's became vacant for rent, Molly and the older girls urged their parents to move into the new house, which they eventually did.

Peggy remembers, “Mum was furious about the house. It was filthy and full of cockroaches, which she had to clean up before we could move in.”

After the move, Peggy continued her schooling at the Buranda State School, which was closer, and she proved to be an enterprising young miss with natural entrepreneurial skills.     
“The teachers at Buranda asked us one day if all the families could provide two shillings and sixpence towards a new swimming pool, so I thought I’d hold a concert at  home.” she explained.

She chose several of the girls from her class who she knew could sing and recite poetry well, and organized for them to perform items. She also had a short skit or two. Unfortunately, one of the two girls who were singing was jealous of the other, because the other girl had more items than she did.

“She stole the piece of paper I’d written the itinerary on,” Peggy told me indignantly.

In regard to the performance area, Peggy engaged the help of her brother, Bill. In those days new cars were packed in very large wooden boxes, and Bill managed to acquire one of these massive boxes and helped Peggy to arrange it upside down, where it made a beautiful stage.

 Several young boys from the area turned up to go to the concert. One of them was Dickie Jorgensen's youngest brother Alec, who was 14.

George ordered them off the property. "But we want to go to the concert, Mr. West,"  Alec argued. George didn't relent, and the concert went ahead without them.

“I suppose I just muddled my way through,” Peggy said, when I asked her how she managed without her itinerary.

The concert was a great success. Along with a few pennies she collected going door to door, and the penny admission she charged for the concert, Peggy managed to make two shillings and seven pence, and the school eventually got its swimming pool.