Chapter 23 Mum's Experience Widens

                                                           Chapter 23   Mum's Experience Widens 

 The school always held a fancy dress ball toward the end of the year, and a ‘Christmas tree’ dance was arranged in the dance hall, which was decorated with a huge Christmas tree.  Every child in the district got a present which was provided by the Hall committee. For the fancy dress ball most mothers sewed their own costumes, because that was the cheapest option. The mother of one of my rivals at school usually hired her daughter’s costume from Brisbane, creating envy on my part. Gossip had it that the costume was returned as ‘unsuitable,’ thus avoiding the charge!

    One year I went as the Genie of the Lamp, and Larry helped to put thick black makeup on my face by burning cork. He drew on heavy black eyebrows and a big black moustache. Mum made baggy pants elasticized at the ankle out of yellow satin. I wore black peaked slippers and a little black and red bolero drawn together with  gold chain  On my head they wound a colourful silk turban. Mum clipped her gold loop earrings to my ears, hung a red glass bauble down on my forehead from the turban and made a pretty  pink fez tassel by fraying rope and dying it with red ink. This was attached upright in the front fold of the turban. Larry found an old oil can that Mum painted with gold paint. Hardly anyone recognized me when I was finally dressed, and at the judging I won first prize. Whoo hoo!

    The end of the year was also notable for the school children because of 'breaking-up day. A few days before the official last day and our breaking-up picnic, Mr Abbott instructed us all to bring to school scrubbing brushes, soap and rags. We had long wooden desks with a form, or long stool, to sit on and each desk accommodated six pupils.  Along the front of the desks were holes for the ink wells, which were stained with ink. The desks were dirty from pencil marks, ink blots, children's hands and fragments of much used rubber erasers.  Everything was scrubbed. The boys carried the desks and stools down onto the grass and brought buckets of water for us all to get stuck into scrubbing with the soap and brushes.

     Our education was furthered when we learnt the true meaning of, “Put some elbow grease into it!”

    Nothing was left uncleaned. Desks, stools, schoolroom floor, window ledges and windows were all scrubbed to within an inch of their lives. Being the tallest in the school I was always given the highest windows to clean, standing up on a chair and reaching up with a cleaning cloth. Workplace health and Safety? A foreign beast, back then.

    Every year we put on a concert for the parents and these caused every one tremendous excitement. One year the play we put on was called Laughter and Tears, and I was given the part of the Princess. Whoo hoo!  There would be recitations of poetry, plays, skits, and choir singing of Christmas carols. In grade four, singing ‘Silent night,’ I didn't know the words and was just following along, singing what I heard. When it came to 'mother and child,’ I sang 'mar the ran chile.'
 
   “I wonder what that means," I asked myself.

     It was another couple of years before I found out what the words really were!
    
    All the parents came on Breaking-up Day and brought sandwiches and cakes for the picnic lunch before the concert. The school committee provided ice-creams in little cardboard cups with flat wooden spoons, and a handful of plums. Both were a novelty. Flavoured ice cream hadn’t been invented yet, and the little cups were kept cold in dry ice, as were soft drinks in small cans. The children lined up in long queues while committee members doled out each child’s quota of one ice-cream and six or seven plums. At the end of the day, formal proceedings included the presentation of the books we’d chosen earlier in the year. What a joyous time.

    When I neared the end of grade seven though, disaster struck.  Chickenpox raged through the school. Owen, now in grade 1, had been in bed sick and was back at school.  I was in a wonderful play that I loved, playing the part of a hotel landlady. Two weeks before break-up day I noticed blisters on my arms, and Mum and I stared openmouthed at each other. I was devastated. I had a bad case, with lesions even in my ears and on my scalp, and  high fever. Mum dragged a bed out into the hall-way in front of the open front door where I could feel the breeze. One day the hair brush became tangled in my hair to such an extent, it had to be cut out with scissors, so sore was my scalp. School had long since finished for the year, and the rest of the children were enjoying their Christmas holidays by the time I recovered.

    The next year we put on a puppet show instead of the play, making our own puppets, under the instruction of Mr Abbott. We grade eights wrote the script. It was my final year at primary school and the last scholarship class before  the government decided to include grade eight with high school. Once again the school was floundering under the onslaught of a contagious illness. It was summer 1959, mumps went through the school, and once again I was not exempt. Fortunately this time it occurred about six weeks before the end of the school year. I went back to school with only three weeks to prepare for the final exam. For the first maths test we had after I returned, my results had dropped considerably. 

    Mr Abbott remarked, "Yes I know, you’re as dull as dish water!"

    Considering my recent illness I was happy to achieve 82% for the final exam.
           

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     Always alert to schemes, Dad conducted polling day at our place, setting up voting booths on our verandah. Another time he and Larry conducted the census, driving around the district delivering forms to all the families, and going back later to collect them. All these little ‘‘schemes’ helped to top up the income.

    One of the greatest schemes that he thought up to benefit our tiny primary school was a talent quest. The old adage, 'It'll be all right on the night,' never rang so true as it did on those nights of our little country concerts. Basically the scheme involved five small surrounding primary schools for the heats. Dad persuaded Assville to get involved and host the final night.  He convinced a member of Parliament to present prizes and a TV station to audition the winner. There wasn't one concert that wasn't a huge success, but some nights were hilariously funny with the benefit of hindsight! Many a time we arrived at the concert with just two or three items on the itinerary.

    Almost invariably some 'would-be famous' amateurs would approach Dad and say, "Do you think I could……” Dad had them signed up before they finished speaking!

    He had singers, dancers, acrobats and even a magician or two and he emceed every concert.

    I remember him pleading with one amateur, "Come on Audrey; you'll be great!” She obliged to help him fill the program.

    In the end the winner was a young married man, a singer, who had suffered polio and walked with a walking stick. Unfortunately he had studied singing by listening to old songs on 78 rpm records. His career ended with the end of the concerts.

     Embarrassingly, little Green Springs school made more money than Assville had ever had! In fact I think the amount of money we had became a bit of a bone of contention amongst all the districts!

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     To his delight, in 1955, Dad was approached to take on the Gillman Creek telephone exchange.

     Mum was pessimistic, “I’ll be the one doing all the work!”

    Needless to say, Mum’s protests fell on deaf ears. There was money to be made.

     “You’ll be right, Mum,” he’d say, trying to humour her.

      In our district we had three party lines, and our exchange was connected to other small exchanges, such as Green Springs and Eadervale. The main exchange however was at Assville.

    The party lines were an interesting phenomena.  On our exchange we had line two, line three, and line four, and there were about four to six subscribers on each line.  Each subscriber had a designated signal. Before the exchange came into our house, our number was 2-S, which was three short rings, as in Morse code for S. I think the other lines were U and W. The other signals were something like two shorts and a long, too longs and a short, or four longs. To dial the numbers you turned the handle on the front of the telephone and subscribers on the same party line could dial each other for free.

     But if someone on line two wanted to call someone on line three for instance, they needed to call the telephone exchange to get connected.

    Mum would answer and say, "Exchange?"

    The caller responded, "3-U. please."

      “One moment, please,” And Mum switched them through. 

    If someone wanted to send a telegram, they also called the exchange and asked, "Could I send a telegram please, Peggy?" Then she wrote down the message and called Assville who would relay the telegram and inform Mum of the cost.

    If the subscriber wanted to call a number in Eadervale or Assville, they asked for trunk, and Mum would switch them through to the main exchange in that town.

    Of course party lines were notorious for having eavesdroppers ‘listening in’.

    Mum became a confidant for stressed marriage partners and menopausal women, and refereed if arguments broke out. She translated doctor’s orders and sympathised with patients.

    It wasn’t hard to pick up the workings of the exchange, and by the time I was eleven I could relieve her sometimes if she needed to leave the house.

    Owen also learnt how to answer the phone and one day, when he was about three, Mum walked into the house to discover her toddler son talking to another exchange.

    She took the phone. "Oh yes, I often have a chat to Owen, He told me that he couldn't hear me because it was raining on the roof," The woman told her merrily.

    The official hours were eight a.m. to eight p.m., and to her credit, Mum sometimes persuaded Dad to work the exchange while she went out to a CWA meeting or church gathering. She didn’t strike a blow for freedom often!