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He was not highly regarded by his family mainly because he got drunk every Saturday night and had autocratic ways.
But to me as a child aged 8 to 14 he was a decisive influence and one of the most wonderful people in my life. I was sent in my primary years - Grades 4 and 5 in a boarding school of exceptional catholic cruelty - Clairveaux, Katoomba, NSW, Australia, thje Junior School of St Bernard's College. The most sadistic De La Salle Brother was Bropther Malachi, who demanded that my grandfather, who had a bad leg pick me up at weekends.
My grandfather would walk the four miles to the college to pick me up. He refused to catch the bus because of the money for the fares. When Bro Malachi saw him coming he would send me out to meet him. How I longed to get out of that polace and how wonderful of the old man to walk that way to make sure I got out.
He talked to me about the Depression, the Railways, The Unions, the Labor Party. He hated the capitalist classes. He would listen to Federal Parliament on the Radio and especially cheered on Eddie Ward, the member for East Sydney who socked it to the monied classes and never let up on how they oppressed the working classes.
He was an inveterate letter writer to the local paper. He became exceptionally abusive when the bus companies put up the price of the bas farfe to Katoomba (by a penny) or when the price of beer went up.
He was stone cold sober during the week. but on Saturdays (my brother remembers Fridays) nothing could dissuade him from getting dressed up in suit, tie and hat, shined shoes and all and going to the pub from whence he came home totally drunk. On the down hill path to the house he once fell over on his head and landed on his head- straight upside down. My grandmother was shrieking in fear that he had injured himself, but he was perfectly all right and so drunk he had no idea he was upside down.
When drunk he would sit up all night and talk all night out loud of his experiences during the Depression on the Railways when the jobs were divided by four and the avewrage person was caught up in a desperate struggle for basic survival.
He had strong views on enterntainment. He loathed Bing Crosby ( a "Groaner") as representing everthing which was decadent in modern youth. He could not understand how anyone could enjoy such colourless singing when they coudl have listened to Harry Lauder, Gladys Moncrieff, Gilbert and Sullivan or Dame Nelllie Melba. He lamented the decline of Vaudeville.which re recollected as real fun and entertainment. He would often sing:-
and similar ditties.
He was a teller of stories. He would describe the boa constrictor snake in fearsome detail. How it could drop from a tree, 30 feet long and a foot thick, wrap itself around a man and strangle him to death.
The Depression and the War (WWII) had also made him extremly thrifty. I used to love walking with him. One day I recall him picking up a piece of paling with an old nail in it. It went into the sugar bag he always carried with him. The wood was saved for the fire heap and the nail was carefully extracted, straightened out on the anvil with the hammer, dipped in sump oil and preserved in the appropriately sized jar. This was the the late forties, Post Depression, post War. Nothing was ever thrown out.
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