My mother kicked my father out when I was around 8 years old. There wasn’t much in the way of an explanation. I don’t really have any memories of him living with us. I remember a few slanging matches between them and that’s about all. I’ll go into that stuff another time. For now, just remember the separation.
I have such a vivid recollection of the day I met Chris. Me and my mate Fong were hanging out in the playground. I reckon it would have been around year 2 in primary school. I think we’re in the early 1980s here. It was Fong who spotted the pushing match. He pointed over to Goran and a new kid partaking in the obligatory shoving competition that precedes a fight.
Fong said, “Look, that kids fighting with Goran!”
In our tiny world, Goran had proven to be a tough kid, and for this new kid to be wrestling in the dirt with him was most impressive. It didn’t last long before a teacher picked them both up by the collar and sent them off in different directions.
“Let’s go talk to him” was Fong’s pragmatic suggestion.
That’s all I recall about that. From that day forward Chris was one of my best mates. I was a scrawny awkward kid. Chris was much cooler and the girls all loved him. He stood up for himself, and me sometimes. He wasn’t the best fighter, and he was only average size, but he hated bullies.
His family moved around a lot and sometimes they would move out bush. We wouldn’t see him for a year or longer. We would send letters to each other now and then; yeah, that’s right – pen, paper, envelope and stamp. Long distance phone calls were expensive man!
He would randomly appear out of nowhere sometimes from then until my late twenties. Sometimes he was moving back, other times it was just a visit. As a result, we were intermittent observers of each other’s development from childhood to manhood.
As kids I was the nerd and clown with a vibrant imagination. He was the sporty and rebellious larrikin. We got on like a house on fire. Along with our other friends we got up to the usual foolish juvenile shenanigans:
Stupid dares: Climb this, jump off that.
Vandalism: Damaging stuff simply because you’re not supposed to.
Trespassing: Exploring construction sites, factories, schools etc.
Petty theft: Usually stuff like ice creams, soft drinks, lollies and bubble gum.
And various combinations of these.
I can think of two times Chris went that little bit further:
- We were wandering around a department store in the city. Chris sees a pair of sneakers he likes and ever so casually removes his cruddy old ones, puts on the new ones and walks out.
- Chris, Jim and I were roaming around the tip (a common past time from my youth) and we came across a large hole in a fence. We went through and discovered we were in the rear of the Penfolds wine warehouse. Pallets and trucks loaded with cases of wine and spirits standing before us. There weren’t a lot of workers walking around, so Chris orchestrates an impromptu heist, and we end up walking home with a few bottles of brandy.
What the fuck is brandy? And what the fuck are we going to do with it?
We took a few sips, and it tasted horrible. Chris ends up giving the unopened bottles to Jim’s mother with some bullshit story about it being from his mother. Jim’s mum’s English wasn’t very good and she seemed pleased, so I guess that went well.
He kept sipping away at the open bottle as we walked to where our paths split. We were barely 12 and this kid’s sipping on brandy like its lemonade. God, it tasted putrid!
It wasn’t until we were much older that Chris told me about a different burglary he pulled when we were kids. My mate Wayne’s next-door neighbour had a long shed running along their fenceline. We would often have to jump the fence to get the ball back during a game. We noticed the padlock on the door, that was about all.
One drunken evening in our twenties, Dean tells us how he figured out it was a hydroponic marijuana set up. He broke in and pinched some. At that age!
What the fuck is marijuana? What the fuck is hydroponics?
That wasn’t the best pot yarn though. He tells another one about how I used to annoy his mother whenever I stayed over. She said I was a really nervous kid, hanging off doors and fidgeting all the time. Apparently, she used to put marijuana in my food to settle me down. No wonder I felt so relaxed over there.
There’s a few more Chris tales I’ll save for later. For now, I would like to return to my mother turfing my father out. I wouldn’t find out until a few years later, but mum and dad were an opposites attract couple – she was straight and he was crooked.
I suppose it’s all fun and games until you have kids and want to keep them away from shonks. Dad always had a job, but he just couldn’t resist a good rort. My sister and I just thought that the companies he worked for were really generous. He would always be bringing freebies back in large quantities. More on that another time.
It turns out that the final straw for my mum was when she found out dad was selling pot. Yeah, that stuff! To my mother, drugs were all the same and dad was just as unscrupulous as a heroin dealer. I still reckon she blurs them altogether now over 40 years later.
All this pot Chris’s parents obviously had no qualms about exposing him too and that I was oblivious of. I had much to learn.
Anyway, that’ll do for our first outing in Shonkyville.
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