A dastardly diving diversion

In 1957 I joined the Riversdale Surf Lifesaving Club. Your image of a lifeguard is someone who is tall, muscular, bronzed and handsome. I was, of course, none of these though after a few weekends in the sun, I did go a sort of a reddy brown. Back then I was incredibly thin. In the 1959 National Surf Lifesaving Championships held at Oakura Beach, just out of New Plymouth, I was judged the skinniest lifesaver  in the thousand man march past at the conclusion of the competition. I was so thin I could have put on a red tie and gone to a fancy dress ball as a thermometer.

Riversdale was no Piha. It was a blessing that few bathers, if any, ever got into difficulties at the popular Wairarapa beach resort. We did attempt to rescue bikini-clad young women about our own age from time to time; often mistaking their waving to acquaintances back on dry land as a signal that they were in distress.  We inevitably had to let them go after their protestations attracted the attention of friends and family. Theirs, not ours. Ours disowned us.

We set off to attend the Oakura championships on a Thursday afternoon. We had a scheduled stop at Hawera where one of our team members, John Oakly, who a few months earlier had shifted to Taranaki to work on a dairy farm, was competing in the final night of the local swimming club championships. His father was the manager of the WFCA department store in Masterton at the time. John had amassed enough points over the season to be in the running to win the senior championship, so we agreed to stay on and give him moral support, and then take him on to New Plymouth to take part with us at the National Lifesaving competitions.

We had a few ales at a Hawera hostelry before presenting ourselves at the local baths. We were warmly met and the arrival of the “Riversdale Surf Lifesaving Team, from the Wairarapa” was announced over the loudspeaker. The swimming club president came up to us offer his personal greetings, and he inquired if there was anyone among us who knew how to judge diving. I found myself being shoved forward from my colleagues behind, two of whom said in remarkable unison “Yes, Rick’s a diving judge” and went on to extol, and of course entirely fabricate, my experiences in this field, even to the extent that I had judged the diving at the previous year’s Empire Games in Cardiff.

This was a spontaneous action and was born in an environment where we were always attempting one-upmanship in pranks we played on each other. It was, I think, the forerunner to theatre sports. The two mostly responsible, for want of better names I will call Brian Bodle and Wayne Snowsill. Our club president who was a sober, decent upright citizen Stan Lane, and who was chaperoning us to ensure this sort of thing didn’t happen, was momentarily speechless, as I was. Before he or I could regain our composure I was being whisked to the best seat in the house and the event commentator was telling the impressed spectators that they had in attendance an Empire Games diving judge, who would be officiating later on in the evening.

It was remarkable that they accepted this claim. I must have been the youngest international diving judge in the world.  I was barely nineteen at the time. Meanwhile Stan Lane, a deeply religious man, had the faraway look of a man not believing what he is seeing.

John Oakly had only one serious rival in his quest to win the Senior Hawera Swimming Championships of 1959, and by the time they came to the last item on the programme, the diving, they were equal first.

I was ushered to a prominent position in the complex, given a diving scorecard, something I had never seen before in my life, and placed between two local judges who gave the distinct impression that they were honoured to sit beside me. John and his rival were to complete three dives each: standing, running and a free choice. John was as portly as I was skinny, and his first dive created such a splash that there was a real risk that he might empty the pool.

I gave him nine out of ten.

My two fellow judges, seeing my card, were startled. They had given him a four and a five, respectively. I explained that at the Empire Games we took more cognisance of the flight in the air rather than the entry into the water. They were impressed with this explanation and changed their score. John got three nines. I marked his rival down a little, even though his flight was every bit as good as John’s and his entry, near perfect. In the final wash-up John won the diving and subsequently the senior championship.

While he was being presented with the cup, in front of a stunned, disbelieving audience, I gave an interview to a representative of the local newspaper, contriving experiences I’d never had. I was warming to my new status. Stan Lane had still not recovered his full speech as we all set off for New Plymouth hoping to continue on our winning way. We did make an impression at Oakura, but not always for the right reasons.

Meanwhile, somewhere in Taranaki today, there quite likely sits a man in his early-seventies staring at an empty trophy cabinet, dreaming of what might have been. How on earth, he will be thinking, after all that dedication and preparation, and a near faultless performance, could he have been pipped at the post on that fateful summers evening in 1959. I just hope it hasn’t scarred him for life.

They say that today you couldn’t do the things that we got away with in our day.

Perhaps it’s just as well.

“There is no way sport is so important that it can be allowed to damage the rest of your life.” - Steve Ovett

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The risks of being a gambling man

My father’s given names were Clifford Keir, though everyone called him Jim. Everyone that is except my mother, who called him ‘Tui.’ No-one ever called him Clifford or Keir, but the staff at the shop always referred to him as “C.K.” To add further confusion my sister and I called him Dad. One day “CK-Jim-Tui-Dad” told me that his father, William Hugh Long, but always known as ‘Tui’- had made a lot of money betting that you couldn’t hit a four gallon kerosene tin, thrown in the air from a distance of ten yards, with a shotgun. Kerosene tins are now a thing of the past, but they were a useful item in their day apart from holding kerosene and providing income for my grandfather from his betting.

They were galvanised and square shaped, about 500mm high and about 250mm square and used by various merchants to hold a variety of products. Science teachers used them to demonstrate to school kids the astonishing effects of air pressure and we utilised them extensively in the butcher’s shop, with the top cut out, to put rendered-down fat in. These were sold to the fish shops as dripping, to replenish their chip vats.

It appeared to me that to hit one with the spreading pellets of a shotgun blast from a mere ten yards would be a piece of cake. That’s what Dad wanted me to think of course, and after little contemplation I bet him a pound that I could do it.

I had never ever fired a shotgun, but I was a dab hand with a miniature rifle and was quite sure that the step-up would pose no problem. To make sure, fellow work-mate and first cousin Jim Geary and I thought a bit of practice wouldn’t hurt. Jim was acting as agent for the rest of the staff to see which way they would place their bets.

We snuck out after work to a deserted paddock on the outskirts of town with Jim’s shotgun, a few cartridges and a kerosene tin. I missed the first shot and was surprised at the kick a shotgun gave to my shoulder. But I soon regained my composure and hit the tin easily in the next two attempts. As pop singer Meatloaf was to sing years later, “Two out of three ain’t bad,” so we reported back to our fellow staff members that a bet on me was like putting your money on Keith Holyoake to win Pahiatua.

Our shop foreman Dan Simonsen, affectionately known as ‘Simo,’ was curiously taking C.K.’s side and was betting that I would miss.  Dad had generously allowed that I could have two attempts at the target and needed to hit the tin only once.  The rest of the staff backed me to a man. Dad and Simo took on all the bets which ranged from a half dozen of beer, ten shillings, or one pound.

The day of reckoning was a bit like Melbourne Cup Day. We closed the shop sharp at five and then all tore out to the gun club premises at Norfolk Road in meat delivery vans and trucks plus a few private cars. The atmosphere was tense. The foreman ran the show. Dad stood back with a knowing smirk. Simo had three cartridges and two kerosene tins. First he put one of the kerosene tins on the ground and blasted it with the shotgun from ten yards. It blew a huge hole in the tin and rendered it useless. The two other cartridges were put into the double barrels, the gun handed to me and the second tin thrown skyward. I took aim and fired at the peak of its trajectory when it was momentarily motionless. I missed. C.K. and Simo said they saw the pellets veer off to the right of the target. I was not too concerned. I just needed to settle down a little; I had one more chance and I wasn’t going to be fooled into shifting my aim to the left. The tin went up, loomed large on my sights, and I took careful aim, fired, and incredibly, missed again. This time Dad and Simo swore the pellets went above the floating tin.

The rest of the staff were clearly upset. Their losses were substantial. To be fair, Dad and Simo only pocketed the cash. They did share the half dozens they had won and we had a party there and then while I agonised over how I could have missed such an easy target.

A few years later I was recounting the story to my good friend Arch King; at that time breakfast announcer and assistant manager at Radio Wairarapa. He assumed the same smirk as my father had, and suggested I go back and talk to C.K. as he hinted there might have been more to the story.

Dad came clean. He had sent Simo down to see Harold King, Arch’s father and the owner of King and Henry, gunsmiths. On Dad’s instructions Harold gave Simo three cartridges, two of which had the pellets removed. It is the measure of a small town when you consider that it was Harold’s father, also a gunsmith, who was the co-conspirator when my grandfather was up to the same tricks. Simo of course used the real cartridge first to blast the tin on the ground then loaded the gun with the pellet-less models. Their claim to have seen the first lot of shot veer to the right and the second lot of pellets go over the top was, of course, pure fabrication. Dad’s generosity in allowing me two shots at the target was hardly generous at all. With Harold King’s carefully contrived ammo, I would have missed with a hundred attempts!

My grandfather lived in a stately home at the bottom of Worksop Road. It is now hidden among infill housing but it was set in two acres of ground, boasted lovely bush areas, large gardens, a prolific orchard and a swimming pool. I realise now that it was pellet-less cartridges rather than selling sausages that likely paid the mortgage.

As for Jim-Tui-C.K.-Dad, a more appropriate nomenclature might have been Ned Kelly. Or at least, the son of.

“No man is responsible for his father. That is entirely his mother’s affair.”  - Margaret Turnbull

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Sanitising sex on the shop floor

Some years ago, I think it was in the mid 1970’s, I was appointed to a quango with the unlikely nomenclature of The Sawdust Working Party Committee. This unit was set up by the government who had decided in their wisdom that it needed to ban sawdust from butcher’s shop floors.

The entrenched little men from the Health Department had carefully scrutinised the sawdust and had decreed that it was chock full of organisms and that these little beasties were scampering up the legs of our benches, landing on the cutting area and then cunningly dropping onto the mincers and sausage machines and were eventually causing havoc in people’s stomachs. Meat eaters’ stomachs that is, vegetarians, a rarity back then, were of course, immune.

According to the Health Department, people were writhing around in pain and dying like flies. Actually I just made that last bit up, but it was panic stations all round and sawdust on butcher’s shop floors had now replaced the North Vietnamese as public enemy number one.

Of course we butchers saw it quite differently. Sawdust to us was irreplaceable. Our floors were particularly treacherous because during the day they got covered in fat and water, a lethal mix. Sawdust soaked up the excess moisture and rendered the surface skid proof. We butcher’s liberally sprinkled sawdust on a daily basis behind the counter and in our boning rooms. You spread it around like you would feed your chooks.

We painted grim pictures of butchers doing untold damage to personages as they slipped, slided, and skated around their premises whilst holding super sharp knives and machete like choppers if the miraculous mixture was marginalised. We opined we would inevitably end up stabbing ourselves or doing unmentionable damage to our various appendages.

To be fair, the government of the day did have some sympathy for our cause, hence they set up The Sawdust Working Party Committee; three Health Department boffins plus three master butchers selected to represent the north, mid and southern regions of New Zealand. I represented the central region.

Three health department officials across the table from three intransigent butchers resulted in stalemate, so the then Minister of Health called us to his office at parliament - this was pre-Beehive days - to see if he could overcome the impasse.

We butchers arrived at parliament with the executive director of the N. Z. Meat Retailers Federation, Don Fyfe, in tow. There we were met at the minister’s door by a barrage of reporters and a TV cameraman. We were keen to front up to the press, but Mr. Fyfe urged us to make no comment and hurried us past the expectant scribes. The Minister of Health, Air Commodore Frank Gill, listened intently to both sides of the argument and said he would carefully consider the issue and get back to us.

As we left, the reporters and the cameraman were still eager for a comment, but again our Mr. Fyfe cautioned us to make no response and hurriedly ushered us down the corridor. We looked wistfully back at the cameraman, knowing that this might well be our first and last chance at a moment of fame, but we opted to do as we were told.

Poor Mr. Gill had no such adviser. He approached the camera and told the lens and eventually the world that there were some problems because butchers had orgasms on their floors.

The media had a field day. It made headlines internationally and Tom Scott, who back then wrote an accompanying story with his cartoons in The Listener, arguably concocted the masterpiece of his career.

Of course we butchers were the butt of some rather uncouth jokes and banter in the ensuing weeks, but we had been giving it for years so I guess it was only fair to now be on the receiving end. Other cartoonists besides Scott made use of their skills to chronicle our activities at ground level and “on the shop floor” took on a totally new meaning.

It was great fun while it lasted.

The upshot of all this was that sawdust was eventually banned, but the government gave us ten years to find alternatives before we had to remove it completely from our premises. No substitutes were ever really found; in the end I think we probably just improved our footwear and learnt to be steadier on our feet.

Fast forward to the 21st century and our boning room is now an art gallery called Hedspace. It has a smooth concrete floor sans the sawdust and curiously I read recently where scientists have discovered that wood does not harbour unfriendly bacteria after all. In fact, plastics, which we were subsequently forced to use on our cutting tables, are the more likely carriers of harmful organisms.

So all the fuss was probably over nothing, and indeed the general health of the public may have worsened. Salmonella is now reaching epidemic proportions claim the current spokespeople at the Department of Health, particularly they say, in the greater Wellington region. I note too that we now have three funeral directors in this town when in the sawdust era, one sufficed.

More undertakers, but fewer butcher’s shops; there’s a message here somewhere.

“Health is what my friends are always drinking to before they fall down.” - Phyllis Diller.

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Keeping resolute for the New Year

True stories they say are stranger than fiction and the New Year always reminds of the time, some years back, when I made a resolution that was going to be damnably hard to keep. The family were sitting around home on New Year’s Eve when we decided to make our resolutions and knowing that I was perfect in every way - oh Lord, it’s hard to be humble - I was having difficulty in deciding what on earth I could do to improve my persona.

I reluctantly conceded that I did have a flaw in my make-up; I’m terrified of heights. The resolution then was obvious. I would cure myself of the fear of heights during the ensuing year. The kids, knowing of my overt fear, were uncharitably sceptical.

I put up with their taunts most of that January, but I was lying on the beach one day and looking up at the sky and it occurred to me that the thing I would hate to do the most was to go skydiving. It was a revelation; all I had to do to cure my fear of heights was to jump out of an aeroplane. It was so simple; why hadn’t I thought of it before?

I was aware that there was a skydiving company out at Hood aerodrome, but I didn’t want to fail locally so I rang the Manawatu skydiving club to check out the options there. The lady on the phone was most obliging. I couldn’t have rung at a more opportune time, she intoned. They were starting a new class in the first week in February and I was welcome to join. It required me to attend a tutorial every Thursday night for six weeks at a complex at Milson Aerodrome in Palmerston North where I would be taught the theory of skydiving. On the sixth night I would be required to sit a test and if I passed, on the following Saturday, I could take my first jump. 

So every Thursday I would rush home from work, shower and change, and then tear over the Pahiatua track to Palmerston North to learn the “theory” of skydiving. I have put the inverted commas around “theory” because I want to emphasise it.

There were 28 in the class; I was the palpably the oldest and we didn’t do anything practical except on the third or fourth evening we were made to climb on to a platform about as high as a dining room table and with our parachutes strapped on our backs we slid down a flying-fox type of contraption and were instructed how to land safely.

To give you some indication of the extent of my fear, I’m bound to confess that my legs were shaking even standing on the table!

On the sixth night we were given the test and I topped the class in the “theory” of skydiving. In fact we all passed with flying colours and the instructor invited us to come back on Saturday morning and, weather permitting, we would be able to put our theory into practice. 

I didn’t get a wink of sleep on that Friday night and next morning reluctantly arose early for the pilgrimage to the Manawatu. My wife and the four grown-up children were all coming of course; there was no way that they were not going to witness the inevitable death by fright of their wimp-like husband and father. I wanted to get lost somewhere around Mangamaire but the family kept me on the right track and we arrived punctually at Milson aerodrome on a cloudless, windless day in mid-March. Perfect weather, the instructor gleefully told us, for skydiving.

I tried to appear outwardly calm - but in my heart my knees were shaking! The palpitations increased markedly when the tutor said, “He who tops the class, jumps first.”

The little Cessna 180 sitting on the tarmac was the scariest plane I have ever seen. There was a door missing on one side and when the instructor, the pilot and I were bundled into the tiny cockpit I discovered to my great chagrin that I was sitting next to the gap where the door should have been. I remember saying to the pilot, “Look at those people down there, they look like ants,” he said, “Those are ants you idiot, we haven’t taken off yet.”    

Soon we were airborne and the plane circled around and around in the clear blue sky to attain the desired height. By now I was numb with fright. I once read a book called The Power of Positive Thinking and had managed as a result of its teachings to keep the contemplation of actually jumping from an aeroplane at a great height out of my thought patterns over the last six weeks, but now, as the plane soared higher and higher, there was no hiding it from my consciousness. The open-door policy only exacerbated the situation!

Finally the instructor said “O.K. now jump.”

I said, “Can we do just one more circuit?”

He reluctantly acquiesced and allowed the pilot to make another turn which really only prolonged the agony and meant I was even further away from terra firma. I was then told that if I didn’t jump after the next circuit he would get the pilot to tip the plane and I would fall out and this would be somewhat less pleasant than actually taking the plunge voluntarily.

Voluntarily! How on earth did I allow myself to get in to this ludicrous situation?

The moment of truth arrived. The New Year’s resolution was about to be fulfilled. I took a deep breath, cursed Dr Norman Vincent Peale and his darned book, and jumped.

Now in the “theory” of skydiving we were told to count up to about fifteen seconds, enjoy the sensation of flying, then pull the rip-cord and float down to earth to the cheers of the madding crowds.

I think I counted fully one-and-a-half seconds before I hastily tugged firmly on the cord. You’re never going to believe this, but the parachute failed to open. Never mind, I topped the class in the “theory” of skydiving and it is important not to panic; you simply curl up into a foetal position and pull on the little white cord with the knot on the end that’s conveniently at waist height and this will release the emergency chute which will reliably open and safely float you to the ground.  I tugged at the cord and at this time all the “theory” went out the window. The emergency chute failed to open as well.

I never did, at any stage, experience the glorious sensation of floating or flying. Now it felt like I was hurtling, and the ground was coming up at an alarming speed.

They say just before you die your whole life flashes before your eyes and certainly as I looked down I could see on the edge of the tarmac my wife and the four kids standing around the car, all the things I hold dear to me – particularly the car – and I could imagine what was going through their minds. “Gosh, isn’t Dad brave, he really is waiting to the very last minute before he opens his parachute!”

To the right of me I could see the Palmerston North public hospital, just a few hundred yards east of the aerodrome, where, with a bit of luck I might end up, but behind me, to my left, there was the Kelvin Grove Crematorium which was far more likely to be my ultimate destination.

I decided to have one more crack at life. I grabbed the white cord firmly, got my hand securely behind the knot and I pulled and I pulled - and I pulled the cord clean out of my pyjamas!

Have a great 2013!                               

“It is always the best policy to speak the truth, unless of course you are an exceptionally good liar.” - Jerome K. Jerome.

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