Dad's Confession

Verdy Marsh stood on the road waving us to stop. ‘Not again’ I thought. It wasn’t all that long since we had  been caught and now it looked like we had been sprung again. Perhaps we had but that is one thing I will never know. Let me explain.

For the first two or three years of high school I caught the school bus at the intersection of what is now known as South Bank Road Palmers Channel and the Maclean to Yamba road. This meant a bike ride of of around eight kilometers. In the morning I would usually meet up  with friends along the way and of course we rode home together in the afternoon. The community had built a shelter shed at the intersection and in those days there was no risk of anyone stealing our bikes through the day.

One incident I remember well, sometimes wondering how lucky I was to escape unscathed. On this particular morning I was racing one of the other boys and we were neck and neck. We shot across the intersection and there, next to the bus shed in a bit of a depression in the ground, lay a discarded and quite sizeable piece of  lumbar. Both I and my school case somersaulted over the handlebars and landed on the ground. But that was not the scariest thing. As we raced toward the intersection we couldn’t see if there was any traffic on the Maclean road because of the sugar cane growing on both sides of South Bank Road, and while it is possible we may have heard the traffic noise we were so engrossed in our battle that we may well not have.

Rocky Marshall and myself went through the smoking stage as boys were wont to do back then - and not only back then I imagine. Now I can’t remember if we puffed as we rode along the road or if we pulled over on the side somewhere. I do remember though that we hid our fags under the local hall which stood at the intersection of South Bank Road and Amos’s Lane - which just happened to be diagonally across the road from Verdy’s place.

One day I made the mistake of taking the fags home. The next morning I stuck them in the pocket of my school shorts - not a very smart thing to do - and walked out of my room, ready for school, with my hand stuck in my pocket to hide the bulge. ‘What do you have in your pocket, Kenneth?’ ‘Nothing Mum.’ ‘Come on, tell me.’ ‘Nothing Mum.’ After two or three goes Mum gave up and I doubt that she believed me, so she must have felt kindly disposed that day. The consequences of upsetting Mum were at times quite painful - for Mum certainly believed the old saying about sparing the rod and spoiling the child, only in Mum’s case it was a switch off the peach tree.

While I was at Wagga Wagga I took up smoking and kept it up for a few years - fortunately giving up before I left for Butterworth. Every time I came home Mum would be on my case over this and I remember her stealing a few cigarettes from the packet in the hope that it would mean I smoked less. This time I got a confession out of her when I confronted her with the accusation.

However smoking had nothing to do with the incident involving Verdy. Next door to Lance and Verdy Marsh’s place - whose son Peter was a bit younger than me - stood the original Marsh family home, built by John and Mary Ann Marsh after they took up their selection of land in 1869. While I can’t remember who lived there - other than they were members of the extended family - they had quite a good orchard next to the house. The thought of all that delicious fruit was a temptation that two hungry school boys could not resist. I am sure that we must have raided it on more than one occasion, but this day Verdy caught  us. We must have faced some punishment, but if so I can’t remember what it was.

It obviously wasn’t sufficient to deter us, this being the reason for my guilty feelings when pulled over again. Sadly, as it turned out, this was not the reason we had been stopped. Mum had only heard that day that her father had died and they had arranged with Verdy that she would look after my brother, who was still in primary school, and me until Mum and Dad could pick us up.

As the years passed the incident of the orchard came up from time to time as the family reminisced. It came up again not long before Dad died. And this time the truth came out.

The local swimming pool was opposite the local hall, being a fenced off section of Palmers Channel as was common practice in those days. One day Dad and a couple of his mates, being boys at the time, made their way from the pool via the Channel to the orchard. They also were caught. I only wish I had thought to ask him what he had thought when his son was found out repeating the offense.

I know this though. Since the day that Dad told me he had also been caught doing the same thing there has been something special about the incident for me. While I struggle to find the words to explain it it has in a way created another bond between us, knowing that there is at least one misdeed that we share in common.