Ambrose Ambles

 

Twelve Caesars.

Book one … “Christopher Corridini”.

(Quarto).

Who writes our stories?

But wait!…what is this story-telling? Everybody now has some fuckin’ story to tell, but what kind of stories, are they for social enlightenment, kudos, hopeful financial reward, or the now favoured style and topic..: therapy writing?…I recall any number of yarn spinners down the front bar or on building site or camp..yarn spinners who told a story just for the sake of it..but to put it on a page in writing takes another kind of style..a different way of framing the yarn. What qualifications does a tradesman have in the way of placing on page stories and yarns?..Is his grammar up to scratch? Does he have the nous to understand such nuances of sentence structure..syntax and plot? How does a working man have the capacity to strive toward the desired requirements of all these things without extending his education past the second year of high-school? Is it just pretentious striving on his part to try to become a writer..any kind of writer..just seeking to be noticed? A foolish, wasted endeavour when one ought to have stayed within the limits of his trade? And to leave the story-telling to those deemed more “qualified”, so we end up with the same contexed stories, the same plot-lines, the same “marketable” content? Am I too, to end like my mother, whose ambitions to have a small career in writing was destroyed by the inability to break free from her domestic responsibilities and a servile duty to the social tyrannies of the times…?…: I can remember exactly when that feeling came over me that here was one of those moments when, through some “native intuition”, you can feel that it is the ending of an era…a passing of a moment in time when something important is being lost…

I was at my aged mother’s house doing some regular maintenance..I am a carpenter and her house, built by my father just after the second world war, was a hotch-potch of scrounged materials and added-on-as-needed rooms that now, some sixty years later was a veritable endless loop of patch-up and maintain.

My mother was quite old at the time…she is deceased now..and I was there having a small lunch after doing the jobs..and it was at the moment when I was spreading some honey on a bit of toast that I remembered something..

“Mum….do you remember telling us about that old chap back there in your Mallee days, who used to raid those honey-bee hives in the trees and he had a big square tin of honey and comb mixed that he used to give you and your brother and sisters a scoop of honey and comb in a twirled cone of wax-paper when you went past on your way to school?”

My mother was fussing around over at the kitchen sink as I asked..fussing over nothing in particular..as mothers seem to be able to do..

“ Oh, yes…old Charlie Rhidoni…yes…I remember..”…she had looked up and now went back to whatever she was doing.

“Yeah…I suppose that’s him..if that’s his name”…I continued..” You oughta jot that little story down so others can read of what life was like out there in the Mallee in those days.”..and I bit into my toast.

“Ah…nobody’s interested in those silly yarns anymore.” Mother absently remarked.

“I don’t know..” I persisted..”there are so many I remember you telling me of those days..like the men at the charcoal burning camps during the war, and that old German man who carried a small pebble every time he crossed the river because he couldn’t swim…an’.. (here, I paused, hoping my mother would pick up and run with the yarn…but she didn’t) ..and he did so because he said the little pebble represented his soul..and if the punt started to sink, he believed that if he could throw that stone to the closest bank and it reached the bank, he would be saved..but if it didn’t and fell in the river..he would drown…That’s a good one too!”

But my mother just kept at her business in the kitchen sink, neither acknowledging my enthusiasm nor exhibiting the slightest interest in my talking..so I had to catch her attention..

“Mum…?” I called to her gently.

“What?..Oh yes…they may have been interesting then, but people are busier with other things now..There’s mortgages and car payments and the cost of living and all that…they don’t have time for some old stories of olden times…nobody’s got time anymore for old stories.”

And that was the end of that.

But as I sat there, I could feel like a vapor of spirit was escaping from me..a losing of that muse of enthusiasm when YOU are the only one showing keenness in an idea and you have to let the feeling go. So I didn’t press on with the conversation…but I sure as hell could feel that at that particular moment, an era was passing from my grasp..

It saddens me at this moment to even write about that time..it gives an ache to my body..for now, my mother..both parents to be exact..and all those earlier generations I grew up with in those times…grandparents and their friends, Uncles and Aunts ..have all gone and with them passed away a record in oral anecdote and short tale all those wonderful, colourful, terrible and tragic stories of when work, home and childbirth was an enormous struggle with life itself..just to survive..just to make ends meet..especially if you came from the place where my folk came from..and so many others of that class of people.

So I have written them down..as close as I can remember them having been told to me..I have written them down, but now too, I am getting old..and being a recorder/writer of no note, I am certain those stories will die with me. There is no-one in my immediate family holds any interest in either story, anecdote or the times and the people. It is like a whole episode of the past has been boxed and sealed off and put up on the dead-storage shelf to be forgotten.

I have written of that old man with his pebble crossing on the punt on the Murray River ..in “a small Pebble” …I have written of the birth of my Aunty in a smaller punt on the river whilst my grandfather wrestled with the mid-wife who was trying to trick them out of the birth-endowment money from the government. I have written story and tale of love affairs and loss in the Mallee..in “The Exile of Celia Adamson”.. story after story of that generation who had so little that they would be willing to take a chance on WHATEVER came their way..truly courageous folk hardened in the wars and a great depression..Their everyday events taking on a almost mythological epic…like the story of old(now long deceased ) Alma suddenly breaking pregnancy waters at home with no-one around to help her with the birthing save her own thirteen year old son…who had to act as mid-wife to the birth of his brother…story after story…moment after moment..I cannot empty the pail for them..the stream of stories is unending…For me, I will persevere while I can maintain this isolated enthusiasm…I work on alone.

But not for my mother…her enthusiasm for a past was being slowly squeezed dry..I remember she paused at one moment in what she was doing at the kitchen sink and spoke out to her garden outside the window there..and in that last mention of the subject, in that hiatus of forever, what she said sent a shiver through my soul and I could hear in the emptyness of her words the passing of time itself and a portend of the possibility of my own loss of connection to the past…

“No…no-body’s interested in those old things anymore…there comes a time, I suppose, for the end of stories..” and that was that..

But any tradesman will be able to tell of the “smoko room” story-teller…the yarn-spinner, the casual relating of oral story or event in their lives..every day there would be at least one story or incident related with humour or perhaps tragedy..every day there would be some new event worth hearing where the listeners would sometimes add to the yarn with their own extra knowledge of the incident if relevant..

Back in those days..mid-sixties or so, we had a loquat tree in our yard at home and this one year it was most proficient with fruit, so I used to take a small bag of them with me to work to eat at smoko and lunch…but in those days, I, and anyone I knew , used to not peel the fruit, but just eat them skin and all..till one day on the site, at smoko..this Slavic chap at the table watched me eat the whole fruit and then addressed me so;

(I won’t try to do his accent)

“Why, my young friend, do you eat the loquat, skin and all?”

“I don’t know”..I shrugged” I just do..how else would you eat it?”…He put his apple down into his lunch-box and said..

“Here..give me one..I see you have many..that big fat one there..they are the best to show you…” I gave it to him “ Yes,,very juicy”..

He wiped the surface with his rough hand and then held it up in front of us both as in display.

‘This fruit is not just a lump of food..(pause)..this is a sensuous delight..not just to chomp down on like the glutton you are , my young friend!”..and he lay it clutched in one palm and proceeded to peel it with his other hand…a strip at a time ..all the while giving me..and those other bemused older men at the table, a running commentary…I have to admit I felt a tad blushing in those innocent days..

His eyes concentrated and his voice softened..

“This fruit is like a woman..you have to be very gentle..for she will bruise so if you handle her roughly..you like this fruit?..so..you must never be rough with that you love..you must gently peel away the outer layers of “garment” (he paused in his action to give me a querying stare) you understand?” (several other men stifled a guffaw) and when you have it down to the flesh…you gently , with both thumbs..so..spread the flesh wide so you can see the seeds..which you ease out with the index-finger..The hand..my young boy..is not only to be used for rough jobs..like I see you throw around those ‘Acrow props’…you must be more gentle in your work”..and he looked at me sternly.

He performed the whole procedure with all the care and sensuality of a lover..”And there”..he displayed the bare fruit in his open hand..and after a suitable pause for me to absorb the result, he raised the dripping delight to his lips and voluptuously pressed them down on the flesh so the juice oozed over his lips, which he dabbled with his napkin…His eyes rolled back in his head….he then spoke in an almost voiceless whisper..

“And then…my so young and innocent friend..when you bring your lips to touch on that forbidden flesh , you can feel both the fruit and your mouth yield to a higher pleasure than you will ever experience in your otherwise worthless existence …” There was a long pause while he held his pointed to the ceiling hand for a moment of appreciation..

“Pitchken dim..” he sighed.

There was a sudden outburst of laughter in the smoko room from the other men and I felt more than a little uncomfortable.

This..is the true creative spirit of telling a story..spinning a yarn..all evolving from the oral method of story-telling to be translated from the words falling from our lips..thence into the written language and placed on page..the "telling" as against the "selling" of a story..and this is where the deviation from the true core of a story gets distorted through  the “manufacturing of language” via twisting and inserting the presumed essential of a knowledge of grammar and sentence structure learned in the higher echelons of education..all else is denied relevance..the writing of stories descends into class “ownership”…the middle-class ownership of the written word, forcing on us THEIR interpretation of tragedy and humour..an interpretation reeking with a kind of super-suave “insider savvy” of twisted language and smarmy “knowing”..the characters themselves taking on the baggage of class-conscious identities..already branded with a “characterisation” stamped with the approval of the publishing houses’ bottom-line demands.

How I struggled against that tide..my crude syntax and early attempts at writing down my experiences as story or tale being dismissed by even some close to me as “crass”, “clumsy and pathetic”..my honest attempts being dismissed so cruelly, but which, ironically gave me strength and determination to work harder at perfecting a style that could relate tale and idea without succumbing to the complex, manufactured pomposity of middle-class English…I learned from reading the many masters on my bookshelf that in reality in the world of creative writing, there were no rules..neither in grammar or plot..It was a revelation to this working-class person that released me to pour forth the many accumulated characters met as a journeyman carpenter.

Nailing down a pine floor.

Let me tell you how we used to nail down the floorboards of a house back when I was an apprentice carpenter. It was always the apprentice’s job to nail down the floor as it was THE WORST job in the list of second fix carpentry. The youngest apprentice got the job and when he was older and a new apprentice came on site, it was passed on to that younger one…it was the way it went.

Most houses in those days were smaller with smaller rooms, so the usual “run” of continuous nailing was about 3-4metres (in this new money)..or around 10 -15 feet..with around 7 or 8 runs per room..each board with two x 2inch nails per board per joist. You would clasp as many two inch nails as you could hold in your fist and you would start “feeding” the nails from palm to thumb/forefinger and keep up a rhythm with the nailing…First strike, lighter , to start the nail off, second to drive it in and third to finish it off flush with the surface of the floorboard so the punch can sink it below the surface in just one blow..and the foreman or carpenter boss got shitty if you over struck the last blow and left a “two-bob” dent in the floor from the head of the hammer.

Three strikes from a 24ounce claw hammer..no lighter hammer, because it then may take an extra blow to do every nail and they add up, believe me!..no heavier (I can recall 28ounce hammers some brawny chippies had for framing or shutter work on the multi-storey constructions)  or your arm would fall off by the end. Three blows in a continuous rhythm with out break and speed…if you missed feeding the nail from the clutched handful that fed to your thumb and fore-finger, you’d keep the rhythm going by striking lightly on the floorboard next to the nail spot just to keep the rhythm going…

“Tap-bang-bang…tap-bang-bang…tap-bang-bang…tap-bang-bang… on and on and on…

Sometimes you’d not have that 2inch nail the right way up or not in quite the right position and you’d come down with that “tap”..which wasn’t a soft touch, by the way, but rather a solid starting hit to set the nail solid ready for the next heavy blow..and you’d spin the nail away and take the force of the hammer blow onto your thumb-nail edge and BY FUCKIN’ JAYSUS…did it hurt..and you would end up with a black nail that would, if you are lucky just drop off in a couple of weeks time..unlucky and it would fester under the nail and you’d be weeping in agony at night until you got your mother (you were only fifteen or so, remember) to heat up the blunt end of a paper-clip and burn it through the nail so that the pus would squirt out and you’d almost swoon with relief..

But you would keep going..”tap-bang-bang…tap-bang-bang…because it was no use stopping and weeping, no-one else was going to do the job…no-one else was going to rub your hand and say coo-cooing things to you to comfort you because they had suffered the same back when it was their turn…they may come in to check why you’ve stopped the rhythm and say : “Poor bastard”, but you’d keep on going because that was your work that was what is required to get the job done and someone had to do it…and sometimes because of the bruising of that first miss-hit, you’d do it again a few minutes later on the same nail and you’d literally WEEP with the pain..but it was no use walking away, quitting or whatever,  because the next place you went to also would have a floor needing to be nailed down and there you were ; the apprentice..

So you just got better at your job..you concentrated on that rhythmic feeding of the nails to your thumb and fore-finger…you kept the blows coming and eventually you could hand the chore over to another apprentice and listen from another room for that rhythmic hammering and wince when you heard the cry of pain…

You got better..but by Jeesus you got a few bruised thumbs and black nails until you did!..and when you got older and went to the pub with your mates and you raised that schooner or pint of beer, you’d see the ingrained dirt and cuts and callouses on your hand and you’d know which class you and your mates belonged to and you’d know about pain and you’d know about bludgers and con-men and shirking the job and who was really a responsible grown man or woman and any decent worker would respect any other worker for that reason…and be fucking proud to be able to do so!

I wrote about the experience of crossing the line from journeyman Carpenter to story teller a long time ago..of the time when I was of an age enough to be listened to as an experienced tradesman, a respected teller of tales..I admit I am caught in a conundrum…as a tradesman first, who enjoys a smidgen of putting pen to paper, I know I am trespassing on the hollowed ground of  grammatical correctness that demands at least a semblance of structural purity. Trouble is, coming from the rough and tumble world of oral story-telling ; Front-Bar style..ie; jokes or buffoonery anecdotes, the nuances of replacing wild gesticulation and spray of beer with a written word demands a discipline that I often find difficult to embrace, for I love the well told yarn.

Trouble is, and I realise it as much as any academic writing on the subject, the blue-collar multitude does not spend much time sifting through the wordiness of a book. Easier to punch the remote and cheer the team..or listen to the front-bar jokes.

It wasn’t always so..There was a time..in my youth..where many a deep conversation could be had about Lawson, or Marx from the same group…more diverse were the conversations over a pint of the best…from The British Hotel to The Seacliff  (Adelaide) to The Seabreeze in Darwin..indeed, one could get crucified for pretending false knowledge or a slip of the tongue…I remember myself making many a faux pas in mixed company and suffering deserved embarrassment for it ( ah! women can cut a young fellah so cruel!).

A pity, because the strength of a society is in the flexing of its cranial muscle rather than it’s biceps..the pen being mightier than the gladis..so to speak!

But without contacts to a publishing network, or the academic cred’ of recognition that opens at least SOME doors, where does one go with a “raw” manuscript?..These days of social media, some people start up their own blog to deliver their work to the reading public.. but the difficulties of maintaining these sites is the thing…someone has to do the hard yards as well as write the contributions in many cases..I know too, as I used to (till just after retirement) run the community blog for the organization I volunteered for..It too is now closed from lack of ..I can’t say interest, there were tens of thousands of hits, but the lack of capacity of others to contribute along with their own work-life meant it was shut down.

There once was an education structure named WEA. : Workers Education Australia. That followed on from the varied philanthropy inspired “Mechanics Institutes” and such, on the principle that an educated worker would be a more inspired worker..and the world would be a better place for it..I presume. I would like to see a structure, much like the Australian Sports Institute, where the Arts and artists are encouraged to work at and hone their skills and talents with a kind of open scholarship system..open to submission of their works and then assessed on those original works to gain funding on the proviso of sincere improvement to their works….why not? ..it seems to work for sport and the arts are just as vital to a society’s health as sport. At least it could give an opening to many from a lower socio-economic group an opportunity to grow their natural skills…to deliver story or work from an undisciplined training but insightful nous of their subject matter.

You can read me rail against the middle class sometimes, but I could just  as much shake my fist in the direction of an indolent working class for all their lapsing toward a chronic dumbing down ….and …lovin’ it…easier the tele’ than “the telling”! But it is in the telling of tales that we of the progressive side of politics are in vast difference to the rubbish side..In the telling of tales, we get to give witness to a side of life that shows lessons of joy, of pain, of enduring strength that demonstrate the sympathy and acknowledgement of another’s life is the underlying foundation of modern civilization, and when that “there but for the chance of fate go I” realization gets swept aside, we lose our civility..and with the loss of civil security, there is a loss of heart that precipitates a loss of courage…the hunting ground for the opportunists in every society.

The telling of tales is a wonderful sensation..Being in charge of that tiniest piece of personal / family history that ONLY you know and then taking a deep breath, sorting out your approach, clearing the old throat with a “hrumph!” or two and then holding the floor as you relate your experience…it is a good feeling..it is a moment to shine and if you can structure the tale adequately, you can humbly relish in the sharing…and maybe , like Kevin Cotton, (a marvelous story-teller who doubled as a “cook” in one of the many camps I have bunked down in my time as a journeyman carpenter) get shouted a beer on the strength of it.

Hell!..it’s no bloody crime to try..I’ll tell you all about it someday..and I did..story after story, all from my memory and what others told to me in both quiet confidence or uproarious laughter..like the time my carpenter mate and myself pulled into the Borrika store in the Murray Mallee to get some essential supplies on our way to a job way out in the bush there and there were two ladies bent over, holding each other’s shoulders and weeping with laughter..it was all they could do to stop when they looked to us and saw the curiosity on our faces.

After gathering herself together and wiping tears from her eyes with her apron, the obvious owner of the store told us of the incident that set them to fits of laughter..

“It was the old man..my husband..” and she giggled..” He went to light the hamburger hot-plate..turned on the gas..’ and she again burst into a fit of laughter “…turned on the gas and..and tried to light it with the flicker thingo…( a pause to get breath)..the flicker gun, but it didn’t work..I coulda told him…but he flicks and flicks the thing..and then he goes to get the matches…of course all this time the gas is coming out..and he looks down to see the gas-ring and then strikes the match….WHOOSH!…oh you shoulda’ seen it go!” and the owner lady looks to her friend there and they both fall onto each other’s shoulders in weeping hilarity…the owner, in between gulps of laughter turns her head to speak to us..”..and the old man is so surprised and he turns to look at me and Gladdie here..and…and (she laughs out loud)..and by Christ!..you shoulda seen his face!…well if’n you’d been here a few minutes earlier, you coulda’ ‘cept the ambulance just now dragged him off to the hospital…” more uncontrollable laughter as she makes a circling motion around her own face with her finger “…I tell you..you shoulda’ seen his face “…!..Ahh..ahh..ahh……….…!……..yes boys..what can I get for youse?”

But it wasn’t out of cruelty or lack of sympathy that the women held their sides and laughed themselves breathless…it was the bathos of the moment..and when that bloke’s wife goes to pick him up from the hospital, she’ll be saying words of kind sympathy and gently caressing his shoulders..and he’ll most likely be apologetic and say how much a mug he was to fall for that old caution…and they’ll make a joke about cooking steaks on that hotplate or whatever and go about their everyday business once again..but it’ll be one of their party jokes for a long, long time.