A Light in My Life

A Light in My Life March 2017

From the patchwork quilt of people who coloured my life, the significant centrepiece was a frail, quiet gentlemen, of Irish descent – my beloved Grandpa Hooley. I was his cherished child, born in the latter part of the gloom of World War II. My first memory is of the summer day he plucked a sun-warmed nectarine from his West Auckland garden fruit tree and offered it to me. I can still savour that sensational taste, likewise the lemon, cupped in my hands, it's zesty citrus scent, and the delicious cool drink we made from it. He made me a rockinghorse chair with seat and footboard the sides were two, white-painted, horses with sculpted manes. Next cane a doll’s cot and pushchair to give me delight. He started making wooden toys to sell, so I learnt early that skills could soon turn to extra pounds and shillings. At this time my grandparents built a new home in the next street. Grandma laid heavy concrete blocks with great gusto, and Grandpa erected framing and floors. I followed in his footsteps, spying bent nails for him to straighten and scraping up pink primer paint drips into an empty tin to make more paint for grandpa - and he let me believe I was helping. The neighbour’s Collie dog was a sight to behold, as it majestically strutted by each morning, while I watched timidly from the safety of the new front porch, with reassuring Grandpa by my side. Four years past, and we visited from far away Whangarei. In the summer I stayed for the long school holidays. I awoke on the couch, travel weary, but hearing familiar voices softly speaking at the dinner table, a tempting aroma of Grandma’s meat pie roused me to join them. "Who's for some pie tiddly-i-tie?” joked Grandpa with a smile. When the meal ended, the table cloth was removed and the red velvet table cover was strewn with cards and counters for a game of HOUSEY. Grandpa called the numbers and he said funny things like "legs eleven"or "clickety-click”, sixty-six”, and made me laugh. He had an old windup gramophone with a tin of needles stowed in its cavity. We wound it up and played all the old 78 records. My favourite was "The Donkey Serenade” and I longed for a donkey of my own. There were donkey rides at the Western Springs Lake Carnival but all I wanted was to stoke the furry years and pat the plush coats of the gentle little animals. At the nearby zoo I had a ride on Jamuna, the gentle elephant, and heard terrifying tales of rampaging Rajah who ended up as a stuffed exhibit in the Auckland Museum. Next morning I sat on the back steps and a listened in awe to the lions roar from the distance zoo’. In the early 1950s the road traffic was quiet enough to hear such an amazing sound in Mount Albert. The large garage workshop was a men's gathering place where grandpa and Uncle George skillfully made and repaired practically everything. The kitchen is said to be the hub of the home, but for me, the men's domain was equally important and I always felt comfortable there. That summer the young fruit trees Grandpa had planted bore their first crops – Coxe’s Orange, Pippin and Granny Smith apples and two sprawling plum trees he called “Satsuma”, and “Sultan”. Late autumn produced gleaming globes of dark-red egg-shaped fruit called tree tomatoes. Grandpa's pride was his flourishing rhubarb and he was regularly found howing his onion patch. I helped gather thed self-wrapped golden harvest and was entrance by the way he plaited the stalks together and hung whole trusses high and dry in his garden shed. We walked to the Point Chevallier library and borrowed piles of Popular Mechanics and National Geographic magazines which started my lifelong interest in Geographics. I stood on the gate of the hedged farm of Carrington Road’s Oakley Hospital and admired the herd of Red Devon milking cows. A sunroom was built on the side of the house next to the wash-house with its shrouded keg of Grandpa’s bubbling homebrew. I never liked the strong dark brown beer but sat sociably downing a shandy of mostly lemonade when each new batch of brew was sampled. My family now visited every second Sunday, crossing the harbour by the vehicular ferry from our Devonport home. A pie-man with tray of temptations regularly walked the lengthy late night queues, but hopes of Dad purchasing pies were never fulfilled. We amused ourselves with games of “I Spy” in disappointed darkness. Grandpa now sat in the sunroom, waiting quietly for those Sunday afternoon arrivals. I went straight away to sit with him; he always asked about my schoolwork at Takapuna Grammar School. Encouraged by his interest, I gained higher marks to please him, he seemed the only person who cared. He told me about his days in the Merchant Navy, visiting Southern Africa, the Orient and the fateful night his ship received an urgent message in the Atlantic to speed to the aid of the stricken “Titanic”, sadly too distant. He suffered a shipboard accident, fell into a hold and damaged his chest badly and had to leave the seafaring life, but continued in marine engineering at Portsmouth. He brought his young family to Wellington, New Zealand in 1925. They settled in the tiny village of Te-Wairoa, out from Rotorua, and Grandpa was marine engineer on the Lake Tarawera tourist boats that visited the site of the submerged Pink and White Terraces. He showed me photos of the Te-Wairoa family house, the lake steamers and the Maori bush school room where his children attended along with that local Maori families. Also photos of a later farmlet at Riverhead where I could see him and Grandma and their three teenagers pitching forked hay onto stacks, driving an ancient tractor and bringing in the cows for milking. He described the 1951 waterfront strike, the frightening riots and looting of downtown shops; the nights Auckland trams were prevented from running and he had to walk all the way home to Mount Albert. Grandpa was soon confined to bed, wasting away with a sinister disease called leukaemia, but he insisted on rising, dressing and being driven to join his RSA contingent to march from the Domain gates to the Cenotaph on his final ANZAC day parade. I stood on the lawn terrace outside the Winter Gardens and watched his fragile five-stone frame march by; he died a few weeks later at home. Sixty years on, I see him still, marching by the Winter Gardens – truly he was the light of my life.