The Beer Bottle Collection

The Beer Bottle Collection

      When my younger brother and I were growing up in Devonport, and regularly exploring and fossicking on our beloved Narrow Neck Beach, we collected beer bottles, large, brown, clinking, conspicuous bottles – worth pocket money! We developed Scrooge McDuck dollars signs in our eyes as we regularly traipsed home with the weekend collects. Lazy yachties and boaties offshore, bobbing around in the Rangitoto Channel, carelessly tossed the empties overboard, which stood in the water like little bobbing soldiers until they gently came to rest on Narrow Neck sands, joining the discards from late night beach revellers.
       My brother's family friends visiting regularly, to admire the growing pyramid of backyard bottles, clinking benignly in the sunlight, and regular tallies showed we were winners. Regular bottle-trucks came to relieve our back garden, and the welcome shillings in pennies mounted up.
I recall those present childhood memories when my own children were young, and enjoying beach life at Whangaparaora, for a few months.
      What a wonderful opportunity to install the "tidy Kiwi" model and start their own bottle collection. One day, on a drive to shop at Orewa, with three small children and wooden beer crates in my old Escort van, I spotted some beer bottles on a claybank and pulled off the road to collect the spoils. Wet winter day prevented me from driving away, in spite of torn-up Manuka brush behind all wheels. Calamity!
       Around the corner appeared two well-suited young Mormon Crusaders, on leisurely bicycles. They insisted on pushing and shoving behind the van, becoming increasingly mud-splattered while the embarrassing clink of numerous created beer bottles increased my humiliation unbearably.
      Afterwards whenever I saw neighbourhood pairs of evangelistic young Mormons, I blushed with shame at recollection of the now-abandoned beer bottle collection.