Junior cricket teams he coached won the most joyous premierships. I remember being in our rusty white Rover with half the team piled in, all of them thinking it was great fun going downhill – he could only stop with the help of the handbrake. For me, this was business as usual. For them, it was like being on a roller coaster with a driver cracking jokes while flicking ash out the side.
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As with many fathers in that era, Dad’s weekends often included household maintenance. Why was that rubbery grey cord in the flywire door always coming loose? And why did the fence always need repairing?
Then there was the cord on the Victa; I can’t be the only one asked to give it a rip when the mower went on strike. A curiously appealing challenge, that – getting an exhausted contraption to work when stronger, calloused hands had failed. And if stubborn splutter shook to shuddery life, what a feat!
A whiff of two-stroke fuel always reminds me of Dad. In the heady days of “burning off”, he’d splash a little on the blaze. I’d stand disobediently close, loving the genie’s flare; trying to outfox the smoke, seeking a non-existent spot it wouldn’t go.
Still, in the sense-memory stakes, a sting of smoke in the eyes or a whiff of two-stroke will never touch the whiff of tomato leaves on a vine. For me, that scent is sacrosanct. In a modest garden, as well as tomatoes, Dad grew sweetcorn, silver beet, potatoes, cauliflower, carrots, pumpkin, lettuce and strawberries. All of it came to our table. I took it all for granted.
Now 84, the old man is still up at dawn. He has his senior moments – two years ago he binned a letter from Centrelink without opening it and they responded sympathetically by presuming him dead and cancelling his pension. Getting your father’s pension reinstated is a project unlikely to make anyone’s bucket list – take it from my sister, who took that thrilling adventure.
If he’s dead, nobody told him. He’s still smoking, alas. And still washing them down with moonshine concocted by another restless old character a few houses away. Dad does the bloke’s gardening, and in return receives whisky. What will life be like when all these resourceful, shambolic old men are gone?
I’ve seen dad cry just once. Doesn’t mean he hasn’t cried his share. His marriage to Mum ended just weeks before their 20th wedding anniversary. That was the year he took a shot at running Donut King. I remember he smelled of cinnamon sugar.
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