Sunday, January 22, 2006

Rory Campbell

When you are in primary school, everyone from the generations older than your parents fits into the category of old. I have no idea just how old Rory was and I am even at a loss to say whether he was retired at the time. I know roughly where he lived, and he may have been farming on a small scale. The party line phone we used was connected to his home. I can say with near certainty that anyone who lived in the area for a year or two knew him and his wife, ‘Wee Betty’. She came up fairly close to his shoulder height. It was understood by everyone on our party line that she listened to all conversations to which that line gave her access. I don’t remember anyone accusing her of broadcasting information. She may well have decided that she did not want to provide evidence for those who might object if they could. Rory himself was tall and straight. I think he must have started out topped off with red hair as described by the Gaelic ‘Rory’. By the time I knew him I think the flame would have gone out up top. I have no memory about the extent of the fading remnant. What I do remember is what we always called a Busby, but I think is more properly called a Bearskin. For a considerable number in the area of the township of Waipu New Years Day was ‘The One Day of the Year’. For the first half of the day you could meet a lot of people in full highland regalia and possibly smelling of moth balls. Rory was always one of these. Wee Betty was not always by his side but they were visible together enough times during the day to allow strangers to be told about the long and the short of it in local marriage.

I dare say he was a feature in some of the word of mouth advertising for the festivities and the sports to start the New Year. If you meet anyone who ever heard of him there is at least one extra feature that is unique in my experience. In my memory he is the only person who carried an ear trumpet. Now of course in my turn I am a fading remnant of the urchins of the time who all just had to find and excuse to talk to him and can now say that they used an ear trumpet for real at least once.

Hearing aids were not all that common at the time, but if he had lived so long and you met him now he might still be using the trumpet. As a friend of mine remarks audibly occasionally “You do not get Scottish ancestry for nothing, but if you have it you are bound to try and get everything else for nearly nothing”.

The Auckland Star was one of two widely read papers and it was always searching for ways to increases its share of the reading populace. Rory in fact often called in to see his nephew just down the road about the time that the Star was delivered.

So it came about that he brought unintended fame to his locality and a lot of friendly amusement to his neighbours. A paragraph appeared in one of the regular columns of the Star – with a fictitious name, possibly to avoid any way it could be actionable.

‘McSqudgeon of Waipu has written our circulation editor a nice letter and we would like to quote from it. “Dear Sir, I have read of the offer of privileges you are making to your readers. Now I read your paper very regularly, but I never buy it. I am not able to use the standard entry form. Will the information I offer here be sufficient?”’

From memory the editor too was a skinflint, and none of the neighbours was moved to buy a subscription for Rory. Nobody I heard ever doubted the identification. I think his nephew, plus wife and family, were quite happy to continue to see him each day. Wee Betty was presumably too busy specialising in the local news, but they could compare notes when he got home.

Wednesday, January 11, 2006

Thoughts and Afterthoughts

Thoughts and Afterthoughts

Donald “More” McKenzie

My first cousin Donald McKenzie scrambled his name a bit while learning to talk. He was known as “Dollar” for some of his youth. After a decade or so, when people were about ready to become more formal, two new “first cousin Donald”s arrived for him. My father and his mother were siblings. I was given the first name Donald. Not much later. on the other side of his family, his father’s sister called her first son Donald. A year or two after I helped confuse his life, I acquired a cousin on the other side. My mother’s sister had a son who was given the name Donald McLennan. Now that Donald McLennan already had a first cousin on his other side named Donald McLennan. For something like half a century my young cousin used his second name. In recent years he has migrated back from being Graham McLennan to being Don McLennan.

At Christmas certain fissures in the family were papered over. My Aunt Myra, another of Dad’s six sisters, dubbed me Donald “Beag” and Donald McKenzie became Donald “More”. If I had been able to spell at the time I would have written my extra name as ‘Beck’, but that last consonant sound in Gaelic is rather more complicated. Translated, I was “little Donald” and he was “big Donald”. My non English speaking background is sparse after two removes. Myra’s mother, my Grandma, spoke English to her parents, and they spoke Gaelic to her. A few words only were convenient for the next generation

I was about to remark that I did not know ‘Dollar’ - Donald More - properly, and I realised I did not know Aunt Myra either. Dad once pointed in passing to a person in a group photo of soldiers, taken a week or so before the Battle of Messines. The main topic was some other aspect of the photo. I gathered that if that man had survived that week, and a lot of other messy weeks in WWI, he might have married my Aunt Myra.
She had taken a northern hemisphere trek lasting some years between the wars. She took strong impulsive and dogmatic views which I would not be sure I could defend, e.g., late in a summer plagued by a polio epidemic: “They should not re-open any of the [~1000] schools in this education area if it puts one more child at risk of polio.”
She had by that time retired from the teaching service unexpectedly when her eyesight was badly damaged, as I understand it, by glaucoma. There could also have been simultaneous complications of cataracts.
In most other matters she was on the other side of any family fault lines.

Donald More was almost, but not quite, in my generation. At the outbreak of WWII he was already in the workforce. He was a handsome, and in my view then a large, young man. In our parents’ generation men who were not returned soldiers were rare. I suspect they were considerably outnumbered, by those who would have been returned service people, but who had not returned. Donald was bound to ‘join up’. Pennants from various Air Force training centres appeared on walls. I have hazy memories of him on “Final Leave”. Letters arrived from the Northern Hemisphere. Various elephantine hints escaped from or were ignored by the censor. He was “having nights out with Popeye’s friend”, and the word went round that he was doing night bombing in a Wellington Wimpy. I don’t know how he let his father know, but he did, that he could not expect to see the end of the war. He was right. He did not survive to fly Lancasters. I think it is 62 years ago later this month that our Aunt Hilda, another of Dad’s sisters, came over to a busy sheep yard with news of his death. On his last flight he almost got his badly damaged plane home. They crashed about ten miles from their field. The sole survivor was the tail gunner. That was a reversal of another frequent misfortune, where a bomber might stagger home, grateful for the work of a tail gunner who did not make it.

He is buried in England and members of the family have visited his grave. For many years we displayed two photos of him. One was a studio portrait of a solemn young man with flight sergeant stripes and those all important wings. The other was out doors, a bit older looking but more relaxed and with a friendly smile. Some years ago I realised that there were a few snaps of him in other places. I could pick him out of them but I had no feeling of the person that went with them. I do not know if the unfortunate disposition sometimes accorded to Aunt Myra was evidence that she was in some way a battle casualty. I do know that Donald “More” McKenzie was a casualty. I do not know if it is simply perverse to wish I had met the two people they might have become in a different history.

After WWII was long over I was given training to fit me to take part in land warfare. Few if any of those who trained with me went into harms way and saw shots fired in anger. My children have passed through a crucial age window without needing that training. I look at the next generation and I fear that they in turn could become vulnerable. I have spoken with historians who felt that both wars were inevitable in their time because of the way international politics played out. It is easy from here to picture sitting a number of the important leaders down together for a showing of newsreels that are now available, at times when the historians of today are now sure those wars were inevitable. Would simply showing them the consequences of their collective folly have stopped either lot in their tracks? Or just removed some of the hideous mistakes and made for greater and longer agony? On the whole, after considering what is visible in the current crop of talent, I would be pessimistic.

The actions are not available. It is too late for global regret. I can call to mind that serious young man and the smiling person in the photos and I am grateful again for this person whom now I will not ever know properly.

Monday, January 09, 2006

DONALD BEAG {Advance on Profile for now: Later the blog will be the profile}

I am a migrant from the first third of the 20th century, drawing on educational resources from the middle third, with value added in workshops a little further along the supply line, and reporting from a foothold on the threshold of the 21st.
My heraldic beast is a contrariwise chameleon. It takes a colour at odds with any current background.
Impassioned presentations often have holes that invite me to go through and look at the same material from the other side.
I still have my birthright: rampant “ ‘satiable curtiosity”.
My armourers include the sage of Ockham, demolition experts called Goedel and Karl Popper: plus a cheerful Mr Fred Daly advising
"If you have the numbers use them. If you haven't, get them." Facts as well I hope. I try to do both. As Orwell might never have said: “All facts are vital; accurate numerical facts are more vital than others.” I try with my armourers to give them all a fair go against my prejudices. I look to Fred for help when I present them.
I have a knee-jerk response in favour of high quality universal free secular and compulsory education. My immediate knee-jerk response in favour of child support gets tangled when it encounters the concept of an irresponsible parent. Where common knee-jerk responses to other issues exist I often know and enjoy the company of people on each side. I have even migrated across a few divides. I intend to stick around and watch myself do it.


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