Memoirs - Page 15
Incidents/Misadventures
Both Vince and myself were, I guess, "normal" boys sometimes mischievous and accident prone, and often at logger heads (as brothers can be) over some issue or other. Although Vince came to be an altar boy in due course for Fr. Patrick LANDERS (who I was destined to meet up with again in later life) and I a member of the boys' school choir, we were hardly saints. In my young days I suffered concussion (the result of a collision between my head and a metal wedge which pried itself loose from a wall in the laundry at the Glebe Road residence) whilst, as had been done on several similar occasions in the past with the neighbourhood kids, practicing my parachuting skills leaping off the 3 ft approx high copper housing and swinging on an internal clothes line onto the concrete floor several feet beyond.
On another occasion, whilst in the care of Ms Jones, and at her place of residence, I - in the act of throwing and catching a stick up into the air - severely lacerated my left knee by walking "slap bang" into a low 4-5 gallon oil drum serving as a temporary receptacle for some old, broken & jagged slate roof tiles. Several stitches had to be applied to seal the wound.
Another was the occasion when I severely bruised my "bumbone" (spine base) after careening off billy cart (a home designed and constructed, with ball-bearing wheel missile with a rope controlled front-steering cross column) going pell mell down a steep hill in Hereford Street, GLEBE. This was a favoured activity and street sight at the time and may well have been the forerunner to the modern day go-kart speedways. I recall having been severely constricted in movement - and very, very sore (not to mention bruised) - for some time after I had collided, with force and at speed, with the gutter (a sudden, alternative option I took at short notice to parting with the machine).
We seemed to be regular visitors to, and customers of, the nearby Royal Prince Alfred or Princess Alexandra Childrens' Hospitals outpatients and/or casualty (emergency) wards for the treatment of minor cuts and bruises (strangely enough no broken bones as I recall). We did have access to a doctor (Dr. FOLEY) who practiced nearby but what his role was I really do not recall as many of our immediate "problems" were first brought to the notice of the nearby chemist (at the shops in Ross Street, FOREST LODGE) and treated. The hospital parades were for real emergencies.
We were consistently in trouble for a range and variety of misdemeanours a memorable one, for me, being when I had my bum kicked for "nicking" ripe (or almost so?) fruit from a neighbours' backyard peach tree. This was a regular, in season, activity in which I indulged (with the local gang of urchins) but, on this (perhaps singular?) occasion, I had not been a participant. In fact I had been dispatched by our mother to find brother Vince (having been quietly amusing myself at home) and in searching and calling for him was arrested "on suspicion" as being one of the perpetrators by the aggrieved (surly old bugger!) neighbour, and justice was administered on the spot. When I reported in to Mum - Vinceless, sore and sorry (of course in tears) and protesting my innocence - she took it upon herself to go out and defend me, and gave the neighbour a right royal tongue lashing. Vince, I seem to recall, got his sometime later when he returned of his own volition - totally unaware of the drama that had preceded him.
Yet another "infamous" event was the occasion when, against all the rules of her better judgement, Mum relented to our consistent pleas to be allowed to go to the Royal Easter Show, in SYDNEY, on a Good Friday no less. Vince and I had a great time but we left her horrified when, upon returning, we recounted the tale of the wonderful feast we had consumed of meat pies, chips and sauce for our lunch on this sacred Lenten day of mourning. Perhaps she is, even today, still making her peace with the Lord up there on our behalf over that one.