Almanac Life: A Futile Search for Inheritance
I come from a background of what would be termed today as ‘working poor’.
We grew up in a housing commission town in WA and it was always a case of ‘what you go without doesn’t matter’. We didn’t know how the other half lived and frankly didn’t care.
Our childhood was full of sport and outdoor adventure. Our parents kicked us outside and only wanted us back for dinner when it got dark.
Any thoughts that we might be missing out on something because of our lower socio-economic situation were negligible.
I’m so grateful for what my parents gave us, especially the freedom to explore and make mistakes. Managing nine kids together must have been horrible at times for them, with very little income.
My dad was a shift working security guard at the local BP refinery and Mum was a home maker full time. I can vividly remember Dad counting every last cent at the kitchen table.
He would count out piles of 10 with 1, 2, 5, 10 and 20 cent coins, then pay the bills and issue Mum with her house keeping for the week.
It’s remarkable what you get conditioned to when you grow up in that environment.
For instance I moved into a flat with a fellow soldier, Keith in Toowoomba when I was 17. We were half an hour from our army base at Oakey and where the regimen of three meals a day was laid out for you if you chose to live in the barracks.
I was way out of my comfort zone, not unlike Steve Martin in The Jerk, a bumbling fool. Keith was a gregarious and privileged eighteen year old from Sydney’s North Shore who had attended the country’s most expensive school, Knox Grammar.
For the first few weeks we lived off junk food because cooking was simply getting in the way of partying.
We finally decided to go to a supermarket and purchase something organic and whilst navigating the aisles, Keith threw a frozen chook into our trolley.
I immediately reacted with a “hey, hey what are you doing mate?”. He gave me a quizzical look and replied, “what on earth are you talking about?”
“We can’t afford that can we?” I said. “It’s actually cheaper than those two steak burgers you demolished last night you idiot” he dismissed me with.
The fact was that chicken was a high priced item in our family home. The old man dissected the rare chook that came our way with surgical precision whilst my younger brother Glen and I were left drooling in the background. In our eyes the roast chook was our holy grail.
That level of naivety continued to plague me many times after leaving home at seventeen.
When I arrived in Melbourne over thirty years ago I would drive around the leafy streets of the inner city and wonder what sort of jobs people had that could enable them to have houses as beautiful as these?
Are there actually that many surgeons, dentists, lawyers and plumbers in Melbourne? How is this possible to own a multi-million dollar home, even on those exorbitant salaries?
As it turns out it of course, much of it comes down to old money.
I’m proud to be someone who is self-made (what I’m made into I’m still not sure) and never having received a ‘leg up’ financially, however I must admit feeling a little envious of friends who have received some form of hand-me-down from a generous relative.
With that in mind I received an envelope from one of my older brothers Bruce recently during a trip to his place of retirement, Bicheno in Tassie.
He found it during a clean-up and it came from our Mum. It was addressed to myself and Glen as follows. As well as stamps there were one and two cent coins.
Mum had put the gift together in 1973. This was to be some form of inheritance.
Again it comes down to conditioning. Mum was clearly under the impression that these items would be worth something in fifty years’ time. It was all she had.
Remaining ‘glass half full’, I was determined to see if it was at all possible that our Saintly Mother who would have turned 100 years old recently, was onto something.
Back home, I emptied the contents and logged into Ebay. To my astonishment there were examples to cross reference the values so I took note of everything and rang Glen in WA with the news.
“Hi bro, I’ve checked our inheritance and I’m pleased to say there were the same stamps on Ebay.”
“Fair dinkum mate. Does this mean I can pay off the boat?”
“Not quite. It’s $20. A quarter chicken and chips and an iced coffee each”
“God bless her.”
“Here! here!”
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About Ian Wilson
Former army aircraft mechanic, sales manager, VFA footballer and coach. Now mental health worker and blogger. Lifelong St Kilda FC tragic and father to 2 x girls.
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Good stuff. You live life forwards and you learn it backwards. Dad was a country bank manager who raised a financial idiot for an eldest son. Part of it was “money was something you didn’t talk about” in our house. My parents were children of the depression so savings and modesty came naturally. As a child of the risk taking 60’s I was the opposite.
Having educated myself of finance, budgeting and investing in the last 15 years and retired modestly comfortably, my nephews recently asked for some advice. I wrote a “Finance Things I Would Tell My 30yo Self” summary for them.
The Avenging Eagle read it and looked at me askance asking “so why didn’t you do any of this stuff when you were 30?”
You live life forwards and you learn it backwards.
Haha. Yes very true Pete. I actually don’t think a big inheritance would have sit comfortably with me. I would however accept a business class seat for a long haul flight if someone coughed that up! I had no education from my parents around finance because they had little idea. My mum was a war bride divorcee who fled from long term domestic violence with 4 x kids and my dad was a deeply troubled WW2 veteran who was a widower with 3 x kids under 10 when he migrated. They then did the Brady Bunch thing and had me and my brother. Everything they executed was the basics. That was the priority. Food, shelter and clean clothes. I would have used your summary for sure! Thanks mate.
You have many stories Ian. They resonate. It’s bordering on miraculous how people – especially larger families – got through. Our family lived from week to week. And unexpected expenses were difficult to handle. The stamps are telling – of an age when stamps were big. My father had been a stamp collector as a boy. When I was a kid he was invited to play golf by one of his parishioners, a local teacher, who at the time had just retired from bush footy. They played chess together (cheap) and had the occasional glass of flagon port. Dad had no golf clubs. So he had his stamp collection valued and he got a handful of dollars which allowed him to buy one of those skinny bags with a 2 wood, 3, 5, and 7 iron. And putter. They were Carnegie Clarks. I used to walk the Shepparton golf course with them, when I was about eight, with the promise of chipping a few 7 irons when we were way out the back of the course. Dad used to get frustrated trying to get a 7 iron out of the bunkers. After some years we were able to find him an old sand wedge.
I can’t imagine receiving an inheritance.
Manning Clark was the son of an Anglican minister. Manning was a scholarship boy, which he wrote about very illustratively and troublingly. The Puzzles of Childhood and Quest For Grace are well worth reading. He described the clergy as part of the ‘genteel poor’ or the educated poor. Parishes provide a manse and a small salary. But on retirement many clergy were (and still are) left with pretty much nothing. The superannuation was minimal. They had to make do.
Thanks for your wonderful story, with its colourful tale and its powerful themes.
Agree with JTH. Powerful story. Lovely ending.
On the flip side of the inheritance thing; I know a heap of young people who’ve inherited shitloads of money, and it’s been the ruin of them. Spiritless, purposeless… just sad kids with no aspiration and no get-up-and-go. They think careers are for suckers. I know a kid who got 35 mill at the age of 25 when his mum died. Your mum’s gift was worth way more than that.
I also have people close to me with wealth (I have none.) who, having witnessed the disempowering magic of inheritance, swear they are leaving nothing for the kids.
PS JTH On that course you were taking shade under the trees my grandfather and father planted.
Great yarn Ian.
As it happens, I remember that 5 cent Golden Wattle stamp. Quite possibly one I used on letters home from boarding school.
RDL
Thanks heaps gents much appreciated
That’s the sort of inheritance I relate to AJC.
The trees, I mean.
A beautiful and personal yarn, Ian. Thanks for sharing.
The themes in this piece resonate strongly for me: my mum and dad married because mum (at 16) was pregnant with me. They honeymooned in Bendigo and spent their remaining few dollars on a double-mattress.
I wouldn’t swap my childhood for quids (pun intended)
Thanks Ian
I totally get it. Been there, done that.
Loved all of the comments.
(Seen a bit of the same stuff as you AJC…….. )
Frank