Almanac Life: When Summer was Different

 

 

This is one of the pieces in Dips O’Donnell’s recently published collection Jolly Nuisance which you can read about HERE.

 

 

 

 

 

When Summer Was Different

 

What’s happened to summer?

 

There was a time where it stretched out endlessly across the universe to a horizon that was so distant it quivered in the heat. It was so long that putting shoes back on at the end of January was a painful experience because your feet had spread and become weathered like Huckleberry Finn’s. You’d spent your days in shorts and a singlet, so your skin was tanned and your hair tinged blond with the summer bleaching.

 

We took monumental bike rides up to the water tower in Research, which was on the other side of Eltham and even further into the wilderness than the Old Eltham Barrel, which seemed to sit on the edge of civilization. In truth, it was about a ninety-minute ride. But that was a marathon on your second-hand Malvern Star that had no gears. It was largely uphill to get there but was a free-wheeling, downhill terror ride on the way back. We hurtled down the hills like we’d jumped out of a plane without a parachute. Grumpy old bastards in their Kingwoods tooted and yelled at us to get off the road but we ignored them and laughed all the way home.

 

We played for hours in the paddocks opposite, running up to Mr Bartlett’s fence and throwing plums onto his veranda. This represented the pinnacle of boyhood bravery as Mr Bartlett was rumoured to have a shot gun and was apparently not afraid to use it on recalcitrant children. He was our very own Boo Radley. No one ever saw Mr Bartlett, so his ghastly appearance was left to our imaginations, which spun like a plane’s propeller on full throttle.

 

And we played around the little dam at the edge of the paddock but never in it because it was dark and inky and evil. But we dared one young girl to jump in for a twenty-cent reward. And she did. But the plaster cast on her arm from a broken wrist sagged like a wet newspaper and fell off. We all got into trouble for that. Though, I was just happy to see her get out of the dam alive.

 

There was a time where we would spend slow, lingering days at the Greensborough Swimming Pool catching flies and piling them up at our feet. We would unleash bombs off the big board and cop a lecture from the pool’s lifeguards, sometimes even being suspended from the water for an hour. We would watch Leanne Yumana (very closely) in her new brown bikini. Think Elle McPherson in the Big M advertisements. She was the first girl I saw who filled out a bikini as a woman should. And she knew it.

 

 

 

 

We would stay well away from the ‘Boro Boys at the pool, who lurked around under the trees near the back fence in their cut-off jeans. They had girlfriends who smoked and tattoos decorating their muscular arms that depicted ships’ anchors and hearts and homages to their mothers. And some of them looked like Bon Scott. Every now and then a fight would erupt when the Sharpies came across from Watsonia in a show of strength. That was some entertainment.

 

Despite the advantages of having girlfriends and ownership of the tree shade, I always felt sorry for these “toughs”, as we called them, because being in that club meant always having to wear jeans, even when it was a hundred plus degrees. I made up my mind as a ten-year-old that being tough wasn’t for me. I preferred my loose terry-towelling shorts.

 

There was a time where we would take five days to play out our own Test matches in the backyard. The pitch would be swept of all the gum nuts that rained down from gnarly old gum trees that hovered over our little weatherboard home. Then we would water the pitch and have deep discussions as to whether it would take spin or whether it would suit a pace attack.

 

Matthew might try out his “Bishan’s” (a spinning delivery based on the action of India’s Bishan Bedi). And when the first few deliveries were blasted over the Del Din’s fence at deep square leg (about fifty metres away) he would revert to his medium pacers that got a bit of a kick off the tree roots outside off stump. Dangerous deliveries to keep out.

 

Mike would wind up the clothesline so as not to catch his delivery arm in its wires at the point of release. He would come in off the long run from under the shadows of the pine trees and down the side of the shed and unleash hell-fire deliveries at the head. Gerard, being a left armer, had a run-up that took him through the back veranda making him a tricky proposition as he was invisible to the batsman until the ball was on its way. He was like Derek Underwood with long hair. Liam used the slow ball very well, often hitting the middle of the rubbish bin after the batsman’s false shot had been well and truly completed long before the ball arrived. And Tim? Poor old Tim. He was the youngest and the cannon fodder, though we did relax the catching rules to better enable him to take wickets. Despite this he spent many hours in the field, usually at silly mid-on or bat-pad opening his terry-towelling bathers and peering in as little boys do. He took a lot of catches when the ball got smashed into his breadbasket and he folded over in pain. But the ball was lodged there. It wasn’t coming out.

 

There was a time, after the sun finally retreated, that we would lie on our backs in our beds with wet face washers over our faces to keep cool. The house was like the inside of a pressure cooker. The gum trees that surrounded our home hung limp and thirsty like the tongue of a farmer’s dog. The sounds made by my brothers sleeping were disconcerting; strange gurgling, bubbling pops, as water from the face washers was inhaled then exhaled from parched throats. And the sweat trickled down our temples and pooled at the base of our backs as we dreamed. We were all Greg Chappell or Thommo or Stacky in our dreams on those summer nights. The sunburn on our backs stung a bit but we knew it would be okay by morning.

 

And Dad would sit in the front room and listen to his Bach with his headphones on.

 

“Boom, boom, boom!” he exclaimed, forgetting that the headphones blocked out external noise for him, but we could still hear him singing.

 

And if he removed his headphones and heard us making fun of him, he’d yell out.

 

“Pipe down you lot!”

 

There was a time when Mum would call us in to try on our big brothers’ hand-me-down school uniform items. She’d hold up a jumper or shirt against our chest and say:

 

“We should get another year out of that.”

 

When that happened, we knew that summer was ending. Starchy collars and Hush Puppies replaced singlets and thongs. We’d go to the bookshop and get all the books for the coming year and maybe a six-pack of coloured pencils. The rich kids and artists got a twenty-four pack of Derwents. They always won the school colouring-in competition. I got in trouble for giving Father Christmas a black beard in a colouring-in competition in Grade 3. But I explained I had no choice – I didn’t have a white pencil.

 

The Greensborough Pool would empty out the crowds and the squeals of summer. Then they would empty it of water, and it would sit sad and naked across the winter months. And the ‘Boro Boys and Sharpies would continue their war in the shopping malls rather than under the trees near the back fence. We would stop sweeping the pitch and would leave Mr Bartlett alone. Leanne Yumana disappeared into the fully clothed throng.

 

When summer ended people and life disappeared. Shoes went onto blistered feet, shirts scratched red necks, teachers taught the imagination and adventures of summer right out of us.

 

There was a time when summer was different.

 

Read more about Jolly Nuisance HERE.

 

 

Should you have an interest, please send Dips a message directly or via the Almanac email. The cost is $25.00 plus postage. Obviously, it makes it cheaper if Dips can hand over the merchandise while enjoying a cold pot with you at the All Nations Hotel in Richmond.

 

Read more from Damian O’Donnell HERE