The ODD ANGLE

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 39, 15 February 1945, Page 4

The ODD ANGLE

By MacCLURE • "BREATHES THERE A MAX . . A friend of mine, Auckland-born, dropped in the other day to discuss his lifelong hobby, the study of ancient empires. Over the years he has built up a huge library on the subject and can tell you offhand who used to live on the west bank of the Euphrates in 1125 8.C., the middle name of any Assyrian Icing's stepchildren, the exact analysis of Cleopatra's bath water, or the price per foot of a completed Chaldean mud house. I pointed out to him that information of that sort would be highly invaluable to Hollywood, but, alas, he'd never heard of the place. "It's in the United States," I assured him, adding that the United States was in North America. "Oh, North America, eh?" he commented, and made a note of both facts. Now I've no quarrel with fellows of his type; after all, they're getting a great kick out of it and doing nobody any harm, and be it Mainwaring (whose knowledge of New Zealand, judging by his latest volume, seems to be of the scantiest) or the author of the school history book just shown to me (in which I read "Richard John Seddon arrived in New Zealand in 1680"), they are all entitled to air their "knowledge." But I would like to see more native-born citizens taking up the study of their own country; and I would be doubly pleased to discover that every Auckland district school teacher was doing his and her best to inculcate into their pupils a deeper knowledge of, a greater love for, and a greater respect for their country and city. And a greater understanding of the many sacrifices made by our pioneers who strove so manfully that all of us today should have what was denied to them.

• PORT BRITTOMART | SPEAKING And, speaking of these old pioneers brings me back to my visitors of last week—the Old Boys' Brigade led by Von Tempsky's cobber, "Old Bill" and the Ageing Lad, who read the proofs for (and often met) old Judge Maning. They have gone but Auckland will never be the same to me now that I've known them. As I look at those cliffs I see the Ageing Lad sitting up there "after school" looking down into the Bay. Princes Street to-day runs right through what was Albert Barracks in their day and if you're entering a horse for the races there is no need to start looking for the officials in the Greyhound Inn. Neither will you find any brickworks in Karangahape Road to-day; nor a farrier's in any of our city streets; the alder tree where Granny Flowers sat outside of her little shop next door to the Waitemata Power Board in Albert Street is gone too, as are the horse trams which all of them saw run for the first time in Queen Street. That was a great day! And that other day when "the whole city was lit up by electric light" was one vividly remembered by the whole brigade—just as that still earlier day was "when Auckland was lit for the first time by gas." Great days for the pioneers. "The gun up at the Britomart Fort used to boom out when an emigrant ship was sighted and the whole town would make a bee-line for the wharf, Mr. MacClure." I wouldn't know.

• AND WAVED HIS WOODEN LEG But I do know "they" have shifted "the manure head at the top of Wyndham Street where lots of the high and mighty folks what now run the city used to do their conjures, standing on their heads, showing off, like." And that Mr. McCready "what used to run the Star Hotel"—"fattest man in Auckland he was—his daughter used to drive him round in a barouche, she did" —is gone from the scene; and "Dr. Lee, old army quack—used to knock about at all hours of the day and night—had a wooden leg, he did, made it himself" has also gone and his "bell-topper" with him—and the inches-thick dust that "used to be on his medicine booties made it risky to swallow any of the dope he give yer—him saying himself he 'reckoned' it'd be the right bottle— not knowing for sure, like." Dr. Lee then lived in Albert Street. The shops where these ancient lads' womenfolk procured their crinolines and bustles and their dads obtained snuff, whaling gear and pomades are also gone, along with the taxidermists and the horse-hair mattress makers and "the shops on the Queen Street wharf where, by lowering your line between the floor planks, you could catch fish while you were waiting to be served." "In them days" Old Bill and his pals "used to watch, them filling in Freeman's Bay" and, between spells of watching, "used to duck into some of the numerous pubs in Drake Street for quick ones." ,

• DEMURRAGE . As for. Captain Casey, the truly colourful old owner of the Gemini, the Minnie Casey, City of Cork and the Rose Casey (and his still more colourful son) the stories they tell would burn holes in this script. "Casey called that Riverhead steam tub the "Gemini" because his missus had twins, Minnie and Rose, and she wanted the boat named after one of them—calling it the Gemini, meaning twins, fixed that," I learned. But the day Mrs. Casey kept the Captain waiting when he was already late for some function "got his goat proper." "Come on, Mother," he bawled, remembering that the cabby's fare was mounting' up, "the demurrage is running on you know." I