The ODD ANGLE

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 163, 12 July 1945, Page 4

The ODD ANGLE

I By MacCLURE • YESTER-DAYS To-day I received this letter: "Dear Mac. Your article on 'The Good Old Days' made excellent reading. Your reference to Bob and Padd3 r 's arrival in New Zealand was interesting to me, since I well remember the time that Paddy and Pat Hickey arrived from Australia and took up work in the little mining township of Denniston, on the West Coast. Paddy used to board at a little boardinghouse almost directly opposite where I myself used to live and he had barely arrived at Denniston when he started a crusade for Socialism, preaching to the inhabitants every Sunday afternoon from a soap box 'a real one) and always on such occasions wearing a flaming red tie. I distinctly remember the youthful Paddy giving his first address, and, standing on his little box, he seemed a lonely figure, indeed. The hornyhanded miners of those days, a contented, hard-working body of men, stood afar off in smail groups, a little suspicious of Paddy and his strange philosophy. The sentiments of the miners towards Paddy can be expressed in the words, 'Who is this fellow and what is he driving at?' But Paddy kept on. Yes, Paddy Webb and a few others who arrived from Australia started something in those days that they are unable now to control." • A COINCIDENCE The letter speaks for itself. What I want to tell you about is the odd coincidence that occurred to me within an hour or so of receiving it. Passing the business premises of a thriving firm somebody on the first floor beckoned to me. "Hey, the boss wants to speak to you," a young man informed me. Stepping in I found myself being greeted by an old pal of Denniston Hill daj's- of way back in 1908, when the fellow who writes this column was a trucker in the Cascade Mine, Coalbrookdale. Denniston—in the days when the Paddy Webb legend was more potent and his mana greater by far than any other man's. Paddy himself'had departed from the Hill then, and was at Blackball. Strangely enough I hadn't met up with "the boss" in all the years between. • RE-ERECT THEM HERE I am reminded from an old newspaper before me that, at the time of the World's Fair at San Francisco, an enterprising amusement-parlour laddie offered to buy Blarney.Castle, transport it peace-meal across the Atlantic and set it up in 'Frisco. Pondering over the idea the thought struck me that, given the true position re housing New Zealand, some of our oversea servicemen might (especially with that back pay coming to them), do worse than ship an old castle or two home here and reerect it (modernising it a bit, of course), and thereby come at a home. On mentioning my idea to a local R.S.A. executive, imagine my surprise when he insisted that, after the last war, old Alf and I "did something of the sort yourselves." To prove my memory is slipping and that he was speaking the truth he presented me with this cutting torn from an August, 1938, Star. "Rather prophetic about Walter Nash, don't you think, Mac?" he commented, "considering Walter has taken over the Bank." Maybe. Judge for yourself. Here is the cutting, (1938): • AN OPEN-AYR CASTLE First prize in the art union ! It sounded all right, but knowing old Alf's ideas, I could see us borrowing our fares home. "You don't win one every day," he said. "Why not live like a Labour Minister?" Why not, indeed? "He is who thinks he is," the radio had told us in a Sunday night talk. "The kids and the well-to-do will keep us when we're spent out. They've got to under the Security Scheme," Alf said; his mind was set on a castle, so up we went to Ayrshire for a Scottish "haggle." We just missed a beauty by two centuries; it had tumbled down the previous year after standing since January 3, 884, A.D. Looking over the file the agent put his finger on an empty one—£2o with one ghost. The portcullis was bent, so he knocked off 3/7 and promised to solder the Norman keep. I gave old Alf Bruce's bed—l had heard the poem as a boy. We found the ghost tucked away in a stuffy dungeon, working at a printing press the while he whistled Deanna Durbin's specialty. As we shook hands I noticed his scar. "Operation," he said. "It was successful but I died. The name's Caxton — oldest printer in England; here's a couple of things I ran off in the 'seventies — March, 1477." "I did a small job for a joker named Walter Nash last year—printed off a billion pound notes for him for five bob. Said he'd post it to me. He never did, though." He showed me one. "They're only printed on one side." "Yes, there's nothing at the back of them," he said with a mirthless laugh. "Would a castle like this cost as much as one of Johnny Lee's cottages, Mac?" old Alf asked me. "Certainly not," I answered, "these places were merely thrown tip anyhow for lords and dukes—they only last about ten centuries." I noticed the ghost was coughing badly. "Better bunk in with us till it's better," I said. It was close on midnight before we got all our junk up from the dungeon; as the stairs were very narrow we had to leave his presses below. "It's funny," he said, "when you look back at the stuff they used to reel off in the old soapbox days about all men's services being of equal value to the community and that all workers should be paid the same wages." Someone was knocking. It turned out to be our ghost's cousin Fred, who was an under-ghost at Castle Caerlaverock. He had been hung, drawn and quartered by Edward I. and his skeleton was tied together with pieces of flax. As he walked his backbone creaked damnably. Alf reached for the oilcan and gave it a squirt. "Thanks a lot," he said. Sitting there with* one thigh bone thrown carelessly over the other and his vertebrae sagging badly, ; he commented on the Social Security scheme. "There were plenty of plunderings when I was a kid," he said, "but Walter certainly has all our old baron robbers licked to a razzle."