DRUNKS
The store and hotel did big business those days. especially on the weekends. There
were saddle horses and packhorses every where, tied to hitching rails and fences.
I thought the store-keeper might give me some lollies but there was not much doing
so I went over to the hotel and looked into the billiard room. I found the room filled
with a lot of inebriated bushmen and others all scrapping on the floor with highfalutin
language flying everywhere: they were harmlessly drunk. I leaned onto the window-sill to get a good look but some bloke gave me a cuff behind the ear. I got away post-haste,
making for the rickety swing bridge and Mum.
Men with pack horses used to come from as far away as Waiouru to pack stores when
the Main Trunk Railway had been built as far as there. They used to take a day to
ride to Mangamahu and a day to get back, and of course they put the night in at the
pub.
The owner of the hotel in my time was a Mr Lacy, with a wife and family. I went to
school at that time with their family. Mr Lacy had a building at the back of the
hotel which everyone called the morgue. This was the place where he put the drunks
when their big cheques failed. He would wean them off the grog until they became sober
then tell them that their cheque had cut out. Sometimes they got a job sowing grass
seed and track-making on the bush burns. More than half the bushmen never got past
the pub when they came in with their big cheques and didn't see daylight for about a fortnight
or so.
One of the men fell in the river, I remember his name was Mick: they never saw him
again, but they found his hat and walking stick above the very high papa cliff that
overlooked the river, close to the hotel.
Many funny incidents happened around the Mangamahu Hotel, mostly by inebriation.
One day I remember a groggy man with a horse and gig was to leave for home. Someone
thought he would do this man a favour, so they harnessed his horse, put the shafts
of the gig through the fence nearby, then hitched the horse into the gig on the other side
of the fence. The owner came out of the pub with a whisky bottle showing out of
his pocket, got into the gig and said "Get up you B..." The horse gave a lurch, the
fence creaked and all of a sudden the horse freed itself, tearing away with a broken shaft
of the gig. The horse was caught afterwards with no damage to itself. The owner
was terribly distressed because his bottle of whisky got broken and lost its precious
contents.
CANDLES AND CLOWNS
I can remember when we made our own candles and soap. For the candles there was a
mould that made six candles at a time. It had a tube for each candle and a wick
was fitted down the centre, then boiling fat was poured in.
All families milked some house cows, put the milk into a huge, flat, round, low-sided
pan and in the morning they would skim the thick cream off the top with a skimmer,
then put it into a round wooden churn with a handle. When the handle was turned
it made the cream into butter and liquid whey was left over. That whey was most times made
use of for cooking or fattening the bacon pigs.
About 1905 they held an agricultural show at Mangamahu, with clowns in the side-shows
which very much amused me because I had never seen clowns before. There was horse-jumping,
chopping, running and all sorts. Of course, lollies galore.
When ploughing the river flats my father dug up some Maori axes and they looked like
greenstone. The Maoris gave my father three exceptionally long wooden spears, which
they had used for spearing the pigeons with. Also we had a little wooden trough
the shape of a Maori canoe which was put up in trees, especially the miro, that has a mass
of berries. In these troughs they put water, nooses were set from each side of the
trough, so when the pigeons drank and lifted their heads they lassoed themselves,
fluttering from the sides over the edge and hung themselves. The Maoris collected them
when necessary.
BOWS AND ARROWS
I used to make bows and arrows for birds. For the bow I used a springy wood from
the bush - not lancewood, it was too bendy. Arrows were made from toi-toi with a
binding at each end to hold a sharpened nail and a feather. I could send an arrow
out of sight up in the air. They were not very accurate but I could shoot a bird with them
once in a while.
I also used to make darts. One day I was throwing darts around when one stuck in
a fairly tall cabbage tree. I shook the tree hard to make the dart fall, and while
I was looking up the dart came unstuck, came down, and stuck in on the bony place
between my eye and my nose. I didn't go near the house for a long time, for my eye and face
had swelled up badly. When I did go back, I didn't tell them how it happened, but
I think they knew. I also made shanghais, with a forked piece of branch and thin
strips of rubber cut from bicycle tubes. My brothers had bicycles to ride and I used to
ride theirs, not for great distances, the roads were too rough.
At the back of our farm at Rush Flat was the junction of the River Road and the Ridge
Road, where the Ridge Road started from the flats and climbed a long incline up onto
a main ridge, which it followed well on the way to Mataroa, near Taihape. The Ridge
Road could only be used by the wool-wagon s and other wheel traffic in the summer
and autumn, and it was exceedingly narrow and winding, especially for the wool-wagon
s with their five-horse teams. When the wagons were on the higher altitudes, their
dust could be seen from miles away, like a huge cloud rising in the sky, for none of the
old road was metalled. On the bad corners the leading horses had to sidle over the
bank where not too steep, or else the leaders had to be unhitched and let the shafters
do the pulling around the extra-sharp corners.
FLOUR AND SUGAR
When our wagon carted the wool in the summertime, it was backloaded with the necessary
farm stores for our large family. It was to see us out until the next summer or
autumn. Flour was bought by the ton in fifty pound bags, sugar also was brought
in at nearly a ton at a time in seventy pound bags. The quota for our family was about two
tons of flour and about three quarters of a ton of sugar. When ordering it was always
better to order too much than too little. We had a large pataka which stood on long
tin-covered legs to keep rats and mice from entering. It was used as a storeroom,
especially for flour, rice, cornflour and anything the vermin liked.
Sugar got a great run because of jam-making and preserving fruit. Most farmers had
large orchards with heaps of fruit going to waste or fed to the porker and bacon
pigs. Spraying the fruit trees was practically unheard of in those days and all
kinds of fruit trees had prolific crops. For the jam and preserves they always had heaps of
shelves to keep them on, especially in the wash-house and any building outside.
The sugar bags were not wasted when emptied, they were made into aprons, etc, which
looked very smart when made with a little 'do-da' of coloured thread sewn on to imitate birds
and animals. The flour bags, they were made into blouses and shirts and used to look
wonderful with designs of flowers and all sorts of scenery. Most women were extremely good with the needle and made dresses all embroidered to go tatas with.
FRUIT TREES
We had quince trees, pears, 'pears for our heirs', and a very tall mulberry tree that
grew in the fowl run. It was laden with mulberries. People could tell when any
of us had been at the mulberries because we would be stained with the purple juice.
We had peaches, different kinds of plums and quite a number of apples though not the same
varieties you have today. We used to keep the apples quite a long time. Some went
bad fairly quickly, and some kept almost right through the winter.
There was the stray fig tree though no-one seemed to have grapes. There were raspberries
of course and gooseberries too. We had a few blackcurrants, they were fiddly to
pick, but some were used for jam, although the kids used to go for them first. Walnuts did well, there were quite a few walnut trees in the valley, but very few apricots,
it was the wrong climate for them.