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Colin wasn’t his real name. ~Ian
My new boss had the knack of extracting the maximum effort from me for the least possible cost, and he made the most of it, setting me subtle challenges which I felt compelled to meet.
He was completely callous in his handling of animals — and of me — and in the process he produced a monster in me of whom he became afraid.
I was still only thirteen years old, an age at which one strives to emulate one’s elders. This I endeavoured to do with Colin as my model. On his farm I became as hard and callous and indeed brutal as he was — the result of the conditions under which we lived and worked — but especially as a result of the example he set.
He was a boiler-maker by trade and came into possession of his farm through marriage.
Colin had an uncontrollable temper, but, whatever his mood might be, he treated me — and his animals — as if we were inert machinery without feelings, disregarding our welfare completely while using us to satisfy his own needs and wants of the moment.
§
I say those things in hindsight. Just as I had admired the Smiths for their skill and dedication to the ideals of scientific farming, at the time I worked for Colin I found many things about him to admire. He was clever with machinery and owned a Packard car of which he was very proud. He had a pleasant and attractive wife and two small children. His wife produced very good meals and was always warm and pleasant to me. Occasionally I even enjoyed the luxury of a good bath, for they had an excellent hot water service.
Thus Colin had many of the things I coveted for myself — wife, children, farm, nice house and car, and considerable wealth.
And he had a good singing voice: he and I would sing and whistle to our mutual enjoyment as we milked the cows.
I had to provide my own bedding, blankets and alarm clock. Mum provided the clock and, I think, four blankets — but no mattress, which I thought he would surely supply. He didn’t though — and I didn’t ask Mum for one because if I had she would have told me to leave. Instead I spread newspapers over the old bed-stead, covered them with one of my blankets, and that with two or three blankets on top was my bed.
My quarters were in an old rotting house, the original residence, about two hundred yards away from Colin’s and his wife’s house. I reached this in the dark by stumbling over rocks and through blackberry, my way lighted by a candle in a bottle. Surrounded by pine trees, the old house was spooky and smelled of decay. I had another candle by the bed, which was the only furniture in the house.
§
It must have been spring when I arrived for I remember cows calving and new calves to feed in the most shocking conditions. It was my job to teach them to drink from a bucket and subsequently feed them with milk which was pumped to the calf-shed. There was no shelter for man or beast, just a pen deep in mud; and when it rained, and was dark, it was hell.
As the calves learnt to drink — and would come to you for their milk when called — they were let out into the paddock, but until then their chances of survival were not good.
My instructions about bobby calves were to try and teach them to drink but, if they didn’t do so readily, to hit them on the head and throw them over the fence into an old ironstone pit. This was the way that most of them, and a few of the heifer calves that didn’t survive, ended their short and miserable lives.
Colin set an example in this regimen and, because of the conditions, I readily followed him. The surviving cattle were a hardy breed. They had to be.
§
The milking plant was efficient — Colin’s mechanical knowledge saw to that — but otherwise conditions at the shed were shocking. There was, as at the Smiths, a narrow strip of concrete that the cows had to be persuaded up to be milked. So deep was the mud in the outer yard that neither man nor dog could negotiate it. One had either to stand at the edge and hurl stones and abuse at the cows in an effort to move them on, or ride a horse in after them. The rocks under the mud made matters worse. These were volcanic, some with very jagged edges.
Frequently, of course, the cows had to be persuaded with a stick. They all had sore teats and would cheerfully kick one’s head off. It is no exaggeration to say that my shins became so hardened from repeated kicks that they ceased to register the pain. The cows would in their turn be kicked and beaten, in anger born of desperation.
The cowshed had initially been conveniently placed, but the building of the Mangawhero and Mangahahura drainage canals had divided the farm into three portions, which meant that the cows had to be driven long distances to cross the Apotu bridge. There was a long trail of mud where the one hundred cows twice a day traversed the paddocks, some of which were still strewn with logs and stumps. I used to get the cows in on a horse called Maori Weed with the dubious assistance of a very old sheepdog called Jock. At the risk of a broken neck I used to gallop hell-for-leather over these paddocks, mud, stumps, logs and all. The falls were frequent and I soon developed the art of leaping to my feet before the horse did and grabbing the reins to avoid a long walk home, or the alternative of an extended exercise in frustration trying to catch the Weed.
The Weed, like the rest of the animals, hated mankind, was hard to catch and once landed both hind hooves in the pit of my stomach, which didn’t increase my love for him.
One large paddock in particular was cut off by the two canals. To get to it one had to cross the Apotu bridge and then go cross-country to a private bridge over the Mangawhero — a long way if one had overslept. A short-cut involved crossing the Mangahahura at the foot of the hill below the cowshed, which I frequently did. Many is the wetting I got swimming the horse through fast flowing water when a flood was up. The banks were steep, and getting into and out of the cut was a foolhardy undertaking — another challenge.
Colin imposed on me more and more as time went by. I would have the cows in and a lot of them milked by the time Colin arrived with a cup of tea, at times as late as 7.00am. I would have climbed into my wet clothes and been on my way by 5.00.
At times he would clear out, leaving me to take the cream out and clean up the shed. I would have to catch Ben, an old, lethargic draught horse, harness him to the dray and load the cream. With the back of the dray about four foot six from the ground that was no small undertaking for a thirteen year-old. A twelve-gallon can of cream must weight at least 130 pounds (59kg) and I managed this by lifting the cans first on to a box and then on to the dray. Colin’s reaction to any job of this nature, which was obviously beyond my strength, would be to say “Eat a bit more porridge for breakfast,” and I would almost bust a gut trying to get the job done.
Ben was the slowest horse I have ever seen, worse even than the Smith’s Moke. Using a stick on him produced no reaction except for flick of his tail. His rump, like my shins and for the same reason, felt no pain. The only way to get a reaction was to jab that thick and calloused rump with a pitch fork, which would produce a slow trot for a few yards before he settled down again to his slow plod.
§
One day Colin and I were loading rata logs onto the dray. Colin in his usual manner was standing on the dray while I struggled to lift one end of the log up to him. When he had grabbed that end he would instruct me to lift up the other. This particular log was very heavy and, as I frantically struggled to lift my end over the back of the dray, he dropped his. I lost control and the log came down, jamming my hand between it and the steel angle-iron which protected the dray’s wooden floor. My fingers were a mess, severely bruised, one of them badly out of joint, and they hurt like hell.
My first reaction, a natural one I think, was to see a Doctor.
“No!” said Colin. “He’ll charge you ten bob! You can pull your finger straight and bandage it yourself.”
I looked at my hand. One finger had two right-angle bends in it. I made a half-hearted effort to straighten it but the pain was excruciating and I couldn’t do it.
“Let me look at it, then,” said Colin, still standing on the dray (it wasn’t hurting him a bit!). He grabbed my finger and pulled. It came straight, but at that moment I wished it wasn’t mine.
That was it. We continued to load the dray with blood dripping from my bruised and painful hand.
Mrs Jones was properly sympathetic and bandaged it for me, and I carried on working as usual. Milking was agony, of course, as I washed and squeezed, roped up cows and so on, with my fingers being continually bumped and bruised afresh. The bone had been crushed and the finger gave me trouble for years — and it still doesn’t bend properly. I’ll bet Colin didn’t have me insured, and couldn’t face the prospect of milking a hundred cows on his own.
§
Harvesting time came and Colin decided to make silage from the early grass surplus. This was a back-breaking job, forking green grass on to what soon became a high, round stack which we topped off with a layer of dirt. This we accomplished on our own as far as I remember.
Silage is grass that’s been compacted and stored in airtight conditions (hence the layer of dirt) without being dried first like hay. The fermented silage was fed out as stock feed over winter.
Next came hay-making. Colin cut the hay with a horse-drawn mower. After a day or two’s drying we turned it, or as much as we could manage, with pitch-forks. Milking on those days didn’t begin until late and frequently we didn’t get in to dinner until 10.00. Shades of the Smiths.
I got very tired but also extremely fit. To help get in the hay, Colin engaged three of Hikurangi’s unemployed. I raked the hay with old Ben using a tumbler rake and, when that was finished, I was put onto a tumbler sweep to sweep the hay into the stack.
Colin had been using the sweep himself and having a bad time of it. The horse was a very cantankerous animal. How he expected a boy to cope I’ll never know. The paddock was rough and the horse would break into a trot as the first windrow was gathered. Keeping him under control and down to a reasonable pace while at the same time hanging onto the sweep handles was an impossible job for most grown men. Worse, however, was the horse’s habit of jibbing — coming back onto his traces when the sweep hit any obstacle — so that, as the tines dug into the ground, the sweep would begin to tip forward. The sweep would almost reach the point of balance, ready to trip, when, with a load of hay above my head as I followed behind it, the sweep would fall back onto me if I didn’t back off quickly enough and then attend to the horse, which by then was trying to go backwards over the sweep.
The inevitable happened. Luckily the sweep handles (made of water pipe) didn’t hit me on the head, but they jammed my fingers against my bent knee. I don’t know which suffered the most as both were very painful.
Colin was in an awful temper when in the course of time he came to my assistance. Armed with a pitchfork, which he jabbed into the horse’s belly at any sign of jibbing, he drove the horse while I handled the sweep.
Haymaking went on for weeks. It was an exhausting business. The horse continued to get the pitchfork treatment and developed a huge swelling on its side, but continued to be worked nonetheless.
One morning during milking a vet arrived from Whangarei and Colin insisted that I assist the vet while he continued milking. The vet lanced the huge swelling, from which poured a torrent of blood and pus, a sickening sight.
“Did you see the ti-tree stake that came out of it?” asked the vet.
The light gradually dawned. I said, with an awful feeling of guilt, “Yes, I did.” This was a cover-up.
Constable Quinn was on the doorstep after breakfast to investigate a complaint of cruelty to a horse. I wondered who had warned Colin, and I felt guilty myself for having been involved. And hadn’t I frequently used a pitchfork against old Ben?
Suffering and hardship brutalise people and I had been brutalised. I made animals suffer as I suffered myself, and I was too young to know what had happened to me.
Quinn questioned me thoroughly for about two hours. I said I hadn’t used a pitchfork on the animal myself (this was true) and hadn’t seen Colin do so. I said I had seen the vet remove a ti-tree stake from the horse’s stomach.
I stuck to my story. Colin was convicted and fined six pounds for working a horse that was unfit to work. The charge of cruelly wounding a horse was dropped because of conflicting evidence, principally the evidence of a crooked vet.
I met Constable Quinn on the bus months later and he congratulated me on sticking to my story. I didn’t react, fearing he might be trying to trap me into telling the truth.
§
It was during hay-making at Joness that I had the ride of my life — not on Creamy after all, but on the Maori Weed.
First I need to describe the bridle Colin had made up for the Weed. The halter and reins were made from bits of old rope, while the bit itself was made from two half pieces left over from old bits which had worn through where they joined in the horse’s mouth. These two pieces, paper-thin, were tied together with string, which cut through fairly quickly because of the sharp metal edges.
I hadn’t had the need or opportunity to ride the Weed for weeks, and he had got away from his tether (after the string parted) with a sheepskin strapped to his back for a saddle. The sheepskin had caused a sore that made him even more agitated than usual.
Anyway, thus mounted and equipped, I rode up to the house fence to collect lunch for the men from Mrs Jones.
There was a gallon billy of tea hot from the stove, which I carried in my left hand. On each finger of that hand was also a cup. In my right hand I had the reins and, hooked over my arm, a large basket of food and another two cups.
The Weed was already extremely agitated about all this clinking paraphernalia when, half way down the hill from the house, the string holding the bit together broke.
The Weed took off.
Of course the first thing to happen was that the hot tea splashed on me and The Weed’s tender back. This didn’t help. He could go, I knew, but never had he travelled as fast as he did now. And never had my riding ability been so challenged.
At break-neck speed we made a difficult 90-degree turn on a slope through the front gate and an immediate 90-degree turn in the opposite direction on to the road. The road dropped steeply to a narrow, slippery wooden bridge after which we made another right-angle turn through a very rough gateway. The Weed knew where to go. He had traversed this farm for years.
These three headlong turns — carrying all this gear, and without reins — was bad enough, but from that point on it got worse. Gateways were completely ignored. He wanted to get away from this burning hot stuff that splashed on his sore back and from this so-and-so member of the hated human race who clung to him like a leech. He didn’t fall, as he had often done. He hurtled furiously across the flat for about three quarters of a mile — very rough country — jumping logs and stumps, several ditches and two fences, and — amazingly, with five men having downed tools to watch my progress in bug-eyed astonishment — stopped at the haystack.
There I proceeded to tell Colin what I thought about him, his horse, his gear and his so-and-so farm. I had broken one cup, which had shot out of the basket, but there was plenty of tea left for all of us.
§
I possessed an old push-bike with worn-out tyres. It was quite a performance inserting pieces of leather and what-have-you behind the holes, and keeping them in place while one inflated the tube. If on inspection one found a piece had shifted, so that the hole in the tyre exposed the tube underneath, the tyre had to be deflated, the patches re-positioned and the tube pumped up again. Punctures were frequent and the tubes were covered in patches.
The Hikurangi Picture Theatre was only four miles away from Colin’s and I had an over-whelming desire to patronise it. On Saturdays I would use all my powers of persuasion to get milking under way early enough to go to the flicks. Saturdays were normal work days and I would work like a slave all day to get everything done. If I was lucky I could wash and change and get in to dinner by about 7.30. Otherwise the pictures had to be abandoned for another week.
However if I was early enough I would bolt down my dinner and ride like a demon so I wouldn’t miss too much — I could never hope to get there before the show started. Frequently I would get a puncture, sometimes after covering only a few hundred yards. Then I would dump my bike by the side of the road and run for it. I was fit, fanatical and vicious.
On one occasion I went to a social organised by the unemployed and arrived there in a filthy temper after a very hard and harassing day. In the hall doorway were several of my natural enemies from Valley Road, including big Bill Simpson who was a good head taller than me.
Although I didn’t hear what Bill had to say, it appeared to my tortured mind that the laughter which followed was the result of a joke at my expense. I hit Bill about six times, leaving everyone in more or less a state of shock, and carried on in to the hall. It was no surprise that there was no retaliation, for who would want to tackle an obvious lunatic?
§
Ken Wright, now an old friend, arrived to work for Colin in time to help with the last ten-acre (4 hectare) hay paddock. I was burnt almost black by the sun, having worn nothing more than a black bush singlet right through the cold spring months. Ken envied this and I persuaded him that by exposing himself to the sun — even if he got burnt initially — he would end up as brown as I was. He was a trier and I will never forget Ken and I turning the hay in that 10-acre paddock with pitchforks, and his suffering under the boiling sun. He didn’t ever become tanned. I think Ken slept on the floor in the old house. A cousin Jack, who worked with me during the latter part of my stay, insists that he did.
With two of us there Colin spent less time than ever in the cow shed, and Ken and I got up to all sorts of nonsense. I remember one water fight which I was winning until Ken started using boiling water from the copper.
We had to chop fire-wood for the house. One of us would hold the ti-tree sticks on the chopping block while the other wielded the axe. If the one with the axe didn’t hit the ti-tree in exactly the right place the other suffered badly jarred hands. We often came close to blows over this, with one of us threatening the other with axe or stick.
One day Colin went to town and instructed us, first, to clear a fire-break around some ti-tree that had been felled by some unemployed men, and then to burn it.
After breakfast we cleared what we thought was an adequate firebreak and lit the fire. It was out of control in no time and, without benefit of food and water, we fought it continuously until ten that night. Colin arrived home about seven and helped, but finally we had to give up and start milking, which we finished about midnight. The fire burned for days in the peat, which didn’t increase our popularity.
Ken was a little older than me — and more sensible, for he didn’t stay long. Winter came and the cows were dried off, except for thirty which we milked throughout.
§
About this time Colin’s brother Ted arrived and moved into the old house with me, along with his wife and family. A little later a sister came to stay with them.
Unlike Colin, Ted hadn’t married money and was as poor as the rest of us. He was much more concerned for my welfare. We got along fine and it was a comfort to have others in the house on cold, wet, windy nights. The sister was a horse fan and on Sundays we would go for rides together. She told me I should stop yodelling so as not to spoil a lovely voice!
Mrs Munro, who lived on a neighbouring farm, told me years later that she would sit on her front step at nights and listen to Colin and I sing. This was one facet of life that I did enjoy. I regularly sang (or whistled) while I milked and Fred, another neighbour, told me once that he had never heard such a range of songs. I think Colin may have been involved in an operatic society at some stage for he sang and whistled a lot of light classics, which I copied from him.
I have sometimes sung in public but this ended one night when I had been persuaded against my will to sing a duet with a young lady. After the performance, and in the presence of the persuader, I said to our accompanist, “Please tell him I can’t sing.”
“You’re right,” she said. “You can’t.”
From that time on I sang only for my own amusement. I am compelled to assert, however, that compared to some modern stars I was a Caruso.
§
During the winter Colin went off south to Hawera for a few weeks, leaving me in charge of milking thirty cows twice a day — the rest “dried off” — and feeding silage and hay to a herd of about one hundred and fifty. He left with his wife a long list of things I was to do while he was away. In addition to the normal chores, including feeding out and chopping firewood, I was instructed to repair about two miles of road fence, most of which was falling down, hoe up the back lawn and remove logs and stumps from a large paddock. There was more, enough work to keep a man busy for two years.
Ted helped with the milking for a day or two and then I was on my own. The weather was most unkind, with thunder and lightening, heavy rain and a huge flood. At one stage I had to ride through flood water and cut a fence to rescue stranded stock. On another, while feeding out hay, I was almost hit by a bolt of lightening which struck with a loud bang and a blinding flash alongside the dray. Old Ben was almost frightened into a canter and the cattle which were following after the feed took off in all directions.
Hay and silage had to be cut out of the stack with a hay-knife and forked on to the dray, sodden, wet and heavy, and carted off to various parts of the farm.
During the winter months my clothes were never dry. I put them on cold and wet in the mornings after a cold night in my comfortless bed and they dried, when they could, on my back.
I did my own washing at the cowshed and my clothes dried, if I was lucky, over the yard railings.
The only comforts were at the house, where there was always plenty of hot water at the wash-house for me to get cleaned up in, and where Colin’s wife kept me well fed while complaining mildly to her husband about the tasks he’d set me.
One Sunday when they had visitors I was riding across the flat after shifting cattle. I was in a hurry — and angry at the imposition of extra Sunday tasks that would make a visit home hardly worth while, since I had to be back for evening milking.
Once again the string holding together the bit on the so-and-so bridle broke and the Weed bolted. The Weed and I fought a constant war and he would bite and kick me at every opportunity. Anger and frustration took over and, with a stick, I steered and belted him round and round that paddock, through the mud and over logs and stumps until he was exhausted.
The visitors had been watching me from the verandah and quite properly gave me a telling off for my behaviour. I bitterly resented this. How could they, in their comfortable, warm clothes, enjoying the day off to which I was entitled, know about my problems?
Ted and his family left as spring approached and the cows began to calve. Their stay hadn’t been a happy one.
§
Colin wanted to employ another boy, and I think it was me who introduced my older cousin, Jack. As I occupied the only bed, he had to sleep on the floor in the old house. I can’t remember how he made himself comfortable, or if in fact he did. He did, however, get twelve and six a week, two and six more than me, so I decided to ask Colin for a raise. Colin promptly refused. There were plenty of others, he said, who’d be glad of my job.
By this time Colin was frightened of me and my temper, scared that in one of my rages I might take to him. He wanted to get rid of me — and the sorry memory of his conviction for cruelty.
I let it be known to everyone I saw that I was on the lookout for another job — and, so it was that one morning, as I was putting the cream out, I found Joe, my next employer, waiting to talk to me at the cream stand. He was offering twelve and six a week.
§
In 1954, after Dorothy and I had bought a farm from Mr and Mrs Munro — she being the lady who’d sat on her doorstep listening to the two of us sing — Colin and I re-established an uneasy relationship as neighbours. We helped each other with hay-making, but otherwise contacts were few.
In 1959 he became a County Councillor, very important in his own eyes, whilst I became Secretary of the local Ratepayers Association. Much to his indignation, I was persuaded to stand against him for council. He rang to ask what the hell I was doing — he was looking after everyone’s interests. What’s more, he said, I didn’t have a hope in hell of getting elected.
Our relationship had definitely cooled, and it got worse when for each vote he got, I got three!
In later years his two boys took over the farm. My last memories of Colin, who lived to a grand old age, are of a harmless-looking old man helping his sons at hay-making. His job now was raking the hay — my old job if you remember, the job reserved for the very young and the very old. Now the rake was tractor-drawn and Old Ben, long dead, had been replaced by an elderly Ferguson. Mechanics had always been Colin’s strong point and tractors don’t respond to pitchforks. He was a more contented man.