MY FATHER ....CRYING.....WHAT COULD IT MEAN?

Seventy years ago to-day, my paternal Grandma died - at age Sixty - six years.Here is a Post from 2011 which covers what for Eight Years old me , was a sadly memorable event.

 My Dad John Joseph Dixon 

                                                      at about the age I was that 

                                                                      morning.........

                                                     

His Mother Eleanor Margaret Dixon
  taken the same day as Dad above.

Friday , 20th August, 1948:  I was asleep in my bed, just clear of the inward opening door of my bedroom at the front right hand side (facing), of our two bedroom timber cottage in Second Avenue Berala NSW. I was woken when the door opened hastily.

There stood my 41 years old Dad .A tumble of thoughts into my gathering consciousness : Dad doesn't wake me in the morning ( Shift work meant he was either at work, or not long in from work and sleeping at this hour),  why was his hat crammed on his head in the house? and....... what! My Dad was crying..... what could this mean?  "You'd better get up quick Anth, Ma has died",and he sobbed even more. 

Turmoil. Mum was already up at Grandma's which was in Third avenue just behind us and a tad higher on the gentle hill. Up I got, dressed quickly, no breakfast and round we went. The 1900 vintage cream painted timber house, had originally been much smaller, but had been added onto. Up the front steps into the hall and I was taken down to Mum who was busy holding the family together, consoling this one, calming that one, and meanwhile getting them fed. My maiden Aunt Nell who was a very good hearted soul, but at that stage of her life very tense, afflicted with a bad stutter, suggested while Dad was there, that I should be taken into Grandma's room to see her body. You can perhaps imagine my horror - at eight years of age - at the suggestion. I had no experience of death and I had no desire to see the Grandma I loved so devotedly , and who loved me , in death. I would NOT go in.

 Dad was too absorbed in grief to intervene, but mercifully Mum came across, asked what the fuss was, saw my reaction and put an end to that idea. I can't remember the rest of the day.

The funeral was some days later from our Church-School - St. Peter Chanel's on the hill at Berala. My mind boggled at all the relatives and friends and fellow Parishioners - the Dixons were not the greatest Church goers( masterly understatement - I'm getting better at it!) , but in earlier times the wooden Church as well as the Convent, had been in Fourth Avenue behind Grandma's place  and there weren't many houses in those earlier days ,so " Mag. Dixon" was well known to the Nuns and to many Parishioners. That old wooden Church had been hauled up the hill to the new Parish location sometime in the 20's or 30's,and was now the Parish Hall.

Grandma was 66 years old.

Dad's Father, Thomas James Dixon died on the 2nd August, 1950. I had rarely seen him. He had left the family home many years before, had a major problem with drink, and was not a very endearing person (actually, I'm getting better at it!) He was 66 years old also - I had never realised the coincidence of their ages at death until a minute ago ,when I came to write this !

Deaths in August were to become more common in the family for some reason as you will see if you bear with me.And, as it happened, when my dear Mum died in August, 1971 she was also 66 years old.


Requiescant in Pace.

1940 EX LIBRIS "FIVE DAYS IN LONDON MAY, 1940"

Amazing what goes on when you are in the cot!

There I was just 1 month and fifteen days old, all comfy and being fussed over in my Cot, and on the other side of the World the British  Cabinet was meeting to discuss what should be done about the encircled British Expeditionary Force at Dunkirk, more than 300,000 men.

In this excellent Book of 236 pages, the Professor of History at Chestnut Hill College, Philadelphia at the time he wrote, John Lukacs explores the five days history of that War Cabinet Meeting.

It is an eye opener. He reveals how delicately the Cabinet was balanced between those who wanted to extract the BEF in order to be able to fight on, and those German sympathisers who wanted to come to terms with Hitler.Winston Churchill had been Prime Minister for 18 days when the crucial point of decision was reached during meeting commencing on 24th May, 1940 and concluding on 28th May, 1940 which just happened to be my Mother's 35th Birthday.

Churchill had himself briefly considered what might be the result of negotiations with "THAT MAN" - the loss of the Fleet, the Army , a puppet Government , possibly under Moseley, and decided it was intolerable and ultimately unthinkable. He believed that at best they might be able to rescue 50,000 of the BEF's men.

At 5.00pm he adjourned the War Cabinet and summoned a meeting of the full Cabinet of 29 and announced his intention that England should proceed to retrieve the BEF and fight on.No one demurred and at 7.00 pm he returned to the War Cabinet ( 5 persons) and told them what he had done. The "opposition"especially Lord Halifax was silent. The issue was resolved - the fight continued. As we now know, not 50,000 were saved but 338,626 were saved in the most extraordinary effort in defeat in the whole War. So extraordinary, saving the British Army and very many French soldiers as well, by the greatest muddling through ever, that it came to have the same morale boosting effect as many victories and has been remembered as a triumph.

Meanwhile, in far away Berala I slept on! And grew up to think it IMPOSSIBLE that we would do anything but WIN the War!

DUNKIRK -ABANDONED MILITARY EQUIPMENT

DUNKIRK - CHAOTIC BUT SUCCESSFUL EVACUATION

DUNKIRK - POSTAGE STAMPS - DEFEAT INTO TRIUMPH

This is an exceptional book, which will reward any reader and give them pause, to think what might have been. 

1943-1945 SIRENS AND SEARCHLIGHTS

Air Raid Siren

A monthly , or bi-monthly feature of life in suburban Sydney during World War II, at least in the vicinity of Berala , in what were then Sydney's Western Suburbs ( now the inner Western Suburbs!), was the sonorous wail of the Air Raid Sirens. As far as I am aware the Siren we heard was near the Park in Lidcombe - a brisk 20 minutes walk away. To me it was a marvellous bit of entertainment! We never believed that it could be a genuine air raid, not that that belief was based on any detailed knowledge of the disposition of Japanese Aircraft Carriers - we just knew we were going to be O.K. Similarly, but more irregularly, anti-aircraft searchlights would pierce the night sky - wonderful stuff causing people all around to run onto their verandahs or into their front/back yards to watch the show. There seemed never to be any aircraft around to give the exercise some semblance of reality, and very rarely a second or third searchlight to allow co-ordination exercises.

We had in our backyard a large hole dug as an air raid shelter, but it seemed to me even as a child, somewhat half-hearted and incomplete, and it  was never taken seriously and as time wore on , it was filled in.

WW II Searchlight

The War, so dramatic in the films, and apparently serious in the papers - not that I could read them- was somehow at one remove from our day to day lives.  At least that was true for children like me.

1955-1956 TRAVELLING TO SCHOOL

It must have been about a 16 miles journey from my home in Berala in the Western Suburbs to Marist Brothers Darlinghurst on the Eastern side of the City. I walked to Berala Station most days (10 minutes) or occasionally to Lidcombe (20-25 minutes)  to catch the suburban electric train to Sydney  Central Station.

There were still a few of these sad-faced ""Bradfield "cars in service - the only advantage they offered was a front passenger window -fun for kids to get a driver's eye view (a few of the more modern trains were similarly equipped at the time.)

The typical electric train of the day is shown in the photo below. Occasionally one of the Bradfield Driving Cars shown above would form part of the train, and more often, there were wooden trailer cars in the consist. However, after the Berala and Sydenham (I think) electric train crashes, the shattering of the wooden cars and increased casualties, meant that they were quickly phased out.

Standard electric train of my school days - to me they ere the iconic "face "of Sydney.Most were built in the U.K. as the brass plates I had to step over on boarding the train announced

.

There were still then, and for years to come, regular daily peak hour steam trains from Riverstone to Central stopping at Parramatta, Lidcombe and Strathfield,and Redfern where the zealots would hop off and RUN up and across the overbridge to catch an earlier City  underground electric train)  and there were always good crowds  on Lidcombe's No.1 Platform   
to take advantage of the express run to Central ( or Redfern as we have seen).

This is the "best"picture I could come up with of a C32 pulling a train of American corridor and end platforms, suburban cars , but I'm still looking!

These steam trains were hauled by C32 Class 4-6-0s dating from 1891 and they hauled American designed central corridor carriages with open entry platforms at either end. These carriages were also products of the 1880's. So the whole train was an operating Museum piece. There had been 191 of the C32 Class locomotives built, and all were still in service up to the time I left School, but the very next year, 1957 the first casualty came : 3264 was derailed and very badly damaged at Otford in January,1957. Four of the Class  survive in preservation and 2 are operational.

Arriving at Central, I would hurry off down the stairs and out to the ramp leading down to Eddy Avenue which crosses the Northern frontage of the huge Station. There, I would hop aboard a Tram for the trip left into Elizabeth Street up the hill to Mark Foy's magnificent Department Store , then a grinding 90 degrees turn into Liverpool Street and at the College Street intersection a brief glimpse of the College perched high on its hill at the top of the continuation of Liverpool Street and the Tramlines curved away to the right for the run up Oxford Street to Taylor Square. Oxford Street was the still in decline as the 1926 Underground Railway into the City had caused the CBD to flourish whilst all the pre 1926 fashionable places -Broadway, Railway Square, Oxford Street slowly died back.

My favourite Trams were the type seen just entering the picture below from the Left they were the oldest around and by far the most numerous.

Trams at Eddy Avenue in front of Sydney's great Central Station

At Taylor Square I began the walk North East ish to the College past the High Court on the right along what I later learned was the notorious" Wall" where at night, perverts picked up their "rent boys".Some of those using their services have been reported in later years as a member of the Police Commision and a High Court Judge . Ignorance was bliss. On the other side of the Wall was the old Darlinghurst Jail - now an Art School - I never went in.

And so I got to School.

Coming home the process was reversed, except that at Taylor Square I used to catch a Double Decker Bus down to Central - I guess because they may have run more frequently than the Trams at that time of day to Central.

I can't resist recounting a little anecdote that has stuck in my mind. One afternoon I was crossing Oxford Street to catch the Bus to Central at the Taylor Square stop, and had just passed a little old lady, dressed in a tired black cloth coat and wearing a small black hat, thinking to myself "poor little old thing"when a car suddenly surged by coming rather close to her . My Lol rounded on it swinging her handbag and screaming lustily "You f......B......!" I was gobsmacked! I have always been more cautious in awarding the title Little Old Lady ever since!

A heavily re-touched 1947 photo of Double decker buses at Taylor Square
where I used to catch them in the afternoon on way home from school.

N.B. "re-touching"was a manual process in the days before PHOTOSHOP.

CHILDHOOD 1940s FEEDING THE FAMILY

22 SECOND AVENUE, BERALA

Okay! Okay! So you're very clever and you've already latched on to the discrepancy !! 1940s in the heading but the TV Antenna shows the picture is after 1956 -first transmission of TV in Sydney and after about 1959 in our case, when we first got a PYE TV set. Oh! And you've noticed the oval Stop light lens and fins on the Vauxhall Cresta I bought second hand (1963 Model) in about 1967 (?) Go to the top of the Class and please sit quietly while I get on with the story.

In those War time 1940's when I was a little bloke and had blond hair ( why does our hair keep changing colour? Blond, Brown, Grey - oh well!) there wasn't a lot of money around but enough to feed us fairly well.

Things were delivered to the door, the Milkman with his Horse (! True!) and Cart came plodding by very early in the morning taking the Billy Can from the Front Verandah filling it from the Tap on the back of the Cart pressing the lid home and returning the full can to the Verandah. If we wanted cream a note was left with the Billy and the "Milko "would leave a litle tubby jar with a waxed cardboard sealing lid.Once a week we would leave out the Milk money in cash of course with that day's Billy. Exciting Huh?

Later each morning the Baker (the word being suitably short did not need a familiar abbreviation) would drift along the street in his little red Ford Van (English Ford of course Vintage about 1934) and there was variety yes indeed there was! You could have white bread or nothing, and you could choose a Square Loaf or a Round Loaf (Now called High Top) . Boy! How I loved the smell of that hot fresh bread (the bakery was only a block away and Brand Name bread was unknown.In the early 1950's we really got with it and the Baker announced that he would be introducing Vienna Milk Loaf to his product range.

My favourites were the convex first slices of the newly broken Square or Round loaves - that was living! Especially with Cheese ( which only ever came into our house in the pale blue KRAFT box which in latter years we would never deign to buy- muttering insulting words like "soap!"

Less often, perhaps twice a week the ""Ice Man "came to refill the Ice Box . It resembled a small wooden ( if your imagination is that good) refrigerator with a smaller top box for the block of ice and a larger section underneath it for the food to be chilled - not a great deal of room - for milk, meat .butter etc.The whole thing was only about 4 feet high. 

Of course, during the War years, what one could buy was closely controlled by Rationing Laws which the Labor Government tried to keep on even after the War.This was part of the reason for its ultimate fall. Rationing affected such things as Meat, Flour, Sugar, Clothing and Petrol and many more. The Ration Book gradually crept into my consciousness as I saw Mum struggle with it in the nearby "Corner" Grocer Shop and Butcher Shop. The Coupons from the book would often be shared with and from relatives in cases of particular need.
 The Grocer's Shop was not overly large . All the stock was behind the Left Hand and Right Hand Counters. Packaging of goods was minimal, and many things were bought from bulk containers the weighed in the hanging "Daytona" scales or on the Benchtop Weighing Scales by the same manufacturer in the USA. We went to the Grocer's and Butcher's shops with "string bags" (in effect a net forming a moderate sized bag and usually a wicker bag with a plywood base. As I got older , I came to these shops with a note from which I did the shopping.And from time to time I would run errands for my Grandma Dixon around in Third Avenue  who could not get out because of her illness.

Then, in the dawning of a new age, we obtained a Hallstrom "Silent Knight"gas refrigerator, which stood on four legs and caused a frenzy of home ice cream making for a year or so. It was later replaced by an American made Crosley Electric Refrigerator, marvellously well made which lasted until Dad's death on 11th May, 1992.

MY FATHER CRYING : WHAT COULD IT MEAN?

Sixty Eight years ago to-day, my paternal Grandma died - at age Sixty - six years.Here is a Post from 2011 which covers what for Eight Years old me , was a sadly memorable event.

 My Dad John Joseph Dixon 

                                                      at about the age I was that 

                                                                      morning.........

                                                     

His Mother Eleanor Margaret Dixon
  taken the same day as Dad above.

Friday , 20th August, 1948:  I was asleep in my bed, just clear of the inward opening door of my bedroom at the front right hand side (facing), of our two bedroom timber cottage in Second Avenue Berala NSW. I was woken when the door opened hastily.

There stood my 41 years old Dad .A tumble of thoughts into my gathering consciousness : Dad doesn't wake me in the morning ( Shift work meant he was either at work, or not long in from work and sleeping at this hour),  why was his hat crammed on his head in the house? and....... what! My Dad was crying..... what could this mean?  "You'd better get up quick Anth, Ma has died",and he sobbed even more. 

Turmoil. Mum was already up at Grandma's which was in Third avenue just behind us and a tad higher on the gentle hill. Up I got, dressed quickly, no breakfast and round we went. The 1900 vintage cream painted timber house, had originally been much smaller, but had been added onto. Up the front steps into the hall and I was taken down to Mum who was busy holding the family together, consoling this one, calming that one, and meanwhile getting them fed. My maiden Aunt Nell who was a very good hearted soul, but at that stage of her life very tense, afflicted with a bad stutter, suggested while Dad was there, that I should be taken into Grandma's room to see her body. You can perhaps imagine my horror - at eight years of age - at the suggestion. I had no experience of death and I had no desire to see the Grandma I loved so devotedly , and who loved me , in death. I would NOT go in.

 Dad was too absorbed in grief to intervene, but mercifully Mum came across, asked what the fuss was, saw my reaction and put an end to that idea. I can't remember the rest of the day.

The funeral was some days later from our Church-School - St. Peter Chanel's on the hill at Berala. My mind boggled at all the relatives and friends and fellow Parishioners - the Dixons were not the greatest Church goers( masterly understatement - I'm getting better at it!) , but in earlier times the wooden Church as well as the Convent, had been in Fourth Avenue behind Grandma's place  and there weren't many houses in those earlier days ,so " Mag. Dixon" was well known to the Nuns and to many Parishioners. That old wooden Church had been hauled up the hill to the new Parish location sometime in the 20's or 30's,and was now the Parish Hall.

Grandma was 66 years old.

Dad's Father, Thomas James Dixon died on the 2nd August, 1950. I had rarely seen him. He had left the family home many years before, had a major problem with drink, and was not a very endearing person (actually, I'm getting better at it!) He was 66 years old also - I had never realised the coincidence of their ages at death until a minute ago ,when I came to write this !

Deaths in August were to become more common in the family for some reason as you will see if you bear with me.And, as it happened, when my dear Mum died in August, 1971 she was also 66 years old.


Requiescant in Pace.

*EX LIBRIS :"FIVE DAYS IN LONDON MAY 1940"

Amazing what goes on when you are in the cot!

There I was just 1 month and fifteen days old, all comfy and being fussed over in my Cot, and on the other side of the World the British  Cabinet was meeting to discuss what should be done about the encircled British Expeditionary Force at Dunkirk, more than 300,000 men.

In this excellent Book of 236 pages, the Professor of History at Chestnut Hill College, Philadelphia at the time he wrote, John Lukacs explores the five days history of that War Cabinet Meeting.

It is an eye opener. He reveals how delicately the Cabinet was balanced between those who wanted to extract the BEF in order to be able to fight on, and those German sympathisers who wanted to come to terms with Hitler.Winston Churchill had been Prime Minister for 18 days when the crucial point of decision was reached during meeting commencing on 24th May, 1940 and concluding on 28th May, 1940 which just happened to be my Mother's 35th Birthday.

Churchill had himself briefly considered what might be the result of negotiations with "THAT MAN" - the loss of the Fleet, the Army , a puppet Government , possibly under Moseley, and decided it was intolerable and ultimately unthinkable. He believed that at best they might be able to rescue 50,000 of the BEF's men.

At 5.00pm he adjourned the War Cabinet and summoned a meeting of the full Cabinet of 29 and announced his intention that England should proceed to retrieve the BEF and fight on.No one demurred and at 7.00 pm he returned to the War Cabinet ( 5 persons) and told them what he had done. The "opposition"especially Lord Halifax was silent. The issue was resolved - the fight continued. As we now know, not 50,000 were saved but 338,626 were saved in the most extraordinary effort in defeat in the whole War. So extraordinary, saving the British Army and very many French soldiers as well, by the greatest muddling through ever, that it came to have the same morale boosting effect as many victories and has been remembered as a triumph.

Meanwhile, in far away Berala I slept on! And grew up to think it IMPOSSIBLE that we would do anything but WIN the War!

DUNKIRK -ABANDONED MILITARY EQUIPMENT

DUNKIRK - CHAOTIC BUT SUCCESSFUL EVACUATION

DUNKIRK - POSTAGE STAMPS - DEFEAT INTO TRIUMPH

This is an exceptional book, which will reward any reader and give them pause, to think what might have been. 

*1943 -1945 SIRENS AND SEARCHLIGHTS

Air Raid Siren

A monthly , or bi-monthly feature of life in suburban Sydney during World War II, at least in the vicinity of Berala , in what were then Sydney's Western Suburbs ( now the inner Western Suburbs!), was the sonorous wail of the Air Raid Sirens. As far as I am aware the Siren we heard was near the Park in Lidcombe - a brisk 20 minutes walk away. To me it was a marvellous bit of entertainment! We never believed that it could be a genuine air raid, not that that belief was based on any detailed knowledge of the disposition of Japanese Aircraft Carriers - we just knew we were going to be O.K. Similarly, but more irregularly, anti-aircraft searchlights would pierce the night sky - wonderful stuff causing people all around to run onto their verandahs or into their front/back yards to watch the show. There seemed never to be any aircraft around to give the exercise some semblance of reality, and very rarely a second or third searchlight to allow co-ordination exercises.

We had in our backyard a large hole dug as an air raid shelter, but it seemed to me even as a child, somewhat half-hearted and incomplete, and it  was never taken seriously and as time wore on , it was filled in.

WW II Searchlight

The War, so dramatic in the films, and apparently serious in the papers - not that I could read them- was somehow at one remove from our day to day lives.  At least that was true for children like me.