NO EASTER EGGS AT 132 NOOKAMKA TERRACE BARMERA

Post 18 - April 16th 2023

Joan Winifred Green - my Mum ... and 132 Nookamka Terrace in Barmera 

With my Lewy Body Dementia journey rolling along it is time once again to go back and have a look at some past stories from my life.

Looking at my life I know I have been very privileged, these 68-years have been some ride but now I head into a time when I will start to become disengaged from that life as my cognitive decline kicks in.

To have a written record of how everything unfolded is important, well at least it is important to me.

In my book Hey Shorty I had a chapter on childhood and what it was like to be growing up in the era I did. It was a great time to be a kid, we all know that, just brilliant and we were so lucky to be a part of that.

So it was easy in my book to cover so many great and wonderful times and memories. A real blessing.

At the end of the chapter on childhood, I also wrote about the not so good times as a kid growing up. Thankfully there were far less bad memories than good memories.

So, a bit odd here, but my post today looks at a couple of the things I didn't like about life growing up as a kid in the 50's and 60's.

Naturally, because of limited space in a blog post I have not covered much of what I wrote in the book on this subject, I have simply lifted a couple of random things to include here. But because we have just celebrated Easter I did highlight a couple of odd happenings from this time of the year.

At the top of my dislike list, my Mum never gave us Green kids Easter Eggs. Seriously!

But, I pushed on with life. I am a survivor from a non-Easter Egg period.

So, for this post I have copied the following thoughts from my book Hey Shorty as written back in 2004.

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The first 50 years

So, what about the not so good childhood memories? I have no doubt I could write much here but why spoil a good story? Somethings are probably best left unsaid.

It is funny though how good memories can generally easily be recalled when we want to visit them but not so with bad and sad memories. They are often suppressed or totally forgotten. Just human nature I guess, our mind has the ability to forget what causes pain and ongoing harm.

At the top of my dislike list as a kid was that I hated drinking those bloody little bottles of milk at school that we would be forced to get down at morning recess during my primary school years. I hated it with a passion, have never had a drink of milk since.

In the summer months the milk would be delivered and sit out in the hot sun in the lunch shed at the Convent school in Barmera and we would have to drink it regardless of the taste. It had to be off! We were even given flavored straws to use but why? Bad milk is bad milk; you just cannot disguise it even with chocolate or strawberry flavor!

On a plus side, the milk bottles came with foil tops and I do recall that they made good decorations wrapped around the spokes of your bike wheels.

Another pet hate at the convent school days was the concert we had to be a part of at the end of each school year. Sure, I guess the school made a few quid from the night but as performers, we were undersold.

For weeks we would be drilled and taught like parrots how to sing a certain song or act a certain part. I hated the routine and on concert night it was never any fun performing on the stage that would be built in the lunch shed. I always felt like a fish out of water being a part of this concert.

Whatever the reason behind that feeling I remember it being very real.

Swimming lessons during the Christmas school holidays I found annoying, very annoying in fact. Growing up on Lake Bonney in the Riverland of South Australia we loved the water and swimming as kids but being forced to endure those bloody swimming lessons every summer in the school holidays was the pits!

They taught us little in terms of safety and did nothing to expand on what we had already worked out for ourselves in the area of swimming and staying safe. We taught ourselves how to dive off the big diving board, how to swim out to the buoy, we were self-made water babes.

I could never fathom why we were forced into such a silly program as the swimming lessons, made no sense. 

My Mum Joan is an amazing person, a real gem, she is a great Mum to us kids. Everybody loves her, she is kind, happy, fun, hardworking, bright and an all-round likeable lady. And she is my mate.

But wow, she has some funny ideas, and no I am not talking about her love for the Adelaide Crows in these later years.

Nope, get this, at Easter we were never given Easter Eggs in our younger years, instead we would get a block of Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate. That amazed me, as a kid I remember thinking how the hell would a chook lay a block of chocolate? They lay eggs don't they?

I found it a tad confusing, as a little kid it would have been nice to get a chocolate egg sometimes. Because, seriously, Easter Eggs, that is what Easter was about for a kid isn't it?

Mum would say that the eggs were a waste of money and we would get more chocolate in a block. I remember the ads from Cadbury, a glass and a half of full cream milk in every block so all good, but all I wanted was a chocolate Easter Egg.

And cracker night! Nope, no crackers at 132 Nookamka Terrace in Barmera. Guy Fawkes Night was legal back in the 60's so like other families we could have had some fireworks fun. The fireworks were always sold at a local deli, on display for all to see and to choose.

But Mum was again using the waste of money line so we got more Cadbury Dairy Milk Chocolate in a block to compensate for the fireworks no go. One year we even got a packet of Arnotts Wafer Biscuits with the chocolate. 

I remember her telling us that fireworks were like money going up in smoke. Probably very true Mum, but chocolate and wafer biscuits did not go BANG like a Sixpenny Banger. And fireworks were such a big thing, cracker night was full on noise around the town with bon fires and people letting off their crackers.

Mum, seriously, at the time what were you thinking, we were only kids after all.

Anyhow, two other things I hated from the younger days were eating Silver Beet and my 'flappy ears'.

Finally, this is not really a bad childhood memory but more of a non-memory. One thing I do not recall is birthdays. I find that so odd given the fact that I have such vivid memories for so many things from that childhood time of life.

But I do not remember birthdays, not one. The first birthday that I have a memory from is my 21st that I celebrated in 1975 while living in Tailem Bend. It was such an amazing party, just a great and unforgettable time. Actually, the birthday celebration was over a full week but that story is told in another chapter.

I do know that I hate birthdays to this day but I'm guessing that it is for totally different reasons to those when I was a kid.

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And there you have it, just a very small sample of what I included in my book from the chapter on my childhood years.

Over time I will add some complete chapters from my book and include them under the links heading on the blog home page. But that is a work in progress. Stay tuned.

For today, for this post, that's all for now. Thanks for checking in ...

Go Cats, we are on a march up the AFL ladder so you are all on notice ...

Now, a JonnyG understanding to go out on ...

Why is the Greek Easter always a week after normal Easter? ... It's because all the Easter Eggs are always on special ...

Thankfully my Mum never had to experience this tech era, she would never have coped