Bonzer Words!: Starting A Career
Arthur Hay tells of his early ventures in the world of work.
After leaving school, I was appointed by the Postmaster-General as an Apod. That was not an electronic dooverlackie with white ear-plugs—it was an Assistant Postal Officer (Delivery). It was probably due the air of insouciance which I affected that the Postmaster-General ruled that I was one postman not to be allowed out on the street.
Instead I was allocated a dimly-lit basement and a roll of government-issue sticky tape, together with a heap of letters and parcels which had fallen to pieces in transit. Fortunately it was a lonely job, because the basement held barely enough air for even one person. Oxygen was in such short supply that occasionally I borrowed a telegram-boy's bicycle-pump to assist my chances of survival. I quickly realised that there could be better positions, including some where you might be able to breathe while on duty. The time spent sticking together torn letters, however, did teach me the importance of mail bonding.
In my next job I was charged with haring around the streets of the Sydney CBD, selling ice creams, drinks and chocolates in 13 different picture theatres. This involved teetering my way through the Christmas shopping crowds bearing a box of goodies which weighed slightly more than I did.
Each cinema screened its films at different times—not for the convenience of the patrons, but to provide the opportunity for us 'concessionaires' to scamper from the end of the interval at one to the beginning of the interval at the next. We never did get to see the films, except for the last 30 seconds of the trailer as we rushed down the aisle just as the house-lights were coming up.
This was the end of 1957, and the same film was showing four times a day at nine of the 13 theatres. I can be as tough-minded as the next person, but there is a limit to how many times a human being can tolerate Pat Boone singing the last 16 bars of April Love. Today there are Workplace Health and Safety officers who police inhumane practices. Not then. Scientific tests have since shown that exposure to any Pat Boone song should be limited to no more than 16 times in any 24-hour period. The day that I needed CPR after hearing for the 18th time that April love was for the very young, I surrendered my peaked cap and my melting ice-creams. It had been a hot Sydney summer.
I was next engaged by a funeral chain in the Sydney suburb of Rockdale to provide appropriately sombre musical accompaniments to their services, at 10s 6d* a time—the same price as the Mad Hatter's topper. This was an easier job, if no less repetitive. One day you may find yourself in a nursing home where someone in a corner of the lounge is singing 'Nearer, my God, to thee' over and over and over and over. That will be me.
The instrument provided was an ancient harmonium, which had to be pedalled as frantically as any Olympic speed-racer to produce a reasonable level of sound. However, in a burst of technological innovation, the undertakers had replaced the traditional bier with an electric hoist, on which the casket would rest at waist height until, towards the end of the service, it would rise into the air, the pall-bearers would step in under it, and the hoist would then gently sink down to the floor, leaving the casket balanced on their shoulders.
For half a guinea, the company required its musicians to be lift mechanics too. The hoist was controlled by a pedal beside the harmonium and, for the first part of the service, was held down securely by a carefully calibrated half-brick wrapped in a bit of old carpet. Just when my music was most dramatic, I had to keep playing, lean over, move the brick and operate the hoist.
In those days I only had two hands—and two feet. But needs must when the devil pays the organist. There may just possibly have been one—well, okay, two occasions when the congregation gasped as the casket rocketed up and down, threatening to launch the recently dearly departed into the hereafter with a last desperate bungee-jump.
Nevertheless, fifty years later, the same chain still occasionally asks me to play at their chapel in Aspley, Brisbane. They don't have a hoist there.
* ten shillings and sixpence
© Arthur Hay
**
Arthur writes for Bonzer! magazine. Please visit www.bonzer.org.au
