Email to:Exposed! My Dad Was Too Old For A Mullet.
Children want to fit in…..
But sometimes it’s not possible.
I’ve just discovered that a lobby group called Rainbow Schoolies will be agitating to make sure students of gay parents don’t feel strange when they make two Mothers Day cards - or their Fathers Day cards feature sperm banks.
Call me old fashioned…..but kids have always coped well – on their own terms – with parents of ‘difference’.
Life goes on. No one gets too upset. No one goes beserk.
My father, Hec, was born in 1914.
It’s, of course, now common for fellas to hold off having children at least until they get their vasectomies reversed – whether that be in their forties, fifties or nineties.
But in the small irrigated township of 1950s Leeton, NSW, Hec was launching his Fecundity Festival at the same time his peers were frantically arranging shotgun marriages or Papal annulments for their grown up children.
When I was born Hec was 45.
['In my dreams..' cr: Keene & Cheshire County photos: flickr]
In what was a stellar late breaking reproductive career, he produced five lovely girls in a little more than six years.
Then – like so many brilliant late developing actors, singers or AFL footballers - he retired.
It was my difficult entry into the Catholic education system that confirmed My Dad was a freak.
As was family tradition, Hec delivered me into the clutches of angry, sweaty women in heavy black dresses and creepy long veils.
Tonnes of religious bling hanging from their thick leather belts clinked and clanked in the traditional Riverina ’start of school year’ heatwave.
Was I having a nightmare in which magpies had grown to one hundred times their size?
No.
Looking around, I saw huge magpies hovering over many other kids.
But there was something else.
The fathers.
They were different to mine.
And it wasn’t just the missing teeth…….
They were jaunty with slicked back mullets, tight pants and - my goodness - some were even sidling into the magpies…….
And the magpies liked it!
The harsh reality?
Me - five, Hec - 50, other dads 23-27, the magpies, indeterminate.
I did for many, many years want A Dad like all The Other Dads.
So much so that when the local Coles store ran a ‘Draw Your Dad’ Fathers Day competition my entry was of a young man with a mullet and missing teeth.
It won.
My interpretation of Hec Ross writ normal was in the Coles window for two weeks.
Gwennie said the judges obviously had NO idea about anything.
I won a selection of ‘Old Spice’ products.
Hec didn’t want them.
He said no man worth his salt would walk around town smelling.
Even though he was very old, I thought he had a point.
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We all want to fit in, don’t we?
I still do but one thing’s for sure, my new mullet isn’t working very well towards this aim….not at all, not at all……..
Did you have parents that weren’t quite ‘right’ when conformity was the rule?
Isn’t it awful to think how embarrassed they made us?
Still…….fathering a child at age 45 in a country town in the fifties…..well I never!!!!!!
Feel free to report in on these issues – and anything else that takes your fancy. Do it by:
Just clicking on the ‘comment’ thingo and following the simple instructions. The place to write your gems is at the bottom of the last published comment. *A little bit of counsel for people new to this caper. Your email (just called ‘mail’ in this case) address does NOT come up on site. And just ignore the URL thingo.
Prawn Cutlet Award
October 18th, 2011 at 11:53 am
My own mum and dad were 26 and 28 respectively when I came along, which I think was pretty typical. There was a boy of my acquaintance at Leeton Public School (now deceased, poor thing) who had the double whammy of (a) being adopted and (b) having ancient parents.
Of course, by ancient, I mean by the standard of the times, because looking back, his mum (who loomed as a grandmotherly presence to us) must have been all of 50-odd when we finished primary school. These days being 50-odd with a late-primary-school age kid is par for the course.
Everyone I know whose kids are about to hit high school is 50-odd (unless they are 60-odd).
I once heard one of the prep mums at our school say: ‘When I had Max I was only 32′, as though she was some sort of prodigy of early-onset fecundity.
Only 32 indeed – my grandmother had 3 under her belt at 22.
I can’t begin to list the ways in which my own dad was not quite right in re conformity to the accepted norms of south-western NSW country town life. I might have to go away and make some notes. I could possibly get one of those Quarterly Essays out of it.
Dear Roma Street,
My ‘on the ground’ research shows that having a baby any time BEFORE 40 now constitutes ‘young motherhood’……….
I guess society should look on the bright side – children will be receiving big inheritances – and early!
So, while your dad may not have been ancient he refused to adapt to the powerful strictures of country town life.
Well, good on him…….
[What on earth did he do? Drive down the main street BACKWARDS?]
KJ.
October 18th, 2011 at 1:40 pm
Whilst I don’t consider myself old, I can recall picking one of my sons up from a birthday party many years ago, and the person who opened the door announced to my son/party – your grandfather’s here to pick you up!
Dear Exposed,
The ‘person who opened the door’ and thought you were grandfather material is without manners – sad really because this is a world crying out for compassion and kindness.
Having said that to be 30 – or perhaps 35 – and look 76 is a most disturbing situation.
Good luck.
KJ.
October 18th, 2011 at 3:54 pm
Not only was my Dad in his late 40s before I (and later, my sisters) came along he was well and truely bald! The mullet option simply wasn’t an aesthetic option. [I should point out that, even though he had no problem with the meaning of aestheticism he certainly wasn't a paragon of style, ever! Even in his freemason's garb]
Nevertheless, age certainly didn’t cramp his style. He was the last child born in his family – five children had, in fact, arrived over some twenty years, previously.
This led to my grandfather clinging on to dear life well into his 90s, just to be sure he’d eventually get a grandson!
This situation had been forced on the old guy because, although he’d had three sons, son #1 had married and deliberately decided he didn’t want kids, and son#2 thoughtlessly choked to death on some food at the age of just a couple of months! This left Dad in an invidious reproductive position as you can appreciate.
As for the Old Spice caper – I suspect it’s generational. Dad would never condescend to wear deodorant etc as he considered it a sign of suspect sexuality!
Sunlight soap was all a bloke really needed to stay clean.
Dear Mister Palm Avenue,
An interesting tableau………
My goodness, YOUR dad being in his late forties before you came along.
It’s a wonder he wasn’t paraded down the main street as an exotic fertility novelty or somesuch…..
I guess what we’re REALLY talkin’ bout is lovin’ – and folks do dat and re-pro-dooooce no matter what their age, their choice of football code…….or grooming products.
All power to Mister Palm Avenue’s dad!
KJ.
October 19th, 2011 at 9:47 am
KJ – for example – my dad was completely comfortable with public nudity.
He once walked nonchalantly stark naked through a gathering of approx 12 beer drinking teenage boys on our verandah, on his way to and from answering a call of nature.
The only words he uttered were “G’day boys” and “See ya boys”.
Also, he once performed an all-the-way striptease to music at a cricket club function.
Dear daughter of Leeton libertine,
Whooah!
Excuse me, I’ll just take my tumbler of lemonade onto your verandah…….
KJ.