I was born in a house next to the Glen Eden Recreation Ground. My father and mother were sharing this house with my Auntie Margaret and Uncle Dave. I suspect that I was delivered by Sarah Arnold who was the local midwife and Uncle Dave’s mother. (It was a wednesday but other than that my memory of the event is somewhat hazy.) Glen Eden, an Auckland suburb, was then a semi-rural area of scattered houses with about 800 population, hilly with metal roads, scoria footpaths and no sewage. Everyone kept chooks and a large vegie garden. All progress had been halted by the great depression.
I know little of my father’s family. His father was named Richard Valentine Thomas as I am and possibly came from Cornwall. My father, Richard John Valentine, was born in Aratapu on the Northern Wairoa and had a brother Lionel and a sister ( Dinah? ) who died at an early age. The doctor wouldn’t come to see her which meant a river trip in those days as the family was further down river at the Red Hill quarry at that time. The family later moved to Ponsonby in Auckland. Lionel and my father were keen sportsmen playing Cricket and Rugby League. They kept fit by racing the trams between stops. An Auckland gym was displaying a photograph of Uncle Lional as one of their successes more than thirty years after his death. I don’t know if I ever met him. He died from a motorbike accident after months in a coma but his wife Anne was a friend of my mum and used to visit us along with her second husband and her daughter whom I didn’t realise at the time was my cousin.
I suspect that my father’s father died when I was about four. Parents kept such things from their children. I remember him visiting and he made me a wooden horse at first with wheels and then converted it into a rocking horse. I was left at my grandparent’s house in Summers St Ponsonby while my brother Bob was taken into town to be baptised so I’d be three then. This was the only time I was ever there. There was a grape vine along the right hand fence line and I was told that the neighbour’s kids would sneek in to pinch the grapes if no-one was home. I met these kids out on the street and they told me that if I wasn’t careful their father would give me a hiding. Sometime later Dad took me to the Auckland wharves on a saturday morning, a workday then, and I met grandad there. He gave me threepence and another man gave me a penny. That is the last I remember of him.
My father’s mother I used to see at the races when I was small. She was keen on horse racing as was my dad as that time. I used to commandeer her binoculars. Years later when she was widowed we would visit her somewhere off Auckland’s New North Road. Then she married George Wrightson who had been a builder in Taihape and Uncle George stayed with us several times at the farm in Dargaville. He took an interest in the farm, grubbing out patches of blackberry, and gave dad money to spend on the farm. It was a definite gift. When he died my grandmother demanded it back which put a rift between her and my dad. Years later, when we were no longer farming and fortunately living back in Dargaville, my dad received a letter addressed ‘Val Thomas-Farmer-Dargaville’. It was from the Welfare Department. My grandmother was now senile and no longer able to look after herself and she had had an Indian student staying with her who had managed to spend all of her money. We had her staying with us for some time but unless closely watched she would wander off and she contiued hostile. It became too much since mum was quite ill at that time so she had to go into a home.
My mothers family is easier. James Moores and family came out here from Manchester in 1920 when my my mother was aged 9. My grand mother before marriage was Mary Anne MacMurray. She was the strong one in the family. Their children were Harold, Donald, Lillian, Margaret, Annie ( my mum ), Lena. There as also Jimmy who died young but I do not know whether he died here or in England.
My earliest real memories are when we were living in what my parents called Harrison’s Place, a rented house on Glengarry Road which still stands. I was nearly two at the time and Joan one. The house is one and a half kilometres from the township. Milk was delivered ( Mr Southgate) and someone from the grocers travelled around the district on a thursday to take the weekend orders. No-one had telephones and families had a monthly account with the grocer. My Uncle Don then working for the grocer took me on one of these trips. But there still needed to be trips to the shops in those no-fridge days. We’d stop and talk to everyone coming the other way. Everybody knew everybody. My brother Bob was born when I was three so that when a young family, perhaps from sickness, made it difficult for Mum to go to the village I at four years of age would be sent alone. Grandma’s house was halfway and most of the people along the way were almost family anyway. I would bowl into the Invicible Cash Store and demand to see the manager Mr. Cheshire. If only I had as much confidence now.
The kilometre and a half to the bus and the bus trip into Auckland to his work meant that we little ones were asleep when Dad left and when he returned. It was on a day when Dad and Uncle Dave were sawing knobs off Estonian-made bent -wood chairs to make them look more modern that I realised that he actually lived with us fulltime and was not just a sometime visitor.
Every friday while at Harrison’s we took the train into Auckland leaving baby Bob at grandma’s on the way to the station. With only the basic services in Glen Eden and no telephones this was usually necessary. Then it was tram along Beach Street to Queen Street. We often walked right up Queen St. to Karangahape Rd but always there’d be a stop at John Courts’ tearooms. This was Mum’s treat of the week. Other times we’d take the free trolley bus up to the Farmers. There was a children’s playground on the roof and when Mum had finally prized us out of the pedal cars we’d work our way down floor by floor usually without buying anything. Then it was Farmer’s free tram up nearly to Karangahape Rd.
At the top of Pitt St there was a cheap clothing shop with much of the clothes hanging on hooks outside. Mum often bought there. Then we’d tour Karangahape Rd. It was a top shopping street then. Not the grotty strip it is now. George Courts department store, Rendals, The House of Flaxon, and Rimmer’s coffee shop. We never went in there but the heavenly smell of freshly roasted and ground coffee. An unforgettable gift from just from passing by!
Then it was bus home to the Glen Eden shops. Call in at grandma’s on the way home to pick up Bob, to talk, and maybe have a cup of tea or a glass of milk and a bikkie.
To jump forward now to the wars end. We were living in our own house in Pleasant Road Glen Eden and I had another sister Miriam born when I was seven. I remember racing home from school because Mum would be home with the new baby. Auntie Margaret and Uncle Dave lived next door but one,Their house being the same plan as ours. My dad and Uncle Dave were close friends. The two houses were built by a Mr Hemming wiih some assistance from the extended family. I was there, aged three, when the sections were chosen indicated by hanging bits of cloth on the then barbed wire fence. It was still farmland. When grandad was doing the flashing around the chimney a certain four-year-old climbed the ladder onto the roof. “I’ve come up to see you grandad.” Auntie Margaret had twin girls Peggy and Pat. Peggy was normal but Pat had been damaged physically and mentally by a forceps delivery but was still a very lovable person. The doctor didn’t realise that my Aunt was carrying twins. Their section was on the corner of Lemmington Road and about a hundred metres down this was Uncle Don and Auntie Gay’s new house. They had two girls. And a hundred metres along Pleasant Road on the other side was Auntie Lill and Uncle Hector’s ( Billington ) new house. They had three boys ( One of whom would later become a Phd.) and two girls. Uncle Harold and Auntie Dorothy, one boy and two girls, lived in the original Moores’ house in Valley Road. (Now Glendene Rd) So that I had plenty of cousins close by.
Auntie Lena and Uncle Eric, three boys, were farming at Puni near Pukekohe but visited us often and even stayed with us on at least one occasion. Bob and I would go down there for the Christmas Holidays. Lena met Eric Green in Napier. Uncle Harold and my grandfather were both of them plumbers and gasfitters and were needed for the restoration after the Napier earthquake. Lena was there to housekeep for them. Lena had hoped to be a nurse. She was born with an extra thumb which was amputated but then she lost her other thumb and they would not accept someone without a thumb for training.
i was christened a Methodist and Joan still has the fancy certificate. As infants our mother had us pray, “Please God bless all the mummies and daddies and boys and girls and everyone. Amen.” A little older we prayed the Lord’s prayer as per the King James Version and I did it without having to be reminded. But then, aged eight, one evening before dropping off to sleep I could not remember if I had said my prayers and it occured to me that not to remember meant that I was not really praying, not really talking to God, but merely parroting words. From then on I prayed in my own words, silently, and whenever appropriate.
We went to an Assemblies of God sunday school and loved it.This although my mother didn’t like the Penticostals (There had been a chap Dallimore in Auckland who blessed handkerdhiefs.) but her father who regularly jumped from one religious group to another was AOG at that time. It was very much like any other sunday school. We were given a ‘New Testament’ to own, little cards with simple texts each week to remember like ‘God is love’ 1 John 4:8, sang children’s hymns and, at the collection sang, ‘Hear the pennies dropping. listen while they fall. Every one for Jesus. He shall have them all.’ and were told bible stories without ever knowing how or why they fitted into the scheme of things or the stream of time.
I am surprised that Mum allowed me also to go alone down to the village to the midweek evening adult bible class. At one these one of those in attendance stated the amazing news that he had found that God’s name was Jehovah. It seemed that no-one else had known that. And it was there that I was encouraged to take up with John Turner the son of our sunday school superintendant.We went into Auckland to hear two different visiting overseas evangelists which means that the war must have been over. I just saw them as being showmen. The thing that really affected me was the two times that we biked into Auckland to a saturday afternoon adult AOG meeting. This was held above a corner furnitude store at the top of Khyber Pass. They began working themselves up even before the meeting. Like the warm-up men that were used in radio shows before they actually went on the air. It was a real religious orgy. They had people rolling on the floor supposedly speaking in tongues but to me it sounded just mindless babble. My eleven-year-old self told me that these people were only fooling themselves.
Before a second meeting we went street witnessing on a tram stop in Boston Road. Singing, shouting the usual impassioned message, and we had signs. You can imagine what they said. Shy me hated it all. We were right outside a pub and most of the bar patrons came out to give us a hard time. One obviously drunk man came over to grab one of our signs and parade it around showing off to his mates. Sister Andrews who was present and was one of my sunday school teachers said that this was the work of the Holy Spirit. I put it down to other spirits and it somewhat dampened the hitherto high regard that I had had for her. I never went again.
We had a lot of religion in those days from the radio. Before the Labour government took ever the previously private stations Methodist minister Tom Garland had owned and run station 1ZB. ‘Uncle Tom’ was allowed to retain some rights during his lifetime. His mission was called The Friendly Road and had about a quarter of an hour every week day morning. They had a full church service on sunday morning ( My brother Bob was baptised there.), a friday evening secular childrens choir and on sunday evening The Sankey Singers children’s choir who sang songs from the Alexander and Sankey Hymn books. We normally listened to these programs. I can remember Uncle Tom quoting from Luke 17:21 in the KJV ‘The kingdom of God is within you’. More confusion for me! Station 1YA also relayed sevices from different churches every sunday morning.
In 1947, halfway through my standard six year, we moved to Dargaville. My father was a waterside worker and the union was strongly communist. When they were working the money was good but they were too often out on strike. Dad wanted to go farming. Something he’d done on the same farm ( Donaldson’s ) when young. One day we kids were at the gate when Andy Meades went by. He was Open Brethren and took a children’s bible class at the marae nearby. He asked us if we went to sunday school or church and, when we said no, went and saw mum and dad and thereafter we kids went to the Brethren Church. But not mum. She obviously knew that something was wrong in popular religion. She was religious but still seeking the truth. I know that the local SDA miinister called several times and we had several of their books but she was not interested in that direction.The Open Brethren really did nothing for me.
At high school the Presbyterian minister, the Rev. Scarrow, took Crusaders on one lunchtime per week. Only two of us attended and I later went to a Crusader’s camp on Ponui Island in the Hauraki Gulf. As a side issue the Rev Scarrow left the Presbyterian ministry because he had come to understand that infant baptism was unscriptual. He joined an offshoot group that shared his views. While I stuck carefully to the moral standards that had been instilled in me from infancy I had come to have difficult questions. Some things didn’t add up.
I was apprenticed to an electrical firm but a little later my family moved away from Dargaville to farm with an old friend, former Glen Eden chemist Erny Cashin, who had decided that he would like to go farming. This meant board for me in Dargaville during the week, a 1925 Chevrolet Tourer, and thirty odd miles of metal roads to Aranga on a friday afternoon.It was at this stage that the Witnesses appeared. Clyde Canty, Ian Forbes, and their wives and the Canty’s daughter. They were there to establish a congregation and would support themselves by selling Bon Brushes. There were loud cries from the existing churches. “These people do not believe in having children. They swap marriage mates on a regular basis as part of their religion. And those painted wooden butterflies on houses. That’s their religion too.” The main expert on these people was the Anglican minister. H had been training to be a Catholic priest when he met a girl that he would like to marry. He had become Anglican but had not really changed. He had wanted to introduce the Confessional which idea did not go down well apparently. The Witnesses were living in two caravans which were toppled over by persons unknown.
The first time that I met these Witnesses was when they called at the farm in Aranga. My mother, who always had an extensive garden, gave them a whole heap of vegetables. My sister Joan has since told me that mum probably had Witness contact through the Mayer family who lived in Glen Eden where we lived before moving north. Later in Tangowahine now closer to Dargaville Paddy Forbes would come out one evening a week for a bible study with mum. No-one offered me a study. We moved back into Dargaville and mum became a Witness.
I was still living at home at that time and in the spare room was a large box-ottoman which held all the out-of-date Watchtower and Awake magzines. I would read some of them when I had nothing else to read. My questions began to be answered but I could never be a Witness. The thought of knocking on strangers’ doors to talk religion was horrifying and not for me.
Later again, I was working in Auckland and boarding with my widowed Auntie Margaret. Earlier in Dargaville we had had a recorded music society and I was the boffin who made the equipment. Back in Dargaville for a weekend found me at the home of Betts McDonald fixing her radiogram. Betts was hoping to marry Eric Lee Johnson the artist but she had been divorced and the Anglican Church was unhappy with the remarriage of divorced people. I said that I would find out what the story was which meant that I would ask Mum. Mum told me that there had been several recent Watchtowers on the matter and while she no longer had them the Congregation Servant probably Have them in the volumns. She would ask him. Which is why the next saturday morning back in Auckland I get a visit from the New Lynn Congregtion Servant who invited me to a public talk that afternoon in the Glen Eden town Hall and I go. The speaker is Brian Terry who speaks on the subject Evolution or Creation. He speaks well. A local family give me a lift home and invite me to the midweek meeting. Again, I go and am impressed at the ability of the speakers. After which they ask me if I’d like to go on field service the next saturday morning. The thing I’d most dreaded but I went. After a short period with the New Lynn congregation I decided to move back to Dargaville to give Mum some support. It was there that I was baptised in a bath tub.
HADYN’S OTHER SIDE.
Later again I am working in Welsford and boarding with the Morgan family. Joan Morgan was an Aiken before marriage and the Aikens had been Witnesses for several generations. Joan’s brother Des had been a conciencious objector put to planting pine trees during the war. At thirty two I am still unmarried thinking that no girl would ever marry me but the oldest daughter Cheryl had other ideas. We were married in spite of the large age difference in age ( 32-17) but it worked out well. Joan had obviously also married young for although having five children she was only four yearts older than I was. She would have another after our first.