Mayhem at Midnight Mass

When I was 14 years old I worked for Ken Madigan Sports Store in Port Pirie.

I was shy. I hid behind the goggles and flippers to avoid customers.

Dad sent me out the back to blow up netballs and stack boxes of trampolines.

I spent my whole wage on Fanta from the Coke machine and gingerbread men from Angie’s Cake Shop.

We delivered toys in Dad’s farm ute with Santa Gertrudis signs on the doors and Donga went too fast around a corner and the trampolines fell off and springs bounced all the way down Balmoral Rd.

Men with anchor tattoos on forearms drank Southwark at a pub called the Snake Pit.

They rode their bikes home sucking Camels and carrying blue-swimmer crabs wrapped in a 28-page edition of The Recorder – 24 of them devoted to Christmas Greetings with red and green jingle bells.

Ladies with candy-cane earrings drank schooners of Riesling at the BHAS Club and went in the meat tray raffle.

Prest’s had a magic cave in Haberdashery and a Santa with beer breath and he told every kid he had one bike left.

Publicans in white shirts and bow-ties hosed down footpaths opposite cranes filling ships with lead ingots bound for China and pigeons fat on wheat from the grain silos did low laps of the town.

We played Test cricket in Smale St and shifted the stumps when the Salvation Army band came along on the back of a flatbed truck and sang Hark the Herald.

Another truck dropped off Christmas drinks: two wooden crates of Olympic raspberry and creaming soda; with six kids, they lasted 48 hours.

My neighbour Mick O’Connor and I found a can of Foster’s in the Westinghouse in the shed and climbed a TV antenna and sat on the sixth rung below a star of David and tasted beer for the first time.

Party-goers sat in pergolas under the Milky Way and drank Coolabah in Vegemite glasses and Baileys Irish Cream on ice.

Dogs barked, cats fought, mosquitos bit and locomotives chugged in shunting yards.

In Fourth Street near the Risdon Hotel, Grandma put up a nativity scene handmade by her husband.

A neighbour decapitated Joseph with a rock and snapped a donkey’s ear off.

Grandma spent every Friday in summer catching up with friends at Woolies because it was air-conditioned.

People stood five-deep at SD Caputo & Sons for Spencer Gulf prawns.

Italians hung coloured light globes on Stobie poles in King Street and Queen Street and we put our pyjamas on and piled into the Leyland P76 for a look.

On Three Chain Road, Mr Francis built something no one had ever seen before: a metal Christmas tree with flashing lights; he made the cover of the crab-wrapper.

We played cricket with the apricots in the backyard and turned everything orange including Sam the border collie.

Mum made jam with what was left and sealed the Spring Gully gherkin jars with cellophane and rubber bands and gifted them to friends, strangers and the Bishop.

Customers put 10 cents in the Moyles vending machine and a slab of ice too big for a metal esky rumbled down a ramp behind the wall and pulled up violently in a chute in a shower of frozen shards.

The north wind turned the sky brown, blocking out the purple ranges.

The mechanical elephant in the Jaycees Christmas Parade broke a wheel and Uncle Bill guided it to safety.

St Mark’s Cathedral was full for Midnight Mass and so were those who came straight from the Family Hotel.

The atmosphere was electric.

Then the Bishop told us off for only going once a year and we slumped in our pews.

On Christmas morning I got a cricket bat, my sisters peeled prawns, my brother slept in, Dad watered the garden and kids rode past on their new bikes.

Mum put a Carn Brae tea towel over her shoulder and searched drawers for sixpence for the pudding.

Bing Crosby sang about peace on earth.

The phone rang – it was a customer, missing some springs.