Chapter Seven
Desertion.
1947-1949
“Thank you,” I mumble to the woman, as I walk away. Dazed and bewildered, I get about 100 meters down the road before the full impact hits me. Dad is in transit to South Africa, Mum is in Awanui and I'm in the poo.
How am I going to live on $5.25c per week. Somehow it doesn't seem like a lot of money any more. After I pay $5 board I'm left with 25 cents for tram fares, laundry, toothpaste, haircuts and stamps. (I write to Mum regularly.) There will be no money to buy clothes. Those that I have are all worn out, 'Hand-me-downs'.
Just when I think things can't get any worse, they do. Brian and I come home from work to find two more beds in our room. Our landlady has decided to put 4 people in each room. A week later it becomes 6 beds. Eventually, there are 8 beds in each of the three rooms she rents out.
The house originally had two toilets but one has had the bowl removed and a mattress put on the floor. The housemaid and her husband, along with her six month old baby, sleep in this tiny room.
There is not enough fresh air in our bedroom and nowhere to put our clothes, so Brian and I find new board in Norfolk St (H34) Ponsonby. This place is better, except our landlady keeps giving me jobs to do, because I'm a boy. There is a man here who takes me to the pictures to see The Three Stooges. I'm unsure of him at first, naturally, but he turns out to be O.K.
I'm having a terrible time trying to live on 25 cents a week. The workers at the factory suggest that I get a job on a farm. After I tell them that I'm really only 15 and not 17, they say that on a farm I would earn $2 a week clear. At 15, I would not pay tax and my food and bed would be provided free and no tram fares.
This seems like an answer to my immediate problem, so I ring some jobs from the paper. One farmer in Karaka, near Papakura, offers me a job so I give one weeks notice at work and the boarding house. A week later, I put all my stuff into a suitcase and catch a bus to Papakura. I get off the bus in the middle of the town centre and go to the Post Office and ring the farmer.
“Mr Brown, this is Warren Ollerenshaw he<