Chapter Thirteen
Motorbike Racing.
1959-1961
From the edge of the bridge, I can see how high up I am and suddenly this girder looks too narrow to walk across, so I change my mind. By the next day, they have put the wooden boxing underneath, ready to pour the concrete. I now have no trouble walking across this 'wide' four foot girder. I meet another Craig driver on the other side and he asks where my truck is. He is surprised when I show him. I'm told that I'm the first non-bridge worker to cross over the bridge.
After the bridge and motor ways are finished, the truck driving work runs out again. Then I go to work for the Shell Oil Company (J54) where Lou is a driver. This is another very boring job. As one worker calls it, making little ones out of big ones. My job is to pour oil from a 44 gallon drum into one gallon cans. I do this all day. My hands are always covered in oil and the workplace is droughty. One man spends all day pulling handfuls of grease out of a drum and wiping it into one gallon cans. He's been doing this for 15 years.
The only interesting thing that happens, is when this Pommy kid calls one of the Maori drivers a “Black Bastard”. The driver stuffs him head first into a nearly empty drum of graphite grease and rolls it along the floor. When he pulls him out by his feet, he tells him, “Now you're a Black Bastard too”.
I stick to this job for a whole week, then I get a more interesting job (J55) with Kelly Automotive, in New market. My job is to issue and pack car parts as well as delivering them to the garages. The tram tracks are now being ripped up all over Auckland and often I have to travel a long way down the road before I can turn around and drive back to a garage on the other side of the road.
Meanwhile, at the N.S.M.C.C, several of us get together and make a radio-type serial on my tape recorder. I also do the introduction voice-over for the title of the six episodes which we call :- 'Mystery Of The Missing Motorcycle'.
One day at work, I'm accused of lying, which isn't true, so I leave Kelly's and go to work for (J56) Tann