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Authors: Geraldine Brooks
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met in the Outback, in the army, and at his job in the trade-union-dominated printing industry.
Ever since he quit singing in 1961 his life had been bracketed by a dreary, hourlong bus commute to an eight-to-four proofreading job. But he never seemed restless in his workaday routine. He loved the English language; he took grammar and spelling errors personally. He crusaded for the correct usage of words like “decimate” and “juggernaut.” To say “centered around” rather than “centered on” was to invite a lecture. All through school, I felt torn about whether to give him my essays to proofread. I knew he would catch every error. On the other hand, his indelicately scrawled proofreader’s hash marks would mean I had to make the effort of rewriting the paper.
I think he also felt contented in his job because the men he worked with at the newspaper were his ex-army buddies and fellow musicians—his mates. It’s hard to convey the freight carried by that loaded Australian word. It signifies a singular, fierce friendship between man and man that doesn’t seem toexist in quite the same form in any other country. Reams have been written about Aussie mateship: its origins in the cruelties of convict life when six of every seven prisoners were men; its tempering by the hardships of isolated Outback settlement; its parasitic effect on male-female intimacy; its tendency to promote a particularly vicious, defensive brand of homophobia. But I think that for my father it was mostly a good thing, a surrogate for all the different kinds of man-to-man relationships his own upbringing hadn’t provided.
Although his grandmother was a kindly woman, the big house in Santa Maria was a lonely place for a little boy. Ronald, his only sibling, had died at fifteen months, when my father was just two weeks old. All his life, my father was tormented by the possibility that his arrival had caused his parents to neglect his brother’s signs of illness. With his father gone, brother dead and grandfather austerely distant, his one friend was a large orange cat named Silver. There is a picture of my father, a sad-eyed little boy, clutching the cat, rubbing his face into its fur. Not long after the photo was taken, the cat fell into a rainwater barrel and drowned.
Over the years, his mother worked her way through a series of husbands that included card sharks and moonshiners. When he was allowed to visit, he learned that one way to avoid abuse from these men was to be quick when the police arrived. His job was to grab the lid of the still and make off with it into the woods. If the still wasn’t intact, the police couldn’t prove that moonshining was under way. No matter how awful each visit, at the end of it Lawrie would beg his mother to let him stay with her. She always turned him down.
If my mother formed my imagination, my father shaped my politics. Sometimes he would arrive home in midafternoon withan announcement that there was a blue at the paper. The dispute may have concerned the hourly rate paid to rural delivery men or an insult to a copy boy. But the Australian rule was “one out, all out,” so the whole staff of the newspaper, from journalists to janitors, would be on strike until it was resolved.
Even though strikes meant lost wages, my father enjoyed these blues. He loved to see the workers flex their muscle in a good cause. And even if the cause wasn’t so good, he loved to see the bosses squirm.
He had been militantly pro-union even as a singer, trying to organize the diverse egos of individualistic musicians. He worked on the headline performers, the stars, reminding them of the hard conditions they’d encountered on their way up, and warning that they’d meet them again on the way down, if the people in the spotlight didn’t take a stand on behalf of the people in the chorus line. “You think your talent will protect you?” he’d argue. “Maybe it will while you’re at the top of the bill, but who
Ever since he quit singing in 1961 his life had been bracketed by a dreary, hourlong bus commute to an eight-to-four proofreading job. But he never seemed restless in his workaday routine. He loved the English language; he took grammar and spelling errors personally. He crusaded for the correct usage of words like “decimate” and “juggernaut.” To say “centered around” rather than “centered on” was to invite a lecture. All through school, I felt torn about whether to give him my essays to proofread. I knew he would catch every error. On the other hand, his indelicately scrawled proofreader’s hash marks would mean I had to make the effort of rewriting the paper.
I think he also felt contented in his job because the men he worked with at the newspaper were his ex-army buddies and fellow musicians—his mates. It’s hard to convey the freight carried by that loaded Australian word. It signifies a singular, fierce friendship between man and man that doesn’t seem toexist in quite the same form in any other country. Reams have been written about Aussie mateship: its origins in the cruelties of convict life when six of every seven prisoners were men; its tempering by the hardships of isolated Outback settlement; its parasitic effect on male-female intimacy; its tendency to promote a particularly vicious, defensive brand of homophobia. But I think that for my father it was mostly a good thing, a surrogate for all the different kinds of man-to-man relationships his own upbringing hadn’t provided.
Although his grandmother was a kindly woman, the big house in Santa Maria was a lonely place for a little boy. Ronald, his only sibling, had died at fifteen months, when my father was just two weeks old. All his life, my father was tormented by the possibility that his arrival had caused his parents to neglect his brother’s signs of illness. With his father gone, brother dead and grandfather austerely distant, his one friend was a large orange cat named Silver. There is a picture of my father, a sad-eyed little boy, clutching the cat, rubbing his face into its fur. Not long after the photo was taken, the cat fell into a rainwater barrel and drowned.
Over the years, his mother worked her way through a series of husbands that included card sharks and moonshiners. When he was allowed to visit, he learned that one way to avoid abuse from these men was to be quick when the police arrived. His job was to grab the lid of the still and make off with it into the woods. If the still wasn’t intact, the police couldn’t prove that moonshining was under way. No matter how awful each visit, at the end of it Lawrie would beg his mother to let him stay with her. She always turned him down.
If my mother formed my imagination, my father shaped my politics. Sometimes he would arrive home in midafternoon withan announcement that there was a blue at the paper. The dispute may have concerned the hourly rate paid to rural delivery men or an insult to a copy boy. But the Australian rule was “one out, all out,” so the whole staff of the newspaper, from journalists to janitors, would be on strike until it was resolved.
Even though strikes meant lost wages, my father enjoyed these blues. He loved to see the workers flex their muscle in a good cause. And even if the cause wasn’t so good, he loved to see the bosses squirm.
He had been militantly pro-union even as a singer, trying to organize the diverse egos of individualistic musicians. He worked on the headline performers, the stars, reminding them of the hard conditions they’d encountered on their way up, and warning that they’d meet them again on the way down, if the people in the spotlight didn’t take a stand on behalf of the people in the chorus line. “You think your talent will protect you?” he’d argue. “Maybe it will while you’re at the top of the bill, but who
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