Now That's Livin'!

By Alexander Kane

This is Captain Alex Kane's first book, illustrating his family's history and his life's journey to where he is today. A second book is forthcoming shortly with a more in depth look at aviation and how it affected his life and the world. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to Rotary International.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alexander Kane
• Release date: Sep 16, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301657155

Alexander Kane

Captain Alex Kane was born in Scotland in 1920. He and his family immigrated to New Zealand when he was just 5 years old. There, he went to school and developed a facination for a very new concept in our lives, aviation. He joined the Royal New Zealand Air Force during the Second World War and embarked on a career full of adventure. He eventually immigrated to the United States and settled in the State of Hawaii, where he resides today. His works are a recollection of family, friends and his biggest passion in life, flying.

Book preview

Now, That’s Livin’!

Published by Captain Alex W. Kane at Smashwords

Copyright 2001 Captain Alex W. Kane

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Dedication

To my parents and my five brothers who served their country with distinction in World War II, and to Cherrie and Andy for their home support.

They shall grow not old as we that are left grow old. Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them.

Acknowledgements

To my daughter and publisher Deborah for the encouragement, direction and guidance in getting my story into book form, to Mark Doyle for editing, Jim Bisakowski for his layout and book design, Stephen Goldblatt for his help in scanning many of the photos, Pete McManus for her help and encouragement, and to my wife Bobbie for her patience and perseverance.

It has been a great joy to write this book. All of it comes from my own memory, which if I may say so myself, is still pretty good! Perhaps just the re-telling over the years of so many of the stories you are about to read have kept these people, places and experiences so alive in my mind. I have done my best to be as accurate as possible but I give no assurance as to precision, be it

time, dates, names, spelling or grammar! My hope is that you can pictorialize, as I did, the Livin' as you read your way through my book. Of course too I hope you enjoy it and come to understand how I came to call it Now That's Livin'.

AWK.

Contents

The Beginning

Mum

The Voyage

Aotearoa

Growing Up in New Zealand

WW II

The War is Over

Back to Civvy World

Australia

Indonesia

Europe

Tauranga; Bay of Plenty

The Top Dressing Revolution

Beirut

Home

Kane Family Crest

Mum, Dad and Joe in Burnbank, Blantrye, Scotland 1914. In 1993 there were 102 of us!

Chapter 1 - The Beginning

In many parts of the world, it is maintained that one’s destiny is well determined before the womb. In my case, truer words were never spoken. My mother and father were two extraordinary people. Both born near Glasgow, Scotland, just before the turn of the century, they married in 1913 and a year later became parents. They knew little of the outside world.

They were products of a feudalistic society. Scotland retained its social, economic and political system longer and later than its adjoining states. It was harsh and demanding, independent and a highly regulated class-oriented structure.

My father, Thomas Nesbitt Kane, had a Scottish Irish Catholic upbringing and was from a family of five - three boys and two girls. My mother, Mary Lees Kane, came from a rigid Presbyterian home and a Scottish heritage as well. She was one of a family of seven girls and one boy. I believe their love may well have been their first, although I have no certainty of that. After all, this was Scotland and one did not talk about love, passion, desire or feelings. Endurance, survival, pride, What will the neighbors think? was uppermost.

They met at a dance in Burnbank, Blantyre, thirteen miles southeast of Glasgow. I believe they eloped; I say believe because I have no information to confirm or deny this belief. In the pictures of them you can see that they were handsome individuals and a most attractive couple. No detail had been left undone to make that immaculate presentation to parents, brothers, sisters, cousins, family, friends and society at large. They were saying to the world, We are as good as you are! We are Scottish born!

Mum as a young woman of seventeen in Scotland.

Joseph, Joe, my eldest brother, was born in 1914. Robert followed in 1916, Thomas, Tom in 1918, myself, Alexander, Alex in 1920, Norman, Norm in 1922, Arthur in 1923 and John, Jack in 1925. It was a standing joke in our family - Why were we all spaced one year and nine months apart?

How on earth they crammed us into that small, upstairs flat above the grocery store, I’ll never know. I can recall from my visit back to my first home in Scotland in 1983 that the flat on Anne Street was about one thousand square feet. The beds were imbedded in the wall. Our indoor lives took place around the fireplace and the dining table, around which we shared our experiences and had our greatest conversations. The midwife was the all-important person at the time. She’d be called when my mother’s labor pains became unbearable. The large basin was filled with boiled water and put on the pedestal. Towels and sheets hid what was happening. I guess the neighbors would take us in while the birth progressed. I do remember Jean Wright, her sister Ethel, and their father. When we were next door, we spent a goodly amount of time in their house and for sure, on an occasion such as this, we’d be there.

The great explorer David Livingstone lived just around the corner and raised ten children in a space of six hundred square feet (that flat is now a tourist shrine, which I also visited in 1983). That’s the way it was in those times. I believe we were all born in that home with a midwife in attendance. In retrospect, the primitiveness, the simplicity, and the ignorance of physical things like conception and birth, although wholly natural, was frightening. People today, with mass media and instant communications, would have no concept of the lack of knowledge and the prevailing fear.

Glasgow was one of the world’s most industrialized cities in the early 1900’s. In the suburban area, work for young men was limited to the steel works, the coal mines or shipyards. Dad chose to join an oil company and became a delivery driver of a horse-drawn tanker. One thing that became his hallmark was his self-discipline. His horse was groomed to a shine - his silver tanker shone from end to end. He carried these qualities throughout his life.

I think he got them from his mother, my paternal grandmother, Janet, whom I knew. She was a rigid disciplinarian and a highly principled woman. No nonsense, no back talk. No matter - hail, rain or shine, the job had to be done.

Many times we had cause to recall father’s appearance as: immaculate, his timing - precise; his striving for perfection - end-less. Small at 5’ 6" with a slim build, he was tenacious, enthusiastic, disciplined in his work, and intolerant of idleness and fools, and of those who lacked punctuality or adherence to a commitment. He was dedicated to his family and to our mother. He lived and accepted the consequences of his inheritance and his efforts.

My father showed little outward physical affection, but the warmth was there. It surfaced not in demonstrative closeness but in humor and the joy of storytelling. He did not hold a grudge; in fact his ability to laugh at a situation that was not so laughable when it happened, was a rare gift. It was our family safety valve, which carried us all through some intense times during the Depression and World War II.

The events may not have been so amusing at the time, but in the light of the day, the next morning or evening, particularly at a family gathering, a re-telling could well be the source of much fun and hilarity. In a word, their laughter was a relief from the pressures of daily toil and stress. In a way it was his way of saying, I’m sorry if I was a bit harsh on you at the time. Their children and their children’s children would recall the stories over and over again.

At the age of twenty-nine, with a young family, my father became a manager of one of the first silent movie theaters in Scotland. In fact, before he was thirty-one, he was the manager/projectionist for three theaters. Father told the story of his exploration to find a better movie projection glass (a better magnifying glass, or what today would be called a lens); when he found it, the result was a better image on the screen -something that would be considered a major breakthrough and a significant achievement today. But this was before talkies in 1923 and the movie industry was in its infancy.

All the ingredients were there for a successful and lucrative career, but his first concern was for his six growing sons. The only job prospects available in Scotland were the coal mines or shipbuilding. He feared for their prospects and wanted something better for them. So did Mum.

They felt emigration was their best option, but where? The United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand? Wasn’t New Zealand the unknown? Yes, it was, but Mum’s older sister, Jen, was there and settled, and she’d strongly recommended it. She made it sound like a garden, a playground with nothing but wide-open space, and a most wonderful place to raise a family, of course.

That was their security. They knew nothing of embassies, colonial offices, travel information offices or shipping companies. Aunt Jen was their source of information and guidance. Who knows what may have lain ahead if they had elected to stay with the movie business, or journeyed to Hollywood instead of New Zealand? Life is full of crossroads, and I would come to know that in plenty as my life unfolded.

One of my first memories was the opening of the new picture theater Dad was managing in Burnbank. To me, at age five, it was as glamorous as the new theaters of today, with lots of glass and big, impressive entry doors. Dad was the manager. We were all very proud of him. Yet, plans were already in the making to emigrate. Glancing back, one can only marvel at the courage, the guts and the determination it must have taken to pick up and move across the world just to give these kids a better chance at life.

Chapter 2 - Mum

With Mum’s concurrence, Dad decided the place to rear a young family was in New Zealand. My Aunt Jen had married a World War I returned veteran and was now living in a town called Gisborne, Poverty Bay, North Island, New Zealand, just half way around the world - about thirteen thousand miles away. There was no doubt that Aunt Jen had considerable influence on their decision to join her there.

Let us deal with first things first. My mother was a total innocent; and inexperienced describes her best. However, don’t let those adjectives fool you, for she was resourceful, enterprising and highly positive with a mind of her own. Oh yes, very much so. She was tall with dark brown hair, a round face, a good figure and a lovely smile. Her beautiful, large, honest eyes were blue and full of kindness. I can’t find words adequate enough to do her justice.

I would say my mum’s great ability was to carry a very large load of daily work. She kept a cool head and got the job done. Yet she did love to socialize, and morning tea was a great favorite. And she did enjoy a good neighborhood scandal. I well recall we had in the neighborhood, a most attractive woman. Voluptuous, I’d call her. She did have men visitors from time to time, none of whom went unnoticed by her neighbors.

Without doubt she was an artist with many gifts and talents, but with the challenge of raising eight children, there was little time left to develop them more fully. She gravitated to the arts. Robert Robbie Burns was her favourite poet and she became renowned in her community for her recitations of his poems, especially All The World’s A Stage. Mary Pickford, Clara Bow and Rudolph Valentino were the actors she idolized. Her favourite escape was going to the pictures and while her husband Tom was manager of the Burnbank Theatre, it was more than affordable - it was free! She was proud of her Scottish heritage, particularly once she moved to New Zealand where she often mingled with other Scottish immigrants in Gisborne. There they talked proudly of Scots like James Watt, the inventor of the steam engine, Alexander Fleming, discoverer of penecillin, and Robert Louis Stevenson, the essayist and poet. She loved working with her hands. You would often find her as she chatted away over her cup of tea, crocheting booties for her next grandchild or making a pair of doilies for the armchair in the parlor. I will always remember one dreary after-noon, coming home from school and smelling her delicious potato scones as I walked up the driveway. She fed an army of us every day with roast dinners, afternoon teas and hearty breakfasts with-out help from anyone! How lucky she must have thought she was being able to feed her family like that! However, I think her driving force was more fear than pride. She never wanted to be poor or destitute or stuck with the kind of life her parents and grandparents had in the small coal-mining towns back in Scotland.

If the mood took her, my mother was quite capable of a diversion. I’ve had enough. I’m out of here. I’ll just show them. She’d leave the dishes in the sink, beds unmade, laundry in the soaking tub, put on her best dress and head into town either to have a cup of tea or dinner with one of her friends, or go to the pictures (movies).

When we came home at dinner time, the house would be in a mess and cold with no fire. Where’s Mum? I wonder where she could be? Do you think she’s at Lil’s or Aunt Jen’s? We’d better get the fire going.

We peeled the potatoes and got some sausages and pumpkins on. When Dad arrived, he asked, Where’s your Mum? Don’t know. What do you mean you don’t know? We don’t know. She left the house and everything is just as it was at breakfast time. Then, about eight p.m., after dinner, dishes and homework had been conquered; she’d arrive just as bright as could be. It was a story without words. We learned our lesson and came to appreciate how important and special she was.

Tom, as a bride and me as the bridegroom on the

Ruahine 1925. My paper pants are split wide open

and I’m using both hands to hold them together.

Chapter 3 - The Voyage

I was five years old in 1925. My earliest memories are of going with Mum to a dairy farm where they had newborn black and white calves and a babbling cold brook. I remember rolling colored eggs down a grassy slope in Hamilton park and I remember brother Tom on the stage at the Hippodrome reciting: Five green peas in a pea pod grew. When he finished he bowed, the audience clapped, he bowed more, they clapped again. He wouldn’t leave so they used the classic long pole with a hook on it to bring him off stage.

I don’t, however, remember much of London or Southampton, or of boarding the Ruahine, a twenty-six thousand ton steamship passenger liner regularly sailing from London to Wellington, New Zealand. It carried a compliment of three hundred passengers and a crew of forty. My mother and father had already journeyed their way down to London on the L.M.S (London, Midland, Scottish) railway, maneuvered across London and boarded the train for Southampton with six kids in tow, one still in nappies and requiring breast milk. Give a thought to the ordeal of controlling six boys filled with excitement and adventure - just amazing how they kept them under control.

When we reached Southampton to board ship, the rest of us were finding our cabins, finding our bunks, finding everything. How exciting! There was a whole ship to be explored! It was all new and thrilling to get to know the other kids on board. And then there were the porters, the deck, the railings, the funnels, the captain’s control room, the fog.

Suddenly, the horn blasted, the moorings were let go and the Ruahine departed. Leaving harbor, we cruised at about five to eight knots past a flotilla of ships, passenger liners, freighters, coal boats and tugboats. The land became distant as we moved into the English Channel past the Isle of Wight, and headed for the Bay of Biscay. Just thirteen thousand miles to New Zealand. We were under way.

Aboard ship, my parents quickly recognized that all there was to protect us from going overboard was a four-rail steel pipe fence. The bottom rung was about six inches from the deck, the next rails the same, the third and fourth were nine inches apart, and a wood rail about twelve inches higher. Jack was so small he could, if he made a determined effort, get under the bottom rail. And one of the older brothers could climb up on the rails and topple over into the ocean.

Passengers in deck chairs kept a sharp eye on us, though, and thanks to them, on we went sailing at fifteen to eighteen knots through the Bay of Biscay. Our route to New Zealand was very direct - across the Bay of Biscay, the great Atlantic Ocean, through the Straight of Florida and down to the Caribbean. The first stop was the Panama Canal; then on to Pitcairn Island and Wellington, New Zealand.

The thrill of being aboard the gigantic liner as she ploughed through huge waves in the deep Atlantic, rising then falling, rolling from side to side, was overwhelming. Aye, we did have some sea-sickness as it took a day or so to get our sea legs. But we all adjusted well enough. The officers were helpful and took us into the chart room to show us where we were going and roughly how long it would take to get there. Our next stop would be the Panama Canal, one of the great wonders of the world. We would reach it in fourteen days, New Zealand in thirty-six.

The Panama Canal

I had heard of the Donkeys that pulled boats through the narrow canals. I visualized teams of donkeys harnessed so that they could effectively pull, or contribute to the pulling and braking of a ship at a very slow speed into the locks. As a child, I waited anxiously as we approached the first lock, all five of us clinging on to the guard rail around the Ruahine. Where are the donkeys? I called out, not knowing that the donkeys were actually mighty electric machines called Mules!

It was mesmerizing to watch this mighty ship being raised and lowered. As we approached the first lock it appeared to us the ship just wouldn’t fit and the gates would not be wide enough. As we got closer, it looked clear that we were too big to fit. But we then saw with our own eyes that there would be enough room for us to fit with room to spare. The gate behind us closed and we began to rise about 30 feet per lock (there were 3 locks in total). The total climb was 85 feet, bringing us to lake level. The lake was most beautiful with many different kinds of vegetation. The trees, shrubs and palms were colorful.

The enormous valves opened and poured millions of gallons of water into the enclosed locks, and the ship was raised and/or lowered like a set of stairs. It was, indeed, a stairway in the seas.

On through the lake to our next spectacle, the Continental Divide. Here was a man-made cutting with spectacular cliffs. The Ruahine was dwarfed by the height of these precipitous cliffs, and for us the spectacle was almost too much to comprehend. Then we began our downward descent to the Pacific. The ship’s tour guide was talking to the passengers and passing out flyers informing them of the enormity of this project. I knew then that I’d seen something great, very great! Something I would never forget. I was fortunate enough to go through the canal again in January 1943.

The Pacific

The Ruahine sailed on through the blue Pacific, past the Galapagos Islands (Ecuador) and across the Equator into the Southern Hemisphere. That was an occasion for celebration. There was a lot of talk about Father Neptune and Davy Jones’ Locker, and if I remember rightly, they dunked quite a few volunteer passengers in the sea inside a cage. By now we were into the third week of our voyage, approaching the Tropic of Capricorn at about one hundred thirty degrees west of Greenwich, England. Our next port of call was in the Pitcairn Islands adjacent to French Polynesia about half way between Panama and Wellington. We anchored offshore and there awaited the arrival of the natives (descendants of Fletcher Christian). You may well recall the film Mutiny on the Bounty, with Charles Laughton as Captain Bligh and Clark Gable as Fletcher Christian. What a wonderful story!

Here they came aboard in their British longboats equipped with loads of beads, hats, bracelets, bags, fabrics, fruits and coconuts to sell to the passengers. In my experience, and that of our entire family including Mum and Dad, we were seeing a different kind of people. A different color of people for the first time. The Scottish were very white, very different from what we were now encountering. Remember, these people were not totally Polynesian. Europeans fathered many of them.

They sang beautifully as they rowed away, their voices rich in harmony. This was a moment that would re-enact itself forty years later in the Hawaiian Islands. We could hear Aloha Oe (Farewell To Thee) as they rowed away from the mighty ship, their voices rising and lowering as they dived into the trough and topped the crests of the waves. Fate is a wondrous phenomenon; throughout our lives often there emerges a message, a signal, a hint of things to come. And when it does come, there is a recall. Such is my memory of Aloha Oe.

Another was aboard the Ruahine in 1925 attending the vessel’s Christmas Fancy Dress Ball! Among other things, they had a Father Christmas, a Christmas Tree and presents for the children. Mum had made our costumes; my trousers were made of black crepe paper. To tell you the truth, I must have bent down too far. Tom and I were Bride and Bridegroom, Tom the bride. We were a couple of freckled faced kids, I with a thick black mop of hair and Tom with a ginger-red mop of his own. My trousers split, and I had to hold them together with both hands, but won First Prize and ended up leading the Grand Parade.

There was a burial at sea. I remember that vividly as well. Until this day I well recall the impact of that experience. I don’t remember having heard of people dying before this. Mum and Dad talked in whispers about the death, and we were not included