Call Me Frank: 20 Men Over 50 Tell It Like It Is

By Julie Ankers

CALL ME FRANK is a collection of 20 autobiographical stories of men over 50 telling it like it is at this stage of their lives. The stories are honest, sometimes confronting and always inspirational.

These heartfelt narratives are also a magnificent response to those sceptics who said that this book would never happen because men don’t reveal their feelings.
From being brutally bullied from the age of four at a private school in the UK, to finding love and intimacy at 82, to being ‘menaced’ by the ‘black dog’, to filming Sir Edmund Hillary’s Everest ascent, to working as an entertainer on cruise ships and then becoming an Anglo-Catholic priest, to dealing with cancer – the stories spring from the page with vitality, warmth, humour, at times pathos, but are always frank and compelling.

CALL ME FRANK is the companion book to Feisty, Fabulous & 50+, a collection of 21 ‘warts and all’ autobiographical stories of women navigating their way through their 50s and beyond.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Mar 22, 2018
• ISBN: 9781925739664

Julie Ankers

Julie Ankers is an entrepreneur with a passion for promoting and developing people, which is why she started a speakers and trainers bureau 24 years ago as well as a company focusing on retaining mature age workers and building effective age-inclusive workforces. This kick-started her interest in the over 50s, especially women who have been disadvantaged by age and gender. It also led to her taking on leadership roles in organisations such as Women Chiefs of Enterprise International (WCEI), National Foundation for Australian Women (NFAW), Economic Security 4 Women (eS4W) and Zonta International.Three years ago Julie decided to make a tree change and currently lives in the Blue Mountains. She divides her time between 2 x 2-hour radio programs, her various board/committee commitments and writing – yes, she has already started her second book, this time on the lives of men over 50. Not forgetting her obsession with beautifully designed hand-crafted jewellery, her love of a good book with a glass of red, theatre, cinema and the exquisite beauty of the Blumos.

Book preview

CALL ME FRANK

20 men over 50 tell it like it is

Julie Ankers

This is an IndieMosh book

brought to you by MoshPit Publishing

an imprint of Mosher’s Business Support Pty Ltd

PO BOX 147

Hazelbrook NSW 2779

http://www.indiemosh.com.au/

Copyright 2018 © Julie Ankers

All rights reserved

Licence Notes

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 your favourite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the author and publisher.

Disclaimer

Although the author has made every effort to ensure that the information in this book was correct at press time, the author and publisher do not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss, damage, or disruption caused by errors or omissions, whether such errors or omissions result from negligence, accident, or any other cause.

Introduction

I published my book Feisty, Fabulous & 50+ in October 2016 then took it on the road. As the book was a collection of stories written by women in their ‘third age’ or ‘second act’, it was well-received by the 50+ age group and those approaching 50. In my travels to many parts of Australia, I also noticed two or three men timidly seated in the occasional library audience, nodding along with the women.

I’ve also spoken to Rotary and Probus Clubs where there was a male majority, and was pleased to see that the stories still resonated.

The book seemed to appeal across the board – to both men and women. Many readers identified with specific stories. For many it affirmed that THIS was the time of their lives and for others that they could contemplate making a few changes. Storytelling is a great way to get a point across in a non-judgemental and inspiring way.

I then decided that it wasn’t enough for men to enjoy the book in such a vicarious fashion. They needed their own collection of stories about what life has been like for other men in their 50s and beyond.

Female friends and audience participants were sceptical. Getting men to ‘open up’ and talk about their feelings and what’s really going on for them earned an ‘it’ll never happen’ response.

Ironically, they’ve all been proven wrong and this book is testament to this. Only two men cried off from participating, but for different reasons.

The themes have all been disparate, many intensely dissected and discussed with a great deal of fervour. Abuse, betrayal, bullying, compassion resulting in good, every day practical volunteerism, care of the physical self, depression through to the appreciation and wonder of Gothic architecture, the joy of singing, finding yourself, self-reflection, the complexities of relationships, distance, the wonders of nature and revelling in what you love, feeling at peace within yourself. And so much more!

Finally, some of the comments from the writers themselves. A few said that they found the experience cathartic, others that this opportunity had come at the right time – ‘the writing has made a huge difference to what will be the rest of my life’, ‘a watershed moment’, and so on.

I hope you will be as moved as I was when I first received the stories. I was humbled by these written reflections – they are testaments to the humanity that dwells within us.

Thank you gentlemen for such compelling reading!

Julie Ankers

15 January 2018

Ian Bear

Going the distance

Ian is in the advertising industry, an industry that calls for resilience and a tough skin, and which has a ‘used by’ date as Ian’s story demonstrates. How do you survive in advertising once you hit 50?

Rural WA

A gravel road rattles north to a rippling horizon. Hills gently rise to reveal shimmering paddocks of ripened wheat. The roadside bristles with low scrub, zebra finches darting through the tangle. From beneath the green-grey canopy shines a silver pipe, thick as a man. Alongside runs its predecessor, crumbling and frail. The Rabbit Proof Fence.

A shifty rumble draws closer. A bobbing white tail zig-zags from the yellow grass as the rumble becomes a roar of metal and dust.

There’s a dull thump under a wheel arch. One down. How many million to go? My mother’s lips tighten. No rabbit deserves her sympathy. The road noise subsides as the Chev swings through the driveway gates and over the cattle pit. A staccato judder of rubber on steel welcomes us home.

*

The soft chugging of the generator outside accompanies the black and white ABC.

The clock on the screen ticks to seven o’clock.

Dar-dar da-dar-dar-dar-da-darr! Da-da-darr! Darr-darr! Darr-darrr!!

Good evening, this is the news. Today Prime Minister Whitlam …

My father knits his brow at the images from the other side of the country. He doesn’t say anything, but his opinion of Canberra is loud. My mother’s, an echo, as she glances up from her plate. I saw my knife into a crumbed cutlet, golden outside, grey inside and bloody with sauce. I have little interest in the news. What ten-year-old does? But I know the slogan that saw Whitlam tilt my parents’ world. It’s time. I did sense that things were changing.

*

Two of my brothers are now at boarding school while my eldest brother is back from Agricultural College. He is now a man. He’s ‘goin’ out’ a lot. Gone to the pub in town a half hour away. Gone to towns and parties even further away. His fun brings my parents grief. Cars are written off. One cut in two. It’s amazing he’s alive. Every time he gets away with scrapes and bruises. After school, when pressed into farm-work, I see tension between my father and brother. It’s old ways versus new learning.

My head was elsewhere. The city mainly. I dreamed of the possibilities. Possibilities that seemed inevitable thanks to a looming boarding school education. Of all the possibilities, I was convinced of one. I would be a geologist. And not just because I was the son of a mining State in the grip of a mineral boom. I was mad for rocks. Crystal hunting was an eyes-down, meandering obsession, often as I trailed a mob of sheep. Big rain events and wash outs brought newly revealed treasures. When I wasn’t sorting my specimens, gathered from all points of the State, I was drawing.

*

My father was a farmer. Farming is twenty-four seven, three hundred and sixty-five, with no overtime. You have to live it. You have to love it. I believe he did. He had the keen eye of a man on the land. Always looking, always watching. Birds. Trees. Comings. Goings. Any sign for when the season would turn or the weather would break. He respected the natural world. Ploughing never took a plover’s earth-bound nest. The tractor would stop, he’d climb down, move the nest with its speckled eggs, plough through, stop again and return the nest as keen eyed parents anxiously called across the furrows. My father cared for our land as best he could, fighting the salinity that the over-clearing of forefathers had brought to the fragile soil. It was a battle Dad elected to retreat from when I was in my first year of boarding school. Despite four sons, no-one was taking on the land. It wasn’t something I felt he begrudged. We all felt encouraged to pursue whatever we wanted to. The farm was sold.

That last summer on the farm was spent packing up decades of occupation. I returned to boarding school. A clearing sale dispersed the machinery, tools and farm junk to neighbours far and wide. In late February, Mum and Dad moved to suburban Perth and a swimming pool. Five and a half thousand acres, to a quarter acre. He was fifty-one and retired.

Two days after Easter he was dead. A heart attack end to a big-hearted life.

*

In my senior secondary school, Friday afternoons were given over to a double period called ‘Year Assembly’. Years 10, 11 and 12 were herded by the prefects into the school chapel to suffer some dull address, film or weirdly irrelevant performance amid teenage titters.

‘Oi, you two.’

‘Aww, c’mon.’

‘Chapel, now!’

The pair of Year Elevens turn and trudge away from the school gate.

‘Mate …’ pleads a voice to my left.

‘Didn’t see you.’

A classmate scarpers out the gates and across the street to the cover of parked cars and trees. I wasn’t above favouritism. Especially as once the stragglers had been rounded up, or released, I would be headed to the art rooms with my own key. A selected crew would be waiting my arrival. We were madly completing folios for final exams. We drew, painted, made stuff and ‘talked shit’. A better, more productive forum than the ‘Year Assembly’ would ever be.

Then, late in my final year, I didn’t show at the art rooms. The Western Australian Institute of Technology (WAIT) was presenting their spiel on why they should be our tertiary institution of choice. Final exams were around the corner and I had no clear idea what I wanted to apply for. Geology had faded into a hobby. I’d sat numbly through UWA’s pitch a couple of weeks earlier. And Murdoch Uni was only where you went to do Vet Science in our minds. The WAIT presentation was my last chance to be inspired. They checked all the usual course possibilities as the minutes ticked past the hour. In their wrap-up, as a way of emphasizing their progressive credentials, they made proud mention of their graphic design degree.

One of only two in the country.

Slides clicked through student projects from posters to logos and LP sleeves. Boom. That was it. All those Graphis magazines I’d poured over in the library … how had I not known?

*

Dogs chased tennis balls as low waves slapped and sighed into the white sand. Over the ocean, beyond Rottnest, the sun dipped low.

‘I can’t believe it’s finished already.’

My mother turned her large sunglasses my way. There was some colour in her face. It had been a couple of months since I last fished empties out from under her bed. She’d been ‘self-medicating’ since my father’s death. My brothers and I were too buried in our own grief back then. We didn’t notice her take to the bottle. She’d been on and off the wagon many times once we realised and sought help.

‘It has gone quickly, hasn’t it?’ She sighed as she turned back to the ocean.

A passing dog kicked sand over our towels and us.

‘Sorry!’ huffed the owner in pursuit.

‘Maybe I should have done architecture, then I’d still have two years to go,’ I joked.

‘Why don’t you do that? You could do that.’

I looked at her face. She was serious. She was happy to spend five more years supporting me. My mother had little idea what graphic design was, but she knew what an architect was. I’d have to prove to her I did have a future.

Sydney

I eased the Torana to the kerbside and cut the engine. It ticked in the morning cool as I checked my watch and the parking sign. Restrictions were yet to start. I had over an hour, if I wanted. An empty Military Road curved away ahead. The trip to the airport and back to drop off my flatmate Jen had taken less time than I expected. Sydney traffic isn’t always Sydney traffic. Not at six in the morning. One more day and I too would be heading off for Christmas. Not winging back to Perth like Jen. But driving north to the Gold Coast and my brother. I remembered the cheque from my mother stuffed inside my wallet. I creaked open the door and headed back to the junction and the St. George ATM. The injection of funds would see me through Christmas and beyond. Early New Year held promise of some more freelance at Mojo. A gig there would have been a good career start. They were all older guys. Guys you could learn from, in their fifties, I reckoned. But there were no juniors in sight, or any likely to be any time soon, from what I could gather. Something will come up I told myself. Somewhere.

Building traffic hummed at my back as I made the deposit and checked the balance. Enough. For now. I turned and wandered back down the ‘nice’ end of Military Road away from the fumes, hoping for an early opening café. I usually avoided this stretch of upmarket and rather snooty shops. Underemployment did that. Also, a cynicism about the people who worked and shopped there. But right now, I didn’t fancy our lifeless flat that awaited a few streets away, with its scrounged furniture and bed base of pilfered milk crates. Any distraction, even window shopping ‘wanky’ shops would be welcome. Jen and I had walked here often, scoffing and sneering. If we were truthful though, we were also, deep down, wishing. Some of it anyway.

We had lobbed in Sydney hoping to find a place in the hip enclaves in the eastern and inner western suburbs. But the steep rents and dank flats with barred windows drove us over the bridge, ‘for a look’. Besides, most of Adland was in North Sydney. It made sense to consider that side given our aspirations. A real estate window in Manly seemed too good to be true. We could afford that. Looks good. Where is Balmoral?

Later, friends from across the bridge would come to visit on weekends like it was a trip to the beach. Which it was from the likes of Annandale or Leichhardt.

Now those friends were all heading west to family and Christmas like Jen. Except me.

I paused outside an antique shop. The elegantly restrained window display had caught my eye. One item in particular. A clock under a glass dome, its workings a tasteful confection of brass and enamel. A pendulum hung, but rather than swing, it twirled horizontally. Four balls on a cross frame made a merry-go-round over a mirror. They slowed to a brief pause, before whirling back the other way. My grandparents had one similar. It now graced the mantle back in Perth. Home never felt so far away. I dropped my gaze and wheeled away from the window into skin and deodorant.

‘Whoa-sorry … miss … ’ I stepped back.

A slim figure with short jet black hair, black singlet top, Walkman headphones and a slash of red lipstick, gave me a look up and down from behind sunglasses. Le Specs, I suspected. She pushed them back up her nose, revealing a small red weight-thingy held in her grasp. With a dismissive nod and ‘you idiot’ frown, she side-stepped and was gone, storm trooping towards the junction, a bag on her back. Clearly too busy, too important for apologies. Bemused, I smiled to myself, before catching my reflection in the window. I’d pretty much chucked on any old thing before taking Jen to the airport. Baggy grey tracky-daks, a dirty blue, loose windcheater and scruffy sneakers. Three-day growth for good measure. I could also see the café owner putting his open sign out on the footpath across the street behind me.

I turned and headed back to my car.

Melbourne

Almost two years, two cities and two jobs later, I was suffering through a client Christmas cocktail party. Complete with name tags. An anxious creative director pushed people together with hurried introductions. My copywriter and I steeled ourselves as he circled.

‘What are you two doing … hang on, you’re from Sydney, you should meet Kim, she’s from Sydney …’

Neither of us corrected him as he led us toward a girl hoping the wall she propped against would swallow her. Short jet black hair, a slash of red lipstick and a truly awful turquoise dress.

‘Ian Bear? That’s not really your name, is it?’ she blurted over a near empty flute.

‘Osborne? What sort of name is that?’

‘Oh … sorry.’ Blushing, she offered a hand.

We shook hands and so did my copywriter.

‘We’re from Perth, not Sydney. We both just lived there for a bit,’ explained my writer.

‘Whereabouts?’ She took a sip as she turned to me.

‘Balmoral.’

‘Really? I was in Clifton Gardens.’

My raised eyebrows spoke for me.

‘Mosman, towards the zoo.’

‘Yes, yes, of course.’

‘Been in Melbourne long?’ Another sip emptied her glass.

My writer slipped from view and the party disappeared as we talked through Melbourne versus Sydney versus Perth, I’ve never been, it’s a long way, you do what, how did you start, and back to Mosman.

‘I loved that flat in Clifton Gardens. I’d walk up Military Road to catch the bus to North Sydney.’ Her blue-grey eyes fixed mine. ‘Very serious walker I was. I’d carry weights, Heavy Hands they were called, my clothes for work in my backpack …’

‘You? That, was you?’

She looked confused.

‘You walked into me,’ I declared.

Confusion shifted to curiosity.

Thirty odd years on, my wife remains as curious as ever.

Hobart

Turning fifty-two has been something of a rite of passage for my brothers and myself. We’d outlived our father’s milestone. A mix of relief and sadness. And a deeper understanding of just how young he was. Three of us had big, somewhat extravagant parties to mark fifty. We probably all should have held off and had fifty-seconds. But by the time I reached that milestone, an extravagant party would have seemed like fiddling while Rome burned.

I had been moved on, let go, retrenched. It had happened before. In advertising, it’s no big deal. The dynamic nature of the business makes it pretty much inevitable that it will happen to everyone. Usually more than once. On those other occasions, I’d make a few calls and would soon be busy freelancing, enjoying more money with a sense of freedom.

But now I had too much grey. Older than many who would hire, possibly even a threat in their eyes. Or seen as expensive, never mind efficient. The industry had become obsessed with ‘digital media’. Seems only young people understand that. Never mind that the germ of any campaign, whatever the media, is an idea born of a real insight. Creating and nurturing those ideas is still the same process. Experience in that process should be valued. Instead, everyone wants a young gun. There’s no such thing as old guns. Apparently.

*

When I took the gig in Hobart, it felt like when I first moved to Melbourne. New town, no-one knew me. Well, next to no one. I was twenty-three again. Except this time, I hadn’t upped stumps with just a year’s experience under my belt. I had a wife and home on the other side of Bass Strait. I was in a position of leadership. Expected to set an example. Mentor my charges. Inspire the team. I was also careful to be circumspect about my age.

Outside of work, there was no-one to go home to. At that time, there was a mob of mainlanders coming and going as the agency experimented with FIFO freelancers. Just no hi-vis or hardhats. We were drinking in pubs, eating in pubs, and, occasionally, getting locked in pubs as conversation stretched into the night. Being of similar vintage, we had plenty to talk about. Not least, the perils of being a certain age. Age, of course, only refers to our calendar age. Like all guys, we’re ‘twenty-three forever’. The word ‘guys’ is implicitly youthful. Often the collective nouns we use to describe ourselves are imbued with youth. We’re ‘getting the boys together’ for ‘a night with the lads’. And if we do refer to ourselves as men, gents or gentlemen, it’s with lashings of irony. We never believe we’ve grown up.

In the New Sydney Hotel in Hobart, or ‘Sydney office’, we’re jostling for whose round it is, bouncing from one story to another, interjecting, embellishing and generally turning ‘not much’ into tales tall, if not true. Take these ‘boys’ and tell them they’re past their use by date, and watch the spit fly.

‘What the fuck would they know!’

A defiant cry that defends, but can also condemn. They want it known that they still have the energy and passion, along with the hard-earned knowledge from years of experience. That they know a thing or two and they’re not done yet. But that passion can be seen as ‘angry’ and that experience as ‘intractable’ or ‘difficult’. In our youth-obsessed world, they’re told to get out of the way.

Thing is, they remember making the same observations thirty plus years earlier. Although it seemed back then that those ‘old blokes’ could actually get out of the way. That they could comfortably retire to a life of leisure. At least that’s what we thought.

*

I got kicked out of the Qantas Club the other day. Turns out, when the last Qantas flight for the day departs Hobart – on this occasion at 5.30pm – they shut up shop. All us poor cousins of the Qantas flyer, the Jetstar passengers, must leave. If my flight hadn’t been delayed, my colleague and I wouldn’t have had to troop out with the delayed and apparently second class travellers. In the terminal, a growing swirl hustled for a seat. I searched for a spot while my colleague Justine made a beeline for the bar.

‘Anyone sitting here? Are these drinks abandoned?’

‘Abandoned. All yours.’

The grey-haired bloke barely took his eyes from his iPad.

‘Flight JQ710 to Melbourne is now expected to depart at 6.30 pm. Once again we apologise for this delay and thank you for your patience.’

‘Great,’ I mutter to myself as I park Justine’s carry-on next to mine.

The bloke rolls his eyes.

‘I take it you’re delayed too,’ I say.

‘Yeah, though it doesn’t look that bad to me.’

Storms in Sydney were to blame for the flight chaos. They looked major on my phone.

‘I’m guessing you’re headed to Sydney then?’

‘Yeah. With another hour and a half from the airport. Windsor way.’

‘Oh, yeah. My sister-in-law was out there-ish.’ Not really Sydney in my mind.

‘I hate flying.’ He slapped his iPad shut.

‘Do much?’

‘Two to four flights a week.’

‘Me too.’

‘Here you go.’ A large glass of pinot landed before me.

Justine folded herself onto the banquette opposite.

‘Cheers.’ She held her glass out.

‘To another week.’ I clinked mine against hers.

‘Attention travellers on flight VA1535, your delayed 5.15 Sydney flight is now ready to board.’

‘Murphy’s law.’ I smiled as Justine took a first sip.

‘You’ll probably get to finish this.’ Her glass clicked onto the table.

Windsor man stood and gathered his things with a sigh.

‘Four hours to go,’ and he was gone.

Justine