Get Tank Laid

By Warren Steel

Welcome to Bullamakanka a small one street Australian country town just south of Sydney often referred to as PPP Pigeon Poop Parade.

Where Tank the manager and only employee of the local bowling club who is a virgin and is about to turn 40 years old.
His buddies a unique bunch of characters which include a Publican, Pastry cook, Newsagent, Dairy farmer and a Veterinarian merge to conspire in typical Aussie mateship style and aptitude to pool their
resources and get Tank laid by fair means or foul which include forming a syndicate to purchase and race a thoroughbred.

The hilarious mind boggling, ingenious plots that they concoct prove to be a ribald romp, typical of real-life in a small country town where nothing is sacred.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: May 5, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499000368

Warren Steel

Warren is an entrepreneur, artist, politician, dedicated family man and now author. Continually thinking outside the square, Warren has been in numerous mainly self-employed business enterprises. Has had an active career ranging from originally as an electrician followed by numerous businesses including printing, squash courts, aerial photography, manufacturing souvenirs, golf driving range and finally real estate. Always a keen sportsman having represented City of Sydney in basketball, played competitive tennis and squash for many years and now is a keen bowler. He is at present in his 18th year as a local councillor, having served as Deputy Mayor of Kiama Municipal Council A ‘ one red eye, one green eye’ devoted South Sydney supporter since birth. He has been claiming since 1971 that this will be the year of the mighty Rabbitohs. A regular entrant in a variety of art shows with varied success has had several contracts drawing comic strips for a couple of newspapers. Such as Bonehead and A lot of Bull He has three adult children and seven grandchildren. And now this is his second book having previously successfully published Felix . . . Memoirs of a Cat Burglar in 2013.

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GET TANK LAID

Warren Stainless Steel

Copyright © 2014 by Warren Stainless Steel.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 04/29/2014

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris LLC

1-800-455-039

www.Xlibris.com.au

[e-mail]

520574

Contents

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

2014

Bio

Dedication

To San

Who has supported every one of my quite often crazy ideas that I have dreamed up over the past 48 years of marriage.

She has been there to pick up the pieces in the not so good ventures and likewise celebrate with me in the successes, to her I owe everything.

To Peta my youngest daughter who I most probably have driven insane with all my many and varied computer woes.

Acknowledgements

My Thanks

To mainly Gerry McInerney, my walking talking encyclopedia, Ric Perry my proof reader, Kel Dukes and Geoff Heinecke my turf experts and Doug Everett my next door neighbour, my sounding board plus the numerous other friends who I have relied on for support when I have been stymied.

Author personally designed and painted Cover of his book

authors%20photo.jpg

Chapter 1

Mate! You need to get laid. Fair dinkum. Ya gunna be forty soon, and ya still a bloody virgin. You need a woman to fix you up. Ya got a dick on ya that an elephant would be proud of.

How do you know? Tank asked.

I’ve seen ya when you pointing Percy at the porcelain . . . , Buster, the licensee of the Cowpasture Hotel said to his best mate Tank. When ya havin’ a piss, he added, laughing.

The corrugated iron roof fibro cottage was situated across the road from the bowling club and about fifty metres down the road from the pub. Horace H. Pennefathing lay sprawled out in his bed across, staring thoughtfully at the ceiling.

What Buster had said last night had really hit home. The trouble was he knew it to be the truth. It wasn’t that he was shy. Sure, he knew he was a bit overweight. But he would love to have a girlfriend and be in a sexual relationship, eventually get married and have kids, but it just wasn’t happening.

Horace was better known to everybody in town by his nickname Tank. He lay sprawled across his king-sized bed, contemplating. He carefully considered if anything would happen today that could be considered more exciting than yesterday or the day before or day before that in Bullamakanka, the little town God may have forgotten about.

Bullamakanka was often referred to as Tudor Town because the hotel, the adjacent shops, Wilson’s general store, and the bowling club across the road, as well as the main office and showroom of the butter factory two kilometres down the main road, all had Tudor-style facades.

Or sometimes, it was facetiously called PPP short for pigeon poop passage because of the number of times cars driving past would get bombarded by pigeon poop by the flocks of pigeons that for some mysterious reason congregated in and around the town.

The town was approximately two hours’ drive south-south-west of Sydney but could easily have been 800 kilometres or eight hours from Sydney out beyond the back of Bourke as far as the locals were concerned; they lived in their own little cocoon.

The township of Bullamakanka’s official flag was that of a black-and-white rampant bull centred on a green background surrounded by a red border; in truth, the town’s original colours were actually crimson and myrtle, but over the years, the correctness had been relaxed.

In one sense, Bullamakanka had always been a very close-knit township especially in times of crisis, but on the other hand, it was divided into two factions. One faction consisted of those who worked or somehow were associated with the butter factory—the fifty-odd dairy farms plus all those who actually worked in the factory and were referred to as the Murts or by some as simply the them and were originally, 100 years ago, prominently of Catholic descendants.

The Murts believed if not for the dairy farmers whose cows produced the milk which was dispatched every morning to the factory. Where the factory workers would separate the cream from the fresh whole milk, then churned it for processing, then after numerous procedures including heating and pasteurised into butter, for it to be sent to the marketplace.

The factory removed the buttermilk and then after numerous processes, including heating, the pasteurised product—butter—was sent to the marketplace. The town is known as Bullamakanka but more often than not referred to as simply ‘PPP’ abbreviated for Pigeon poop parade would not exist.

The others were made up of all the small businessmen in town—shopkeepers and the like and those who travelled for forty-five minutes, mainly into Wollongong for employment and were referred to as the Crims (which was derived from the crimson or red colour associated with the town’s flag and referred to the outlying area cow shit canyon). In essence, the Crims were the merchants who outlaid their money to purchase products and then sold them or provided add-on service to the Murts for an additional percentage for a profit.

The differences between the Murts and the Crims, although at times trivial (both referred to each are as them and us), was the reason that the town had no political representation such as a councillor on the Allowrie Shire Council, because both factions nominated a representative, and each side refused to swap preferences. Thus neither candidate was able to secure enough votes to be elected because of petty jealousies.

As Tank lay there daydreaming, the make-up of the town’s unique characters crossed his mind; there were his closest mate Buster Crabbe, the hotelier; Peppi, the Italian pastry cook, and his wife Pippa; Giovanni, the go-to Dago; the Oxborough triplets; Hoppalong, the derelict; Clarence O’ Keefe, the manager of the butter factory, and his smart-alecky son, Terry, who was his second in charge; together with a smattering of others made Bullamakanka’s eccentrically unconventional residents.

Life was pretty mundane for the secretary-manager-cum-green-keeper-cum-dogsbody of the Bullamakanka Bowling Club, who was about to turn forty and was yet to have sex with a woman. A fact that was both humiliating and frustrating.

Tank had wandered into town about five years ago—nobody was really certain where exactly he had come from—looking for a job, any job, and was hired instantly as nobody else would volunteer for the job as a bar person to serve drinks at the bowling club from four o’clock in the afternoon till somewhere between eight and half past nine of a night when the club closed.

He commenced on Monday afternoon, and on Wednesday, two detectives arrived from the fraud squad and took away the then Secondary-Manager Frank O’Keefe, brother of the manager of the butter factory, in handcuffs; he had been arrested for fraud and was never seen in town again.

On Thursday night, the board of the bowling club called an extraordinary crisis meeting because of the predicament the club found itself in, and on Friday morning, Tank was offered the position of the club’s one and only employee, which he accepted, and the rest is history.

Tank weighed in at 150 kg and stood a fraction under six foot in the old measurements; to be precise, he was exactly 182 cm and copped a lot of ribbing on a regular basis. He was often referred to as the Michelin man or the Sherman Tank or anything which embodied the idea of the enormous obesity which had been his stigma for as long as he could remember, certainly prior and since he had arrived in Bullamakanka.

Tank was easy to like. His big bright-blue sparkling eyes with his pleasant smile always gave the impression that he was pleased to see you. Whether it was the case or not. Plus his habit of shaking hands with everyone he met made making contact with him a pleasant experience.

Sales representatives generally made their first stop in town a visit to the bowling club to have a bit of a chat with Tank and catch up what was happening in town. Tank very quickly earned the title of a sort of Father confessor to the locals; when they had a problem, they would call in and talk things over with him and ask for advice.

He was a great listener, and more often than not, he was able to give very sound advice; he earned the reputation of being the King Solomon of Bullamakanka, until the conversation became about the fairer sex; then he would literally turn into a pussycat and become embarrassed.

It didn’t take long for the name Tank to stick, and as in most small towns throughout Australia, once an adaptable nickname has been allotted to a person, it seemed to stay there forever.

While the sledging was said mainly in jest, there were never any problems. Tank accepted the comments most times as a form of endearment, but on the very few times there had been a ruckus like a brawl between a couple of the patrons, the situation changed.

Tank would immediately come around from behind the bar and grab the closest combatant in a bear hug, lift the perpetrator off the ground, and carry him or, on a couple of occasions, her outside to the parking area.

He would then return and grab the other offender who had been in the altercation and either pick them up in the same manner or frogmarch them, using his enormous girth, out to the parking area and bar them both for a week.

Tank’s reputation was legendary; the patrons knew it didn’t matter who was right or who was wrong. They would both cop the same medicine, and they would be automatically barred from the bowling club for a minimum one week. They were then also refused entry to the local hotel for the same period—it was a mandatory sentence.

This arrangement had been warmly accepted by all the townspeople as the town didn’t have its own council, being a forgotten part of a massive municipality, and the closest police station was approximately twenty kilometres away, which meant that even in an emergency, it would take the police at least half an hour to arrive.

The sanctioning of the punishment dished out by the pub and the club was brought about by an incident that occurred approximately a fortnight after Tank had begun working at the bowling club.

Buster Crabbe, the licensee of the Cowpasture Hotel, had been a professional boxer many years ago and had once fought as a contender for the middleweight championship of Australia. Although it was a long time ago, legend has it, he was unlucky to be beaten on points by the reigning champion.

Buster and been actually christened Hector Henry Crabbe, but after taking up boxing and turning professional his manager at the time suggested he change his name to Buster Crabbe, after the then famous Hollywood actor who had starred in several Tarzan and Flash Gordon films.

Buster’s nose had been broken on numerous occasions. Still, he had a rather handsome face, which was nicely framed by his hair which was white and sleek like a polar bear’s. He had sleepy dark-brown eyes and a mouth which at first view appeared to lavish for his face.

Buster was astute, quick to sum up a situation. Having tended behind the bar for many years, he was accustomed to the usual across-the-bar conversation but had difficulty in tolerating drunks or fools.

Although he always claimed that Tank was his best mate, his relationship with Tank was more of a surrogate father always concerned about Tank’s weight and welfare.

He loved reminiscing about old retired boxers and past fights. His memory of such events was legendary.

Being an ex-boxer, Buster was the target of anybody who, after a few drinks, fancied themselves and wanted to make a name for themselves by saying that they had fought Buster Crabbe. The fact the he had been retired for in excess of almost thirty years didn’t seem to enter into the bravado.

On the night of the now-famous big ruckus, eight bikies from some insignificant group on some frivolous escapade had arrived in town and had been drinking at the pub for a couple of hours when one of their numbers recognised a photo on the wall of Buster fighting for the Australian title.

It didn’t take long for him to pluck up enough courage and turn his glass upside down and challenge Buster to come out from behind the bar and fight him in front of all his mates; naturally, Buster refused the challenge until the bikie threw a half-full schooner of beer across the bar into Buster’s face.

This action brought raucous laughing and jeering from the other seven of the clown’s mates; Buster found himself in an unenviable situation. He phoned upstairs on the internal telephone and requested that his wife Lynette come downstairs to man the till but in doing so told her a code word, which instructed her to ring the police.

Buster, with the experience having been in a similar situation previously, endeavoured to make the altercation with his combatant last as long as possible by ducking and weaving out of his opponent’s reach, hoping that the police would arrive before things really got out of hand.

The other seven bikies formed a sort of circle and began tainting and then pushing and shoving Buster in the back from behind in an effort to assist their mate; as there were only four local drinkers now left in the pub, their intervention was thwarted by lack of numbers.

Fortunately, one of the local drinkers slipped out the rear door of the hotel and ran across to the bowling club in an effort to rally support for the local publican as majority of the local men drank at both the pub and the club.

At half past eight on this particular Wednesday night, things were pretty quiet in the bowling club; luckily, the president and two of the committee men plus two other locals were the only ones in attendance in the club.

On hearing the report that there was a fight in the hotel and that Buster, the publican, was outnumbered and there could be the serious repercussions, Tank—who being new in town was yet to visit the pub and had not officially met Buster, only having previously nodded to him as he passed him in the street—asked the Bowl’s Club President if he would look after the bar so as he might go up and see if he could help out.

From all reports, when Tank entered the front door of the pub, the offending bikie was sprawled flat out on the floor, where Buster had knocked him out. But two of the other bikies had hold of both of Buster’s arms stretched behind his back while another two of the bikies were taking it in turns to punch poor Buster wherever they could land a blow.

Tank raced in like the proverbial Sherman Tank and immediately grabbed the two bikies by their hair and repeatedly slammed their heads together until they both collapsed to the ground, out cold.

He then turned around towards the remaining three and charged at them, crash-tackling them collectively into the rear wall of the pub—the four bodies, the three bikies, and Buster in one tangled assemblage.

By the time they all got to their feet, Buster had managed to free himself from the two bikies who had been holding his arms behind his back and, very quickly, with two straight lefts and a well-placed right cross to one of them had knocked the bikie out cold.

All of a sudden, the odds had changed; the three remaining bikies now faced Buster and Tank, whose nostrils were flaring and eyes were glazed over as if he was on another planet.

Buster nodded in gratitude to Tank. I’ll take the two bearded blokes, you take ‘baldy‘ with the ring in his nose. Buster grinned as he wiped the blood trilling from his nose.

No way, the bald prick and the bearded arsehole next to him are all mine, you can have the ugly one with the beard, Tank replied. Buster nodded, accepting the offer.

The three bikies just stood there with their hands up, ready to defend themselves, their backs against the rear wall of the pub; there was no escape.

Thirty seconds later, the encounter was all over. The pub floor was strewn with bodies of the seven bikies as two patrol cars of coppers entered the pub. The seven bikies were picked up by the coppers and bungled into the two patrol cars, and they spent the rest of the night in clink and went before a magistrate the following morning.

And that night was the start of a very close friendship between Horace. H. Pennefathing, secretary-manager of the Bullamakanka Bowling Club, better known now as Tank, and Joseph. B. Crabbe, licensee of the Cowpasture Hotel, better known as Buster.

The other most influential movers and shakers of the town who made up the hierarchy were Seamus McCafferty, who was the unofficial voice of the fifty-odd dairy farmers that produced milk for the butter factory; and Clarence O’Keefe, the long-standing manager of the butter factory.

Seamus McCafferty was affectionately known as Father McCafferty, possibly because of his close ties to the Catholic church for whom he was a tireless worker; he organised fêtes, called the monthly Bingo nights and was the go to man for every dairy farmer in and around the district, whether it be a civil matter or even as complicated as representing them in the Land and Environment Court.

Seamus, who was extremely well educated, having been a star performer at St Joseph’s Greater Public School in Sydney, was an eloquent speaker, and if he had not decided to follow in his father’s and grandfather’s footsteps, he could’ve excelled in any profession he so desired.

It often amused those who had witnessed some of his performances in numerous court proceedings how, when the situation warranted, he could switch his vocabulary to that to imitate a very broad Irish accent.

Immaculate appearance was a trait that Seamus never failed to abide by with one unbelievable exception; whether he was leading a deputation to the Lord Mayor of Wollongong, or any of the state or federal members, he was always attired in his black-and-white herringbone sports coat with a handkerchief in the top pocket (which always matched the tie he was wearing) and his black-and-white Hereford hide skin vest.

He would never be seen without his fawn moleskin trousers, and the most contradistinct item was that notoriously, he would always be wearing scruffy elastic-sided brown riding boots, more often than not stained with cow shit or, if it had been raining, his big black gumboots.

Seamus, although not completely bald, had a few strands of hair and every three weeks or so, he had his wife cut his hair with the same electric razor that he used on the cows, only changing the comb to a size zero.

The most notable feature of Seamus’s appearance was a huge grey handlebar-type moustache that was always kept in pristine shape; Seamus was the sort of guy that once introduced to you, you never forgot him.

The long-serving manager of the butter factory, Clarence O’Keefe, could never, in your wildest dreams, be described as dapper; his mostly grey hair was parted down the centre, and when in need of a haircut, it would hang over his ears; it still had streaks of blond hair—whether artificial or natural, no one was ever sure.

Clarence, for as long as anybody in Bullamakanka could remember, had always had trouble with his false teeth, and on a regular hourly basis, he would remove his false teeth in a handkerchief and place them on the office table, bench, or dining table that he happened to be sitting at, regardless of the company he was in.

It was nothing for Felicity-Ann, his ever-faithful long-serving secretary at the butter factory, to be ringing around town, asking people if her boss had left his false teeth in a scrunched-up handkerchief on the table or desk where he had visited earlier that day.

It was a recurring joke with the townspeople whenever they spotted Felicity-Ann in a hurry driving through town from the butter factory, sometimes all the way to Wollongong, and on two occasions, all the way to Sydney to recover her boss’s false teeth.

Seamus’s wardrobe consisted of two short-sleeved safari suits—one light blue, the other fawn—which he wore on consecutive days; he always wore an immaculate white neatly pressed shirt. With the light blue suit, he always wore a red-white-and-blue tie, and likewise, with the fawn suit, he wore a yellow-and-green tie with little kangaroo emblems; if nothing else, he was patriotic.

Caution was one of Seamus’s most precious attributes; he always wore a three-inch leather belt with a huge stainless steel buckle and matching coloured braces to the particular suit he was wearing to make sure that his pants never fell down.