One Wag’S Tale

By Susan Ley

The fifties were a great time to be growing up.

It was more natural, with less technology. It was a safe time!

Lynette was a young apprentice hairdresser who led a typical suburban life in Sydney, where she met Stan, who devoted his life to sports and became a top rugby league player who represented Australia.

Marriage and a family took second place, but they finally became married.

Stan toured overseas with the team for almost six months. There were many ups and downs as his career, which took first place in their lives, and finally, Lynette became pregnant.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: May 19, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543400021

Susan Ley

This book was written by a Wag of the early ninety fifties who experienced the intense highs and lows of being married to a top international Rugby League player.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

We were so much in love.

I wondered … Is it possible for someone to be too much in love?

*     *     *

When we first met I had just turned eighteen and Stan was twenty; from the very beginning it was as if "fireworks’ had suddenly exploded.

The Fifties were a good time to be young and a great time to be growing up.

Every evening (with the exception of Sunday) there were dances … with real live bands playing the latest tunes. My girl friends and I used to travel all over the city to go dancing.

We also went to the films and there were also lots of house parties, birthday parties, 21stcelebrations and other family gatherings - as well as big social balls held in the city’s largest venues.

Most of my spare time was spent sewing frocks for these occasions.

*     *     *

Stan loved sport. He came from a sporting family. Anything with a ball - running, kicking … all the body contact sports, tennis - cricket, swimming and the Olympic athletic competitions; Stan and his family always followed each event with the keenest interest.

Although he was apprenticed as a builder, Stan lived for sport.

We met at a school dance.

Every Saturday night a dance was held in the big assembly hall of the local secondary school that I had attended - and on this particular night Stan was trying to find a partner for a ball.

We waltzed together for the last dance of the evening … and I accepted his invitation.

Yes. I would like to go with you. I told him.

So I bought a yard of pale blue velvet - for the bodice … and some blue and yellow tulle for the skirt, and then set to work to make a ballerina style ball gown (which was very sweet) but very ordinary and unspectacular.

I cannot remember this first ball with Stan. Everything was a blur of people, frocks with tulle skirts and a crowded dance floor as we danced the night away.

Once this handsome, charismatic young man came into my life – everything changed.

Although he was a dynamic person (with a great amount of energy and drive) we got on really well.

I enjoyed his company and found that we agreed on almost everything.

Soon my days were filled with … getting ready to go out with Stan. Dear old Dad said sternly, You should not expect to have a new dress every time you go to a ball.

But, sewing was my hobby and I enjoyed making my own dresses.

There was a lovely selection of materials to choose from and most fabrics were inexpensive. It was easy to make one’s own clothes and so much cheaper than buying ready-made garments

*     *     *

My new beau played Rugby League in the winter and tennis in the summer.

He made friends easily, and thoroughly enjoyed the various competitions and social events at the tennis club, as well as the parties and social evenings during the social season.

Stan was a very sociable person who possessed a highly competitive nature; he was always in - to win, and because he lived near a tennis club, during his secondary school years he spent his after school hours - playing tennis.

Finally, after one of his schoolmasters had thumped his butt with a cricket stump, he (grudgingly) began to do his homework.

If I did not get down to the club as quickly as possible – all the courts were taken and I could not get a game, he explained.

On his bike, Stan would race home from school – throw his school bag into the bedroom, grab some food (as well as his tennis racquet) and run down to the club.

*     *     *

It was his uncle who advised Stan’s parents to take him out of school and apprentice him in a trade.

He is never going to be a scholastic boy, Uncle Harry commented - so his parents took Stan out of the Grammar school he attended … and he became an apprentice builder.

Meanwhile at this stage his tennis skills had dramatically improved, and Stan had become an excellent player.

He was defeated in the final for the club championship and although only eighteen was rated as the second best player in the club. Because of this, he was chosen to join a squad of other promising young players who were being specially coached to play in future Davis Cup competitions.

The next year he won the men’s club singles - as well as the men’s doubles (in partnership with a friend.)

His parents were delighted with their son’s achievements and took great pride in his sporting ability.

They would walk down to the club to watch Stan play in his competition matches.

His mother was very proud of her son (who was the youngest in the family.) He had always been her favorite, while his father thoroughly enjoyed watching Stan win his tennis matches - however this promising tennis career worked against their son.

When he was promoted to play in the club’s top competition tennis team, Stan found that the top grade lady players were older married women who had a different attitude to the lovely young girls in the lower grad - whose lively company Stan enjoyed so much.

The older ladies were seriously committed tennis players.

Many had already played against their opponents in interstate matches or were driven to win because of long standing grudges, and they did npt flirt.

So the next summer Stan joined the local athletics club and went running, instead of playing competition tennis.

He ran with many of the local boys from his school days and in this way, renewed the friendship with Jim Sellers, who was playing Rugby League for the local suburban club and took his friend along to try out for the 3rd grade team. (Second grade consisted of older players, who did not have the necessary ability, or had been relegated - but still loved playing the game as well as the comradeship, parties and drinking – while the third grade team consisted of talented, competitive young men striving to fill places in the senior first grade team.

These were keen young men who loved sport and were into serious fitness regimes (and most surprisingly) did not drink alcohol to excess during the playing season … and most definitely – did not smoke.

All this had happened before I met Stan.

Recently - he had changed to another football club in order to gain a position in a senior team.

Another friend from his school days had been chosen to play for the senior team in preference to Stan.

This friend was a brilliant young player, who had commenced playing first grade Rugby League as soon as he turned eighteen, and that year (his first in the senior ranks) he was selected to tour Great Britain.

Although he was the youngest member of this touring team, he had been the top scorer and made a record number of tries, Stan did not stand a chance against this brilliant player, so he changed clubs in order to gain a place in a First Grade team and began playing for the team that represented the suburb where I lived.

CHAPTER 2

I enjoyed creating my own clothes

I really liked to sew and had finally found the style of clothes that suited my figure. I was tall and slim, so either the full ballerina or the tight fitting pencil skirt suited me.

I also enjoyed the creative side of hairdressing.

When I first met Stan, I was in my second year - training to be a hairdresser and had only one more year to go before I qualified as a fully trained senior.

I worked in a suburb that was only a short tram ride away from my home. It was a small business, owned and operated by a very competent lady … where I was being carefully and properly trained.

The clientele were nice, friendly (very gossipy) ladies and girls from the district.

The wages were good (not fabulous) but still good enough for a single girl who lived at home and had a boy friend to take her to the pictures.

My main problem was the late nights (especially through the week) because the next day after my lunch break, a really desperate tiredness would overcome me. Sometimes I suspected that I might have even have been sort of asleep, as I stood automatically winding a customer’s hair onto the bobbins in preparation for her perm.

However, eventually this would pass and everything would perk up as the afternoon progressed.

*     *     *

When I first started going out through the week, both my mother and father used to wait up until I arrived home. They would not go to bed …but soon grew weary of this and eventually resumed their own regular bedtime.

My mother scolded me about these late nights - Lynette, you must be home by 10 o’clock because you have work the next day.

Then she would say You must be in by midnight because you have to get up early in the morning.

Eventually she just used to plead with me -

Lynnie, please dear, do not be too late tonight. Remember you have to get up for work in the morning.

But the best parties never got going until about 10 o’clock and by midnight, when they were in full swing, no one wanted to leave. Sometimes it would be after 1 o’clock in the morning before I arrived home.

Also - because Stan liked a hot supper, many times we would drive into the city where a caravan (parked in the same spot every night) cooked hot take away food.(Stan knew which shop sold the best chips and toasted sandwiches and also where the most delicious milk shakes could be bought.

Sometimes this particular milk bar (which kept open very late on both Friday and Saturday nights) was always filled with sportsmen and their friends.

One evening, a champion middle weight boxer (of world ranking) was amongst the crowd, and this huge, handsome young man, was accompanied by his two trainers and the very pretty, fifteen year old, young sister … of a girl I had known at school.

I learned to look interested as the men discussed the