My Life, My Way

By Dion de Franco

Author Dion de Franco has spent most of his life restoring old cars and going on car club runs around the country. He also creates his own works of art from leather, gemstones and metal.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press AU
• Release date: Sep 4, 2023
• ISBN: 9781982297428

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Copyright © 2023 Dion de Franco.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are

models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Cover Photo: Kaitoke Beach, Great Barrier Island, where it’s easy

to catch pollution-free snapper straight from the beach.

ISBN: 978-1-9822-9741-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-9742-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023916229

Balboa Press rev. date: 08/28/2023

CONTENTS

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Acknowledgements

Glossary

CHAPTER ONE

I HAVE BEEN asked to write a basic account of my life, as when I croak, all the fun and games I have had will be lost and I am sure some people would like to know what went on back then. As long as my arse points to the ground I’m going to continue to live my life to the full. I am sure I was born in a good time: we had neat cars and great music, and life wasn’t as fast as it is now.

I was born in July, 1944 in Wellington, and we lived in the popular suburb of Karori, which is on the western edge of the urban area.

When I was a toddler, my grandmother, who lived with my grandfather up a very steep hill in Karori, Wellington, had to push me in a pushchair up that hill. My sister Glenis told me many years later that she thought I was lucky because I was pushed up the hill while she had to walk.

I remember a Clydesdale horse and cart that was used for delivering milk, which was ladled into a billy for however much you had paid, via tokens and sometimes coins.

My grandparents were caring for Mum, Glenis and me at that time due to my father being away overseas. He was stationed in Cassino, Italy, and also in North Africa during the Second World War. Dad was a changed man on his return to New Zealand, like so many others were when they returned from the war. He couldn’t talk about it and couldn’t stand noise, which was understandable as Dad was an officer in the artillery division.

Whatever I did, nothing was good enough and we were not allowed to talk at the dinner table. Later on, we understood better the reason why Dad was so intolerant with me, Glenis and our brother Craig.

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During the early 1950s in Karori, Wellington, my grandfather grew these enormous carrots. A friend of mine told me that when she was a little girl living on a mixed farm, her dad also grew these huge carrots, which he called horse carrots.

He grew other veges as well and we had fruit trees but the things that stood out most in my mind were these huge carrots, a foot long or more. My little sister Rosie and I would try to eat them but they were very tough. Dad used them as extra cattle fodder.

My grandfather took pride in his big horse carrots and each time we went there for a visit, we usually ended up with a big bunch of them.

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When I turned five I attended a primary school, and one day while walking to school I was attacked by a magpie. It dive bombed me and pecked me in my head. I went home crying, as my head was bleeding badly. I remember when I was a new entrant at that same primary school, twins threw sand in my lunch. That was another day when I went home bawling. You’ll be thinking by now that I was always going home bawling! Our teacher was called Miss Smythe - who would hit the kids with a ruler if she felt you had done something wrong, even if we hadn’t. We were made to sit in the corner with a dunce’s hat on, like a witch’s hat.

Teachers wouldn’t get away with that kind of treatment these days. As it was, all new entrants had to sit on the floor.

Another time at school we were playing cricket when a boy named Terrence Climo hit the ball up in the air, and it came straight down onto his head and knocked him out cold. I thought he was dead; the cricket ball had made such a strange hollow sound, really loud as it hit him on the top of his head. Luckily he regained consciousness a few minutes later and was deemed to be okay.

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The dairy where the tram stopped at the end of the line, known as Karori West, sold Kentish Ale, which as expected going by the name, had a small amount of alcohol in it. They also sold that stuff called sherbet, in a paper bag with a licorice tube in it. The older kids from school would go around the back of the shop and pinch the empty bottles out of the crates and sell them back to the shopkeeper. He was most likely aware of some of the kids doing that, but knew that it brought them back into his shop to buy other things.

During the winter, one of the kid’s mothers made vegetable soup with ham in it, as most of the families didn’t have much money because some of the fathers were still away during the Second World War. A bit later on we had milk delivered to the school. I remember that the milk would sit outside in crates, in a wooden slatted box with gaps between the slats, and of course by 10 am, the sun had been shining on it, with the milk turning sour as a result. Sometimes the milk tasted really terrible and the cream sat on top of the milk, and soon curdled.

Yuk!

We were expected to sit inside in our classroom and drink the half pint of warm, sour milk, and they would put on this military marching music, on a 78 rpm wind-up gramophone (record player). It was amazing that we didn’t throw up!

We played marbles - the glass ones, and some of the older kids used to come up to us with mud under the heel of their shoes, and would stand on your marble so that the marble was embedded in the mud, and walk away carefully, stealing your marble. It was a cunning trick, but they were big kids and we were just little kids so there wasn’t much we could do about it.

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When I was still at primary school we feared going to the school dental clinic, which was on the way from Karori, heading into Wellington city.

If your name was called out while you were in class, you knew it was your turn to go to ‘The Murder House’ the next day. I hated going there as the nurses used to practice on the kids’ teeth, which had nothing wrong with them. How could small children have holes in their teeth at that age? The nurses were student dental nurses, drilling holes in the kids’ teeth and then filling them up again.

The health system allowed some stupid things to happen, even back then. I am amazed that the parents allowed this to happen, but then I guess the parents just trusted the nurses and the ‘system’ to know what they were doing. They knew all right! There were all these young kids, not daring to flout authority; perfect guinea pigs for the nurses’ practice.

I supposed that’s the only way that they could train student dental nurses to do that job. There were