Post by macky on Oct 7, 2020 0:48:53 GMT
Your accounts of important areas of your life Baz, are at once harrowing and informative. They are a portrait of the way others often live, no less in NZ where we have at least over 100 (reported) cases of family violence a week through the courts, just in Hamilton, a city of only around 150,000.
Getting back to the Irish, when I lived with my grandfather after getting booted out of the house a second time by my step-father, a prize arsehole if ever there was one, there was an Irish fella across the road. The suburb is very hilly and his house was about 30 feet above the road level via three terraced lawns.
He popped in one day for me to give him a hand with getting his motorized concrete mixer, just delivered, up to his house and I went over with him to see the guy tying a rope around his waist, the other end already fastened to the mixer. I was to stand behind the mixer and guide it up the slopes while he pulled it up from the top.
Well the result was that although I was lifting weights at the time and was toned up a bit thereby, I was pulled off my feet from the Go and he dragged me and the mixer up the terrace slopes with me fighting to regain my feet. I acted as the weight on the downside, and sure kept the mixer from overturning, just by hanging on.
When I and the mixer arrived at the top, he came back untying his rope and I asked him where had he got his tractor from, and he replied he used to be an anchorman for a tug-o-war team in Ireland. He was a decent sort of a guy until he started drinking, and I saw him one night in a city pub drinking by himself and looking positively dangerous. His eyes were flicking around (he didn't see me) and I got the impression he was watching for the next gunman or bomb to go off.
I didn't dare ask him if he was green or orange, not even when he was sober.
A notable account of Irish shenanigans when I worked for an engineering firm, (the same one as my two Irish workmates), came from upstairs where an Irish engineer had a mate who got himself deported through traffic violations of the serious kind. According to Dave Litser (that's his spelling) his mate bought an army surplus 4 X 4 army truck and welded steel plates on the back and front, then painted them black and yellow diagonal stripes.
His first demeanor was noticing a cop parked roadside and accelerating past him to get the cop to follow him. As fast as he could go in the truck, the cop car soon caught up and just as the car started pull out to turn around him to go to the front, matey jammed his anchors on and the cop ran straight into the back of the truck's welded plate. As the cop sat frozen, he inched forward and all sorts of bits of cop-car fell to the road.
In court, the magistrate asked him why did he stop so suddenly, and the answer was that he stopped when he first heard the siren and was going to turn off to clear the road. He didn't realize the truck had such good brakes. The mag. fined him for speeding and cautioned him. The cop got a ticking-off.
In those days (60s) NZ had separate traffic cops and police, and they didn't (normally) have any guns whatsoever.
Anyway, finally Dave's mate got deported. He had come up behind about four cars that were "going far too slow" and collected one after the other with his truck, pushing them jolting and braking along for about 100 yards until stopping. The drivers got out and started coming towards him rolling up their sleeves. Matey jumped out with a large knife and said "don't bother rolling up your sleeves, Gentlemen ! Come here and I'll cut dem off !
After that, police were called and Dave's cobber was taken into custody. Not being a citizen, he was charged and convicted of threatening grievous bodily harm with a dangerous weapon, and deported back to Ireland.
A long time ago, I still remember it like yesterday.
Getting back to the Irish, when I lived with my grandfather after getting booted out of the house a second time by my step-father, a prize arsehole if ever there was one, there was an Irish fella across the road. The suburb is very hilly and his house was about 30 feet above the road level via three terraced lawns.
He popped in one day for me to give him a hand with getting his motorized concrete mixer, just delivered, up to his house and I went over with him to see the guy tying a rope around his waist, the other end already fastened to the mixer. I was to stand behind the mixer and guide it up the slopes while he pulled it up from the top.
Well the result was that although I was lifting weights at the time and was toned up a bit thereby, I was pulled off my feet from the Go and he dragged me and the mixer up the terrace slopes with me fighting to regain my feet. I acted as the weight on the downside, and sure kept the mixer from overturning, just by hanging on.
When I and the mixer arrived at the top, he came back untying his rope and I asked him where had he got his tractor from, and he replied he used to be an anchorman for a tug-o-war team in Ireland. He was a decent sort of a guy until he started drinking, and I saw him one night in a city pub drinking by himself and looking positively dangerous. His eyes were flicking around (he didn't see me) and I got the impression he was watching for the next gunman or bomb to go off.
I didn't dare ask him if he was green or orange, not even when he was sober.
A notable account of Irish shenanigans when I worked for an engineering firm, (the same one as my two Irish workmates), came from upstairs where an Irish engineer had a mate who got himself deported through traffic violations of the serious kind. According to Dave Litser (that's his spelling) his mate bought an army surplus 4 X 4 army truck and welded steel plates on the back and front, then painted them black and yellow diagonal stripes.
His first demeanor was noticing a cop parked roadside and accelerating past him to get the cop to follow him. As fast as he could go in the truck, the cop car soon caught up and just as the car started pull out to turn around him to go to the front, matey jammed his anchors on and the cop ran straight into the back of the truck's welded plate. As the cop sat frozen, he inched forward and all sorts of bits of cop-car fell to the road.
In court, the magistrate asked him why did he stop so suddenly, and the answer was that he stopped when he first heard the siren and was going to turn off to clear the road. He didn't realize the truck had such good brakes. The mag. fined him for speeding and cautioned him. The cop got a ticking-off.
In those days (60s) NZ had separate traffic cops and police, and they didn't (normally) have any guns whatsoever.
Anyway, finally Dave's mate got deported. He had come up behind about four cars that were "going far too slow" and collected one after the other with his truck, pushing them jolting and braking along for about 100 yards until stopping. The drivers got out and started coming towards him rolling up their sleeves. Matey jumped out with a large knife and said "don't bother rolling up your sleeves, Gentlemen ! Come here and I'll cut dem off !
After that, police were called and Dave's cobber was taken into custody. Not being a citizen, he was charged and convicted of threatening grievous bodily harm with a dangerous weapon, and deported back to Ireland.
A long time ago, I still remember it like yesterday.
