Glimpses of Poverty–I

Recently a friend gave me a box of Whitman’s Sampler. The yellow box with its vintage embroidered look triggered the following memory.

There lived a woman, many years ago, who was old when I was young. I met her briefly, never knew her name and never saw her again but she permanently changed my perception of the world. Greed, poverty, truth, passing judgement, compassion and reality, were all experienced in one vivid moment that I can never forget.

My parents and I were traveling on Grace Lines Santa Maria and had gone for a walk on the dock in Cartagena, Colombia. The Second Steward, a charming man named Sal Renzi, had offered to accompany us for safety sake when we decided to hand out candy to the young boys who’d been diving off the pier for quarters in the hot tropic sunshine. The children gathered quickly as soon as they saw us.

In the midst of this lively crowd, she appeared, black as tar, bent and withered from age, stretching forth knobby fingers and begging silently for candy.

“Children first,” my father told her.

The sea of waving, grasping hands, at first charming, quickly frightened me, as though Medusa had taken on the form of innocence. There’s a moment of fear when you are surrounded by people who have nothing and want desperately what you have. The climax arrives when you know your generosity will be exhausted before their needs are met.

Dad was trying to distribute the candy fairly and blocked the woman’s hand several times, but despite her age and frailty, she held her ground and remained insistent.

“Just wait!” he said, clearly annoyed.

“She only wants one of the brown papers,” Renzi told him and I saw Dad glance at him in confusion. “She’ll save it to smell.”

At the end, Renzi told the boys to move on and Dad gave the woman the two chocolates that remained, along with the crinkly cups and the box. She never said thank you, but her face declared it and, clutching her treasure protectively, she walked out of our lives.

The Thunder Box - Oz Icon

 

 

The Thunder Box
by Heather Blakey

The night was dark and dreary
The dunny (toilet) light was dim
I heard a yell
I heard a scream
By God she’s fallen in.

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The earliest written reference to the disposal of human waste is more than 3600 years old and is found in The Holy Bible. “And you shall have an implement among your equipment, and when you sit down outside, you shall dig with it and cover your refuse…”(Deuteronomy 23:12-13). For hundreds of thousands of years before the bible was written, human beings simply squatted when they had the urge to relieve themselves.

When I was growing up in the country in Australia we did not have a flush toilet. Our toilet was in a small wooden building behind the garage, overgrown with passionfruit. Mum planted the passionfruit by the dunny because the passionfruit need plenty of fertiliser and moisture to keep growing strongly, and dunnies usually were pretty rich in both of those. Our dunny was painted a cacky yellow colour and had a corrugated iron tank nearby.

Visiting the dunny at night was a daunting affair. A chamber of horrors awaited as I stepped along the shadow filled path. The long fingered shadows reached out, threatening to grip me by the throat. The owl in the tree hooted. I was always hunched over, in a state of terror as I sped into the toilet and shut the door behind me.

Spiders gathered in the corners and I lived in fear that one would drop in to my lap or I would lift the lid to find a red-back lying in wait. In these days of backyard dunnies 80% of red-back victims were men using the toilet, which explains the popularity of Slim Newton’s song ‘Red-back on the Toilet Seat’.

But I digress! In the early hours of one dark and gloomy morning I had carefully negotiated the path, had managed to elude the fingered shadows, established that there were no red-backs and I was sitting quietly, not thinking about anything much. All was still. Even the cows that usually managed to cough nearby were silent and the chooks were all asleep in the nearby chook shed.

Imagine my shock when a deep voice said ’scuse me Missus’. I leapt off the seat and pulled up my pants. As I looked around to see who was talking I could see a light shining below the seat. The night man had come early and was changing over the night can.

I screamed and ran into the house, waking everyone with my indignace.

Postcards from Barcelona

Looking at Froglet’s link I was swept back in time to my very first visit to Spain in the 60s. I have wonderful memories of Barcelona. So while I am sitting in the shade of the almond tree, with a delicious glass of Carmelcita’s iced lemon tea, I went through my old photographs to share some of those memories with you. I was just sixteen, a glorious time to experience Spain.

This is my mother and I sitting outside a cafe in Barcelona.

The Plaza de Toros de Monumental at Barcelona is indeed monumental - you can fit a six pole circus tent inside it.

In one of the postcards you can see a huge hill behind Barcelona. This is a very young Gail on the top of this hill.