Writing Group Stories

by Pat Ritter

  It’s a small world:

  Almost forty years ago I worked with a person who is a relative of a member of this group. We didn’t particularly become personal friends however we were close work colleagues. Throughout the years we followed one another’s career paths and kept in touch at functions and other times we’d meet.

  Our paths parted some twenty years ago and we lost contact until a recent event. A member of this writing group is the cousin of this particular person whom I have described. Never in my wildest dreams could I have established this fact until this member bought it to my attention. I failed to join the dots.

  My partner and I live at Imbil, a small town nestled in the Mary Valley west of Gympie. Many years ago this member worked for my partner picking ginger and afterwards worked for relatives of my partner on a farm.

  Before I retired, my family was heavily involved in harness racing in Queensland. Our horses competed at the major tracks and in conversation with this member uncovered she was also involved in harness racing in Queensland, yet unfortunately we didn’t know one another in the sport.

  Each Thursday I play keno at the RSL at Cooyar and have done for some time. This member also plays keno at the same club. My partner recognised her and reacquainted their friendship and I was introduced. She’s known as the big winner at the club because she always wins huge prizes.

  At the time this writer’s group met at the Pomona Bowls Club to introduce new members, this member and I joined.

  Ever since then we have conversed about many topics and discovered the connection between my previous work colleague and her relationship to him.

  It certainly is a small world.

  Word count: 303

  I thought I saw a ghost:

  Was it a ghost I saw? The vision rattled my brain; I blinked and looked out through the window. I’m certain I saw a vision of my wife, the same coloured hair; the clothes she wore; and the way she walked. No noise only the sight of my wife.

  It couldn’t be, I protested. She’s dead. Her ashes are buried at the front of the house. It couldn’t be possible. My mind must have been playing tricks.

  Only a couple of months before, I said the final farewells to her as she lay in a nursing bed at the Palliative Care Unit at Redcliffe Hospital. It was the saddest day of my life. Half of my heart and soul was torn away from me. We’d been married over thirty-one years. She was fifty years of age and cancer destroyed her life.

  I remember the morning of Saturday 13th September 2003 at 7.45am when she took her final breath. It was as if a flame on a candle had blown out. She looked so beautiful before that final moment – she was glowing; it was as if beauty overtook her body. Then she was gone.

  We’d sit on the front veranda at our Redcliffe home and I returned there and sat for the remainder of the day. Numbness overtook my mind and body.

  At one point in the day I looked out of the front window and thought I saw my wife cross the road to the other side. I jumped up from the chair and ran to the door to discover it was not her but another lady who resembled her. I would have sworn I saw my wife walk across the road; however, it wasn’t her. Probably I wished it was her instead of another person. The loss was cruel.

  Before she passed away we enjoyed staying at the farm we purchased for our retirement at Brooloo. Most weekends we camped in the shed on the property waiting for the house to be built, discussing our future and where everything was going to go. She passed away one month before the house was completed.

  Before her death we spoke of a number of things which one was, where she wanted to be laid to rest. Her request was to be cremated and her ashes placed in a rose garden in front of the bedroom – that way she could keep an eye on me.

  Her wishes were fulfilled and a rose garden was built for her to rest in peace. Her ashes placed in the garden directly in front of the main bedroom.

  It was about a month after I completed the garden that I thought I saw a ghost.

  Word count: 460

  An alien:

  Japanese scientists have invented a robot, similar in appearance to humans. These robots speak various languages, walk, show expressions on their face and are life like.

  According to the news broadcast they will act as companions to the elderly in Japan; sit by their bedside and talk transmitting computerised messages.

  The mind boggles when we see how much science has improved over the years. I remember many years ago a story in the motor vehicle industry. Toyota bosses asked employees how to reduce costs. A worker asked why lights needed to be on when robots made the vehicles. Robots didn’t need to see what they were doing.

  This assembly worker became a senior manager of Toyota and saved the company millions of dollars.

  The television programme ‘Alf’ is another example. The title character nicknamed ALF (Alien Life Form), crash landed in a garage of a suburban middle class family in America.

  Why did this character ‘Alf’ make me laugh? Was it because he was funny; hilarious at times, almost splitting my inside with laughter at the strange and wonderful moments of disbelief of looking at alien form. Another science fiction character was ‘My Favourite Martian’ I watched religiously as a child.

  A human-looking person in a one-man spaceship crash-landed near Los Angeles. The ship's pilot is, in fact, from the planet Mars. Tim O'Hara, a young newspaper reporter for The Los Angeles Sun, is on his way home when he spots the spaceship coming down.

  Tim takes the Martian in as his roommate and passes him off as his Uncle Martin. Uncle Martin refuses to reveal any of his Martian traits to people other than Tim, to avoid publicity (or panic), and Tim agrees to keep Martin's identity a secret while the Martian attempts to repair his ship.

  Uncle Martin has various unusual powers: he can raise from his head two retractable antennae and another to become invisible; he is telepathic and can read and influence minds; he can levitate objects with the motion of his finger; he can communicate with animals; and he can also speed himself (and other people) up to do work.

  Are these television programmes suddenly coming to life? I wonder. Let’s return to the broadcast about Japanese scientists creating a robot to help the elderly; could it be in the future we become an alien.

  Word count: 395

  An Australian story:

  This is a story about ‘Hollywood’ John McMullen a legend in Queensland Harness Racing and the first recipient to be inducted into the ‘Queensland Harness Racing – Hall of Fame’.

  ‘What’s going on,’ John cried out when he felt a boot strike his foot. He woke to see his father standing over him.

  ‘I didn’t bring you up to sleep in a horse stall.’ His father yelled. John was asleep in his swag in stall number 13 at Ipswich Show Grounds when his father visited him.

  He just turned 17 years old; he’d left home three years before and decided to travel the Queensland Show Circuit. At Ipswich he met a harness racing trainer Aub Kennaway who raced trotting horses, names such as Queen Caroline; Flying Pete; and Togo Prince.

  Aub asked John if he wanted to drive his horses in races and when he tested his driving; the harness racing bug bit him. The thrill and feeling of winning at his first drive in a race never left him and at that moment all he ever wanted to do was to be involved in harness racing for the rest of his life.

  The thrill of sitting in a race gig behind a horse, controlled only by a pair of long reins the only means to guide the horse; travelling across the ground at speeds of sixty kilometres an hour sent an adrenalin rush through his body. He’d made up his mind at that moment to race against the best harness racing drivers in the world.

  Convincing his father at the time was a problem because John lived out of his swag and travelled the circuit. It was a free lifestyle with little money but plenty of life experience.

  In those years he learnt many lessons about horse racing, like shoeing, gait of the horse, training and driving techniques.

  From those humble beginnings he never lost
that initial feeling of excitement of harness racing. You can’t believe the feeling until you’re out there competing, he’d often say.

  A decade later Albion Park Paceway in Brisbane became a reality. John became the leading owner; driver and trainer at Albion Park for the next five years. Trotting was alive in Queensland.

  Albion Park was the only metropolitan track in Queensland and raced each Saturday night. He only wanted horses that could race at Albion Park.

  Kevin Thomas, who would become the leading driver in Australasia, was a youth at the time when John asked his friend Ron Wanless and Kevin if they wanted to race in America; the year 1977.

  All three travelled to America and there competed at the best courses in the world and John drove against some of the best drivers and competed well.

  After a season in America they returned to Australia when John purchased a property near Albion Park Paceway and built a harness racing complex similar to what they had in America.

  Albion Park became the Harness Racing Capital Of The World with it’s modern facilities and 1000 metre track. Life was looking up for John until interest rates rose. John borrowed $300,000.00 and overnight the government devalued the Australian Dollar and suddenly he owned $600,000.00.

  Instead of feeling sorry; he rolled his sleeves up and put a plan into action to purchase Australian horses; transport them to the United States and sell them at a profit. In a little of six years he’d repaid his loan.

  While he was in America he purchased stallions for clients in Australia to breed and in all, imported twenty-eight stallions to enhance the breeding industry.

  For fifty years John competed in harness racing and says he has never lost that feeling of wanting to win.

  Looking back on his life, he wouldn’t change a thing and remembers one time driving in a race at The Meadowlands in America. He looked across to see he was driving against the top best ten drivers in the world. At that moment a feeling of absolute joy came over him to know he finally climbed his mountain of success.

  Word count: 681

  A turning point in my life:

  Looking back on a turning point in my life, now I come to think about it seems so long ago, almost 20 years.

  It happened in my early forties when I reached a point in my career of climbing the ladder of success. Within a short time I would have reached a personal goal of which I never thought possible.

  For the past twenty years I’d laboured to reach that goal; however, something happened which changed my life forever. My heart almost stopped.

  A visit to the local doctor uncovered a fault in the electronic node in my heart, the particular part that makes your heart beat and pumps blood throughout your body had slowly degenerated over a period of 12 months. If I hadn’t gone to the doctor I would have died in my sleep that night.

  My heart rate was beating at 17 beats per minute when it was supposed to be beating at 70 beats per minute. Immediate hospitalisation was required. My career was finished and my future unknown. It was a dismal time to reflect on.

  I am a firm believer in ‘things are meant to happen for a reason’, and at this point in my life I couldn’t understand why this particular event needed to happen to me at this time in my life.

  After being prodded and constantly examined by doctors finally I was admitted to another hospital to have a pacemaker implanted. This electronic machine was inserted under the skin on my right shoulder and a lead feed through an artery to the bottom chamber of my heart.

  Indeed I wanted to get over this event and get on with my life from where I had left it but there were other troubles on the horizon which I had no or little control.

  Shortly after the operation I returned home and early one morning I walked into the kitchen to prepare breakfast.

  Suddenly without warning a black