Working Class Boy

by Barnes, Jimmy

  I came home one afternoon to find Reg in the backyard. He was in a hole in the lawn and he had a handkerchief over his face. There was a different horrible smell this time, one I hadn’t noticed before.

  I shouted out to him, ‘Reg, Reg, what are you doing in there?’

  And he came over to me with a bucket on a rope in his hands. ‘We have no money, love, so I have to empty the septic tank by hand or we won’t be able to use the toilet.’

  As far as I could see this was the worst thing anyone could think of doing, especially in the one-hundred degree heat.

  So I said, ‘Why are you doing it, Reg? It’s disgusting.’

  He looked at me with tears in his eyes and said, ‘Because I love you, son. That’s why I’m doing it.’ He pulled the handkerchief up over his nose and went on with the job.

  He was a bit dramatic, our Reg, but he meant it. He sacrificed a lot for us and I knew it. Most people paid for a truck to come around and empty their tanks but we couldn’t afford it.

  ‘This is as poor as you can get,’ I thought. Poor Reg.

  While I was checking out the abattoir at the end of the road I came across a horse-riding school. The idea of riding horses really appealed to me. I always wanted to be a cowboy, so I started hanging around the school, trying to help out when I could.

  My brother John used to hang around there sometimes too. As usual, anything John tried to do he was good at, so he very quickly became really good around horses. He started working at the riding school whenever he wanted to. The guy who ran it could see how keen I was and started giving me the odd bit of work around the place too. Cleaning up shit and even feeding the horses. In return for my hard work he let me ride the horses. I was not very good at it but I tried really hard. A few horses threw me off but it didn’t stop me and I developed the liking for horses that I have to this day.

  I stopped for a while after a particularly big horse, a Clydesdale, stood on my foot and nearly broke it. Being a very keen football player, I couldn’t afford to have broken feet so I stayed away for a while.

  The idea of changing our names came up. I’m not sure if it was Reg’s idea. It may even have been Mum’s, one last chance to plunge the knife into her ex-husband.

  I didn’t need to think twice about it. I changed my name to James Dixon Barnes. Jim Swan was my father but Reg Barnes was the man who cared for me, he was my dad, and I wanted his name.

  John was the only one of the kids who wouldn’t change their name to Barnes. He wanted to keep his dad’s name. Which was fine by us. We loved Dad too.

  I was the biggest eater out of all the kids. They nicknamed me seagull because I would hover around the table, waiting to eat anything that was put in front of me. And while the others were busy with other things, homework or watching television, I would be getting ready for bed and heading into the kitchen to have one last bite to eat with Reg. It was a moment where he could ask me about school and check that I was all right. Unfortunately, the late-night cereal he and I would eat together was gone. We couldn’t afford it anymore. But Reg tried to make it all right.

  ‘Bread with milk and sugar is better than cereal, Jim,’ he assured me as we sat eating at the kitchen table. ‘When it gets cold, we’ll heat the milk up. And it’ll taste really great, you wait.’

  It didn’t taste that good but I still liked it because I was sitting having it with him.

  ‘Now let’s wash these bowls and set the table. If you do it now you get a little bit more time to yourself in the morning.’

  ‘Can’t we do it in the morning? I’m tired.’

  ‘Listen, son. In this life you can’t put things off. Get up and do what you have to do. Then you can put your feet up. That’s a lesson you have to learn if you want to have a good life.’

  Reg had a way of making me feel sad, just by how he spoke. I think it was because he had never been a parent before and every day he was learning how much it took to bring up a family. Sometimes when he spoke to me, he was on the verge of tears, trying to hold them back. This just made me respect him more; I knew it wasn’t easy for him. He would tell me that life was not always easy and sometimes you had to do things you didn’t want to do because it was the right thing to do. We were one of those things. I know that if Reg had to do it all over again he would and he wouldn’t even think twice about it because we needed him and he was our guardian angel.

  Speaking of guardian angels, Reg told me one day that he had an angel watching over him. To a young boy from Elizabeth this sounded a bit like having fairies at the bottom of the garden. But it obviously meant a lot to him so I listened as he told me about a native American Indian who watched over him. Now there was a Red Indian hanging around the house. It was already crowded enough.

  I wasn’t sure I believed him but it was kind of cool to think about. I never saw the Indian myself but my sister Linda, who saw ghosts everywhere, did, and said, ‘He is real. I see him when Reg is sleeping, by the bottom of the bed.’

  My mum said, ‘I saw an Indian near Reg’s bed one day when he was in the hospital.’ And she wasn’t one to see ghosts. The only spirits she’d seen before then, my dad had been drinking.

  We would laugh it off as politely as we could but still take the mickey out of Mum. Many years later, when Reg died, as I was leaving his funeral I started seeing photos of Indians everywhere. American Indians. There were billboards that I’d never noticed before, right in front of my eyes, with huge pictures of Indians looking down, smiling at me. I found an old lighter that Reg had given me with an Indian on it. It was very strange; they seemed to pop up everywhere. When I noticed them I felt a strange sense of calm come over me, as if Reg was there somehow looking out for me again. I know he was, and still is, my angel.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  smoke and mirrors

  Soon we had to move again as Reg couldn’t afford to pay for the house. Six kids were a lot more expensive to look after than he knew or Mum remembered. But they never spoke about it in front of us. I heard them talking in bed one night and realised how hard things were getting.

  We started moving from one cheap place to another, mostly within striking distance of Port Adelaide. Sometimes Mum wanted to go back to Elizabeth; Reg could never understand why. He hated the place and we had nothing but bad memories from there. After each short stay in Elizabeth we would drift back to Port Adelaide. We rented houses in Ethelton, Wingfield, Mansfield Park and Seaton. Anywhere that was cheap enough. Many battling families lived and worked in these areas and we always seemed to find another place.

  I can look back now and see why we moved so much. Mum and Reg would get a house for really low rent because it was a shithole and Mum would say, ‘I think this place’ll be really good wi’ a coat o’ paint and a wee bit o’ love.’

  ‘Too right, love, it will be beautiful,’ Reg would say.

  Then they would work really hard to make it a home for us. Mum was usually right. Not long after we’d move into a place it would be nice to live in. They were always painting and fixing up houses and of course as soon as they fixed them up the landlord would come around and put the rent up. Then we couldn’t afford to stay there so we would have to move to another dive.

  We moved from one suburb to another, ending up for a little while in a place called Hindmarsh, a couple of miles out of the city. It had a large Greek community. I got on well with all the Greek kids I met. These kids were not like the kids from Britain I’d grown up with in Elizabeth. They were from working-class families but they seemed to be a lot happier. Not aggressive and dark like the kids in the west. These kids liked to go home to their mums and dads. Their houses were happy places full of laughter and the smell of great food cooking in the kitchens.

  The girls were cute too. I had a crush on a girl called Sue. We went to the Hindmarsh pictures together and kissed in the back row.

  The guys loved football too, which made me feel right at home. I played in a Greek football team called Hellas, one of the big clubs in
Adelaide. I was in the under-12s and we were pretty good for our age. Occasionally our football team got to play at Hindmarsh Stadium, which was just around the corner from our house. This was one of the biggest football grounds in Adelaide, it had lights and a grandstand and everything. I thought I was on my way to playing in the World Cup.

  ‘Pass the ball!’

  ‘Hey dickhead. Pass the ball over here.’

  ‘Skase malaka!’ I heard them shout at each other.

  I never knew what it meant but within days of being there I was on the football pitch, yelling at the other team. ‘Get out of my way. Skase malaka. What are you an idiot or something?’

  One of the boys quickly gave me some advice. ‘If Mum or Dad come to the game, Jim, do me a favour would you?’

  ‘Sure, what do you want?’

  ‘Don’t try to speak Greek. You’ll get us killed.’

  But I was sure I heard the same words coming from their fathers as they watched us play.

  The school had a choir and luckily for me they didn’t sing in Greek so I immediately joined up. Then something happened that changed my life. The choir master pulled me aside after a few days and said to me, ‘Jimmy, I’m going to have to ask you to leave the choir.’

  I was shattered. I loved singing and I had always been a good singer – all my teachers had told me so.

  ‘Why do I have to leave? I love singing in the choir.’

  He sat me down. ‘You sing too loud and this choir is about blending in. I’m sorry, but you just don’t blend in with the other kids.’

  I was horrified. I didn’t know what to do. Where was I going to sing now?

  Luckily I was listening to a lot of radio. And a lot of the singers in the bands on the radio didn’t sound like they would blend with a choir either. So that was it.

  ‘I’m going to sing in a band,’ I said to myself. Not straight away, but as soon as I worked up the courage and found out how to go about it, I would find a band to sing with.

  Reg had a young brother called John, the wild one of his family. There’s at least one in every family.

  John had long sideburns and greasy hair and he dressed differently to anyone I had ever met. Not particularly stylish but he did have a likeable quality about him. Maybe it was because he was an outcast from the Barnes clan and he could see that we were outcasts too that I liked him. He warmed to me immediately too and told me stories about his escapades in the motorbike racing world.

  ‘I ride sidecar in speedway race meetings. You should come to see me race. I reckon you’d love it, young fella.’

  Without a second thought, I jumped at the chance. The following Friday night he took me to a big meeting at Rowley Park Speedway in Brompton, near the city.

  ‘You’ll love this place Jim,’ he told me. ‘It smells like petrol and you can’t hear nothing but bikes and cars. No bastard can talk to you even if they wanted to.’

  This was a different world. Everybody seemed to be some kind of misfit. They were all fat or had speech impediments or something. They were social cripples but I liked them and they liked me. Maybe I was one of them. They were like carnie folk. They didn’t care about normal life. They didn’t belong in everyday society. They were like a tribe of gypsies. They had their own friends and their own rules; it was a closed group that you could only join if you were brought to them by one of their own. This was my introduction to the entertainment business, when I think about it.

  The speedway show was about man and machine. But there was a bit of smoke and mirrors too. I got the feeling they knew who was going to win long before their engines had started. But that didn’t stop them from pushing themselves and each other to breaking point.

  I would run around in the pits, breathing in the fumes from the roaring machines, watching men frantically fine-tuning their engines. They were also being watched by some rough-looking, slightly overweight women with tattoos. These girls gazed at the men like they were athletes or even rock stars.

  ‘Do you need anything, darling?’

  ‘Just a kiss from you and a fast bike sweetheart.’

  ‘What about a drink, love?’

  The men were doing men’s business and the women were always running to get cold beer for their champions.

  There were horrific crashes when things didn’t go as planned. Some nights, Uncle John and his friends would end up drunk and in tears as close friends were battered, burned and broken. Some were driven away in ambulances to waiting emergency units. I don’t know if they ever saw them again. It was life on the edge. But they got the chance to entertain people who were just like them, but were afraid to take the chances these speed freaks took. Next week they would rebuild their smashed-up bikes and cars and limp back to the track again, for one more chance to be a winner.

  After a few trips with Uncle John, Reg stopped me going with him. I think he was afraid that I would want to get on the bike and have a ride myself. I didn’t have the need for speed yet but I could have caught the bug if I hung around long enough. I’m sure Reg was trying to keep me sheltered for as long as he could from all the dangers that he knew I was drawn to.

  The other thing I remember about those times is that my mum was always scared. Every house we lived in seemed to be cased by thieves who were about to break in at any time. Nearly every night Mum would be up crying and panicking. She obviously convinced me the villains were real because after a while I was afraid too, just like her. We all were – myself and my brother and sisters. And we would end up in one bed most nights, too scared to sleep.

  These same intruders were following us from house to house too. What could they have wanted? We didn’t have anything worth stealing.

  In the middle of the night we would hear a noise outside the house.

  Bang. Bang. Bang.

  The wind was howling around the house but we could still hear it.

  Bang. Bang. Bang.

  Mum would hurry into our room. ‘Don’t worry. Go back tae sleep.’

  ‘What’s that noise, Mum?’

  ‘It’s okay, kids. Reg’s just making sure the windows cannae be opened from the outside.’

  ‘What’s he doing out there?’

  ‘He’s just bangin’ a few nails intae them tae be sure.’

  Bang. Bang. Bang.

  By the sound of the nails that we heard being hammered, the windows would never be opened again.

  ‘Why is he nailing the windows, Mum?’

  ‘I heard someone sneaking aroon oot there and I just wanted tae be sure you were safe. That’s all, go back tae sleep.’

  Bang. Bang. Bang.

  ‘But we can’t sleep, Mum, you’ve got all the lights on and there’s too much noise.’

  ‘I know but it’s better tae be safe than sorry.’

  Reg would walk in through the door, soaked to the skin from the pouring rain. ‘There you go love. No one’s getting in. Now can we go back to bed?’

  ‘Go roon the hoose again, just in case they’re still there.’ Her eyes would be darting to the window as if she caught a glimpse of someone walking past.

  ‘There’s no one there, love. No one in their right mind would be outside on a night like this. Not even a prowler.’

  ‘Just go roon once more, please. I’m sure I heard someone. I know someone’s there.’

  ‘Jesus love, you’re going to scare the kids. No one is out there. I’m bloody telling you.’

  ‘Aw right then, you kids come tae ma room where you’ll be safe.’ We’d climb out of our own beds and follow her into her room.

  Bang!

  ‘What was that? I told you someone was oot there!’

  ‘It’s the wind, love. Let’s get some sleep.’

  Reg didn’t seem to be afraid at all and always told us, ‘It’ll be all right, kids, you’re safe here with me. No one’s going to hurt you.’ He would be rundown from lack of sleep and stress and always seemed to have a cold from being outside in his dressing gown. These prowlers were killing him – very s
lowly, but they were killing him.

  So after a short while, maybe to keep one step ahead of Mum’s demons, or maybe because Mum and Reg had improved the house to the point where we couldn’t afford to stay, we would have to move again. To another bad suburb and into another bad house with a new lot of burglars. I said goodbye to my friends and waited to see where we would end up next. The places seemed to go from renovator’s delights to hovels.

  I ended up at Ethelton Primary School up near the Port, which was fine as this was close to where Reg’s folks lived. He liked the area even if our house was a bit of a dump. It was on a dead end street, which backed onto a swamp that would later become a place called West Lakes. At the time we lived there, it was nothing but swamp and the remains of an old factory that no one had been in for about fifty years. There were no lights or houses, so at night it was pitch black. Mum was frightened out of her wits. I don’t know why she moved there.

  Once again Mum thought someone was out to get us. One night she had John and his Scottish hoodlum friends hiding out in the empty paddocks around our house, waiting in ambush to catch, once and for all, these people who had been trying to get us. She was sure that this time we would catch them and prove she had been right all along. By then, even we didn’t believe her, and we laughed about it a bit. But we never did it in front of her.

  Unfortunately for Mum, the criminals were too cunning for us again. John and his mates didn’t see a thing. So after hours of sitting in the dark around the house, Mum called off the ambush. ‘Okay John, bring the boys inside for a cup of tea. Maybe we can have a wee drink.’

  No sooner were they inside and sitting down than Mum suddenly heard the noises outside again. The prowlers must have been watching, waiting for the boys to come inside.

  So out they went and sat there for another few hours. I think that at least one of them brought a gun with him so we were lucky no one came anywhere near the house even by accident. They would have been killed. But no one was coming anywhere near our house, by accident or on purpose. We wouldn’t have gone anywhere near it if we didn’t live there.