Mr Bluenose

by Jack Lasenby

  Dad has to go to work, so you go down to see Mr Bluenose; there’s always something to do there. He tells you stories while you give him a hand to sort apples, feed the pigs, teach Horse how to push the wheelbarrow, and terrify boys who plan to raid the apple trees.

  On the way home, you look for empty bottles and sell them for boiled lollies to Mr Bryce at the store. He pays you more boiled lollies for telling him stories about how Mr Bluenose got his name, how he rode a whale to London, and was so seasick for so long in the crow’s nest that he ran away from sea to Waharoa and planted his orchard.

  And then there’s always Freddy Jones and the other kids to scare with stories about vampires, moreporks, and the White Woman of Waharoa who has a face as smooth as an egg…

  Captivating and amusing; a rich, fun-filled summer through a child’s eye.

  Jack Lasenby is one of our finest writers for children.

  Acknowledgements:

  I re-read Rudyard Kipling’s Captains Courageous and Alan Villiers’s Quest of the Schooner Argus before writing Mr Bluenose. If you’re interested in finding out more about the Great Banks cod fishery, you’ll find both books fascinating.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Acknowledgements

  Dedication

  I The Story of How Mr Bluenose Came to Waharoa and Threw Something Into the Long Grass Across the Road from Mrs Doleman’s Billiard Saloon

  II How I Found that Mr Bluenose’s Story Was True, and How I Told Mr Bryce and Was Rewarded for My Story

  III How Mr Bluenose Got His Name, Roast Pork and Apple Sauce, and Why I Lay Grinning in the Dark

  IV Mrs Dainty’s Complaint, How Horse Got His Name, the Rat Who Liked Boiled Lollies, and the Trouble with False Teeth and Chewing Gum

  V Boys and Barberry Hedges, Apples and the Dark, and the Ghost in the Macrocarpa Tunnel

  VI How Mr Bluenose Ate a Fisherman, How He Was Seasick for Six Months, and How Dad and I Ate Blue Cod and Parsley Sauce

  VII Baked Northern Spy, Father Christmas and the Boiled Lolly, and Freddy Jones and the Walking Hawk

  VIII A Clove of Garlic a Day Keeps the Vampire Away, Using a Dock Leaf for a Hanky, Licking Boiled Lollies, and Sickening for Something

  IX A Dory Story, Walking Like a Sausage, Tasting the Soup of Sorrow, and What Happened to the Old Fishermen Who Disappeared on the Grand Banks

  X What Horse Did With Mr Bluenose’s Green and White-Striped Boiled Lolly, the Corned Beef and Mustard Sandwich, and Mr Bryce’s Suggestion

  XI Freddy Jones and the Missing Tooth, Why He Tried to Look at His Tongue, Wringing and Blueing the Washing, and Hanging Bill Baillie

  XII The Morepork’s Revenge, Mr Bryce’s Verandah Post, Why Freddy Jones Bit His Tongue, and the Way Fern Uncurls at the Top

  XIII Horse Gets the Sulks and Steals an Apple, the Skylark Sings, and What Happened to the Yellow Boiled Lolly and My Hanky

  XIV Why Horse Laughs and Eats Apples While Mr Bluenose Pushes the Wheelbarrow, and Mr Bryce Gives Me Four Boiled Lollies On Tick and an Idea

  XV Dad Gives Me a Hand to Draw Horse Being Hanged, I Find Out What Getting Something on Tick Really Means, and Guarding the Boiled Lollies from Dad

  XVI Scaring Horse and Making Him Jealous, Keeping a Promise, A Great Success, and Why I Climbed Mr Bluenose’s Gate and Ran

  XVII The Bottle Thief Strikes, How I Worked to Pay Off the Boiled Lollies I Got on Tick, and A Pleasure to Do Business With

  XVIII Dad Brings Home a Treat and Tries to Make Me Feel Sorry For Him, and Mr Bluenose Admits that Roasted Sausages Bring Out the Glutton in Him

  XIX Pork Snarlers that Squeal and Grunt, the Haunted Wardrobe, What the White Woman of Waharoa Said, and Running Home Because of the Dark

  XX The Crunch of Sugar, Somebody Tells Me My Own Story That I Made Up, and Then He Wants to be Paid For It in Boiled Lollies, and a Good Crop of Potatoes

  XXI How the Mad Morepork Hummed and the White Woman Hooted, How Chooks Clean a Burnt Saucepan, and Why Mr Bryce Said I Was Getting All Bolshie

  XXII Kehuas and Spooks Down the Cemetery, Silly Old Bluenose, the Ghost in the Macrocarpa Tunnel, and Why Freddy Jones and Billy Marshall Mowed Their Lawns

  XXIII Talk About Ghosts and Damming the Ditch, Getting a Double Home and Washing Amber Beads, and Mr Bryce Pays a Debt

  XXIV Two Moreporks Pay Me a Visit, the Epidemic is Over, First Day Back, Golden Delicious and Boy Traps, and Summer’s End

  Some Fascinating Biographical Information About the Curmudgeonly Old Author.

  Also by Jack Lasenby

  Copyright

  In Memory of Jackie Andersen, his orchard, and the Minotaur’s tunnel under the macrocarpas.

  Except for Horse, everything in this book is fictional. No resemblance is intended to any person, living or dead, awake or asleep. Only Horse’s name is real.

  1

  The Story of How Mr Bluenose Came to Waharoa and Threw Something Into the Long Grass Across the Road from Mrs Doleman’s Billiard Saloon.

  I don’t know who told me the story of how Mr Bluenose came to Waharoa, I just seemed to grow up knowing that a stranger walked in one day, carrying what looked like a long wooden pole. He glanced around the men leaning against the front of Mrs Doleman’s billiard saloon, raised his hat, and said, “Good morning!”

  The men stared at each other, and one of them said, “What’s that you’re carrying?”

  The stranger smiled and took the wooden pole off his shoulder. “You do not know what this is? Goodbye and good riddance!” he said and threw the thing into the long grass on the other side of the road. The men looked curious, but none of them bothered to go across the road to see what it was.

  Within half an hour the stranger had bought a run-down little farm off one of the men leaning against the front of the billiard saloon. He bought one candle at Mr Bryce’s store, half a stale barracouta loaf at the baker’s, and one sausage at the butcher’s, and on the way home he picked some rauriki growing behind the fence around the hall. The men saw light from his window that night, smoke from his chimney, and said to each other the stranger must be cooking his tea. One of them said he still hadn’t told them what he was carrying when he walked into Waharoa that morning.

  The day after all that excitement, the men leaning against the front of Mrs Doleman’s billiard saloon watched the stranger cross the railway lines and buy seeds, an axe, and a shovel at Clark’s seed, manure, and hardware store. They followed him home, leaned on his gate, and watched him chop down a dead tree and start digging the paddock by his house. Next morning, the men leaned on the gate and watched the stranger planting seeds. A few months went by, and people started buying their vegies from him. A couple of years, and he was pushing his wheelbarrow over to the railway station and sending barrels of apples and sacks of potatoes to customers up and down the Rotorua line.

  He now bought his candles by the packet, whole loaves of fresh bread, and sausages by the pound, and he ate his own cabbages and lettuce instead of rauriki, but he always stopped, put down his wheelbarrow, raised his hat, and said, “Good morning!” to the men leaning against the front of Mrs Doleman’s billiard saloon. And they always shuffled their feet, and nodded, and mumbled, “G’day!”

  Somebody, I can’t remember who, must have told me that was the story of how Mr Bluenose came to Waharoa. I remember thinking it was funny that the men leaning against the front of Mrs Doleman’s billiard saloon were curious, but none of them went across the road to see what it was that he threw into the long grass.

  2

  How I Found that Mr Bluenose’s Story was True, and How I Told Mr Bryce and was Rewarded for My Story.

  One long hot summer, the school stayed closed after the long holidays because of an epidemic of what they called
infantile paralysis. It killed some people and left others crippled.

  Dad said some people thought you caught the infantile by running around in the sun without a hat. Some thought you caught it off other kids, or that it was in the water. Anyway, that’s why the school stayed closed, the long holidays went on for ever, and we didn’t play together as much.

  Dad still had to go to work, so I often used to go down to see Mr Bluenose and give him a hand in his orchard, just for something to do. One day, I asked him what it was he carried over his shoulder when he came to Waharoa.

  “When I was a boy, I wanted to see the world and ran away to sea,” said Mr Bluenose. “But I was so seasick so many times, I tied up my last ship at Auckland, put an oar on my shoulder, and walked inland till somebody asked me what it was. Then I knew I was so far away from the water and waves, I would never be seasick again.”

  Mr Bluenose saw me looking at him. “I have told it so many times, I cannot remember if my story is true or not.”

  “But you must remember!”

  Mr Bluenose shook his head. “It happened so long ago….”

  Mr Bluenose was a good friend of mine, so I thought I would try to find out for him whether his story was true or not. Going home, I went past Mrs Doleman’s billiard saloon, crossed the road, jumped the ditch, and looked in the long grass. I found a couple of empty beer bottles, and a lemonade bottle. And I found what looked like a round, wooden pole flattened out at one end, and shaped for a handle at the other. It fell to bits, rotten, as I tried to pull it out of the long grass.

  I took the three bottles to the store, and Mr Bryce gave me a penny each for the beer bottles and a penny ha’penny for the lemonade bottle.

  “Could I please have thruppence worth of boiled lollies?”

  Mr Bryce nodded, tore off a piece of brown paper, rolled it into a cone, and filled it with boiled lollies. “Hold it at the bottom,” he said, “or they’ll fall out.”

  I gave him the three pennies and still had the ha’penny left.

  “Have you got any new stories?” asked Mr Bryce, so I told him about the pole I’d found in the long grass. Mr Bryce pushed his glasses up on top of his bald head and thought “How long was it?” he asked.

  “Much longer than me; longer even than you.”

  “It sounds like an oar, for rowing a boat,” said Mr Bryce. “But how would an oar get into the long grass beside the road through Waharoa?”

  That’s when I told him Mr Bluenose’s story about how he had come to Waharoa. “That wooden pole must have been the oar he threw away,” I said.

  “By Jove!” said Mr Bryce.

  “Not only that,” I told him, “but Mr Bluenose said he’s told the story so many times, and it all happened so long ago, he doesn’t know whether it’s true or not.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “Tomorrow,” I said, “I’m going to tell Mr Bluenose his story is true after all, and I’ll tell him about the oar I found in the long grass.”

  “I’m sure Mr Bluenose will be very grateful. It’s a good story.” Mr Bryce felt around on the counter. “Did you see what I did with my glasses?”

  “They’re where you put them, on top of your head.”

  “So they are! I’ll tell you what, give me that ha’penny, and I’ll give you some more lollies for your story.” I gave Mr Bryce the halfpenny, and he gave me a few more lollies and said, “I’ve often wondered who left that pole in the long grass across the road from the billiard saloon. And now I come to think of it, I do seem to remember some story or other about when Mr Bluenose first came to Waharoa, but I didn’t know what he was carrying over his shoulder…. I like a good story,” said Mr Bryce. “Here, have a couple more boiled lollies.”

  I sat under the hedge at the corner of Ward Street, and ate my lollies so my father wouldn’t find and eat them after I’d gone to bed. I did save one big red and white-striped boiled lolly for Mr Bluenose, to give to him when I told him his story was true.

  3

  How Mr Bluenose Got His Name, Roast Pork and Apple Sauce, and Why I Lay Grinning in the Dark.

  “I’m sorry, Mr Bluenose, but my greed overcame me,” I said. “I ate the red and white-striped boiled lolly I was saving for you, but your story about how you came to Waharoa is true. I found the oar in the long grass across the road from Mrs Doleman’s billiard saloon.”

  “I am glad about the story,” said Mr Bluenose, “but I am sorry to hear about the boiled lolly.” I was giving him a hand to sort apples in the shed out the back of his place. I liked the shed. Mr Bluenose had no corrugated iron when he built it, so he flattened out a lot of kerosene tins and nailed them on the roof and walls. I thought I could build a shed that way, too.

  “If you look after a boiled lolly,” said Mr Bluenose, “it can last you a long time.”

  We stood at a bench with the apples in front of us. The big ones went into one barrel, the smaller ones into another barrel, and the ones the birds had pecked, or that had bits of bad in them, went into a kerosene tin for the pigs to crunch up.

  I felt sorry because I hadn’t made Mr Bluenose’s lolly last. I’d crunched it up as fast as I could, in case Dad found it, and was on the last bit when he called out from his bedroom, “Are you eating lollies in bed?”

  I swallowed the last bit quickly. “Just grinding my teeth.”

  “Well, grind them quietly.”

  “Yes, Dad.”

  “Have you said your prayers?”

  “Yes,” I told him. “Have you said yours?”

  “Thanks for reminding me,” Dad muttered. “I’ll say them now.” I listened and could tell he didn’t get out of bed and kneel beside it, and I said so. While Dad was complaining and getting up and getting down on his knees, I found another bit of the boiled lolly under my tongue and made a fair bit of noise crunching that up. Dad groaned so much as he got up off his knees, he didn’t hear.

  I didn’t like to tell Mr Bluenose about how I’d crunched up the boiled lolly in case it upset him. Instead, I took the kerosene tin of bad apples to the pigs. They stood on their hind trotters, put their front feet on top of the wall around their sty, and squealed when they saw me coming. I liked grunting to them as they gobbled and crunched. “Dad always serves apple sauce with roast pork,” I told them, and they grunted back as if they liked apple sauce themselves.

  If there were too many apples for the pigs, Mr Bluenose put them on the compost heap. The compost went back on the garden, or under the apple trees. Mr Bluenose always said there’s no point in wasting anything in an orchard.

  “Would you mind telling me another story?” I asked him.

  “What story would you like to hear?”

  “How you got your name?”

  “What makes you think there is a story about how I got my name?”

  “Because I asked Dad, and he said, ‘I could tell you a story about how Mr Bluenose got his name, but I’m not going to.’ And I heard him saying to himself, ‘Little pigs have big ears.’ He often says that when I’m around. But I just looked at your little pigs, when I was giving them the bad apples, and their ears aren’t that big.”

  “You are right,” said Mr Bluenose. “Little pigs have got little ears. And yours are not all that big either. I do not know what your father means, but I will tell you a story about my name.

  “Just one thing you have got to remember,” said Mr Bluenose. “It is like that story about the oar: I am not sure whether it is true or not. But if you find out that it is true, and somebody gives you some lollies, you might save one of them for me.”

  “I’ll try to,” I said, “but I won’t promise. My father says lollies bring out the glutton in me.”

  Mr Bluenose nodded. “Away to the north of Waharoa, and around the other side of the world, away up off the eastern coast of Canada,” he said, “there are fishing grounds called the Grand Banks.” His voice changed, and I looked at him and saw that he had closed his eyes, so I closed mine.

  �
�Icebergs float down from the North Pole and Greenland. The warm Gulf Stream sweeps up from the south, meets the icebergs and makes fog. It is so cold and foggy on the Grand Banks, the fishermen’s noses and ears and fingers and tongues and toes turn blue.

  “That is how they get their names. Some families are called Bluetongue. Some are called Blue-Ear and Bluefinger. When I started fishing, I got so cold and seasick, my nose turned blue. That is how I got my name.”

  I opened my eyes. “Is that true?” I asked Mr Bluenose.

  He opened his eyes and looked surprised. “I am not sure if it is true,” he said, “but you asked for a story about how I got my name.”

  On the way home, I looked in the long grass across from Mrs Doleman’s billiard saloon, but there weren’t any bottles. I went to Mr Bryce’s store and told him the story of how Mr Bluenose got his name. Mr Bryce didn’t seem to think it was worth any lollies. Instead, he said, “You find any empty beer bottles, I’ll give a penny each for them. Soft drink bottles, a penny ha’penny.” And he reached up, felt for the glasses on top of his head, and pulled them down.

  “I looked,” I told him, “but there weren’t any.”

  “Then,” said Mr Bryce, “you’ll just have to look harder,” and he showed me how to look hard by staring at the big glass jar of boiled lollies.

  I went straight home. I didn’t sit under the hedge at the corner of Ward Street because I didn’t have any lollies that Dad might steal off me.

  “Why such a long face?” he asked.

  I told him how Mr Bluenose got his name, and I was going to tell him Mr Bryce didn’t think it was much of a story, but my father said it was nonsense.

  “I’ve never heard such rubbish,” he said. “His nose went blue because he drank too much, so people started calling him Bluenose. That’s how he got his name. Bluenoses and Bluetongues!” my father said. “Blue-Ears and Bluefingers! What ever next? Bluetoes?”