Haveachat with Les Shipp

by Les Shipp

He sometimes ate at the diner as the meals were good and not expensive. He was very shy when he was served by Ruby as he thought she was very beautiful with her fuzzy black hair and beautiful smile. It took some time before he got to know her enough to speak to her and as he became more comfortable with her he found she had a wonderful disposition. He desperately wanted to take the friendship further but he felt he had nothing to offer her. Ruby on the other hand thought he was very handsome and strong with his Spanish good looks.

  It was inevitable that the barrier would soon be broken down and as Sanchez was eating at the diner more often, they spent what little spare time they had together. Sanchez eventually plucked up enough courage to ask Ruby to move in with him. They were very happy together in Sanchez’s hut by the railway line. Later on they were blessed with a beautiful baby daughter.

  They poured all the love and devotion they had for one another into the raising of their precious little girl. They named her Lucille and she did grow into a very beautiful girl. As she grew up they poured their efforts into giving her a better life than what they had. They made sure she attended school and often struggled paying fees for the schools extra activities. Dancing was one of these activities and as Lucille excelled in this, they gave her all the help they could.

  As she grew into a beautiful teenager she won a bursary to a ballet school. Ruby and Sanchez were overjoyed with this event and it helped them out with their finances. Lucille had several years training in classical dance as she grew into a young woman. She entered dance completions and did well but the one she was best at was jazz ballet.

  When Lucille left school she felt she wanted more in her life than living in a shack down by the railroad, and decided to get a job and make her own way in life. She auditioned for a part as a dancer in a musical that was coming up in the city. Not only did she get the part but was lead dancer in the show. As her skin was a light coffee colour she was accepted as a Latino. Not that this worried Lucille but it did make it easier for her as her career went from strength to strength. Now being comfortably off, she moved her parents from their fettlers hut down by the railroad to a very nice little house on the edge of town. There they lived in great pride watching their precious Lucille dance her way to fame and fortune.

  HIT AND RUN.

  Johnathon was a quite gentle little boy, and when he started school where his father was headmaster he was immediately an easy target for a big bully boy named Bruce the Brute. Bruce was from a family whose philosophy was to trample on anyone weaker than you. It made them feel powerful and important. In reality the father was a good for nothing drunk who used to beat his wife and son up on a regular basis. So Bruce was brought up to intimidate anyone he could. Little Johnathon was an easy child for Bruce to intimidate and harass, because he was miserable with his life at school and was ashamed about being such a weakling. He especially didn’t want his father to know how pathetic he was in not being able to defend himself.

  Almost daily Bruce would ruff him up and take his lunch money. He would even intimidate him outside school hours. Johnathon avoided playing in the park or attending sporting venues in case he came across Bruce. This didn’t make for a happy little boy and his parents could tell he was unhappy and tried to find the reason. Johnathon being afraid of more reprisals from his tormentor kept it all to himself.

  This situation went on for some time and it wasn’t until Johnathon’s dad was sent out to a remote Aboriginal settlement north of Alice Springs that he had a break from his tormentor. The family all moved to the settlement and Johnathon was the only white child there. He was such a quiet kind little boy that the aboriginal children accepted him and immediately gathered him into their culture. The parents could see he was starting to bloom with such a lot of friends and were only too happy to let him participate in their activities. He learned to hunt and fish for food and went on long treks out into the desert with the children. He learned another big lesson and that was you didn’t bully others to get what you wanted.

  The boys at the settlement were all keen on the sport of boxing and taught Johnathon the art of being successful in the ring. As his confidence increased he became a proficient boxer and with all the activity he was engaged in his body became lean and strong. Life was good at the settlement for him and he wondered why he had been so afraid of a certain bully. His character strengthened along with his body and by the time his father’s term of teaching ran out on the settlement he was quite a different boy.

  His father was to return to his old school when his contract ran out so the whole family moved back to their o0ld home. Johnathon had put Bruce out of his mind by this time but this was not the case with Bruce. On spying his old victim Bruce was overjoyed to have this little woos back for him to torment. Bruce made sure he had quite an audience when he set out to prove his dominance in the playground. He approached Johnathon with a smirk on his face ready to give this weakling a real ruff up. Johnathon tried to ignore him at first but Bruce was not to be put off. As Bruce stood over Johnathon full of bluster, shouting obscenities at him, the crowd had gathered around to watch their Bruce destroy the kid. Johnathon by this time realised there wasn’t going to be a happy ending so with his newfound skills he let fly with a mighty clout to Bruce’s nose. With blood running from his nose Bruce couldn’t believe what had happened but with the look on Johnathon’s face he could see it wasn’t going to get any better for him so with a mighty bellow he fled the scene with all his ex-mates laughing at him.

  This was definitely a case of hit and run. Johnathon hit and Bruce did the running.

  MAGIC MOMENTS.

  It is hoped that everyone has their own magic moments in their life and it would be sad for anyone who didn’t. There has been many magic moments in my life and some more profound than the ones I’m going to write about.

  I have loved to sing for most of my life but up until I moved to some acres outside Tamworth I had only sung at private parties. Arriving in Tamworth by myself I decided to fill my empty evenings by joining the very active musical society. Too shy to audition for a part in the upcoming Oklahoma. I was given a place as a cowboy in the chorus as a singer and dancer. This for me was a great success and gave me confidence to take part in the next musical which was Carmen. This stretched my vocal chords beyond what I thought was possible even though I only had a part as a soldier in the chorus.

  My next part I did audition for and it was for an English lord in Anna and the King of Siam. It was a minor principal part but it was a magical moment to be able to transport myself from being a very ordinary person to being a toff up on the stage dancing with Anna. It became a gift to be able to escape the ordinary to be whatever I needed to be up on stage. It was no longer the farm worker or the railway fettler but someone lost in his part up on stage being whatever was required of him.

  In the musical My Fair Lady, I had to change roles three times going from Professor Higgins butler, to a cockney, to being one of the gentry in a ball scene. The biggest challenge for this musical was from the makeup ladies who had difficulties changing my appearance for the different roles, so I was forced to shave off my beard which was a thick bushy affair at the time.

  One of my more memorable roles was in Something Funny Happened on the Way to the Forum. There I played the part of Erroneous, a befuddled old man who was searching for his daughter and the only way to find her was to tramp around the Seven Hills of Rome seven times. As I staggered across the stage seven times the audience would give a loud cheer. I must have played the part well as the musical society in Armidale asked me to play that part in their production. I had to decline as I was already in rehearsal learning to tap-dance for our next musical. Everyone agreed that I was type cast for the role as a befuddled old man.

  The society put on Fiddler on the Roof and I really wanted a lead role in this production. For many nights before the auditions I would play a tape of the musical as I drifted off to sleep and by the time of the auditions I knew word for word every single par
t. However singers from far and wide auditioned for the main parts and I was relegated to being one of the Jewish puppers, Usal the hat maker. The other part I had was as one of the Cossack dancers which just about wrecked me by the end of the show.

  I had the joy of being in seventeen musicals altogether as well as several concerts and plays. One of the concerts was a big one put on for the centenary of the local council. We were given a standing ovation at the end of the show which was indeed a magical moment.

  RITE OF PASSAGE.

  My name is William Khan and I was borne in India twenty-four years ago. This is the story of my fight to win my rite of passage. My father owned a tea exporting company in India and my mother was his Indian housekeeper. They were not married of course as back then such an event would not have been acceptable, but we all did live as a discreet family in private. I was told that my father owned a large family estate in England and that his wife lived there and had no intentions of ever coming to India. It was too barbaric and hot for her to contemplate. Father would visit England occasionally to take care of his affairs there, but he preferred his life in India. He and