by Pat Ritter
it lay bare with only two bars running from left to right across. At least now it had straightened a little more than it had when swinging from the post. When repairing other gates I always stood them upright to take an eye view of the straightness and shape. My eye was better than a tape measure to measure the distance from corner to corner. If I saw it was straight than other people who looked at the gate would also see it was straight.
To make it stronger I welded three pipes running along the gate between the top and bottom in equal distance. To finally complete the task I welded upright bars from top to bottom in equal distance.
The gate was now reborn with the strength of Samson. With a coat of silver-frost paint it rose from the ashes of death and now happily swings from the post at the cattle yard where it should last for a few more years.
Word count: 412
How To Mend A Broken Heart.
My mother once told me, ‘you’ll know when the right one comes along.’ She always had an intuition of what was about to happen. What is stranger than my mother’s intuition is, only recently, I had been thinking of my first love or whatever it was. And now this story has been given to us to write.
Let me share with you my first love, or perhaps it wasn’t love – it may have been something else. Whatever it was broke my heart. I honestly thought I was going to die. The thought of not being with this person shook the earth below my feet. I felt devastated and hurt. Every bone in my body ached and I kept asking, ‘why me?’
There was little to do in our neighbourhood where I lived and one afternoon I decided to go for a walk. Entering a park a girl around my age walked toward me. Our eyes met - hers brown and sparking. I couldn’t take my eyes from her, she was beautiful.
I stopped and wanted to speak with her and couldn’t. The cat had caught my tongue. Nerves twisted and turned in my body.
‘How are you today?’ Her sweet voice echoed in the air. I was gob smacked. Why would this beautiful and delightful girl want to speak with me? We chatted for a time, exchanging names and where we lived. She asked me to walk her home.
Her Irish parents greeted me with warmth and care and wanted me to stay for afternoon tea. Was I in a dream or was this actually happening, I thought.
From the day we’d met we continued to see one another either at her home or mine. By this time she’d met my family and it was deemed she was part of my life.
Life couldn’t be any better for a fifteen year old teenager who thought he’d found true love. We’d been inseparable for fifteen months. By this time I turned sixteen years of age. Actually I thought I was in love, but at the age of adolescents I really didn’t understand what the term ‘love’ actually meant.
One afternoon I introduced ‘my love’ to my ‘best friend’. Their eyes glued together and within a week I was told me get on my bike and move on. I felt the world had ended. How could my best friend do this to me after I introduced them?
I remembered the words told to me by my mother, ‘you’ll know when the right one comes along.’ Obviously this first encounter with the opposite sex wasn’t the right one.
Anyway eventually I did overcome puppy love and found the right one.
Word count: 456.
The Troubled Man.
Bundy Quicksilver staggered from the public bar of the Railway Hotel. It was closing time. Each night he visited his watering hole to catch up with his mates. On this particular night his mates left at six o’clock stating they were going home to their wife and family. Bundy couldn’t understand why after an hour of drinks they wanted to go home. His session had just begun.
At eight o’clock he looked at his watch through blurred eyes to see it was almost time to leave. The next he remembered was the barman shouting, ‘last drinks gentlemen.’ He couldn’t explain how the past two hours went so quickly.
His trusted steed, the iron horse, Hillman Minx was tied to the hitching rail as he almost fell while stepping from the kerb. The police station was across the road so he thought he’d better act right. They’d be on the lookout for drunks driving their car home but Bundy was sure they wouldn’t catch him because he was one of them.
The iron horse knew its own way home, thank goodness, because Bundy had little sense of how he arrived home. He found his house in darkness, and thought no one was home until he almost fell up the front steps and stumbled falling to the floor. Picking himself up, he staggered into the bedroom and the bed lamp illuminated. Ada, his lovely wife shouted, ‘don’t think you’re sleeping here tonight – you’re drunk. You sleep on the lounge’.
Bright and early next morning Bundy committed his daily ritual by emptying the contents of his stomach on the back lawn. He’d slept in the clothes he’d worn the day before and vomit splattered over his new shoes. His mouth felt as though birds had built a nest and his head thumped as if someone was banging a hollow forty-four gallon drum.
Ada wasn’t happy. When Bundy walked into the kitchen to the smell of fried bacon and eggs, he almost vomited.
‘You come home drunk tonight; I’m taking the kids and leaving. I’ve had enough’, she shouted. Bundy couldn’t believe the words his wife blurted out to hear them clearly.
‘Is there a problem with my drinking?’ He wanted to know.
‘You come home drunk every night and I don’t know where you are half the time. I’ve had enough, and enough is enough.’
A cold feeling overcome him, ‘I PROMISE YOU NOW, I WILL NEVER DRINK AGAIN.’ He told her.
Bundy kept his promise and never drank alcohol again and that was thirty-four years ago.
Word count: 430.
Chasing The Sun.
It was a time when the Beach Boys sang about surfing and celebrations. Lester and Danny, my mates from those days wanted to chase the sun with their surf board. They’d been mates since childhood and I felt I was the third wheel. At times I felt I would never fit in and to tell the truth I doubt that I did. Until one day they wanted a set of surf board racks made to carry their surf board on top of Lester’s car.
My expertise was welding and making anything from cement trowels to surf board racks. This was a time before surf board racks were publically manufactured. Instead of carrying the surf board on top of the car, half of it hung out of the back window or if you had a panelvan, it was carried in the back.
Surf board racks, simply made, were two rods, usually the domestic straw broom handle, fastened by a locking devise to the gutters on the roof of the vehicle. It was ingenious at the time and never in my wildest dreams would have thought the idea would spread world-wide.
I manufactured four couplings and fastened them to the gutter on either side of the roof on Lester’s Austin A40 Sedan. A triangular steel plate held them in position, together with a threaded steel rod passed through a tube welded to the plate. When tightened, the triangular steel plate locked into the guttering of the roof on the vehicle holding the roof rack in position.
To complete the surf board racks, the handle of a straw broom minis the broom head, was passed through steel tubing welded on top of each coupling. It looked fancy and all there was left to do was lay the surf board on top of the rack and fasten it to both wooden handles.
Leslie and Danny chased the surf that summer without me. I continually felt I was the third wheel and they weren’t too keen to have me along. On their return from their escapade they abused my workmanship because during their trip the surf board racks broke and they lost their surf board.
With the speed of the vehicle together with the cylindrical force against the roof racks holding the surf board caused the roof rack couplings to loosen and break from the guttering of the vehicle.
Looking back on the event some fifty years later I may have been slack in welding the racks to the proper standard or perhaps it was I knew they were more interested in going with themselves rather than have me chase the sun with them.
Our friendship didn’t last past those years and I wonder why?
Word count: 456
My U
ncle’s Donkey.
When we received this story to write, I didn’t have the slightest idea on where to start until I checked on Google. To my surprise after typing in ‘my uncle’s donkey’ in the search field revealed a novel ‘My Uncle’s Donkey’ written by author Tohby Riddle. Before searching the name I’d never heard of the title of the book nor the author.
Eagerly I read the notes published by the author and was astonished to read the idea actually came when he had a ‘silly’ conversation with his then three-year-old niece. The author told his niece he had a donkey in his apartment where he lived. This lead to questions and sparked the imagination from each of them. She laughed at his answers. This small collection of words became an idea for a book.
Speaking about a donkey living in an apartment, as a book, on our recent Christmas Tour with Sinclair Tours, I was seated beside an aged lady who loved to talk. Could she talk? Our bus was nearing the town of Cooma when she asked me what I did. I told her we bred miniature horses.
‘What do you do with them?’ She asked in her inquisitive voice.
‘We invite them inside the house and each has their own small lounge chair to sit and watch television.’ I told her with a straight face.
Her hand went to her mouth, ‘Oh – you’re telling me lies, you don’t do that.’ She was aghast by my comment.
‘No I’m not – each miniature horse has their own chair and when we