|
||
|
|
||
| PAPERBACK BOOKS | ||
READ THESE REVIEWS: * Wow! What a full-on book. It really makes you think how lucky you are and helps put the plight of repeat offenders into context—Phil Gayen—Today Tonight * This is a book children should
read and then discuss it with their teacher
in a classroom. * Take the phone off the hook—this book can stand alongside the best—Jenny LaCompte—feature writer—That’s Life.
PREFACE. This
book is a true story. Thank you Steve L. INTRODUCTION
The
most vivid memories I have of my parents were their drunken screaming fights,
with my mother yelling at my father… she was always saying; “I'll
keep Jack and Benjamin here with me, but you… take your precious little Marty
and get the fuckin' hell out of my life!” My
dad would just walk into his room mumbling and close the door behind him… I
used to think: “Why
does mum want me and dad to leave?” “What
did I do?” But
when their fights were on in earnest, I would scream and yell too. As
I grew older… 10, 11, 12 and so on, I used to end all their fights by calling
them both a pair of fucking bastards and run out of the house. Sometimes
I would stay out all night. My
mum was always goin’ on about how I was dad’s favourite, but for the life of
me I could never see it. On
some of those occasions when I did stay out all night, I used to sleep in the
doorway of the local barber’s shop, which was on the bus stop on the main road
of our suburb (Great North Road). My
father would come up to the bus stop at 4:00 A.M. on the weekdays to catch the
bus to work, he had a ‘fruit and veggie’ stand at the Sydney markets. He
would simply nudge me in the ribs with his foot and tell me to get home….
C H A P T E R O
N E
(part sample)
It was Christmas morning 1963 and waking up was one
of the best experiences of my life, for leaning up against my bedroom wall was
my 'new / used' pushbike. Even though it was a second hand bike, the previous
owner had kept it in mint condition. Although
a little faded, it had an immaculate paint job, a frosty dark green with yellow
and white insets and black and white pin stripes down the frame, a
Speedwell racer, a classic bike back in the early sixties. My
parents really couldn't afford it, but I had been badgering them all year to get
it for me for my first year of high school. I had told them that if I got
nothing else, I just had to have that bike. I
had received very poor marks on my test at Abbotsford Primary School in 6th
class… 256 out of a possible 800, which was a failing grade anyway. But I had
already repeated fifth class the previous year and was turning 13 in 1964, so it
was time to move up the educational ladder. My sixth grade teacher told me that
I had better pull my socks up, or I would never get out of first form. At
about this stage of my life I suppose I was looking for someone to blame for the
way I was, my attitude towards
everybody and everything, and my basic smart-arsed behaviour in general. Well
I lay the burden of that fairly and squarely on the shoulders of my mother and
father, for the simple fact that I was an unwanted child, and they had let me
know it from the day I was born. I
was angry and on the verge of hating them! Both
of my parents were serious alcoholics, and through out my early years they were
always fighting… more often than not because of me, and of the position that
‘I’ had put them in… I can't remember one time in my life when I didn't
smell booze on their breaths. My
mother's maiden name was Nora Phillips and she was 35 when she gave birth to me.
She was already an unmarried mother with a nine year old son named Jack
Phillips, who was born in 1942. I
was never told that Jack was my half brother, I was told that he was my mum's
younger brother, my ‘uncle.’ Then,
in 1950 my mum and dad started dating, or they at least dated once, because my
mum fell pregnant and I was the result of that liaison. In
those (good old) ‘archaic days,’ it was totally unacceptable in our society
to be an unmarried mother, and due to all the peer pressure that my father {who
was 39 and single at the time} received from the community, ended up marrying my
mother in October 1950. He
did the ‘right thing,’ by starting up a legitimate family. I
was born on the 12th of June 1951… christened Martin James White the first son
of Bill and Nora White from the middle class inner western suburb of Abbotsford
in Sydney, I began my life. My
mother gave birth to another son two years later, Benjamin White. Our
house was a ‘classic,’ for in the centre of our middle class suburb stood,
‘The Haunted House’… well, that's one way to describe it (and most people
did.) A huge four bedroom single level ‘in need of a paint job’ fibro and
timber dwelling on a large block of land on the corner of Campbell and Bickleigh
Street. The grass in our yard was over three feet tall, except for a pathway,
which was kept mown for access to the clothesline... and it had an old paling
fence that was falling down all over the place. Our
house stuck out like the proverbial cliché.
Some parents even told their kids not to walk past our house, or to play
with the kids from the ‘haunted house.’ Some people even crossed the street
to avoid walking past the place themselves, but I think that had more to do with
mum and dad’s drunken screaming fights more than anything else, and I could
sympathise with them, it scared the ‘shit’ out of me… and I lived there! My
mother and father had the most unusual relationship and were indeed an odd
couple, they had their own separate rooms, and lives. It's
easy to describe my mum and dad. Mum was four foot ten inches tall and very over
weight, and my dad was close to six foot tall and as skinny as a beanpole. Both
of them looked ill and much older than what they really were {grey hair and
aging.} My mum looked like she was in her late forties, and dad… on a good day
looked close to eighty.
|
||||||||||||
| All
Prices in Australian Dollars CURRENCY
CONVERTER
(c)2003 Zeus Publications.com All rights reserved. |
