Cheap by Name, Cheap by Nature
When I was studying to be a minister of the Gospel my student churches were two small adjacent wooden churches in the inner slum areas of North Melbourne. For seven years ,during the 1950’s and 60’s, the people of those inner slum areas were my parish.
In those days some of the worst of the little workers’ cottages were badly dilapidated, wet and unhealthy. They were to be demolished, and the state government intended to build huge high-rise concrete flats in their place. In them, one of the families I met was that of Mr. and Mrs. Cheap.
How could I ever forget the Cheap family? Their family slogan was “Cheap by name and Cheap by nature”, which they used to proclaim with great pride. But it seemed to me that they never really understood what they were saying. Mrs. Cheap was a slovenly woman, always dirty, but always bright and happy. She managed to do the least amount of work possible. That was amazing because they had seven children in a tiny two bedroom house.
Mr. Cheap was permanently unemployed. He used to spend all of his days sitting in an old over-stuffed club lounge chair watching black and white television. In those days of the late 1950s, just after television was introduced to Australia, the hours of transmission were restricted to the late afternoon and evening. However, all morning and afternoon a test pattern was telecast. Each time I called upon the Cheap family, Mr. Cheap would be sitting up in his over-stuffed armchair watching the test pattern with great interest. The music filled the house.
Mr. Cheap always intended to get about and do something during the day, so when he got up of a morning he pulled an old tartan dressing gown over his thin pyjamas and sat down in the chair until he recovered sufficient strength and energy to set about his daily duties. If I ever called late in the afternoon close to tea time, he would still be sitting in his tartan dressing gown and thin pyjamas in front of the black and white television watching the test pattern and waiting for Mrs. Cheap to bring him a warmed up TV dinner.
Among the tribe of children the work of the house, and of caring for the younger children, fell upon the shoulders of the older daughter, Ginger. She was an absolutely beautiful girl with long red hair.
She certainly did not inherit her hair from her father. Mr. Cheap was almost bald except he had a tuft of hair around the back of his cranium which he let grow to great length. The first thing every morning those remaining long strands of hair were duly oiled with Brylcream. They were then carefully combed backwards and forwards across his bald head in a zig zag pattern until they ended up stuck down near the front of one of his temples. By carefully zigzagging the Brylcreamed hair across his head he managed to convince people that he was not bald.
Ginger had no problem like that. Her hair was rich and gloriously red, with natural waves. She was a striking girl. At 16 years of age she had film star looks, an extremely ample figure and the glorious red hair. Mr. and Mrs. Cheap possessed little by way of furniture or belongings in their house except this new black and white seventeen inch television set and a big old pianola which had been Mrs. Cheap’s mother’s. The pianola was the pride of the family. When the Housing Commission had built the huge 24 storey concrete flats, Mr. and Mrs. Cheap and children moved into one of the Housing Commission flats. They asked me if I could get a man to help shift the pianola as they could not afford a removalist.
I rang up my friend Jim Strack of F.W. Strack and Sons of Essendon and asked him if he would, for my sake and the Gospel’s, shift a family who could not afford to pay. We laugh about it to this day. The pianola was so huge it could not get into one of the lifts in the Housing Commission flats. Jim and two of his young men carried that pianola up eight flights of stairs until eventually they got it into the door of the flat and collapsed exhausted. Throughout all of this time Mr. Cheap sat in his favourite armchair in his dressing gown and pyjamas watching the test pattern on their black and white television. As Jim Strack said to me “Here we were working our insides out to get their pianola into the flat without any recompense when all he did was watch the television which I could not even afford.”
Ginger hated both their old slum cottage and the new concrete Housing Commission flat. She wanted to have money, a big house with two storeys and a balcony around it. Her dreams were going to be accomplished.
Although she was only 16 years of age, she had clearly in mind what she was going to achieve in life. The first problem that she faced was her name. She hated being known as Ginger “Cheap”. She decided to get her name changed by deed poll and she changed it promptly to Taylor. Somehow the hair of Ginger Rogers and the face and figure of Elizabeth Taylor seemed to come together in our own 16 year old version of Ginger Taylor.
Ginger and the younger children came to our Sunday School in the Newmarket Church of Christ. She became very active in the youth group. She made a commitment to Christ, was baptised and became a member of the church. She was most enthusiastic in all that we did. But within two weeks of coming to the church she had already decided that there were no boys whose families were wealthy enough for her. Ginger made no secret of her ambition and asked me very frankly who were the wealthiest family in the entire district.
The only people I could think of were the Azzopardi’s, a family that ran several greengrocer shops and a greengrocer wholesaling business at the Victoria Market. Mr. Azzopardi belonged to one of those huge Maltese families that had worked very hard in Australia in those years following the war. He had built up a good business. He had one son, Nicholas, who drove round town in a white convertible car. Nicholas was good looking and hard working. He had left school, like his father, at the age of 14 and spent the early morning hours of each day at the market selling their fruit and vegetables and then all afternoon working in one of their shops.
For some weeks I had missed Ginger at the youth group at the church, so I called round to the flat. Mrs. Cheap invited me in and promptly poured a cup of tea. Every time she laughed, which was often, her double chins bounced up and down. Mr. Cheap sat in his over-stuffed club armchair with his tartan dressing gown over his thin pyjamas while he watched the test pattern on the black and white television. Two or three of the little children were home with the latest sniffle and so was Ginger. Ginger Taylor looked radiant. She could wear the oldest of clothes and rags and still look like a princess. However, she did not wear rags but very carefully spent every penny she could obtain on her hair, her face and her clothes.
I explained the reason of my visit. I had missed Ginger at Sunday School, at youth group and at church services. Ginger stunned me. “Oh, I do not go to your church any more. I go to the Catholic church up the road. As a matter of fact I have been taking lessons in the Catholic faith and the priest will very soon receive me into the church.”
I was surprised at this turn of events and asked her why she was going to the Catholic church. Had she been studying her Bible? Had she come to new insight of the Christian faith? Had she decided that she liked the Roman Catholic mass better than our more plain communion services and evangelical gospel services?
It was more simple than all of these significant questions. She simply had noted that Nicholas Azzopardi had pulled up in his white Falcon convertible outside the Catholic church each Sunday morning, on her way to our church. So she decided that she was going to become a Roman Catholic. Now, six weeks down the track, she was about to become a communicant member of the Catholic faith and she had her first date the following Friday night with Nick Azzopardi.
Mrs. Cheap was full of joy at the prospect.
It was not long afterwards that I saw the white Falcon pulled up at the traffic lights and I stepped across and greeted them. Nick, was sitting in the driver’s seat with his long black hair carefully combed, wearing sunglasses, with his right hand on the steering wheel while the left arm lay across the back of the seat. Nestled in beside him, dressed in a white strapless dress with her gorgeous red hair about her shoulders was Ginger Taylor, formerly Cheap. Ginger called to me as I approached the car and waved her left hand furiously. On her third finger was the biggest engagement ring I had ever seen in my life. She and Nick were engaged and were going to be married at the end of the year.
I never received an invitation to the wedding service but it seemed like everyone else did. More than a thousand people gathered in the Kensington Town Hall for the wedding breakfast. The wedding of the year had been celebrated in the Catholic church which had been filled to overflowing. Every Maltese family in Melbourne seemed to be present and sitting at pride of place at the long head table were Mr. and Mrs. Cheap and their assorted children. Ginger looked absolutely radiant. I was told she was greeted by everyone present as one of the most beautiful additions to the Azzopardi family.
I stayed working among the slums in Newmarket for the next seven years. That was long enough to see Nick and Ginger shift to the outer suburb of Keilor, where in a new neighbourhood, they built their home. One day while visiting a family in the area, my friends pointed out a huge home on the top of a hill and said “Do you know that Ginger Cheap lives in that house?”
It was all that I ever pictured Ginger had wanted. It was a large two storey brick house with balconies all around, with white plaster columns in the front and a white plaster balustrade around the veranda. A wide sweeping staircase led down to the front of the garden. The house was huge and I am quite sure would have been filled with ornate Italian furniture. However, Ginger did not have all her way. The front garden and up the side of the house was full of rows of staked tomatoes, celery and green beans. Nick Azzopardi was going to use every bit of ground he had to make sure the greengrocery business was successful.
Over the next seven years about half a dozen children arrived. Ginger had her family, her figure, her plentiful hair, her house and her man.
As far as I could ever find out they lived happily together in an harmonious family life. Ginger Cheap Taylor Azzopardi became the queen of the new housing subdivision of Keilor.
Whenever I called upon the Cheap family there were always photographs of the latest grandchildren, of Nick and Ginger, the babies and surrounding them the huge Azzopardi family. Mrs. Cheap was so proud of her daughter’s accomplishments. Mr. Cheap had new interests in his life, because by now the stations were playing a series of programmes and he could sit up throughout the whole day in his pyjamas and dressing gown, watching “I Love Lucy” until “The Untouchables” at the close of transmission.
I will never forget what it was like when I first started to visit the Cheap family in their little wooden house along the row of Newmarket slums. I thought Ginger was one of the most beautiful girls we had ever seen as I walked out in the heavy air blowing from the abattoirs, started my motor bike, and headed back towards the College of the Bible to train as a young minister, thinking of my meeting with some of God’s children in the slums of Newmarket.
GORDON MOYES
