He Had The Last Laugh
When I was studying 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 the little church there was the O’Hara family. The dynasty was headed up by old Grandpa Ernest O’Hara. He was in his eighties. The family had come from Ireland and he was the third generation to live in the Newmarket area. They were very proud of their Australian ancestry and their Irish background and had built a large family business. In his time he had been a City Counsellor for the city of North Melbourne and had been followed after a record term in office by his youngest son. It was a powerful local family, influential in local politics and in all the activities of the area. Old Grandpa Ernest O’Hara was the proprietor of “O’Hara’s Wonder Supplement” a vitamin supplement that they manufactured for race horses.
Now old Ernest attended church every Sunday without fail. He strongly opposed gambling and racing but his whole life was bound up in the racing industry. He lived a very moral and upright life. But his dominating characteristic was his meanness. He was thin, wizened and angular. He looked mean. He had the most powerful handshake of any man I knew and his fingers were permanently crooked with sharp nails so that when he shook hands his nails bit into the palms of yours. He not only looked mean, he was mean. He wore the oldest clothes of any person I had ever seen. His waist coat was permanently on him and permanently thread bare.
He told me on one occasion, when I asked him for some money for a church project, that he had promised his father that he would give the church two shillings a week which was a tenth of his income in those days and he had kept that promise throughout his entire life ! No more than two shillings a week was ever given to the church. I remember on one occasion when I visited him at his work and suggested that as a final gesture he might like to donate to the church a new electric organ to cost 1,000 pounds. To a man who had never given more than two shillings a week, the thought of 1,000 pounds was enough to strike him dead on the spot. Needless to say, I never got more than the promised two shillings.
He had three sons, all of whom were very inadequate. The eldest son was large and muscular. Jethro was married to the most fashionable woman around the area, Sheila. What really troubled Sheila was that she did not have the money to dress in the way she would like. Jethro, like his other two brothers, was only paid a minimum salary and in spite of the fact that their family were worth over a million pounds in property and assets, they lived like paupers. Sheila had married into the family expecting money and an easy life. And her whole appearance, dress and behaviour was one of a person who was dying to get her hands onto the family fortune but totally frustrated because of old Grandpa Ernest’s refusal to let any money slip through his fingers.
The second was David, who was short and shifty and married to a nondescript woman. The youngest son born many years later was the apple of his father’s eye. Judd was very short like his brother David and was unfortunately deformed around his spine and shoulders so that he always walked with a pronounced stoop, with his head on one side. But he was Grandpa’s favourite and was chosen by Grandpa to follow him into the City Council. He in his turn had been Mayor and had a long line of civic responsibilities. His wife Jane was a very warm and kindly person who struggled being Mayoress while at the same time living on a most limited income.
All the family wanted Grandpa’s money, and Grandpa was determined that no one should have it.
They had built their fortune from “O’Hara’s Wonder Supplement” and the ingredients were a highly kept secret. I visited their home and the factory at the back of Grandpa’s house on many occasions but was not allowed to see the ingredients that went into the “O’Hara’s Wonder Supplement”. But over the years I gained an idea that it was composed of bread, which was bought stale from the bakeries, dried out in large ovens and then crushed, then salt, and blood and bone extract that came from the abattoirs was added. The blood was dried, the bone was crushed, and the ingredients mixed together and compacted into square blocks which the horses used to lick.
Most of the race horses’ trainers around Flemington racetrack and the Ascot Vale Show Grounds used to swear by “O’Hara’s Wonder Supplement”. Their business did a brisk trade sending large packets of blocks of “O’Hara’s Wonder Supplement” to race horse trainers all over Australia. During my time, the company also branched out into a smaller sized block suitable for greyhound food. Because it was composed largely of crunched, dried out bread, salt, blood and bone extracts, there were no fats involved, so it was ideal for greyhound training.
The secret of the mixture stayed with Grandpa and his three sons. Mean old Grandpa Ernest would spend every cold morning around the track at Flemington, rising before dawn with the race horse trainers and the jockeys. Underneath his trousers he used to wrap a copy of the previous day’s newspapers around his legs and tie them with string to stop the chilled morning air getting through to him. Every day like ritual he used to mix a glass of warm water with a small tablet of “O’Hara’s Wonder Supplement” and drink the dark brown liquid for his health. He swore by it “for man and beast”.
The greatest contention concerned old Grandpa Ernest’s will. The three sons were to inherit the business and all of his property. They knew that, but old Grandpa had made a condition on the will that they must continue to run the business until the next generation, for if they sold the business the total proceeds from his estate would go to animal welfare.
The three boys and their wives felt trapped. They lived in little workman’s cottages, made of weatherboard which had been unpainted for years. Their wives were unhappy, especially Sheila. They were regarded by the community as a millionaire family, but they lived and worked like paupers. And people attributed to the three sons and their wives the same meanness that they saw in old Grandpa Ernest. However, I knew them better than that and I knew that if only they could get hold of Grandpa’s money, they would all have new houses, new cars, new suits, in the biggest orgy of spending Melbourne had ever seen. It was openly spoken about among the boys that they would contest Grandpa’s will immediately he died.
But Grandpa Ernest was not going to die. Even in his late eighties, he had a keen eye underneath his wiry and bushy eyebrows. He was the founder of the Newmarket small bore rifle club and there always was a trusty rifle near at hand around the factory. Many a time I had been visiting and talking to him at work when he would suddenly reach to the side of a factory wall, pick up his rifle and, without pausing in conversation, swing round and shoot from a rafter a rat that he saw walking along. He also hated cats and my guess was that many a neighbours’ prowling cat disappeared at night.
But the day came when old Grandpa Ernest started to die. The process went on for weeks. He was bedridden, frail and in a coma. The doctor said almost daily that he did not believe that he would see the day out. Yet day after day went by and old Grandpa Ernest survived. Then late one night, I received a call to say that he was breathing his last breath and would I come. I left the College of the Bible, pulling a pair of trousers and a shirt over the top of my pyjamas, climbed into my motor bike leathers and turned the big black BSA 500 towards Newmarket. I rode through the cold night air and arrived at their home to find the three sons, their wives, an assortment of grandchildren and the local doctor all standing around Ernest’s bed. In the centre, in a coma, with the oxygen mask over mouth and nose, lay a very pale old Ernest.
I stood there with the family for a short while and the doctor leaning over lifted his eyelids, placed his stethoscope on his heart and removed the oxygen mask. “I’m sorry to say your father is now dead” he said. As he wound up the plastic tubing from the oxygen mask I moved to the side of the bed and spoke to the gathered family for a few moments about my memories of Grandpa Ernest and what he had meant over the years to the community, to the church and to their family business. I then took the still, lifeless hand of old Grandpa Ernest in mine and asked the family to bow their heads while I committed the soul of Grandpa Ernest to God. I thanked God for his life and for the work that he had done and for his regularity at church over all the years and I committed his soul to God. I concluded my prayer by saying “in Jesus’ name, Amen.”
At that moment I received the biggest shock in all of my life. The dead man grasped my hand, his nails biting deep into the flesh of my palm and said in a firm thin voice that was so easily recognizable, “Amen !”. Even in his coma, without breathing or heart beating, he had heard and understood. Everybody in the room jumped. The doctor quickly unraveled the plastic piping and placed the oxygen mask back on his mouth and nose. Jethro said “Damn ! Damn !” He and Sheila walked out into the lounge room with the other brothers, their wives and assorted children all following. It was almost as if they had been cheated. Old Grandpa Ernest was not going to die after all. He had come back from the dead.
Only the doctor and I stood around the bed. The doctor told me he had never seen anything like it. He checked him more thoroughly with his stethoscope and held a mirror to his mouth once more and again took off the oxygen mask. There is no doubt about it. Regardless of what we saw or held, this man was clinically dead. And so he was. During all this time I still had Ernest’s hand grasping mine in the tightest of grips with the nails biting into my palms. Then I noticed that his grip had become quite frozen. I untwined his fingers from mine and his lifeless arm dropped across his chest. The doctor checked once more and said “There is no doubt about it. He’s dead alright, he’s well and truly gone.” I said another silent prayer and looked at old Grandpa Ernest O’Hara for the last time and prepared to go out into the lounge to tell the other members of the family. But I will swear that as I looked at him for the last time old Ernest O’Hara smiled a wicked grin. I am sure he enjoyed giving them one last fright.
The funeral was a large affair, and the family did contest the will, and in their turn did buy new houses, cars and Sheila became the grand lady of Newmarket. But old Ernest enjoyed his control over the money till the last moment.
I’ll never forget that night as I walked out of their house into the cool night air with the wind blowing from the abattoirs, started my motor bike and headed towards the College of the Bible to train as a young minister thinking with my meeting with some of God’s children in Newmarket.
GORDON MOYES
