I’m Dreaming of a Poor Christmas
When I was a boy growing up in my old home town of Box Hill, there was no happier time of year than Christmas. But in those days towards the end of the War and immediately after, when my mother, recently widowed, was struggling to keep a business from bankruptcy, and to save the remnants of the property following her young husband’s death leaving her with four children under the age of eight, Christmas time was not a time of expensive presents.
The anticipation of Christmas started months before. Adults would often ask “What do you hope to get for Christmas?” We would inevitably make our feelings known: perhaps a Meccano set or a toy train or a wind up car. The girls almost always wanted a doll whose eyes could shut, or a bride doll dressed in the finest of white. We never wanted more than one present because we knew that only one gift was what we would get.
My mother used to hang up a pillow case near the chimney in the front room of the half house in which we all lived, with my mother and father before he died and baby Nola sleeping in the first bedroom, my poor old demented grandmother who slept in the second room which was also her lounge, her sitting room and the centre of her whole life, and we three older children all slept in a tiny room with a large hall cupboard. It wasn’t a proper bedroom but the three of us were squeezed in one on top of the other and that was sufficient, except when someone also wanted to go into the bathroom which had an old chip heater and a handbasin.
The front room was always left “for good”. We had a big comfy sofa and a couple of chairs, a big square gramophone in the corner which was wound up with a handle and it was in the front room that we also had our radio set and pianola. All of the valuables of the house were carefully presented in this room. My mother prized above everything a crystal cabinet in which she displayed pieces of her best china and things from her “glory box”.
On Christmas Eve on the mantlepiece above the chimney four pillow cases were hung, each with a name on it. A slice of Christmas cake was left out for Santa Clause and a bottle of beer, Victoria Bitter, and a glass for Santa to refresh himself. Sometimes we even brought home some hay from the bakery and left it at the bottom of the chimney for the reindeer.
We believed in Santa Claus and I can remember a feeling of absolute dismay when one Christmas someone told me that Santa Claus was not REAL. In an instant, the myth was broken and much of the magic was gone.
Our pillow cases were usually filled, not with toys but with things we needed. There was always a new hand knitted jumper, perhaps a new pair of pyjamas, a new pair of socks, a jigsaw puzzle, a few little painted nails which were twisted round and locked together which required a great deal of patience to untangle them, a little round flat case with a picture inside it with five holes in the picture and five ball bearings under the glass cover which had to be held very carefully to see if you could get the five ball bearings in the eyes and ears and mouth of the picture. There were always plenty of peanuts, an orange or two and some sweets such as “Minties” or the more expensive blue wrapped “Fantales” whose wrappers told us the life stories of famous actors and actresses to be seen in the Regent and Rialto theatres in Box Hill.
Apart from this there was one toy for each child.
The three toys that I remember most from my childhood were all second hand. All stayed with me although much dilapidated by use over the years, until my adult life.
One year there was a large wooden box with a handle on each end and a lock. It had stamped across the cover in black lettering “The Commercial Banking Company of Sydney Limited” and on the side the black word “Coppers”. My father had obtained this box from our friendly bank manager next door to his shop, Mr. Monteith, who was our banker for as many years as I could remember. He had celebrated my birth by opening a bank account in my own name and depositing 1 of his own money in it. He had given my father this strong wooden box which the bank used to cart pennies and ha’pennies from the vaults.
There was a lock on the box and the keys were in the Christmas stocking. The excitement of opening that box was greater than if it had been a pirate’s treasure chest. Inside it were a whole collection of Meccano pieces. They has been used before and many had the green paint chipped and cracked but it was my own Meccano set. During the war, precious metal could not be used in Britain to make children’s toys and war time production of Meccano was limited to make believe metal pieces made out of printed cardboard. I did have some cardboard Meccano there but most of the pieces were real metal dating from before the war.
That Meccano set was used to create hundreds of models every single year, even up into middle teenage years. It became a ritual every Christmas to make a large Meccano crane and to bring out all of our toys and to set up a big display of everything we had and the Meccano always took pride of place. Six years later, I still have the box and the Meccano set.
The second most memorable toy arrived. It was an electric Hornby train complete with railway station with little people painted on the side, four carriages and a magnificent engine with cotton wool for smoke. There was a transformer and the train gained its electricity through a centre rail. Over the years, each birthday and Christmas added pieces and I used pocket money to purchase additions to this train set. Over the years, we added more rails until it could have a bigger loop around the good room and then a rather waggly extension from a cross over down the passage and around the corner.
The train set was also second hand and marked, yet it was the most beautiful train I had ever seen in the world. There a came a moment of heart break when, having kept it all through my childhood and adult life hoping that my own children might enjoy the same thrills that I had, only to find that electronic space invaders had taken over, I took the train set in its box down to the local opportunity shop. It had been my companion for 35 years. I have regretted doing that ever since.
The third present I remember was my first bike. It was standing there by the chimney one Christmas morning. I rushed in before dawn and I saw what I dared not even dreamed might be given to me my own bike. It was bright red, had 24 inch wheels and up the bar in the centre were the letters “Moyes Special”.
Of course it was second hand as well but my father had asked the men round at Templeton’s Bike Shop to give it a fresh spray of paint and a signwriter friend added the name. The red Moyes Special and myself became inseparable companions for years. Eventually it was passed on to my younger brother, then returned to me for one of our own children. My father had ordered that bike for me just before he died. This was the first Christmas after his death.
On Christmas Day, the red special arrived which was to cause a problem in our family.
With such a bike as this a boy could ride anywhere. In the early morning light, I wheeled the bike out to the front gate. I had changed from pyjamas into shorts and a shirt and wearing a pair of sandals sat on the seat and tried riding it. Of course I had ridden friends’ bikes previously. Before long I was speeding down the hill in Miller Street, around into Bank Street.
After riding up and down the hill a few times I realized I could now travel anywhere I wanted and I decided I would ride the bike to Ferntree Gully and show my friend who worked in the bake house, “Dave the Wave”, my new bike.
I had never ridden a bike more than perhaps 20 yards before. Now I was setting off on a 16 mile journey which would climb up into the foothills of the Dandenongs.
I also neglected to tell my mother that I was leaving. Somehow I thought with the speed of this little red bike I would cover the distance, show Dave the Wave, ride swiftly down hill all the way back and present myself before my mother in time for breakfast.
I set off with a great deal of enthusiasm, the pedals flashing round. It was not long before I had ridden outside the boundary of Box Hill and before long I had passed the furthermost point I had ever travelled on foot in my exploration of surrounding countryside. The main road was empty of cars early in the morning. I made great progress. Once I was on “Ferntree Gully Road” I knew I only had to stay on this road until at the end I would come to the house of “Dave the Wave”.
The pedals were not going around quite so fast after a while and the 24 inch wheels took a lot of revolutions to cover one mile. But boyish enthusiasm and general fitness prevailed. Several miles went past. The sun began to rise and it was going to be a typically hot Melbourne Christmas Day. I stopped beside a creek and had cold wash leaving my hair ringing wet. It seems strange in these days, but there was nothing wrong in those days with stopping at a creek and having a drink of water. I rested for a while and set off again towards Ferntree Gully.
I cannot remember what the journey was like but eventually some time in the early afternoon, incredibly weary, I proudly rode the red “Moyes Special” up to the front gate of the house where “Dave the Wave” lived with his parents in Ferntree Gully. They were amazed to see me, staggered to think that I had ridden the entire journey on the little bike, and then alarmed when it was discovered that I had not told my mother where I was going. Their Christmas Dinner was already over and they were spending the afternoon resting in easy chairs on the back lawn. Dave the Wave wanted me to leave the bike there and he would drive me home on his motor bike.
However, after a few glasses of lemonade, strength returned and I was insistent that I would ride the bike home. After saying farewell to my Ferntree Gully friends I set off on the 16 mile journey back home. Most of the journey was down hill but there were some steep hills to be faced on the way back. Night came. I do not know how Dave the Wave contacted my mother but apparently they had rung someone in Box Hill and asked them to go round to tell my mother where I had been. In those days very few private homes had telephones and some kind person apparently left their own Christmas rest to go and tell a very alarmed mother.
My mother did not know how to drive the car but she was determined meet me. It was dark when she set off up the Ferntree Gully Road to find me. My mother had driven the car before when my father was alive by sitting behind the steering wheel driving the car with my rather drunk father in the passenger seat changing the gears. Now, on her own, she set out along the Ferntree Gully Road. She found me absolutely exhausted slowly walking my little red “Moyes Special” up the long “Wheeler’s Hill” with still another 5 miles to go.
The back of our old car used to fold down and the Moyes Special was popped in the back while I got into the front seat next to my mother. I do not know whether she was relieved, whether I was scolded, received a belting or what. I simply remember falling asleep before we had travelled very far.
Thirty years later my wife and I had been saving desperately hard to buy our first house. We also had four children and no money. We had placed a deposit on a house using up all of the available savings we had, had obtained a sufficient bank loan to cover the rest of the cost and were the proud owners of a house with a huge mortgage. But we still had a large amount of debt to pay: legal fees, stamp duty, estate agents costs and the like. At a time when I was earning $26.00 a week the accounts which totalled almost a thousand dollars seemed an impossibility but we were determined to pay them off rather than take a second mortgage.
Various people agreed to receive our payments. We scrimped and saved every cent we could to pay off every debt we had before Christmas. That year my wife worked a miracle of house keeping. We purchased nothing except the bare essentials and every piece of our savings went into our new home. There were no birthday presents apart from what we made for each other. Two months before Christmas we decided that instead of giving presents to each other and to the children we would make each other gifts. There were lots of secretive hours spent in different parts of the house where everybody else was forbidden to go. Out in the back garage I hammered and sawed, glued and painted and eventually we had assembled a fine group of toys for our children. It was a great Christmas. One boy loved the huge fire engine with the ladder on top and the hose behind complete with all chrome fittings rescued the tip. He could actually sit in it and pedal it along. Another liked the bright red billy cart made with old pram wheels. Our daughter loved her two storey dolls house with each room decorated with carpet and wallpaper and tiny dolls furniture. Another boy enjoyed his large farm with its fences and sheds and mirror duck pond.
It is interesting that years later whenever my children talk about the toys of Christmas they all say those were the best toys they ever owned: those we made when we were poorest. The doll’s house and farm, have been used by our grand children, as their owners kept them for their children.
In an era of highly expensive electronic mass produced and highly advertised children’s’ toys, both in my generation and my children’s generation the toys that we remember most were second hand or hand made.
But there was one other ingredient in them. Those toys were an expression of love made with diligent care and increasing delight as they gradually took shape. Christmas was not a hurried purchase two days before. It was two months of preparation, secrecy and love. We had each other. We had love in our family and we had Jesus Christ in our midst. They are the free gifts of Christmas and those gifts made the others worthwhile.
I often used to dream of what I might get some poor Christmas when I was a boy walking home along Bank Street beside the railway line to the top of the hill and to No.5 Miller Street, Box Hill, a great city which was then only a village where the adults were kind and where the children grew up responsibly.
GORDON MOYES
