The Dim Angel
When I was a young minister freshly graduated and ordained, my first ministry in the mid 1960’s, after seven years of the slums of Newmarket, was in a small country church, in the small country town of Ararat, gateway to the Wimmera in Western Victoria. There I learnt the difficult art faced by all city bred ministers, of becoming a country parson.
Right in the middle of town, half way up High Street where the road takes a bend, just opposite the Commercial Hotel, was the Tarara Cafe. It had been run for many years by a genial Greek by the name of Demetrios Angelopoulos. His wife and his family had been in the community for many years and in spite of being of Greek origin, everyone accepted them as real Australians.
They worked long hours. The Cafe was always open for people passing through the town on the way between Melbourne and Adelaide. Their daughters were over protected but also worked as waitresses in the Cafe.
I wanted to tell you the story about the Tarara Cafe Tarara being “Ararat” spelt backwards and I needed to check some facts about the proprietor. No one ever called him by his full name, which was rather a mouthful, and it became abbreviated over the years to Dim Angie or with some people the Dim Angel. Demetrios was an angel: big, slow moving, genial, friendly, always moving as though he were conserving energy, and always working long hours behind the counter. Regardless which day of the year it was, for the Tarara Cafe never closed, he always wore the same uniform, short sleeved checked shirt, a pair of shorts and a long apron. When he turned round to the big vats of cooking oil where he cooked the fish and chips, you could see the backs of his legs. They were clotted with the largest number of dark blue varicose veins that I have ever seen on a man. He wore shoes without socks and slid his feet along the ground as he walked up and down the long counter of the Tarara Cafe.
There were just a couple of items about the Dim Angel that I wanted to check. So I rang the source of all information at the Ararat Newsagent just up the road and spoke to Eileen. Eileen had worked in the Ararat Newsagency for the last 30 years and knew everybody. But before that, she used to be the switch operator in the Ararat Telephone Exchange. Of course automation eventually came to the Telephone Exchange and when it became automatic Eileen closed an era of telephone switch girls. They were always there night or day when you needed them. The one who lived on the premises, would get up in the middle of the night if you had an urgent call to plug you in. She knew everybody in the Community and their business, and usually knew their business before they knew it. It was widely rumoured that she listened in on all the party line conversations but Eileen stoutly maintained that she never gossiped. She might pass on some important pieces of information to people who ought to know, but she never gossiped.
After the Ararat Telephone Exchange became automated, she started working in the Ararat Newsagency. For the past 30 years she has helped people with their Tattslotto, Soccer Pools and other gambling forms. She still chats on about everyone, and if I ever want to know any information about the people in my old country town, I can quickly give Eileen a ring.
However, last week I got a surprising rebuff when I rang her to ask about the Dim Angel. “I am not telling you a thing about him, and you needn’t bother ringing me any more.” Her voice was quite bitter and sharp which was most unusual for Eileen. I wondered what had happened to our years of friendship. She was soon to let me know: “Everybody up here is talking about that radio programme of yours. They listen in every Sunday and hear you talking about us. And we don’t like what we hear either. We can just picture all you city people laughing and giggling about us country people and our ways so I’m not going to help you. We always regarded you as one of us, for you not only worked here in Ararat but you and your family came back here for 20 years for your holidays and we always reckoned that if anyone came back for their holidays here they really were one of us. But you have betrayed us, telling all those city people about our way of doing things. It’s just not right and I’m not going to help you.”
I mumbled back to Eileen that I certainly never meant to hurt anybody in my old country town, and when I told stories about people in the town they were kindly stories designed to show the courage and resourcefulness of our Australian country people. But Eileen was having none of it. “Well you can get your information from somebody else because I’m not going to tell you anything that will cause you city people to laugh at us.”
I could see that I was never going to win the case with Eileen any more and I put that problem to one side for another day. So relying on my memory I want to tell you about the Dim Angel and the Tarara Cafe.
The Tarara Cafe was on the right hand side of High Street as it went up the hill and proclaimed its name boldly in gold letters across the glass front. Inside the glass window were trays of fish, quarters of cut lemon and some fly stained menus stuck on the window.
When you walked in the Tarara Cafe you saw it was in two sections. On the left hand side was a carpeted area with tables and chairs. This was the restaurant. On the right hand side there was a long counter running the whole length of the shop and behind it all the facilities for cooking fish and chips, hamburgers, and chiko rolls.
Over the carpeted area were six spotty crystal chandeliers, each one bearing five light globes. I remember sitting in the Tarara one day noting the fact that of the 30 light globes in the six crystal chandeliers only five were working. Against the wall were large mirrors, not up on the wall, but standing on the floor. It was as if Demetrios was going to put them up one day but he had not got round to it. In front of the mirrors were gold anodized pot plants in wrought iron pot plant stands with a dying green plant in each. The plants seemed to be permanently dying which was not surprising, because the earth was always dry in the pots.
The ten or so tables had plastic table cloths over the green laminate. There were stained paper serviettes around crumpled up from the previous diner and the carpet was speckled with stains of spilt tea and coffee and Worcestershire sauce over the years.
In front of the long counter the floor was covered in black and white lino tiles. It was here that people stood while they awaited their takeaway order of two pieces of fish and a shillings worth of chips, the whole huge parcel for five shillings. The Dim Angel’s chips were renown. He would get a potato, peel it by hand leaving the eyes in, and chop the entire potato into only six or eight chips. Even the smallest chips was as thick as your thumb and when Demetrios cooked his fish and chips they really tasted good.
There were several signs on the back wall which said “Do Not Eat Take Away Food in the Dining Room”. The fly wire screen door, which used to bang shut at the front door and scrape open when any person came in or out, did very little to keep the flies out. So everything was speckled with fly dirt. Over the counter running the whole length of the shop was ten gold plastic ball light shades. Those ten gold plastic ball light shades held only two working light bulbs between them. Demetrios’ wife had added some Greek touches by way of decoration, with plates depicting ancient Greek scenes of Apollo, Aphrodite and other Greek gods painted upon them. Several vases of plastic flowers were also fly spotted. Over the refrigerator at the end of the shop was a stuffed crocodile that Demetrios had apparently caught on one occasion and two Chinese ginger jars. There was a large barometer on the wall just inside the front door which did not work, and a large dirty map of Western Victoria that many people had marked with biros to work out their shortest journey. There was as hat rack just inside the carpeted section which always bore the remains of the decorations of the previous Christmas.
The one thing that the Tarara Cafe did better than anybody else was to provide you with a wholesome, hearty and delicious meal. When Demetrios gave you a meal, there was never any shortage. The one dish that people always asked for was “T bone Steak and Chips”. The plate was covered with salad, mainly unoriginal but plentiful. There were several leaves of lettuce, three or so tomatoes cut into chunky quarters, some cucumber, a couple of pickled onions and whatever vegetable happened to be in season, a huge pile of his famous chips as thick as your thumb, and then the largest T bone steak you could imagine, half an inch thick and covering the entire plate. On top of the steak was a fried egg. Over everything was liberal lashings of tomato sauce and salt. Salt, carbohydrates, fat it was the heart surgeons’ nightmare!
In those days before Kentucky Fried Chicken, McDonalds and Pizza Hut, it was standard fare for the hungry traveller. As the Tarara Cafe was four hours out of Melbourne and seven hours out of Adelaide, it was a convenient place to have a good big meal. Plenty of transport drivers stopped there.
When you came to the counter to order some fish and chips, Mrs. Angelopoulos would write out your order on the butt end of a book of raffle tickets and give you the other half as your number. Demetrios would then cook up the order and when it was wrapped and ready Mrs. Angelopoulos would call out your number “Yellow sixty one”. You would then come up and give her the ticket and pay for the parcel. This was quite a strange custom as often there was no more than one person in the Cafe at any one time.
But one night there were a crowd of people in the Tarara Cafe.
I had gone up late to get a bottle of milk for some unexpected visitors that had arrived at our place for supper. Our old refrigerator barely kept things at room temperature and to try to keep milk over a hot summer’s day was always risky. When I went in to get the milk the Cafe was rowdy with ten members of the motorbike gang from Stawell. The motorbike gangs that we had in Stawell and a smaller one in Ararat were the plague of the town. The Stawell Sinners drove noisy bikes up and down the highway to the consternation of all using the road. They were defiant, loud mouthed and ugly. They wore leather jackets with the arms cut off at the shoulders and half sheep skin jackets allowing their tattoos to be seen. Victoria had recently legislated that everyone should wear a motorcycle crash helmet but the Stawell Sinners let their long hair blow in the wind and defied the police to do anything about them.
In those days before the invasion of Japanese motorcycles, most of the motorcycles were British. Outside, in the deep gutter of High Street, there were packed half a dozen motorbikes, Nortons, Aerials, HRD’s and one lone American Harley Davidson. Among the ten were three girls who travelled around with the Stawell mob. They had come down to one of the Hotels in Ararat to have a fight with the Ararat bikies, but the Ararat bikies were out of town doing the same thing down at Ballarat. In those days the Hotels closed at 6.00 p.m. and so the Stawell bikies all thumped their way into the Tarara Cafe and confronted Mr. Demetrios Angelopoulos.
The Stawell bikies rather liked confronting people. They would weave in and out of traffic and pull up at a traffic light with three bikes on each side of a car and then put their big boots up on the bonnet of the car while they waited for the traffic lights to change. They defied the driver to get out and do anything about them.
When they saw a police patrol car travelling along the highway they would ride three abreast in front of it and slow right down so that the police bumper bar was almost touching their back tires forcing the police car to drive slower and slower. If the police pulled up and got out to book them, this was exactly what they wanted. The police would get out of their car, lock it, and take their books to write out tickets for the motor cyclists in front. While they did that, two or three of the others, or their girls, would stuff a potato up the exhaust pipe of the police car, and partly unscrew the valves on their back tyres. Later, when the police went to drive off or when they hit the first bump, the valves would work loose and both rear tyres would go down. The potato up the exhaust pipe would make it hard for the car to start. Or while they were writing out a ticket one of the girls would force a couple of matches into the lock of the police car door so that when the police went to put the key into it again, they could not open their own car.
If it happened at a night time with the lights on and with the blue light circling on the roof, it would only be a matter of twenty minutes or so before the police car battery would be dead flat long before the police could ever get help for, after all, the car radio was locked inside the car which had the locks jammed with broken off match sticks.
The Stawell Sinners were anathema to everyone.
This night they were in an ugly mood, sitting around the tables in the dining section of the Tarara Cafe drinking cups of coffee and eating takeaway fish and chips. Several of them had their feet up on the tables
and chairs and they were shouting out with loud voices “You fat Greek wog, get us some sugar for our coffee”. I looked at the person shouting. He was a mean specimen of Australian manhood and was holding the Cafe sugar bowl in his hand. It was a cut glass sugar bowl with a chrome top with a spout on it. He had three of them on the table, two empty and the other one upside down with the sugar running out all over the laminate table top. He was pouring some sugar into ten cups of coffee by just moving his hand over the ten cups allowing the sugar to run all over the table top, which others were blowing and sweeping onto the carpet. He had emptied three sugar bowls that way and the others were grabbing more for him to continue his fun.
“Come on, you fat Greek wog, bring some sugar for our coffee.”
Demetrios looked hopeless against such a group of ugly Australians. He slowly walked the length of the counter and came round to the dining section and picked up the empty containers of sugar while they all laughed at him calling out more abuse, “Send your daughters out here you fat Greek wog. We fix virgins”. The rest dissolved into laughter and the girls with them screeched their delight. Big Demetrios took the sugar bowls out the back and refilled one giving it back to them and then went out the back again to fill the others. He was missing for a while and I felt he was rather game leaving the Cafe unattended. I did not mind waiting for my bottle of milk because I knew Demetrios was more concerned in getting these louts out of his Cafe as soon as possible. I heard the side door of the Cafe slam shut and Demetrios came back in and attended to my order. I paid him for the milk and got out of the Cafe before they turned their attention onto me. I hoped the rest of the night was not too difficult for my Greek friend.
About three weeks later I was back in the Tarara Cafe and made mention to the Dim Angel how sorry I was that the ‘hoons’ from Stawell had been in his Cafe. Big Demetrios put both hands on the counter and leant forward “They might call me a fat Greek wog, but Demetrios knows how to look after them fellows. They asked this wog for sugar and I give them some sugar.” With that rather enigmatic statement he turned round and cooked his fish and chips.
It only occurred to me some time later that I had not seen any of the bikies from Stawell in town for a long time. That is when I asked Eileen at the Newsagents if she had heard anything about the bikies and if the police had been keeping them out of town. Eileen looked at me: “The police? They haven’t kept them out of town. They’re grounded for a while, that’s all. I hear they have all had problems with their motorbikes. One after another their motorbikes have all conked out. Their engines have all been damaged. All their pistons and cylinders have all been scored and they have had to have rebores or whatever you call it, on their motorbike engines. And their carburettors were all blocked and their valves were burnt. I don’t know what happened but all of them have had trouble with their bikes and there’s not a single one running. They’ve all got their engine blocks down at Ballarat having rebores. It won’t do any harm to have them grounded for a while.”
I did not think much of this piece of information until I was doing something else when all of a sudden the penny dropped! Rebores. Burnt out sticking valves, clogged carburettors and fuel lines. It all sounded very consistent, as though someone had got to all of those motorbikes and poured half a cup of sugar into every petrol tank! A half a cup of sugar would not be noticed at first, but after a few days things would go terribly wrong with the engines. A half a cup of sugar slipped into each petrol tank in those days before motorbikes had locks on their petrol tank covers, would have been enough to do all of that damage. Who could have put sugar in their petrol?
Then I remembered the side door of the Tarara Cafe slamming shut and Demetrios shuffling back in saying to me “They ask this wog for sugar. I give them some sugar”.
I called into the Tarara Cafe as soon as I could find an excuse and said “Hey Demetrios. I believe the Stawell boys are grounded without their motorbikes? Do you know anything about that?”. Demetrios looked at me and said with a straight face “I might be a fat Greek wog, but I’m not too dim. They ask for sugar, I give them some sugar.” And with that not another word was spoken. He simply turned around to the deep frying vat and shook a couple of wire baskets full of golden fish and luscious thick chips as big as your thumb.
The Tarara Cafe is still there and I guess operating much the same. The Dim Angel is certainly an angel, but he is not too dim. The town is proud of Demetrios. That is why Eileen at the Newsagents will not give me any information any more in case we laugh at them. At the time of the bikies I wasn’t laughing, that’s for sure.
I just headed back to the country manse at 90 High Street, opposite the Railway Station, having learnt another lesson in the difficult art of becoming a country parson.
GORDON MOYES