Straight-laced Party Animals

Me: I've been looking forward writing today.
She: I know. 
Me: It doesn't seem so overwhelming when I take it like this -- one bit at a time, and not alone.
She: Tell me about those relatives.

My great great grandmother on my dad's mother's side had a wooden leg, and the story of how she got it went that one night she got so drunk on gin that she fell in the fireplace, and her leg got burned off. I have no idea if this story was true. Truth isn't really the point. This was a funny family story. We heard it like an old family joke, old grannie's nana was a boozer who fell in the fire, and her leg burned off. Haha hilarious.

There were quite a few boozers in that family's story book. The Houlihan girls (or was it the Hourihans before them?) had a reputation as party girls, drinkers, dancers, walking 25km from Invercargill to Riverton to get to a dance, because they didn't have a ride. That was one hell of a commitment to partying!

Aunty Kate and Uncle Bill would be drinking gin when we arrived for a visit after mass on Sunday. That would be 11am. We loved Kate and Bill. Everyone did. Aunty Kate sat by the fire in the lounge, smoking, drinking, laughing her throaty smokey laugh. She had white hair when she was quite young -- just like I do, and people have said I look like Kate. She held her cigarettes in her mouth and the smoke curled up her face, into her lovely white hair, giving it a yellow streak, just like their cocatiel bird, who squaked swear words, and made everyone laugh.

I saw Aunty Kate not long before she died. It was the first time I'd seen her not sitting in her chair beside the fire. It hadn't registered to me that she actually had a bedroom and a bed! She was so bloated and croaky from years of drinking and smoking, and she was so lovely and kind and pleased to see us. She was always happy when the little girls came to see her. She still had that yellow streak in her beautiful white hair.

Kate and Bill were the family party animals for years -- over generations. Kate was dad's aunty, but not that much older than him. She was nana Ward's youngest sister. Quite a tear-away. She and Bill bought booze for dad and his friends when they were under age. They had parties at their house, and welcomed all the young people who showed up. They were generous and hospitable, 100% welcoming.

I was fascinated by their time-table. Kate and Bills "hours" were widely known in our family. This was when they were getting a bit older -- late 50s? 60s?

They ate their dinner at 4pm, went to bed at 6pm, got up at 4am, and started drinking about 10am. This was very likely why we only visited after Sunday mass... so they weren't too wasted when we got there.

Once mum told me that they drank so much because of a sad thing that happened to them -- they were so sad they drank to cheer up. They couldn't have children of their own, so they adopted a beautiful girl called ____________ (Madeline? Marguerite?). She had beautiful long red hair, and they loved her so much. Even though they adopted her, they didn't get the right paperwork signed, and one day her real mother came and took her away, and they never saw her again. Kate and Bill were devastated. That's why they drink so much.

My little sisters, Angie and Maria, used to visit Kate and Bill on the way home from St Patrick's primary school. I need to ask them if they had a gin with them for afternoon tea!

Kate and Bill couldn't drive. Well, maybe they could, but they couldn't. They used to take a taxi down to the Wilson Neil liquor store. One day they bought their supplies, left the shop, jumped in the cab and said, "21 Centre Street please!" When they got to their gate, Bill said "How much do we owe you?" The guy in the driver's seat said "Nothing, I'm not a taxi!"

Bill lived a lot longer than Kate, and for a long time I didn't hear much about him. I remember he did come to dad's funeral, and instead of sitting with the oldies down in the lounge, he sat in the garage with the young people, drinking and partying like the old days.

Bill had to have some kind of operation on his leg -- not too long before he died. Someone asked him if he was worried about it, and he replied famously "I don't need my leg to drink!" Haha hilarious.

She: Are you doing OK?
Me: I'm getting a bit tight in the chest, sore in the throat. Telling these stories is making me feel a bit uncomfortable.

It just seems sad that in my memory Kate and Bill are defined by their drinking. That's pretty much all I know about them. Well I know they worked in a sawmill out Tewaewae Bay, and Bill worked at the saw mill in Queens Park and cut us huge pine branches for our Christmas trees. We had the biggest Christmas tress in town. But it's all doused in booze. I know nothing else about them. They were defined by their drinking.

It feels like such a narrow view. As a child it felt mostly normal, a bit dangerous, a bit confusing. It was confusing.

There were other people in that family of course, but in my memory they are sort of stuck in one pose, one story. Kate and Bill are alive and moving, colourful, noisy. The others are like old browned photos. Kate had two brothers, Roy and Martin, who had been to the war, and lived with their mother, Old Granny. (the daughter of the legless granny). We called Roy Uncle Canvasback, because he lay on a couch, and in my experience he never got up. When we walked down the path to the door, we would see the lace curtain pull back, Uncle Canvasback checking who was coming to visit. He stayed on the couch the whole time. He could move. Many years later I saw him walking out of his pensioner flat, and I was shocked at how tall he was.

Uncle Martin moved around, but only in the kitchen. He worked at the pub with dad. (Dad had a day job, but he also worked behind the bar at various pubs. I don't really know why. More on that later.) The inside of that house on Eye Street was murky and dark. It was smokey I suppose. A radio was giving the racing results, somewhere in the background. A newspaper with a half-finished crossword and a stumpy pencil sat on the kitchen table. There were calendars, the cheap kinds that we hung inside the cupboard doors, out on the walls, in public. It was a whole other world in there.

Old Granny sat in the rocking chair in the front lounge, by the fireplace. It was dark in that lounge -- they must have had the blinds down. I never saw her stand up. She would call us over, and hunt around in a pocket under her skirts, pull out a coin for us. A penny or tuppence? That's the only time I saw her move. But no, there's a photo of her standing outside the Bacillica, with Nana Ward (her daughter), Dad (her grandson) and me (her great granddaughter). We're at a family wedding. Four generations on the church steps, squinting into the sun.

Me: I need a break. I had no idea all that Kate and Bill stuff was there. I can still see the colours in their house, teal and pale yellow. Kate by the fire, laughing. Bill in the kitchen, having a beer with dad, a soft mumble of talk about the races. A budgie swearing in the corner. I'm staring at Kate's hair, fascinated and horrified, as if I knew one day, I might look like her.

She: Great work.
Me: Thanks. I feel a bit choked up, but OK.
She: Take a break now.

_________________

It seems strange to realise that the out-of-control drinking I was amoungst as a child (and these are only the tip of the excessive drinking iceberg), was laughed about, a joke, a haha hilarious legend. Now I know drinking is no joke. But I suppose joking about difficult things is one way to deal with them -- to cope with them -- to stop them from crushing you under their weight.

There are lots of photos of me as a child with a serious but bemused look on my face, like even then, I know this wasn't funny. I knew things just weren't quite right.

I also knew, without a doubt, that we were better somehow, than the family boozers that were joked about. There was drinking in our house, but it wasn't as bad as all that.

NEXT Better Than Those Other Boozers