My Father and I duly arrived in Invercargill . It'd been raining which is as unusual as finding something not made in China .
Dad drove steadfastly to an address now long forgotten .
There on the side of the street was an image I'll never forget . A car , more a small , grey , automotive mistake parked and looking fore lorn on that cold dreary day and as the rain gladly fell from it and sped off along already full gutters to the safety of the sea , my new car sat and quietly rusted . What the fuck was it ? It looked like a mutated Volkswagen Beetle only uglier ! I remember moving around it , squinting , trying to get some sort of attachment to it as I felt the disappointment of the damned creep into my soul . I was a teenager remember , thats what teenagers feel . That's what I felt , and as I moved closer up on that abhorrent , metal , social death machine , I felt my dreams of owning that Dodge evaporate into oblivion .
It was a Renault ! ? A Renault 750 ! ? One of about two in the whole world . The other one got clubbed to death for being uglier than Hitler and slower than a cheque in the mail . It was banned from the roads for making other drivers fall into convolutions of hysteria because the very sight of it caused people to have accidents while doubled over their steering wheels in gales and fits of laughter ! It was just too French , even for the French !
Alarmingly , the front doors opened backwards , The front seats could tip forward , at any time whether you wanted them to or not , the steering wheel was made from a white plastic that , when your palms were sweaty , like when you hit 50 mph , the plastic reacted and gave me fiendishly itchy palms and that's how I learned to drive with my knees . I had to scratch that which itched , what else was I to do ?
At least it was slow ! Good God it was so slow ! I was passed my babies in prams , grandmothers going to the toilet in walking frames . I remember going flat out and being passed by the tide once . No matter what I did . Drilling holes in the muffler made it sound faster but made it go slower still . To aid in the illusion of speed , I put a pair of little plastic wings on the windscreen wipers but that just made then flit one way , air born and without any affect what so ever on the perpetual rain on the windscreen then crawl back at a snails pace and I actually nearly died in a head on collision because the 'Flit / Crawl ' effect mesmerized me into a stupor . That and the four large bottles of beer on all but for a few potato chips on an empty stomach , reluctantly given to me by a now nameless friend and co pilot . Best of all was it's handling . It didn't . The best you could hope for was that God wasn't ready for you yet and just hang on for dear life .
Being French , they put the engine at the rear most part of the car , then the gearbox , then the diff and axles , then three white faced , terrified passengers , then finally me clamped to the steering wheel as if hanging from a cliff and pretending that that last 360 degree spin was intentional and to show my driving prowess . I subsequently learned that Dad had decided to buy that car to keep me safe while I learned how to drive . It worked ! It was so unsafe at all but pushing speeds that I learned virtually every trick in the book . Under-steer , over-steer , drifting , sliding , spinning uncontrollably , screaming , wailing , shitting bricks and shedding all but the bravest and laziest friends too tired to walk and prepared to take a risk . If Ralph Nader had heard of the Renault 750 , he'd have invaded France and bombed the Renault factory flat !
Ahh ... Those were the days . In a crash , cars could grate you into pieces on cruel metal dash boards like a soft tomato . They would rarely stop in a hurry yet go like a rocket . No soft , plush, plastic padding to gently ease you through a collision . The cars dad and I owned had no seat belts and no arm rests , you needed your arms to wrestle with the non assisted steering wheel . Power brakes ? Ha ! Just push harder and aim for a soft spot in a paddock and if you hit a fence all the better . It might slow you down and stop you going over a cliff into a river and what with all that Southland rain , rivers were everywhere , sneaking around , waiting ...
That was during the late 1960's . Kids in cars ! Round and round . Drinking , driving , chasing girls , or Ho's if you prefer .
My father's generation , rode bicycles or , if you were lucky , a fast motorcycle . The Vincent , also known as the Widow Maker , was popular . You might have had a horse ! Today , most only know of the horse they feed to their cat out of a can . I wonder how fast you could get a horse to go on P ? Quite fast but no for long I bet .
My little Renault and I eventually did become good friends . Once I understood the importance of cool versus moron , I began to feel ever more comfortable with my strange little frisson causing automobile .
As the late sixties gave way to the early seventies , a strange social metamorphosis occurred out of the fading pious nature of God , Queen and Country . And that was flares . Flared jeans were IN baby and so was Flower Power , Make Love Not War , and Hair . Gleaming , flaxen , waxen ! Hair ! And I had some and it was all on my head ! So while some of my friends were going the way their parents had gone before them . Into the freezing works to hack at dead flesh and sporting a short back and sides , a beer pot by the end of the week and more bigotry than a hall full of American Bible Bashers , I became one of Gores first hippies . I bought a pair of floral flares , a fancy purple shirt with ruffled sleeves and the highest platform shoes money and bravery would allow and I painted my Renault burnt orange with huge flowers all over it . I was IN !
I bought Stepponwolf , T Rex and Led Zeppilin records from the World Record Club and played them on a valve powered Radiogram , in mono ! This was before television was common and before I discovered the wondrous affects of pot .
Those were halcyon days so I thought . Imagine my surprise when my days just kept getting better . There's a lot to be said for refusing to grow up and instead compromise by growing out . Years later , when I discovered writers like Oscar Wilde and Truman Capote , I learned to saviour their hard won wisdom . Oscar Wilde once said ' Life is far too important to take seriously ' . One of mine is ' The more I know , I know , I don't want to know it ! '
[ As New Zealand life , it's life style , it's energy , it's soul and spirit was to change , I have learned that one had best keep ones self safe and pragmatic to remain ' involved ' and ' connected 'without seeking refuge in denial and , as is the way of some , to emigrate .
As I write , to in some way lay a pathway into where my writings will take you and I , I feel obligated to reveal my history in such a way as to highlight what we've come to lose by steadfastly remaining ignorant and living in denial of some awful truths . ]
By early 1970 we , my Aunt , my mother , my father and I were sucombing to huge pressures being put upon the farming ' industry ' . Even the weather seemed to change to herald what was to become the induction of the Neo Conservative regime into our evolving , eglartarian society .
As we bade farewell to our beautiful farm , our friends and my place of birth for a new future , in at least the better weather of Canterbury , none of us could have realized what was to unfold . Both for us and for our country ...
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