Bill Pettersson's Memories

Dad worked as a gardener for Mr Charles Odlin in Ludlum Crescent in Lower Hutt, which later became the American Embassy. He travelled out there everyday with Odlin's head mechanic who also lived in Island Bay. Dad would meet him down the Bay at 7.00 am and he would get home about 5.30. Tea would be at 6.00. 

Later Dad worked for a Mr Smitten who lived down where the Catholic Church is now. Smitten was an accountant in the city. 

The Smittens lived in a very big house owned by Mrs McMenamen, of the Terawhiti Station. There was a very large flower garden that Dad looked after and another man looked after the vegetable garden. 

We would often go along there after school to meet Dad, particularly on Thursdays. That was when the paymaster came and we were always assured of tea and a piece of cake or a biscuit. The paymaster would give Dad a pound and then he had to give half a crown back as tax. 

Every Thursday on the way home from work, Dad would do the weekly shopping. It would usually come to 7s/4d. It consisted of butter, sugar and flour. Sugar was bought in 10lb bags. Mum used a lot of sugar and flour as she did a lot of baking and preserving. 

Dad used to carry the groceries on his back. Cupboards were well stocked and we had a lot of fruit trees - pears, apples, peaches and plums. If we were short of fruit Dad went to Courtenay Place Market by tram to get more. He sometimes got some vegetables there but we had a good vegetable garden with potatoes, beans, peas, carrots and onions. We always had new potatoes ready for Christmas dinner. 

Christmas dinner was a roast - not a turkey - but a side of mutton. Only upper classes had turkey. 

Dad grew vegetables both for home and also for a Mr Paino who had a fruit shop in Lambton Quay. Dad would be up at 4.00am picking lettuces for Mr Paino. In spring he grew daffodils - some of them are probably still on the property. 

Our house had an outside toilet although it was plumbed. Mother had a coal range and she used a copper, a tub and a scrubbing board for doing the washing. The wash-house was outside - around the back of the house. Mum did lots of bottling using fruit from our trees. We had hens and whatever eggs Mum didn't use she would sell. She did quite well with this little business. 

For weekend outings we might take a tram to the railway station and a train to Pukerua Bay. A friend of Dad's would lend us his cottage for the weekend and we would spend our time swimming and playing on the beach. The water was much warmer than at Island Bay. 

Once we went on a holiday to Auckland. We went by train and stayed at the People's Palace - run by the Salvation Army. The Palace was cheaper than the flash hotels but it was all we could afford. 

After Island Bay School I went to Wellington Technical College. I went on the tram. The uniform was grey shorts and shirt. I did woodwork and learnt enough so that years later I was able to build a bathroom and put an inside toilet into my own house. 

I left Tech after the Fifth Form - despite Dad's objections - and became a butcher's apprentice. I worked for Mr Fanthorpe. The shop had sawdust on a concrete floor and a wooden chopping block in the middle. The block was a chunk of a tree about the size of a table with cleavers and knives hanging above it. The butcher had a knife in his belt and wore an apron that went below his knees. One of my jobs was to deliver meat. Families would get a parcel of meat usually twice a week - usually roast beef, legs of mutton, mince and sausages. I was provided with a bike with a carrier at the front that you could get 3-4 orders in. People either phoned in their orders or else gave them to me when I delivered the current order. I sometimes had a problem biking up steep streets in Island Bay due to my asthma.

Another part of my job was to put pounds of meat through the mincer. As soon as the meat was brought into the shop the butcher's dog would come out from under the counter and lick up any that fell on the floor. Meat carcasses were delivered by truck. They were not refrigerated - they were open with a cover over them. I was paid f3-4-0 a week, less tax. I put some money into the Post Office and paid Mum 10 shillings a week for board. I also brought meat home for Mum. I worked for a couple of years at the butcher's and left when the butcher retired. 

I applied for a job at the railways and used Mr Odlin as a referee and also a Mr Kraus who bought eggs from my mother. I got a job in the railways as a junior porter helping with the luggage but was there only a month when the war broke out. 

I was called to the Territorials in 1939. We went for training after work and in the weekends. Then in 1940 my group went to Russell Street School in Palmerston North when the school was on holiday and then to the Palmerston North Showgrounds for two weeks. 

Our group was called the Second Wellington Infantry Batallion. 

We were meant to go to the Middle East but as Japan had just entered the war we were sent to Guadalcanal in the Pacific instead. 

My older brother Charlie was called up earlier and was in the Air Force in the Pacific. My younger brother Bob fought in Italy. All of us survived. I didn't lose any mates in the war. 

I spent two years in the Pacific and have some terrible memories of the horrific sights I saw. I still have flash-backs to them all these years later. The worst experiences were being bombed from the air. 

When I came home I went back to work on the railways - this time as a shunter in the Wellington railyards. 

I met Edie at the railway station. She worked at the bookstall and lived in Newtown with her mother. It was a few weeks before I asked her out to the movies in town. I used to pick her up in my Morris Minor - my first car. 

Our wedding was very simple. It was 1948. We got married at a registry office and then had a 'do' at my parents' place. Edie kept working at the bookstall until our first child came. Later she worked in a cake shop in the Bay.

We moved to Taita when we got married and lived in a Transit Camp run by the railways due to the post war housing shortage. Our first son, Neil, was born in 1950 and Linda followed in 1953. 

After we had been at Taita a few years, Dad retired to Levin and sold me the family home. Our third child, Dennis, was born here in 1957. When we moved back to Rhine Street the house still had the coal range, the copper and the outside toilet. The first thing I wanted to do after moving in was to build an inside toilet. Eventually I built a new bathroom that included an inside toilet and the trips around the back with a torch were a thing of the past. 

My kids did much the same things as I did as a child. They played with the neighbourhood kids, the Farrs, the Myers and the Home kids. They went horse riding over at the Riding School, played cricket, walked on the hills, slid down the hills on sledges I made for them, fed the hens and collected the eggs. We didn't have a television until the mid-sixties. We often went over to the Home of Compassion and I mended broken toys while my kids played with the Home kids or helped feed the babies. We always had some of the Home kids over to children's parties. We had a big shed that the kids loved to play in. It had a 3-4 metre long blackboard with a railing along the bottom for the chalk. There were always lots of kids around - up to a dozen kids would be running around the property at the same time. On Guy Fawkes night we would have a bonfire. We would get the firecrackers from Farr's fruit shop. 

Just like me, my kids went to Island Bay School and Wellington High School. Tech had changed its name by then. 

I worked for the Railways for 40 years. During my last 2 1/2 years there I was a foreman on the platform looking after the porters. 

For the first 22 years of retirement I drove a van for the Home of Compassion delivering meat and vegetables. My grandfather, my father and myself have always had a good relationship with the Sisters. 

I got involved with the revegetation project on the hillside and I used to go up most days and plant half a dozen trees that I would get from the nursery. Altogether I planted around 5000 trees. 

In 2005, 1 am still living in the house I was born in. My eldest son Neil died from a road accident at 18. My daughter Linda became a teacher and has taught at both the local schools. She taught at St Francis de Sales School for 14 years. She now writes educational resources and teaches part-time at The Correspondence School. 

Dennis was a builder and built a home in Frobisher Street in Island Bay. Now he has a farm just out of Eketāhuna. He farms sheep and cattle. We often go up there for weekends.