The Story About the House

I spoke of this briefly in an 'interesting things about me' article years ago, but have never told the whole story before. I mentioned it in a comment again this morning and as it's such a nice yarn, I thought why not spin it.

My first year out of school I was working in a bank and, not being terribly inspired about this, the instant I had a mild case of the sniffles I declared it a serious illness and took the opportunity to stay home and goof off for the day . I was still living in my Mum's crowded modest wee home with my two older brothers and my younger sister. Big sister had married and moved out some years earlier, but Mum was still host to the rest of her huge grown children and most likely sick to death of us. She'd raised us alone, back in the days when doing that was extremely difficult, as opposed to being simply very difficult like it is these days, and although she'd worked full time since we were old enough to not kill each other when unattended, it's not like there were many luxuries in her life.

Like a telephone for example. We never had a 'phone in our house as I grew up, and even by this stage, when her employed offspring could easily have chipped in for the expense, she'd chosen not to bother. If she were alive today I'm sure she'd laugh herself silly over the idea of owning a mobile phone. "What the bloody hell for?" she'd likely ask. "As if anyone's that important!"

So the day it happened, I was home pretending to be sick. One brother was also home. I think it was a college day for him so he wasn't required at work til later, maybe. Buggered if I know now, this was decades ago. Anyway, there came a knock at the door and it was a telegram! oooOOOOOooo. Telegrams, as we knew from the movies, mean only one thing. Someone was dead. My brother and I pondered over what to do. It was addressed to Mum but she was at work. And we couldn't simply ring her because we had no phone. So, one of us had to go down the road to the public phone and call her. But what about the contents of the telegram? Perhaps we should read it first, so we could compose ourselves after learning the dreadful news, and then call her. Yes! Goodo! Let's open Mum's telegram...

Dear Mrs Adams,

Congratulations! Your ticket number 123456 has won first prize in our Prize Home Art Union. Stay Sober.

Mr Nice Man

Scarborough Prize Homes

Gulp!

But hang on a minute. Even in the days before the internet there were many ways a person could be scammed, fooled, tricked and humiliated. So my next reaction was Oh shit! Someone's being a bastard to our Mum. I'm not telling her about this until I check it out.

With all the shrewdness that my childhood reading Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden had instilled in me, I started investigating. I searched her drawer (you know, the important drawer that holds all the bills, the casket tickets and her remarkable collection of two dollar notes) looking for an art union ticket that matched the one described in the telegram. There were several charity art unions in the country at this point and the Scarborough Art Union was well known to us as the tickets were a bit cheaper than the others (the properties being raffled being a little more modest than some of the grand homes available out there) and I knew Mum occasionally bought them. But I could find no evidence of any appropriate ticket in 'the drawer'. I did find an old one though and.. Ahah! Right there on the back it said winners notified by registered mail. Ahah Ahah! So, there you go, we'd received a telegram, not a registered letter. Ahah Ahah Ahah! Bess, pass me my coat, I have work to do!

So, armed with no matching ticket and the telegram I marched myself off to the public phone down the street in order to speak with the Scarborough Art Union people and satisfy myself finally that the telegram was a fake.

- Hello, Mr Nice Man? I was wondering if you had a prize home drawn today?

- Why yes we did young lady, why do you ask?

- Well, my Mum just got a telegram saying she's won it but I know you send advice via registered mail, not telegrams, so I'm calling to let you know someone's taken your name in vain.

- Now, just keep your cockatoo cool there young sheila.. yes, we do send registered letters to confirm our winners, but first we telephone them so they know as soon as possible. Today's winner didn't have a telephone number so we sent a telegram instead.

Gulp gulpity gulp gulp!

Yes Mum was their winner and it was all true and my head was spinning and my tummy was hurting and I was most likely crying too. Now I had to call her at work and tell her the news. No luck. It was lunch time or something. No, no message. I'll call back later.

I raced home to tell my brother and after an interminable half hour wait he then went to the phone booth and rang her, this time getting through. She was home in a cab (A cab?! A cab that costs money?! She'd clearly let this thing go to her head..) very soon after that and an unforgettable family night of great joy and celebration followed.

The next day we all took the drive out to take a good look at her new house. It was a great bloody huge five bedroom cape cod style home in the lovely seaside town of Redcliffe (Yes, where I now live. But back then Reddie was a long drive from the suburbs of Brisbane and one only went there for special occasions.) It was fancy and swish and posh and furnished with great bloody unnecessary things like the gold baby grand piano in the formal lounge room, and the four foot wide television set in the family room, and the twenty foot long bar in the rumpus room. Mum, of course, was terrified of the place.

But she soon had it sold along with all its pretensions and bought us a big cheery old Queenslander style home in a lovely old leafy suburb of Brisbane from where we would all soon enough fly her new coop. There was enough cash leftover as a buffer against the invalid years ahead of her, and each year thereafter she could afford to take a holiday and finally visit all the places she'd only dreamed of during the terrible years of hardship she'd endured. She never quite forgot what it meant to struggle and be poor, but sometimes, just sometimes, she'd even hang the expense and take a cab to the airport...