Rites of Passage

Volcanoes built New Zealand and our local extinct one was a small cone called Mangere Mountain. Every once in a while we would head up there for some hiking or riding a sled my father had made. It was a very steep hill to ride down, which terrified me. My father could be very handy. He also made a slip and slide out of a very large piece of strong plastic which he used to set up in the front yard. The neighborhood kids would all want to come over for hours of fun.

Our family had one car but in those days most things were close enough to walk to. Before I started school, my mom used to walk me across the fields of the local Manukau Rover rugby club just down the street to the Mangere shopping center about a mile away. That was where I once underwent the childhood rite of passage of getting lost. Fortunately, we had the car that day and my thinking skills came in handy. I just went to where my mom had parked the car and that’s where she found me.

The car was a VW beetle. One time she lost her keys so I came up with the brilliant plan of asking someone with a car like ours to see if their key worked in our locks. Of course it didn’t work but the owner gave us a ride home to get our extra set.

Another rite of passage I achieved during those years was the foot in the spokes of the bike. I used to ride on the little metal carrier on the back of my Mom’s bike and inevitably, one day my foot got too close to the spokes and got pulled in. Fortunately I didn’t break anything.

Every once in a while we would go into the big city of downtown Auckland to see a museum or go shopping in the big department stores. That was also where I saw my first movie in the theater. I don’t remember what it was. 

We went to the local Methodist church about 15 minutes away. The church was near where one of my dad’s brothers lived so we could go over to their place afterwards. The church was also on the road where I decided what I wanted to do in life. 

I didn’t have big aspirations. One day we were walking down the road and there in the gutter was a hedgehog. I rescued it before a street sweeper came along, cleaning the gutters. I looked at the street sweeper and thought what a nice, quiet, simple job that would be. And that’s what I decided I wanted to do when I grew up.

When I got to school age, I started at Viscount Mangere School across the street from our house. This was the early seventies and we had a teacher named Mr. Finimore who was into popular culture. One day he had the class dancing to Jimmy Hendrix but I sat under a table saying I wasn’t allowed to dance to that kind of music.

I don’t remember many kids from the neighborhood but there was Kevin Capper who lived about five houses down the street. Then there was my earliest little sweetheart interest, Allysa Preston two houses down. We also had some neighbors in one of the houses next to ours who were Maori. The kids would often hang outside. I think they were poor because they seemed to be dirty and their clothes weren’t very well kept and they often had runny noses. 

One of the boys named Dougie eventually became a part of a family joke. Later in life, whenever we went somewhere amazing around the world we used to say, “I bet Dougie’s never been here”. Much later, my mom expressed regret in using him as the butt of our joke because it demeaned him in a way. I hope he’s done well and I hope he has been to all those places.