Thanks, Doug. I was aware that this is very much a draft, doing a lot of
telling. I'll see what I can do. I take it you mean 'strict' purpose. I
considered bunching the whole lot up into a prose poem but I think it would
be more just loopy prose.
Bill
On Thursday, 7 July 2016, Douglas Barbour <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Bill,
>
> you’ve got a good story here, & I enjoyed that, but I don’t feel it as an
> more than that yet. I think you now need to go at it & edit for (I don’t
> know, exactly) speed, & shifts. Too many sentences that just feel broken
> but not for any street purpose where the lines end & begin…
>
> Doug
> > On Jul 5, 2016, at 4:34 PM, Bill Wootton <[log in to unmask]
> <javascript:;>> wrote:
> >
> > The olive paint-flaked weatherboard house was
> > wedged between St Pius Catholic Primary School
> > and East Ivanhoe State School number 4386.
> >
> > Old Mr Wakeman lived there, wild-haired,
> > grumpy state school caretaker
> > whose son John was in my grade.
> >
> > Imagine now someone suggesting
> > building attached premises to schools
> > for live-in caretakers and their families.
> >
> > But it worked. We all knew Old Wakeman
> > had eyes over the whole property.
> > Maintained it, kept it clean.
> >
> > Metal bins full of lunch scraps he'd empty
> > into the 'burner' as we termed the brick
> > incinerator on school grounds between
> >
> > the wooden library/tuckshop building
> > and Wakeman's backyard. Smoke
> > billowed each night.
> >
> > Come morning recess we'd pounce.
> > Three or four of us regularly. Down
> > on our knees with sticks, raking
> >
> > ash from under the burner,
> > slow sifting for careless treasure.
> > Coins. Mostly pennies, halfpennies.
> >
> > But sometimes the odd little threepence
> > or sixpence with its kangaroo/emu
> > coat of arms. And once, John Bright
> >
> > hit the jackpot with a blackened shilling,
> > that distinctive ram's head silvering up
> > nicely with a bit of spit and hanky rubbing.
> >
> > The coins cropped up because slack kids
> > failed to check for change in paper bags
> > with their tuckshop lunch orders.
> >
> > The best you could hope for was change
> > from a two-bob bit. Especially if
> > they only ordered one thing.
> >
> > Old Wakeman knew what we were up to.
> > And he'd come charging out to shoo
> > us away, hating the strewn ash piles
> >
> > we left on the concrete apron in front
> > of the burner. Sometimes it was lumpy
> > stuff. Best was fine, powdery ash,
> >
> > so available of quick coin reveals.
> > Some tuck-shop ladies turned up
> > their noses at our black bounty.
> >
> > But most clanked our coinage
> > and served us Chocolate Royals
> > which we promptly smashed
> >
> > on our foreheads before peeling
> > off chocolate to reveal marshmallow
> > on top of jam biscuit. Or Sunnyboys,
> >
> > sweet orange cordial in a tetrahedonal
> > tetra pak, also available frozen,
> > the better for lasting longer.
> >
> > 1966 saw decimal coinage take over
> > but no one slipped a new silver fifty
> > in their lunch order as far as we knew.
> >
> > Not that it stopped us trying to suck
> > in gullible burner newcomers:
> > 'Uh huh, a shifty schent shit!'
> >
> > Both schools still exist, on Robin Hood
> > Road, East Ivanhoe but in between,
> > where the caretaker's house stood,
> >
> > gleams a massive steel stadium,
> > a facility perhaps shared. And who
> > cleans it is anybody's business.
> >
> > bw
>
> Douglas Barbour
> [log in to unmask] <javascript:;>
> https://eclecticruckus.wordpress.com/
>
> Recent publications: (With Sheila E Murphy) Continuations & Continuations
> 2 (UofAPress).
> Recording Dates (Rubicon Press).
>
> Automobile Accident
>
> Not finding where the flowers were
> he seized a tree.
>
> Lorine Niedecker
>
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