Stratford reflections from a nonagenarian | Taranaki News | Local News in Taranaki

Bill Morrison shares his memories of his life and the atmosphere in Stratford during the 1931 to 1935 period. Born in Stratford in 1918, he was educated at Stratford Primary School, Stratford Technical High School and Auckland Teachers Training College, where he graduated with a MA. He taught at Ohura and Taumarunui Districts High Schools and Hawera High School. He was a pilot in the RNZAF during World War II and from 1952 farmed near Stratford. He is now retired and living in Waikanae.
AT the recent Stratford High School Easter reunion only six of the 1930’s pupils turned up: in order of enrolment, me (Bill Morrison) 1931, Wally Ware ’32, Jack Smith’33, Betty Morrison ’37, Roy Lithgow and his wife, ’39. 
We were more numerous five years ago with at least two from 1926. We could be regarded as baby boomers of World War I.
Our two decades grew up during the Great Depression.
As children we naturally accepted the world as we found it, but for our parents, who had endured the trauma of the Great War, and for whom ‘the good old days’ referred to Edwardian and late Victorian times, the 1920’s and ‘30’s were a disillusionment culminating in the Second World War. 
This seemed the ultimate betrayal, with the appalling prospect of losing sons in the ensuing conflict. Their memories of Gallipoli, Passchendaele and the Somme, were only too real.
As early as October 1939, in the second month of the war, Pilot Officer Hubert Keller became the school’s first casualty, shot down in the English Channel, possibly by one of Goering’s fighter pilots whose skills had been honed in the Spanish Civil War.  Only 20 years old and having already secured his pilot’s licence at the New Plymouth Aero Club, Hubert was accepted as an officer/cadet in the RAF early in 1939.  Others were soon to follow, including classmates Cecil Hight and Bruce Clifford-Jones in the Battle of Britain.
Throughout the war, Bomber Command with its 30 per cent casualty rate contributed largely to future honours boards in schools throughout NZ. 
And then were the arduous army campaigns in Greece, Crete, North Africa and finally Italy, before the boys could come home and the fear of receiving those dreaded messages could be dispelled. 
These events, and those in the islands of the Pacific and at sea, lay ahead of our school days.
One of my early realizations of the ‘Slump’ aka the Depression, was that some of my Std 6 classmates did not go on to high school; they had to take any available job. 
I doubt whether in our family we fully appreciated the sacrifices made so that all seven of us had secondary schooling. 
We were in good company with that family of achievers, the seven Thomsons. 
My best friend in Std 6 was Jack Steven who went on to NP Boys High School as a boarder. I found it hard to forgive his enquiry “and how are things at Stratford Tech?”  An uncalled for emphasis, I thought. I’m sure like many of us he has looked ruefully at an account and wondered why he had been scornful of the trades.
Walking to school the odd mile or so was no big deal – only paper boys and privileged townies had bikes - but it was a bit tough on country kids like the Rankin girls or the Shannon girls who had to cycle up hill and down dale from beyond Toko and Cardiff, respectively. 
Subject to correction I think Stratford’s altitude is about 1000 feet, Toko 900 and Cardiff 1100.
Of course the north and south train kids had to budget extra time and many had a considerable distance to travel beyond the railway station. And it is a well-known fact that the older you get, the further you had to walk to school!
My first year at high school started off memorably with the strong tremors of the 1931 Napier earthquake. One consequence was the arrival of refugee, Phil Lamason, staying with Stratford relatives. 
We met up again in 1945, he a Sq/Ldr, RNZAF, in the course of repatriation at No.12 PDRC, having been shot down and a POW.  I digress. 
1931 was the year of the Queen Street riots.  Some old pupils now at training college were enlisted as Special Constables. 
In Taranaki we must have been sheltered from the more grievous aspects of the slump although farmers were only too fully aware of the low prices for wool, meat and dairy produce, which inevitably impinged on town businesses and shopkeepers. 
So unless we had family or friends directly involved, we knew little of the relief works and single men’s camps.
Strange how are clutters up one’s mental attic. I can still recall from Darky White’s first lesson in geography;  the factors affecting climate are:  latitude, altitude, relief, prevailing winds, distance from sea and ocean currents.  How about the first Latin declension - Mensa, mensa, mensae…..?
On another memorable day, just after morning interval, our English lesson with Miss Knight was shattered by an almighty bang, a bit of screeching, and ‘My goodness, oh dear’ from Winnie. Two sixth formers, Geoff Keller and Kingston Braybrooke were the culprits but luckily neither was seriously injured. The inquiry was kept pretty hush-hush so we can only guess they were doing research for the Defence Department.  Both able scholars, Geoff served as a pilot in the Pacific and then resumed his civil engineer career with MOW to retire in due course as District Engineer in Otago, while the brilliant Kingston, I believe, continued in academe, and occupied a Chair in Law at Adelaide University.
During the first term our dad insisted on shouting the fare for my brother, Bob and I to on the special excursion train to Haeo to see the last spike driven to mark the opening of the Stratford to Okahukura line. 
‘An historic event,’ he said. ‘You’ll be able to talk about it when you’re old.’  Yeah – right. Here I am – old – and this is the chance I’ve been waiting for!  It turned out to be a pretty ho-hum affair and as usual, the bigwigs made the most of the photo opportunity.  So, the hot, tiring day served as a prelude to the many trips I made in the late ‘30’s on the nightly express to or from Auckland.
Until the advent of air travel, this was the way to go – far more reliable than the coastal voyage to Onehunga, and a better people and freight mover than bus or lorry.  Travellers will recall the reversing of seats at Taumarunui in order to continue the preferred mode ‘facing the engine’. 
On pleasant evenings, it was not unusual for folk, in Whanga, or even Ohura, to gather at the station ‘to see the train go through’. 
At primary school we had dashed outside to see the rare aeroplane fly overhead.  There was a paddock landing by the likes of Captain Hewitt or Mad Mac McGregor whose planes were promptly surrounded by awe-struck boys who immediately substituted ‘pilot’ for the dated ‘engine driver’ secret ambition.
My algebra exercise book was liberally adorned with marginal sketches of planes.  Little wonder that so many of my age group volunteered for the Air Force during the war.
Some, however, found that their educational standards especially in Maths were a hurdle to overcome. 
In many cases these young men had been early school leavers and only needed some remedial work, which was readily provided by volunteer tutors. In the main, secondary school teachers who were delighted to help such motivated students.
It would be wrong to ignore the fact that the Air Force offered better living conditions than the Army, and for aircrew, probably a quicker death than a slow disembowelment in a muddy trench. I had no illusions about the glamour of war.
Promoted to the ‘Matric’ class in 1933 and in the absence of educational guidance, I chose the easy options and ‘dropped chemistry’ and continued
with agriculture and dairy science. 
Still a bit crazy about aircraft, Bill Foley and I borrowed bikes and rode up to the old Bell Block aerodrome to see Kingsford-Smith’s ‘Southern Cross’ land, such was the allure of this pioneer of long-distance flight. 
We also took on a job on a Toko farm weeding carrots and mangles, haymaking and helping in the shed. My first paid job, it included board and lodgings, and I still recall being solemnly handed a crisp 10-shilling note, which I hope I accepted with appropriate dignity.  I’m not sure now if it was for one week or for the month. 
My dad was paid only £5 a week and that was subjected to a compulsory wage cut of 5% during the Slump. 
So jobs and security continued to have an inordinate influence on our lives. My brother Bob had taken up a job on Mr Hann’s farm on Skinner Road at the end of the 1933 year. 
I remember Bill Foley making a frantic dash up to Midhirst, applying for a job at the Dairy Company. His rebuff turned out well as he was selected later that year as on officer/cadet at the Royal Military College, Duntroon, and thus embarked on a distinguished career as a Staff Corps Officer.
If I remember correctly, the baths were due to be opened for the first term 1934. Bikll F and I kept a close watch on the water level and determined to be the first to dive in.  On the critical day, early before breakfast we arrived, togs on, ready to plunge in on the count of three, when a shout from Shorty Jans at the doorway of the nearby caretakers house, deflated us – ‘My wife beat you to it!’  We had to be content with also ran.
Longevity has its rewards.  In 1935 I played in the 1st XV, the 1stXI, and was given prefect status.
The Trimble Library was a haven for sixth formers, our tutorial room where ‘the boss’ Amess and Walter Hall raised our standards in literature. 
I was not long weaned from the cowboy books of Clarence E Mulford and the Tarzan series by Edgar Rice Burroughs. 
My years at high school, 1931-35, coincided with the emergence, and rise to power of Hitler. The Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations had not lived up to expectations.
Europe was in a ferment with treaties made and broken. There was widespread talk of trouble looming and the inevitability of war. As early as 1933, I remember my father muttering…..’better sooner than later before you boys are old enough to go.’
The late ‘30’s saw us, of the 1920 and 1930 decades of school leavers, neatly launched in our careers, destined to be involved in the armed forces, unless our jobs were categorised as Reserved Occupations.  But all that is another chapter, another story.
I plead guilty to name dropping, but that is surely the stuff of reminiscence and re-unions, ‘do you remember?’  And one memory engenders another, so there tends to be little order or logic about this compilation. I fear I have lost my audience – this should have been penned 20 or 30 years ago. Any 80 and 90 year olds out there?
At the recent reunion, the well crafted address by John Granville (Captain, RNZN, Rtd), dealt mainly with events and personalities of the ‘50’s and 60’s. 
What did resonate with me was his amusing account of a boy’s transition through pubescence and adolescence to some semblance of adulthood, those troubled and baffling years, and how to cope with girls. 
Here I must acknowledge Johnnie, father of three sons, Alan, Bruce and Ian, and therefore well qualified to be mentor and guide. He encouraged us to attend social/dances at the parish hall, so that we might acquire some social graces and learn how to dance the waltz, foxtrot, the valeta and other civilized forms of dance.
At the 75th Jubilee of the school, the Hon David Thomson referred to ‘that revered trinity of teachers, Freddie Bowler, H.C Johnson and Miss Knight’ Decades of pupils applaud them. 
I can attest too that my experience indicates that the school motto ‘Palma non sine pulvere’ was well chosen.
Finally in view of my meandering pros, let me quote or misquote a fragment of verse ‘To the Young Men’
Mock not the old man shuffling in the street,
For he has known the boundless joy of youth,
And the soft touch of a maiden’s cheek…
One day, you too, may be old.