Mangatapiri
Mangatapiri was a good place to work on. It was owned by the Fernie family and ran half breed sheep. Half breeds were a Merino and Lincoln or English Leicester cross mainly.Percy Hayden was the manager, a good bloke Percy but he had a wee problem – whiskey.
His wife Elsie was a real sweetie without a doubt. The loveliest person I’ve ever known, wonderful cook and very motherly. They were a childless couple which was a great shame but understandable as Percy would never have been sober long enough.
How he got his whiskey was a mystery, he would have been a bottle a day man at least and out of respect to Mrs Hayden, no-one would get it for him. But being an alky he was as crafty as a fox.
One way was to get if from a stock firm, which he did, but in those days you had to buy a dozen beer for every bottle of spirits. He was allergic to beer he reckoned and tried to sell it to us, but we were awake to that one, so he gave it to us.
None of the other blokes drank much but one cunning rascal used to get it and resell it, he finished up a very wealthy man in later life.
So Percy’s grog was an expensive item. He must have had another avenue of getting it, somewhere. He got me on the wrong side of Mrs Hayden more than once. He’d get me to drive him somewhere on some pretext or other. When we got to the Patangata pub, seven miles away, he had to go in and see someone. He only drank doubles and he’d order two. I had an understanding with the publican and only had singles. When we had a couple of nips he’d sneak around the corner and have 3 or 4 triples, then he’d come back and have 2 or 3 more doubles. Then around to the other bar again.
After a couple of hours I’d be as full as the family poe and he’d just be getting wound up.
How the hell we ever got home I’ll never know. He was a hard man alright. He never did a tap of work but always had good staff, some really good men worked there over the years.
Some real characters worked there, one was the cowman gardener, Johnny Gleadow. He was about my age I suppose, in his twenties. He wasn’t all that bright, very single minded, but always cheerful and often bloody infuriating.
We never had the power on, when I went there Johnny milked four cows but had milking machines run by a petrol motor. He was reliable, always on time, never broke into a run but he walked fairly fast.
Johnny milked the cows, fed the chooks, then separated the milk by hand. After breakfast he would peel the spuds for Mrs Hayden, then was the separator plant – all in strict order.
One morning I went up and took the covers off the cows, then asked him to make sure he put them on again at night.
Next morning I asked him had he taken the covers off the cows.
“No”.
“Why not?”
“They were already off”.
“How the hell did they come off”.
“Well as I was taking them off again this morning I didn’t do the front straps up and they came off by themselves”.
Entirely predictable. I just shook my head, I had no answer. The others laughed like hell, as I have said he was very infuriating.
Another morning while he was washing the separator, Mrs Hayden went out and asked him to go up to the woolshed and tell Percy to come down, he was wanted urgently on the phone.
“No”.
“Why not?”
“I’m washing the separator”.
“But you can finish it when you come back”.
“No I can’t”.
So the poor woman got in the car and went up to get Percy herself. She told me she could murder him at times. I knew the feeling.
When he finally finished the separator he went and asked her what the message was. She told him she’d done it herself, “Then why did you ask me?” He wasn’t cheeky, just matter of fact.
Another morning he came in for breakfast, a big grin on his face as usual. When he’d nearly finished he told us something had killed a lot of chooks, “What” I asked.
“I don’t know, I never looked”.
Three of us shot up to have a look and sure enough eight were dead, no doubt a ferret or stoat. Whatever it was would come again, they always do. Strict instructions to Johnny, “let us know”. He assured us that he would.
We had a big day and come in late after dark. We were having tea when Johnny came in, a big grin on his face again. Then after about ten minutes he informed us that something was killing the chooks again.
“What”.
“Well it looks like a little cat”.
I was already on my way with the 22 and a torch. The stoat was there alright with about 12 dead chooks lying around. The stoat, a big bloke, quickly joined them. “Well I told you didn’t I”. Yes he did.
Another little incident. He was the gardener, not a very good one. Maurice took an interest in the vegetable garden and possums were a big problem so Maurice showed him how to set a possum cage and he caught quite a lot. I used to shoot them for him and he’d dispose of them.
But I wasn’t always there when he caught them and he’d leave them in the cage until I came home, sometimes not for several days. So I told him if I wasn’t there to tie a rope on the cage, put the cage in the hole in the creek and put a big stone on the cage so the possum would drown.
A week or so later, he told me he’d put a possum in the creek about four days before and it hadn’t drowned. That was strange. So Maurice and I went down with him to have a look. The poor damned possum was in about six inches of water, a more sad and bedraggled looking creature would be hard to imagine. Maurice and I looked at each other, speechless, then started to laugh. Johnny wanted to know what was so funny. Maurice used to stutter like hell, poor bugger, and was nicknamed ‘statics’. “Wha wha what th the hell are you t t trying ttto kill the p poor bugger with, pneumonia”.
“Why didn’t you put him in the hole”.
“I couldn’t”.
“Why not”.
“Well I would get my feet wet”.
Maurice patiently showed him how to do it and we wandered away.
“I’d sooner you shot him Ken, I think it’s cruel this way”.
“Well there’s two very good reasons – one I wasn’t there, the second being I haven’t any bullets left”.
“Well you should get some more”.
“I don’t think I’d better”.
“Why”.
“Well I haven’t shot a man yet and I would be very tempted sometimes”.
He had a motorbike, a 350 Ariel. It was his pride and joy, he spent hours polishing it and it was handy, he used to do messages for anyone. He would go away to Waipawa three or four times a week and do his thing, whatever that was, go to the pictures, have an ice cream etc I suppose. But what used to annoy me was his habit of parking it just outside my window when he came home and sitting on it, ponk ponk poking it for a long time. Abuse, threats had no affect so one morning I told him if he did it again I would kick it over the bank. It was a steep bank and jammed with fern, blackberry and lawyer vines.
A couple of nights later he did it again so I got up, went out and pushed it over the bank. Next day he got it out again but it can’t of been easy, he had a lot of scratches and marks on him. But he didn’t get the message, “You’ll get sick of it before I do”. He was right.
One night he came home with a motor bike helmet, the first we’d seen. He paraded around in it, slept with it on I suppose, we were chalking him one night about it. He told us if you wore one of those helmets and you had an accident, you wouldn’t get hurt.
He told Maurice to hit him on the head with something. “What?”
“Anything. Try that boot over there”.
The boot was a very large hobnailed boot as heavy as lead. So Maurice hit him on the head with it, “See it didn’t hurt, do it harder”. So Maurice did as hard as he could. Johnny’s eyes glazed over and he went down, hell. This wasn’t good at all, we tried to get it off. No joy at all, we all got worried. So the four of us got and by prizing it with levels and god knows what, we finally got it off. After he came to we bathed his wounds with Kerosene and he was right next morning, a bit stiff but ok otherwise.
I said to Maurice, “You know, that was a bad moment and I had a vision of you being in court on a charge of murder. I would have to say you had an uncontrollable temp and wasn’t responsible for your actions, and instead of going to jail you would end up in an asylum for the rest of your life”.
He never stuttered and said, “you bloody bastard, you would too”.
Johnny told us one day he worked in a cheese factory near Woodville. He worked there for quite a while he said. When I asked him what he did there, he said he was the second assistant. “How come?”
“Well there was the manager, and the first assistant, and I was the only other one there so I was the second assistant.”
He also worked for his uncle, Pat Beachem, but they didn’t get on apparently. Pat told me they were working on a very steep fence line and he sent Johnny down to boil the bill. He took a long time and when he finally arrived back they sat down to have smoko. Pat poured a cup of tea and there was no tea in it. When he asked why, Johnny told him he sent him down to boil the billy he didn’t say to put tea in the billy as well. It’s a good man that does what he’d told but Pat didn’t see it that way. That’s when Johnny came to Mangatapiri.
But he was pretty good with motors and never had any trouble with the one at the cowshed and the one that ran the lighting plant, or the lawnmower. He had them running well as long as he was left alone.
He cut the lawn every Wednesday morning come what may, even if it was pouring with rain. After smoko in the morning he cut the lawn, even in a drought with no grass to cut.
He and Percy fell out over the lighting plant motor. Percy didn’t know anything about motors and there was a yelling match. Johnny resigned and went away.
I was him several years later at the Manganoka pub. He called in to have a beer, still the same old Johnny, still the friendly grin.
When I asked him what he was doing he told me he was working at the freezing works at Fielding. He was dagging sheep there. I didn’t know they dagged sheep there and I didn’t know Johnny could dag and he wasn’t any good at catching one. Oh he dags them when there are dead.
“What the hell for?”
Well he informed me when the sheep were dead and hung up on the chain, Johnny dagged them all. “Do the bosses know” I asked. “Of course he answered, I’m the best one they’ve got”.
He’d been there for years, he had a flash motor bike which he showed to me. “Did I want a ride on it?”
“No, not really,” that’s the last time I saw him.
Percy retired to live in Napier, I saw him once. Mrs Hayden was not a day older. Percy would be hunting for a whiskey up in the clouds somewhere I suppose. He was a good joker, old Percy. I am richer for knowing these blokes, I suppose we’ll all have a big muster up in the sky one day and we’ll all be there. It will be good to see them all again.
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