I believe I can claim the infamy of being the first person to ever have purple hair.
Of course, it became popular with the elderly many years later and with the punks in the eighties. But I would’ve been locked up if I had walked out in public with purple hair in 1959.
It wasn’t too long before I found another job. This time it was Johnston’s cake shop in Fortitude Valley. Apart from the two brothers who owned the shop, there were a couple of bakers and the head woman, Ethel (who was having an affair with one of the brothers,) and three other shop assistants. Thelma came from a poor background and although I felt sorry for her, she lost all the compassion I had for her the day she used my brush and comb and gave me a head full of nits. Edith wasn’t overly impressed either because she caught them from me. We spent a great deal of quality time de lousing each other.
Marilyn was a bit of a twit. She was a nice enough person, but she tried so hard to be everyone’s friend that it was sickening. I used to be highly amused every time I heard her tell a customer that sausage rolls cost fourfpence (four pence, approximately three cents).
Leone was a lovely girl and I liked her from the moment I met her. She was an attractive looking girl and would have won a Sophia Loren look-alike competition hands down. Leone lived on the northside and had many friends who lived in the area. All the teenagers of that surrounding area would congregate in The Hub Cafe at the tram terminus. It was such a great place with a fantastic atmosphere and it became my regular haunting place too. I used to enjoy every moment I ever spent at The Hub. Though on reflection, there were two occasions that come to mind that I wouldn’t want to relive in a hurry.
There were at least thirty teenagers who regularly went to The Hub and probably just as many who called in occasionally. I knew most of them reasonably well and I like to think that I was fairly popular with most of them. It was a big shock to the system, (to say the least) when one of the occasional regulars came in one night whilst I was talking to a group. He had obviously been drinking and he said very loudly, ‘What are you talking to that bitch for?’ Someone said, ‘What’s wrong with you?’ He replied, ‘That Amelia, she’s nothing but a moll.’
He went on and on what a low-class slut I was. Quite a few people tried to shut him up, but he kept up the abuse until I walked over to him and said, ‘I don’t know what’s eating you, mate, but I think you’ve got a kind and likeable face, --the kind I’d like to throw shit at. The entire cafe went absolutely wild with applause and laughter and someone said, ‘Mate I think you’d better apologise to Amelia, she’s a good kid. The Amelia you’re thinking of comes from northside and this Amelia lives near the southside.’ The fellow came up to me and apologised profusely to me and offered to buy me a coke or a malted milk or anything I wanted. I declined his offer and he put his arm around me and said, ‘Sorry, sweetheart, I was completely in the wrong, but Jesus that was the best line I’ve ever heard, you really put me in my place. I thought you were complimenting me and you made me feel like a real mongrel.’ I patted him on his face and with a smirk a mile wide I said, ‘That’s because you’ve got a head like a robber’s dog.’ Every time he saw me after that night, he’d come up and give me a cuddle and tell me what a good sport I was.
The second incident happened on Boxing Day. Leone and I were walking along the footpath towards The Hub when a fellow whom we’d never seen before pulled up alongside of us and asked us if we wanted a lift. We both said, ‘No thanks.’
We kept walking and talking and trying to ignore the fellow who kept his car in motion at the same pace as what we were walking at. He kept calling out questions such as where we were going, if we were meeting someone and we kept ignoring him. He then started to yell at top note, ‘Who the hell do you think you are, ya stuck up bitches?’
I replied, in my best-spoken voice, ‘She’s Sophia Loren and I’m Doris Day.’
We kept walking and talking and we were just so pleased that we’d gotten rid of him. We finally reached The Hub but it was closed, so we sat down on the tram seat outside and were deep in conversation when the fellow in the V.W. came up alongside of us again and yelled, ‘You pair of bitches have got tickets on yourselves haven’t you?’
I had had about as much of this fellow as I could stand. I knew if we ignored him, he wasn’t going away so I said in an exasperated tone, ‘Look, mate, go and take a running jump at yourself will you, you’re too bloody ugly to be bothered with.’
He jumped out of the car grabbed me by the throat and shoved my head several times against the brick wall. I thought I was going to lose consciousness and could feel my head starting to spin and I could hear Leone’s voice screeching at top note telling him to let go of me. He jumped back into the car and took off towards the city as fast as he could move. Leone memorised the first three numbers of his number plate and as groggy as I was, I managed to remember the last three numbers. Leone rang the police and one young cop turned up about twenty minutes later.
We gave him the number of the car, the make and colour of the car and a very good description of the fellow and he drove away in hot pursuit. We sat there waiting, and a couple of the boys who were regulars at The Hub came along. When we told them what had happened, they were absolutely ropeable. They wanted to go and sort the fellow out there and then and they reprimanded us for not ringing them instead of the cops. I knew that if we had’ve rung them instead of ringing the cops the guy would’ve needed an ambulance. We told them that the cop would be back at any time and that they’d better bugger off. The cops never needed an excuse to pull up any teenager to question what they were doing and why they were there, even if they were only waiting for a tram. They didn’t need to be told a second time, especially when they saw the cop car approaching.
The young cop said, ‘The number you gave, doesn’t correspond with a Volkswagen, so I’m afraid there’s nothing that can be done.’
Fortunately, two of us had a brain and one wasn’t the cop. Leone and I asked to see what number he had written down and he had written the wrong number down. He phoned through to headquarters and they got the fellow. Apparently, he pleaded guilty in court a couple of days later and went for a three-month holiday at Her Majesty’s Prison at Boggo Road.
Chapter 12
Tolerance is not my Virtue
I didn’t stay at Johnston’s Cake Shop for more than six months or so but I associated with Leone and The Hub crowd for about twelve months, before moving on to meet other friends. Apart from my friendship with Leone, the memories that stick in my mind of my time at Johnston’s were two customers who came in at separate times during the day. Stink Bomb as we had so eloquently named him was a poor old alcoholic derelict who wandered the streets of Fortitude Valley by day and slept in the cattle trains at night. He would come in to the shop to buy a pie with peas every midmorning, usually when there was a shop full of customers. Of course, he would always be served first otherwise the other customers would exit faster than a speeding bullet. He absolutely reeked of stale grog, dung and vomit. As much as I felt sorry for the poor bastard, I couldn’t serve him because I would dry retch as soon as I got a whiff of him. He got a bit obstreperous one morning and Ethel ordered him out of the shop. In a well-spoken, obviously well-educated voice he said, ‘I will take my business elsewhere and I shall not return.’ But he did return a month or so later but Ethel chased him out of the shop with the millet broom.
The other customer was old mother Scot, so named because she had a strong Scottish accent. She wore an old petticoat with an unbuttoned lightweight coat over the top of it and a pair of old, scuffed, slippers on her feet. She would come in and say, ‘I want thruppence worth of meat for me carts.’ (In English, ‘I want threepence worth of meat for my cats.’)
We’d all take it in turns to serve her and every day we’d say, ‘Sorry we don’t sell sausage meat try the butcher shop down the road.’
She would shuffle out the door and down the street out of sight, until the following day.