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Hi everyone , 

Sometime 

Way back in the day when I was a child I guess that money for most people back then was pretty tight , and to earn extra money as a kid you had only a few limited choices, with doing odd jobs or running messages or errands for people or even going around town collecting and recycling bottles , as there was a large deposit on lemonade bottles in place back then and most kids  collected them  because , 

Joes bottles were 10 cents and large Coke bottles were a refund of 20 cents . 

20 cents was quite a lot of money back then to a kid , and to give you an example , when buying lollies as that’s what I mostly used  all my spare money for, 

For a cost comparison from then to now , like aniseed balls we’re ten for a cent ,  so for 20 cents you got 200 and a big roll of bubble gum maybe 8 cents that sort of thing , so a coke bottle would get you a fairly large bag of lollies. And they were so much larger back then than today’s lollies. 

There was one of my most favourite shops in the world in the main street it was located next to the side lane and opposite the Melbourne furniture shop and at that stage it was called Dabbas.

From my memory It was set out in like the American style  diner cafe , milk bar just like on  the tv show happy days with  fancy booths rowed up with some sort of box  mounted on the end of the wall in each booth that were maybe  for music or just the menu , with the signature flip though index , but I really didn’t care to much at my age to take really any notice and take a close look , as lollies were so much more important. 

It was one of my favourite places  to visit and to buy lollies or if I was really lucky for some reason I would get to sit down in a booth with a  huge milkshake served in a great big metal cup 

 I remember something that I had discovered and noticed quite by accident and I had noticed it while walking up the back lane next to the shop one day and the big yard gate there was  wide open and then I noticed that there was a big stack inside against the fence of the  old returned lemonade bottles. 

So  everytime when I would walk into Dabbas and see him standing there behind the counter he was the nicest man ever and he would greet me warmly with a massive grin on his face every single time , 

I also personally 

knew him pretty well as I also then knew every single other  shop keeper in town well back then , mostly from me delivering parcels to them working for and helping out in my family’s delivery service and because of this even as a young boy when I visited  Dabba’s shop we would have a  bit of chat about whatever the subject just happened to be and then I’d buy myself a  bag full of mixed lollies from him . 

I thought back then that secretly I had worked out a great plan  for the future to make the size of my lollie bag  magically grow . 

So I tested out my theory a few times  myself 

, before one day me and my little sister Meg went to the shop and then I showed her exactly just how it was done . 

We first brought our lollies from Dabba and left the shop, I think then we went down to the train station to eat them all . 

So probably ten minutes later we returned and I took her up the  laneway  and then I climbed up to the top of the side fence and I then reached over to the stack of bottles and  I passed Meg a few. 

We then boldly went straight back into Dabbas shop and I presented to him his own bottles back and I cashed in our wrongly acquired hall , Dabba acted as nothing had happened and gave us a great big happy grin and we spent all of the refund money on more lollies . 

This practice continued whenever I was down the street on my own for a while and for all of that time when I thought that no one but Meg knew , 

later on i life I found out importantly that Dabba also knew .

I’m not sure if my dad actually on the side gave him money to cover it , 

but many years later I had the chance to square it up and when I was eighteen I was nominated to be considered to join the Wonthaggi Club and my application and nomination was accepted and in my first few visits to the club I saw that there was an older man relaxing there on a stool and that it turned out that it happened to be Dabba . 

He recognised me and we caught up and had a few beers and a chat. 

I brought up the subject of the lollie shop story with him and he was quite amused by it and told me with his signature massive grin that he had known all the time . 

Hmm 

I guess that he was my candy man , and a top gentleman at that. 

So here’s the part in todays story where I must add a warning to those of you who are against eating meat , 

like vegetarians and vegans  and animal libbers against animal processing to not to continue to read on with the next part of the story as it possibly may offend or upset you. 

But for everyone just else to remember that this part of my story was around 48 years ago and things were  so different back then . 

So let me take you all way back in time , 

back to my childhood neighbourhood where I grew up and as I have said earlier that all of the kids that lived there were really close and as families we sort of all shared things , like the Cargills trampoline that I spent endless hours using ,the Pryors  pool  that the whole  neighbourhood shared swimming together over summers . 

BIRDS of A FEATHER 

So I want to mention to you a  bit of a story now about another one of the local lads in the neighbourhood , his name is Glenn , and for his birthday he had got a present of a brand new air rifle , 

I was so jealous as all I ever asked my parents for at birthdays and Christmas time was for an air rifle and a motorbike . 

I had been occasionally using another air rifle at a family friends on the other side of town when we visited. And I was you could say at the time a bit infatuated by it. 

So I was really excited at the prospect of possibly maybe getting to fire Glenn’s new gun . 

There were two different calibres available in air rifles which were  .177  and .22 

.177 being the smallest pellet size and was most common and more accurate at shorter range and in less wind . 

.22 was heavier and better over a longer range and also better in a bit of wind . 

Glenn’s new gun was a pull down to cock and load it , it was a  .177 calibre and really quite powerful as it was new and had no wear on the spring mechanism .

Mind you these were old fashioned air rifles and the range of their pellet wasn’t huge and depending on the wind conditions and it wasn’t actually that far maybe 25 metres  on a good day at a guess.

But deadly within range . 

Also they were great guns to hunt birds with anywhere because when you fire them they are relatively silent, so they don’t scare everything in the vicinity completely off . 

So I guess I was  now Glenn’s permanent wingman , and I became his constant shadow for a few weeks , we spent a lot of hours together hunting for birds out in  the bush with me hoping the whole time like crazy that at some stage that he would let me fire his new gun . 

This situation all changed pretty dramatically one day. 

I went to visit Glenn in the morning one day and we had a bit of a chat where he asked me if I wanted to earn some spare money ? 

Of course my ears pricked up and I answered of course I do. 

I asked him exactly how were we going to do this ? 

He was really cagey about giving me any of the details saying it needed the two if us to do it and to come with him and he will show me. 

He grabbed his gun off the bench , some slugs and a large size hessian bag , that he handed to me to carry , 

and we set off walking up the back lane with Glen pinging off the odd shot at a bird along the way , he actually rarely missed his target and he was quite a good shot. 

We got to the golf club road part and we crossed it and kept walking down the overgrown part of the lane . 

We went on  a bit further and when we stopped and  looked around I was still  completely in the in the dark as to what we were doing as all I could see in front of me was  back fence a gate and a house . 

Glen put his finger up to his mouth indicating to be quiet and then he pointed his finger towards what I saw then was in that particular back yard , in fact it was an outdoor bird aviary that had a lot pigeons flying about and also hanging around. 

We  both took up a hiding position each crouching low down in the weeds and grass behind the fence , 

Glenn quietly cocked the air rifle and loaded a pellet in to the chamber , he then raised the barrel and took careful aim and fired . 

A pigeon then instantly fell to the ground and most of the others there then took off , 

then it was my turn , and that now obvious to me my part of the job was to retrieve the dead bird , 

I had to jump the back gate and stay  really low out of site from the house as the owners were likely at home at the time and run and grab the bird as fast as I could  and bring it back to the lane and then put it into the sack . 

We waited for the flock of pigeons to resettle and we then both repeated the whole process again . 

This activity then continued on for most of the day , untill I think we had around half a big hessian bag full of birds . 

I was feeling a little bit disappointed on the way home as he had told me on the way there that I might get a shot but it never eventuated . 

On the walk home Glenn explained the best part of what we had just achieved together , 

that was that he had last week spoken to a local Wonthaggi butcher and he wanted to buy as many pigeons that Glenn could supply to him , so I guess he was already planning that we were going to do the exact same thing else where ,  in town a bit later on , 

but according to Glenn we have now both just managed to just make lots of money , but he didn’t explain to me that the worst bit that was yet to come. 

When we returned to Glens house both of us were as  pleased as punch with our efforts , and teamwork and we then headed for the small workshop shed on his place and we opened the door up and we entered the building. 

Glenn then informed me then that in their state inside the bag that the birds were not exactly quite ready to deliver to the butcher, and that we  still had to clean them and we had gut and pluck them all before we can get the money. 

At that young stage of life I had never done that sort of thing before , and Glenn had made a start on the first one , so l just copied him and we began to clean the birds , after the first few I looked at the size of the bag  remaining and thought gee this is going to take us forever, 

It must have been a hell of a scene a little while later as the floor  of the shed by then , was completely covered in  bird feathers and they were now even accumulating on the walls as well and I had  so much blood and guts on me and I was completely covered with that and also loose feathers right up to my elbows , also so did Glenn. 

 So they say that all good things come to an end and in our case that end was really quite sudden and abrupt. 

The next second  still in the act of plucking our bounty a massive rush of daylight filled the dim lit shed and as I quickly looked up toward it and there , standing in the door light was prety frightening site as it was the big silhouette of Glenn’s dad , 

Oops busted 

Bugger 

I don’t remember him saying anything to us at that point but I remember that I panicked and somehow I excused myself from the shed and I left  the scene of the crime , I then washed off my arms off at the  outside tap and  I headed home. 

I don’t think that I actually saw Glenn for a week or two after that effort I’m not sure if i just avoided him or if he was actually grounded by his dad as a punishment. 

For some reason we never ever spoke about the aftermath of our escapade , but  somehow after writing this story that I think that  now Glenn  still actually owns me  some money ,

Do you? 

Cheers 

Curly Retriever 

Footnote Because mum and dad don’t have the internet sometimes I read my stories out to them or like this unwritten one I outlined it to mum yesterday but it didn’t have any of the first part to it then . 

She looked at me and said to me do you remember how much of a shit of a kid you actually were ? 

I thought about it for a second and then 

I said that with these stories  mum I’m beginning to lol