Community Contributed

Jean Elizabeth Rolston 1920 -

Kete Horowhenua2020-03-23T16:47:18+00:00
Levin resident as interviewed by Kathryn Somerfield and Marcia Douglas of 4MC Horowhenua College.

Born in 1920 in the Horowhenua, Mrs Rolston has lived here all her life with an involvement in the AP & I Show that has stretched just as long.

Growing up on a farm as a child and continuing to live in the country for much of her life, Mrs Rolston attended the Levin Primary School. She recalls her first teacher Mrs Hitchcock as being just like a mother to the children and how she remebers her dislke for her first day at school. She told the teacher that she wanted to go home at playtime because she had "had enough". School subjects were just the general reading, writing, arithmetic and nature walks. They pursued one industrial topic each, cooking for the girls and woodwork for the boys. There was not much sport played at school, but the one sport the young Jean played was basketball.

The first AP & I Show she remembers was when she was six years old. She recalls it because she had to get up so early to help her father ready the cattle.Jean vividly recalls one drastic morning when the truck came to pick up the cattle. It drove up the drive and ran ocver one of the farm dogs.

‘Dad didn’t think too much of it at the time, because it was just a silly old farm dog that got in the way of the truck’.

In the late twenties her interests in the show began to change. Around this time the Great Depression hit New Zealand and money for the show was short. In response to the crisis some of the women started the Women’s Committee where they cooked pies and cakes to sell and raise money. Jean’s mother was a member of the committee and Jean along with some of her friends began to help by doing some catering and also some waitressing. It was when Jean began waitressing that she became more interest in the home industry than in showing cattle. Before long she became a steward and a short while later she ended up being Chief Steward for the show and has continued in this position of responsibility through until the present time.

The AP & l Show has been up and running for nearly ninety years. It stared in 1907 at what is today the racecourse. At the start it cost one shilling (10cents) for a child to enter and half a crown (25cents) for an adult. Jean never paid an entry as she always got in on her father’s members’ card. The show was held at the Racecourse until 1953 when the AP & l bought the showground’s. The Horowhenua AP & l show is now one of the few shows that own their own grounds.