My Grandfather by Joan O'Dea

My Grandfather at 10 Kent Street Levin

(Through the eyes of his granddaughter Joan-Marie aged 10 (-memories)

My Grandfather Harry Stanway George was born in 1876. There was a strong family resemblance between my mother and him even as a child of seven I was aware of it. As a young man in the early 1900s he was the operator of the general store in Manakau and then he moved into Levin with his wife Margaret my grandmother. They had five children

Margaret and her sister had arrived in Wellington from Melbourne at the turn of the century

At six I remember when I used to go through to Levin and Ganga used to hug and kiss me. He used to have impeccable taste in clothes and how he wore them and usually he would wear a formal suit and a bowler hat. Hanging from his waistcoat he always wore a round clock with a huge stone dangling off a heavy chain.

His suit would always scratch my skin so I didn’t like that but he would always have some sort of sweetie for me and tell me how special I was cause I was his youngest grandchild. His suits always smelt a little of mothballs, like Mum used to have in our linen cupboard. He was very personable that’s what Mum said but I didn’t know till a lot later what that word meant. In 1913 he was living in Levin and joined the Loan and Mercantile agency and worked there for forty three years.

His family home in Kent Street was wonderful for all us kids. It was very old and dark inside. At the front there was a huge verandah with a large window. That was always the parlour, and the round dome room of which Granddad was immensely proud. He kept his big desk in there and his chair. Around the side was a verandah that had beautiful green stained windows.

Granddads died and I missed him

When he died all of us cousins including me went and looked through the parlour window. I expected to see Granddad in his usual tweed suit but all we could see was a solid box that had a cross on top. Where was Granddad I thought he would be there with my usual lolly. Nobody explained to me or could console me. So that’s what happens when people die they are put in a box I blubbered to Mum that’s just like Martins budgie Bluie. It was hard for me to understand that you could buy another budgie at the pet shop but you couldn’t get another Ganga.

I really missed Ganga, that’s what he liked to call him. I was the youngest so I could get away with anything. Mum said I called him that cause when I was a tot I couldn’t pronounce the word Granddad. That’s what it seemed.

For a while, that day we looked through the parlour window my older cousins were nice to me and Mr Lester from Lester’s soft drink factory bought us over a crate of fizzy drink and I was allowed to choose first. Usually as the youngest cousin I got what everyone didn’t want. I drank it really fast and then proceeded to be violently sick just making the lavatory in time

This wasn’t what you should do at a time like this. After all I was wearing my best taffeta dress, after that it always had a pineapple stain on the front no matter how much sunlight Mum used.

In the obituary in the Chronicle it said that my Granddad was a man of high principles. (Another word I didn’t understand then) He enjoyed shooting fishing and a game of bowls and he rode and bred race horses. A lot of people came to pay their respects when he went to heaven.

I have lots of little memories of him, and as I got older I realised that Mum had high principles in encouraging, pushing us kids be the very best that we could be. So that’s where she had got this urge from. It was inherent in her and she just had to pass it on to us, her own children.

Granddad would expect it. That was only right. But rebellion could be in the wind us children had also inherited our fathers free spirit as well so it was highly likely there could be sparks in the wind at 16 Reynolds Street Taita.

Little did we kids know, when Granddad died that our material belongings would multiply, because of what Granddad had left Mum.

I often have thought that Mum and Dad came from different upbringings. But true love always finds a way. It did in there live together. That’s what it seemed.