MY old mate Frankie Waghorn could spin a yarn, and there was none better than his brief experimentation with the drug speed, otherwise known as methamphetamine.
Frankie went to a party and was offered some speed and swallowed a full gram down with a can of lemonade. He then went home to his mother’s place in West Heidelberg and thought that it would be a good idea to vacuum the house, seeing that his mother was away.
So Frankie proceeded to clean the house at 3am. When he had finished he thought it would be a good idea to vacuum the driveway, so he got an extension cord and started vacuuming the driveway.
When he finished, he noticed that the footpath was a bit dirty and ran inside and came back out with a second extension cord and gave the footpath in front of his house a good going over.
The neighbors rang the police, as the vacuum cleaner was kicking up a terrible racket. When the police arrived they found Frankie and the overworked Hoover in the middle of Waterdale Road in front of his mother’s house.
There was no criminal offence involved, although they did breathalyse my poor old mate. The mind boggles at what the charge would have been had he been drunk!
Most short bar room yarns, while being comic and true, tend to be of a sexual nature. I’m led to believe Henry Lawson had a vast collection of dirty yarns he told in pubs but never wrote down, and even the great Banjo Paterson had a few slightly blue ditties up his sleeve.
But I’m afraid my dirty ditties and short stories are somewhat bluer that anything the gentle Banjo ever told.
Micky Marlow and the lady with the club foot is a favorite. However, good taste begs that I spare you the sordid details of that particular yarn. A recent yarn I picked up a short while ago involved Bucky and the blind girl, which puts the tale of Micky Marlow and the chick with the club foot in the shade.
Comic story telling and joke telling and the telling of wild bar room yarns was once a classic Aussie pastime, sadly fading in the pubs, clubs, racetracks and prisons. But the art is not dead yet. There was a time when every Aussie had at least one wild yarn up his sleeve and I’m one Aussie with a sleeve full of the bastards. Ha ha. My mate Pat Burling together with my old friend Andy Hutton had a rip-roaring New Year’s Eve at the Retreat Hotel on Invermay Road at the bottom of Mowbray Hill in Launceston.
Pat is a bit of a mad bugger with a few drinks in him. At six foot and 100 kilos he fights like a threshing machine. Pat and Andy were having a quiet drink in the bar of the Retreat and Pat said to Andy, ‘As soon as we finish these drinks you smash that bloke over there and I’ll smash this one here’. And Andy, not quite understanding the plan, said ‘Right’ and put his drink down and walked across the bar room and proceeded to swing punches.
The pub broke out in total chaos and Pat jumped in swinging punches at a 100 miles per hour. Andy Hutton has the courage of a lion but isn’t the world’s best punch-on artist and was getting punched to the floor.
He kept getting back up swinging his fists and was promptly punched back to the deck but refused to give in. Meanwhile Big Pat was taking on all comers in grand fashion, but it all got too much.
He tossed the car keys to Andy and yelled, ‘Get the gun.’ Andy grabbed the keys, ran outside and grabbed the gun. Andy was a former member of my old crew, the hole in the head shooting club, and drunk in charge of a firearm he is a bloody menace, believe me.
Anyway, he proceeded to blast the shit out of the pub, with men ducking for cover and diving to the ground all over the place.
Big Pat Burling made good his escape and they both jumped in their car and took off up Mowbray Hill with a line of police cars on their tail. Pat hung the gun out the window and aimed it at the police cars behind him and yelled, ‘Get a bit of this into ya, you bastards’ and bang, bang, bang. Then the bloody gun jammed. Needless to say both Pat and Andy got themselves pinched and Pat accidentally lost the sight in his right eye after the following interview got a bit out of hand.
As we all know, there is no such thing as police violence so perish the thought that poor Pat was the victim of foul play in the police station. Andy, who has a plate in his skull, needed to see a panel beater after the police interview to get the plate straightened out. Ha ha.
Naturally enough, the police get a bit funny after they have been shot at and tend to suffer mood swings. The bloody Retreat Hotel is known locally as the little police station at the bottom of the hill as you only have to fart and the police get called and they really get pissed off if you pull a gun out. My favorite pub in Invermay, which is like the little Footscray of Launceston, is the Inveresk Hotel in Dry Street, Invermay. You could fire a cannon in the bar of the Inveresk and everyone would mind their own business, provided you didn’t hit the TV set.
What Pat and Andy were doing in the Retreat is a puzzle. Anyway, mad Andy Hutton, my old comrade-in-arms, is out and about, a free man. With good lawyers and a lot of luck anything can happen. Pat Burling is in here with me. Poor bugger, he looks a bit funny with his pirate eye patch on.
The strange thing is that Pat’s cousin, Big Josh Burling, is also blind in one eye. Pat, nicknamed ‘Mumbles’, is one of the funniest men you’d ever come across, and a better fellow you’d never meet in a day’s march. While I’m sorry to see him in jail again, the prison would be a much duller place without him. Having a few good blokes around you makes all the difference.