The Promised Land

I received an e-mail from 50 years ago yesterday. Well, the person who sent it was the younger brother of a friend of mine, possibly my best friend, back from the early 1960s. The person who sent the e-mail is Ian Cockman, his older brother David was an Elvis fan and was a bit older than I was. The first thing I remember about those days is the Cockman’s back rumpus room where we played cards and made whooping noises associated with our newly created testosterone. I also recall their trampoline which was where crazy young boys performed death defying feats of madness and bravery and funnily enough I recall the blood that ran down the driveway after Mr Cockman hosed it out after butchering a shitload of kangaroo meat that I imagine ended up in the mouths of some long dead dogs, and then there was the smell of that garage and the memories of young teenage boys discovering a new phase of their lives. Those days were an important part of a right of passage for me and my friends in East Bentleigh. The soundtrack to our lives were The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and a bit later Jimi Hendrix (and countless other amazing bands), new music every week, new experiences both good and bad flying at you like bullets from a machine gun. Discovering our sexuality, getting drunk for the first time, camaraderie, fitting into a pecking order (I was usually on the bottom), going camping together or out into Port Phillip Bay in the Cockman’s small motorboat, I’m pretty certain it was red, a boat that also smelt like blood, bopping on a choppy bay while I felt sea sick but never dared mention it. Meeting each other outside the Milk Bar at the small group of shops after dinner to hang around and share stories, some true, some false. David had a job at the Chemist shop which was the last shop in the block, right next to a vacant allotment. I always felt jealous of him because he got better wages and delivered prescriptions while I had to schlep big wooden boxes of vegetables on the handle bars of my less superior pushbike for far less money. Another fond memory of David was his cuban heeled, pointy toed Beatle boots. I couldn’t afford my own pair. By now I was playing in a band called “The Sands of Time” which miraculously got me a few dates with a well endowed girl named Dianne Woods. I thought all of my Christmas’s had come at once but she was about the same height as me which for some reason seemed problematic. I struck a deal with David to “rent” me his Beatle boots for  Saturday afternoon walks with Diane around the streets of East Bentleigh. The price I paid for each transaction was one of my beloved 7 inch singles. Parting with a “single” was a bit like getting a finger chopped off each Saturday. David’s boots gave me a couple of extra inches but didn’t bolster my confidence enough or make me macho enough to keep the dates going for too long. Before I knew it Diane was in the arms of Bobby Lamb, a more manly and far taller specimen than me. Another memory from around this time was one Saturday night when I had a gig with my band at the Bentleigh McKinnon Youth Centre. I must have been about 14, David was possibly 15. This was during the notorious car stealing era. I missed most of the wild rides back then because I was playing on the nights when the cohort got their “wheels for the night” and took off down the Nepean Highway. David offered to drive me to the gig so I was there when he “stole” the car making me complicit. Mixed feelings, terrified, exhilarated … all at the same time but my ride was short and I ended up having to jump out of the car while it was still rolling to get out for the gig probably because he had hot wired it and didn’t have a key. Whatever, this was my brush with the illegal stolen car activity. God knows how the others must have felt roaring around Melbourne’s south east for the whole of Saturday night. The other thing that I wasn’t brave enough to do was to jump from one carriage of a red rattler to another. Bobby, Don and David would get out off the door of the train and hold onto the ridge at the top of the carriage and slowly work their way along the outside of the moving train where they would open the door and surprise the shit out of the people on the train. I felt a bit jealous of their bravado but nothing would have convinced me that the thrill was worth the danger. I was a bit like a voyeur at the time, standing back and feeling good about being there but even better about not participating in the macho shenanigans.

Almost every Saturday night we went to a dance called Penthouse which was in the Rosicrucian Hall in North Rd, Ormond. We would catch a bus to McKinnon, drink a long nose Victoria Bitter which one of us would have mustered the courage to purchase from the Bottle Shop in McKinnon Rd. Back then Bobby’s dad was a friend of an American guy named Gus Mercurio who was a boxing commentator. His son starred in the dance movie, Strictly Ballroom years later. Gus took it upon himself to teach us boxing. Damn, I hated this. The idea of being punched in the face was the most unappealing activity I could think of. Yet to be part of this group I had to at least pretend that I thought it was cool. The thing is that the others loved to try their fighting skills on each other so there were a few organised punch ups while drinking our beer before catching the train from McKinnon to Ormond. By the time we arrived at Penthouse there would be two groups of teenage boys – sharpies and mods. I was a “mod” and sharpies loved the idea of punching mods. Get the story? I don’t know how many times I got punched or harangued by boys with short crew cuts and well pressed baggy trousers. Funny thing is that one of these sharpies, a guy named Johnny ended up being part of the international hierarchy of the Hare Krishna movement.

For me these teenage years were a mixture of playing in bands and hanging out with my friends experiencing the randomness of teenage-hood and taking life as it came. The thing is that David was there throughout these years. He always remained true to his “glorious” head of black Elvis Presley hair brushed back to emulate his hero.

I had 2 groups of friends by the time I was 16. These were my boyhood friends who I met because of geography and fate when I moved to East Bentleigh in 1963 at 11 years of age and later there were also my band friends. Never did these two groups meet. I would gravitate from group to group but eventually the musical guys prevailed and as I got older I drifted away from my East Bentleigh friends and eventually lost touch with them in the early 70s.

Those years are so long ago but the feelings, emotions, thrills, adventures, discussions helped form who I later became. Our friendship lasted from 1963 until probably 1970. I know I was at least 18 because I recall driving my friends, including David, down to Waratah Bay in my 1958 Holden Station Wagon and being urged to get it up to 100 mph on the way home one day or being in Rod’s (Rodney Lyn) old Vauxhall which he was an expert at rolling, always on purpose of course. The gang evolved over the years but essentially consisted of David Cockman, Bobby Lamb, Mike Hirst, Don Baird and me. There were a few new people who became part of it later on like Rodney Lyn but if I remember rightly that was the core. I was always the youngest. It looks like we all survived except for Rod who died decades ago. I met up with Mike and Bobby a few years ago but now maybe it’s time to get the gang back together again for some reminiscing.