Village to Village
(With thanks to Jude for the prompt)
Once upon a childhood Matata was my home by the lagoon,
Behind us the dense green hills transformed each summer
Into a ferocious forest fire of towering fury and spitting live embers
Way more threatening than the Australian bush fires
Which gave us spectacular blood sunsets
Beyond the roaring breakers Mum said we must not swim in.
So we commandeered a stray length of rusty roof iron or a log
And launched through dense raupo into the lagoon’s murky waters and thigh-high mud
Praying not to stand on eels which bit and couldn’t let go,
Wondering if the glorious golden carp escaped from a goldfish bowl.
At low tide Dad took us flounder fishing
By torch and a sharp nail at the end of a stick,
Flounder flicked into the four-gallon kero tin with holes in the bottom which
Dad in season dipped and filled with whitebait from the Cut,
The fast-moving Tarawera outlet into the vast Pacific
Where Whakaari forever signalled a plume of ominous smoke.
Never mind that, we lived for the Saturday matinee and maybe a pie and ice cream,
Not so much for Sunday Mass, except at Easter and Christmas.
Lent without lollies broken by Easter Saturday chocolate eggs
Quickly cracked to get at the yellow lolly chicks.
Then a long year to Midnight Mass and no sleep
Until the sitting room floor beneath the Christmas Tree strewn with destroyed wrappers
And work assembling a Meccano crane or reading the new Biggles.
Mum slaved over a hot stove for the annual chickens roasted in buttered brown paper,
A huge ham and roast of Dad’s spuds, kumara, pumpkin and parsnip,
His peas and beans and not, please St Anthony, his choko.
Bowls of exotic nuts, dried figs, muscatels and chocolates in coloured foil,
If we were lucky a Turkish delight or marzipan filling.
The climax was Mum’s six-month-hanging dried fruit pudding
Twice swaddled in thick suet skin and calico cloth,
Which Dad poured brandy over and lit.
We did not wait for Dad’s yukky brandy butter,
Burrowing through custard and skin for threepenny bits and sometimes sixpence;
Watch you don’t swallow a coin, always Mum cautioned, not always heeded.
The village at the end of my life has things in common,
Like the coast for surfcasting and the hills for hunting and hiking,
Like the post office we grew up behind
And played on the telephone exchange,
Listening in on party lines when Dad was not looking.
That was closed by the late 1980s government ‘reforms’,
As was the Paekakariki post office my cousin worked in
And when surplus to Rogernomics bought and lived in.
Both railway stations were also ‘reformed’,
Matata closed, but Paekakariki locals fought to keep its station
As a museum and bookshop,
While the steam trains of my Matata youth
Are operating at Paekakariki to the side of the commuter line.
This century I made Paekakariki home,
Familiar as Matata on another slice of sand
Between temperamental surf
And the sharp green hills,
Downpours the equal of Matata
Flooding the village in 2003
When the drains could not cope.
The fires are only domestic and
Ash and his fire brigade deal to them.
Matata and Paekakariki still sell pies,
But the latter’s bakery does gourmet versions,
Paekakariki a place of many cafes and artists,
At the weekend a boutique village destination
For visitors sampling the baking and coffee
And the local paintings and pottery,
So often drawing inspiration from Kapiti Island,
More potent than distant Whakaari or cute Whale Island,
Both villages etched by islands.
At Matata the rusty former town hall
Was a raucous picture theatre,
Especially when Audie Murphy was drawing his six-shooter
As Billy the Kid, or Errol Flynn was wielding a pirate sword.
Paekakariki’s village hall has arthouse cinema occasionally
But is the epicentre of music and monthly market day
Ever since St Peter’s Kiwi Gothic church on the hill surrendered
The hall for the locals to refurbish it as the hub of community culture,
The old surf club up the road transformed into a fine Memorial Hall
For Anzac Day and funerals and usually posh music.
Matata annually repossessed its old town hall for the huge Women’s Institute
Competitions with red, green and blue ribbons for good, better, best sponges and miniature gardens,
While the footy field was taken over for gymkhanas and Wirth’s travelling circus,
Both featuring stockmen wielding long, long whips
That cracked like gunfire, the horses for rodeo riding or tent circling,
Riders doing acrobatic tricks while high-wire acrobats and carousels flew high,
And sideshows offered the chance to win a fluffy animal
From shooting 22s or throwing down coconuts.
Paekakariki fairs are for home produce and local artisans,
The park for concerts and Shakespeare and soccer for all age groups.
I launched a book in the railway station waiting room,
Once busy with the tea ladies serving the first steam-train stop,
Catered by locals with local musicians playing
‘Matata’, a poem written by Paekakariki’s poet laureate Michael O’Leary.
The villages are different yet essentially the same.