The Ryno Pen

Or, Further evidence that your humble bloggist is a bastard.

When I was a kid, the J Hoover’s Witnesses would come to the door, and one of the parental units would tell them we didn’t want any, and the JWs would go away. Fairy nuff, too: apparently they get to count the time spent haranguing householders off some sort of celestial debit card balance. Couldn’t have them enriching themselves at our expense, could we?

I’m a bit of a Magna Carta type. Home = Castle, and I don’t behave at all well when the unwelcome and unexpected comes lolloping up to the portcullis. Jay-dubs I’ve come to regard as a kind of odd, seasonal, sporting beast, like grouse.

Here are some tales of the hunt…

All Along The Wash-Towel
There were four of us spotty yoofs in this grotty fibro-cement two-bedroom upstairs flat (one of a set of 2 upper and 2 lower), reached by a long, rickety staircase with railings clad in more fibro-cement. One Saturday morning in the height of summer, the door resounded to vigorous rattling. Hangover death-glares were exchanged, and my old friend Beako was chosen to go and see what the hell it could be.Now I mentioned summer, didn’t I? Answering the door meant bunging a towel round one’s waist¹, because our tropical pyjamas were the sort you repair with a band-aid: to wit, skin. Beako duly girded and went forth, to find a couple of lads about our age, but with the scrubbed, pink, kind of other-worldly look reserved for young men raised in restrictive faiths. The one not making Standard Friendly Intro #352 was reaching in the ubiquitous satchel the for the magazine and tracts…Beako² cooed, “Oh, would you like to come inside?” in a way that would have made Tim Curry’s Frank N Furter look butch, if the RHPS had only had the good sense to be written and released at the time, and…
gave his towelled hips the most subtle of flicks.The lads were down the stairs and out the gate before the towel landed, I swear.  The Flat In Felafel Country  The book (and subsequent film) He Died With A Felafel In His Hand³ mainly happens in the inner western suburbs of Brisbane. Although seriously yuppied-out and gentrified now, the Toowong/Auchenflower/Milton area was once a sort of mad Bohemia, and within skateboarding distance (downhill, in the dark, making loud cartoon pterodactyl noises) of the (in)famous Night Owl⁴, I shared a flat with Wakey The Surf-Loon and Creepy Vet Student, about a dozen years before John Birmingham chronicled our happy hunting ground and the strange tribes that dwell therein.Wakey was nicknamed for Rick Wakeman, the blond-haired keyboard guy from Yes⁵, on account of his having long blonde hair and playing Yes music and other proggy stuff on his organ and little synthesizer. He kept his keyboards under a black velvet drape. Between Wakey and Creepy Vet Student, the place was a bit like Tussaud’s Chamber Of Horrors: CVS had all manner of botflies, tapeworms and what-ho in bottles of formalin, while Wakey was studying to be a lab assistant, and had half the skeleton of some poor malnourished third-worlder to join together and mount on a board, as a term project.Wakey had gone surfing and CVS was off doing Unspeakable Things, leaving me alone. I sat on our porch with a ciggy and the morning paper, doing the lordly and leisurely thing and surveying the street with a sort of hangover content…Hmm, those blokes parading up the street in pairs: could it be plainclothes cops? The lifestyle of Felafel Country involves a modicum of paranoia; ask not for whom the bong tolls. No, the short-sleeved safari suits were a bit too daggy even for Joh⁶-era plods. The ubiquitous brown leatherette satchels confirmed my suspicions. I started getting ready.And so it was, that the brave Watchtower guys knocked on the door, to be greeted by a figure draped in dusty black velvet, brandishing a human thighbone and gutturally jabbering in what may have been a mixture of Latin and Tolkien-Orkish. (And take my word for it, that’s hard to do without boaking like Linda Blair to complete the picture.)

It’s a bloody good thing for these people I tend to live up stairs: the downhill run helps ‘em escape.

 Sheepdog Trial Judgement Day
During the fabled Lost Years following the Curious Affair Of HMAS Corrupt⁷, I went bush. One of the necessary bushman accoutrements came to me unbidden: a very smart Kelpie bitch pup, nicknamed Trash, sort-of-missed the local dog catcher and became mine. (I gave him a packet of smokes for her.) She grew in wisdom and size, and Took Charge.There was the time she totally demolished the middle seat in my truck just before a date: pure Footrot Dog vs Cheeky Hobson stuff. On the whole, though, she was a fine dog. Always brought rabbits to me, untouched; learned to work sheep almost on her own despite my lack of skill: that sort of thing. Then came the day a vanload of the annoying JWs found their way up the heavily-rutted road that forked off to run a mile to three small houses, then nowhere. The nuisances at my door got a fairly quick “No thanks: you were just leaving”, went to their car, and stayed there in my bloody front yard. The the trio that had been at old Cyril’s place joined them. They were almost certainly waiting for the remainder of the gang to arrive from Tooley’s, and yep, there they were, ambling up the road.Ever seen God’s flock rounded up in a nice tight bunch and moved to the van with meaningful looks and the occasional bark and lunge? It’s a vision from heaven.   Home On The (De)Range(d)
Which brings us, by way of many details omitted for your protection, to the present dwelling. I’ve been here for just over ten years now: picked it up for a song, and it’s worth seven or eight times what I paid for it. Best thing about the joint is the size of the mortgage: nil. Apparently the place was used as a renter for a while before it went on the market. One of the last sets of tenants was a Murri (Qld aboriginal) family. Being a lot less whitefella-diluted than little old Palawa me, they were (of course) remarked upon, and Tales Were Told by some of the old ladies of the neighborhood when I moved in. (Jeez, I feel old thinking of that — all those old biddies are gone now.)The house was in more-or-less sturdy condition, so thay can’t have been quite as bad as the tales went…. Now let’s move on a year. I was freelancing for a local bus charter firm, and I’d come home in the middle of the day with a killer migraine. It was all happening: the nausea, the “silvery rainbow mylar streamer screensaver” thingy across the right-hand side of my vision, the headache of death, the whole shebang. I tend to sleep them off if I can find a quiet, dark place. My bedroom was doing a great job until….BANGBANGBANGBANGBANG went the front door, about five yards from my head.Arg. Using whatever I could muster by way of left-eye vision, I lurched to the door. There were two older women, with the obvious Watchtower Seal Of Approval about them.”Hnrgh.” I was not entirely articulate, and I probably looked like Father Jack, as well as sounding vaguely similar.

“Do you have any black people here?” asked one of the JW ladies.

That tore it. I screwed my face up even more, and “scowled upon a hostile world through one forbidding eye“.
“I didn’t know you’d be fucking collecting, did I?”

And I went back to bed. It’s only been eight years, give or take a quarter.

They left me alone until yesterday. More of that next post…

Foot Notes™

¹ Queensland dressing-gown.

² Not teh gayzor, and rather, erm, involved with one of my sisters at the time this happened.

³ Book referenced here - see also author John Birmingham’s blog.

⁴ A thriving business which appeared to cater mostly to cases of the Dope Munchies.

⁵ Here - especially the second photo.

⁶ Here.

⁷ A story yet to be told. Watch this space.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 29th, 2007 at 6:08 pm and is filed under Humour, Jehovah's Witnesses, Watchtower, memories, people stuff, religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.