Chopper Unchopped (86 page)

Loyola was involved in the death of kings and even popes. Political intrigue and conspiracy has haunted the Society of Jesus ever since and the Jesuit order certainly does seem to have a great interest in matters social and political.

They are without doubt the most powerful order within the Catholic Church. I used to joke with Father Norden that the Jesuits were the Vatican mafia and that they should stick to what they know most about.

‘What’s that?’ Father Norden would reply. ‘Killing popes and plotting the overthrow of South American dictatorships.’ Ha ha.

I think it’s fair to say that I wasn’t his favorite prisoner in spite of our smiles.

Now, to get back to these bloody police shootings. It’s like the monkey who roared like a lion at night and made all the animals in the jungle run away in panic and fear.

The monkey started to think he was a lion because all the animals ran in fear of him at night. It was dark, none of the animals could see that the roaring monster was just a little monkey and so the monkey continued to rant and roar.

Even the elephants ran away with the wolves and jackals, and the monkey roared out, ‘I am king of the jungle’. Then one night the monkey came across a lion and the monkey roared and growled, but instead of running away in fear the lion charged forward and pounced on the monkey and tore him to shreds.

In the morning all the animals came to look, and when they saw the dead monkey they all cried and asked the lion why he killed the poor monkey. The old lion looked at the dead monkey and, feeling a bit puzzled himself, he said, ‘He’s a dead monkey now, but last night he was a lion’.

I guess the moral is if all you’ve got is a banana in your hand you’d better eat it and stop waving it about trying to pretend it’s a shotgun, and if you’re a monkey stay in the trees and don’t run around the jungle pretending to be a lion. If anybody wants to roar like lions then they better make sure they have the teeth and claws to back it up. I for one have no tears for dead monkeys. The world is full of real dangers, and police are no different from any other people. When you hear the lion roar you either fill it full of lead or run like a rat. You certainly do not stop to check to see if it’s a real one or you could end up dead. And I’m no police lover. I’m a lover of self-defence and a great believer in every human having a god-given right to self-defence.

I reckon the jungle is becoming too full of monkeys who roar like lions, and when they die all that anyone sees, in hindsight, is the poor dead monkey and they all blame the poor old lion.

I’ve shot a few of these roaring monkeys myself. Personally I can’t stand the little bastards. Mind you, some of them gave me a few ‘gorillas’ if I ever put my hand out. And some were more chumps than chimps.

A SMALL topic of comic interest unique to the criminal world inside and outside prison that has always given me much amusement over the years is the way crooks divvy up their ill-gotten gains.

The very best of friends will gather to whack up the booty, and each man will sit at the table with his hand on his gun butt as the pie gets cut up. Very often a six-man gang can meet to whack up the proceeds and turn into a three or four-man gang in a few bloody moments of gunfire.

Half the gang wars in and out of a prison have been sparked by ill will over the unequal division of cash and goods. Squabbles over money are never ending and every weekend at the card tables in every jail yard, this fine criminal tradition is carried on.

It reminds me of another story told to me as a small boy by my dear old Dad, who was a sort of bent Aussie version of Rudyard Kipling or Aesop.

In relation to the equal division of funds, there is the yarn of the lion, the fox and the donkey who agree to form a partnership and go out hunting. They were the very best of comrades in arms and staunch and solid friends and plundered and killed with scant regard.

At the end of their hunting adventure the lion told the donkey to share the proceeds out. The donkey divided the booty out into three equal parts, making sure to be extra careful and correct that each pile of goodies was exactly the same size and weight.

When he was done the donkey said to the lion, ‘You are king of the jungle so you have first pick.’ The lion said, ‘Thank you, my dear friend donkey.’ Then the lion looked at the three large piles of game, gold and goodies and all manner of good things to eat and he turned and sprang at the donkey in a fury and rage and killed and devoured him.

When the lion had finished licking the donkey’s blood from his claws, he looked at the terrified fox and said, ‘Dear old foxy, my fine fellow, would you be so good as to share out and divide the proceeds again into two piles? The donkey, bless his heart, won’t be needing his.’

The cunning fox then set about collecting all the piles of goodies, gold and game and pushing it into one giant pile leaving only a few small leftover tidbits in a very tiny pile for himself. Then the fox said, ‘Lion, my dear fellow, please take your pick.’

The lion looked at the tiny pile and then at the large pile and picked the large pile, then turned and said to the fox, ‘By the way my dear foxy, who on earth taught you to share things out in such a manner?’

‘The donkey,’ replied the fox. Ha ha.

My dad and his yarns. When the old boy wasn’t punching my head in for assorted crimes that I may have committed, he was spinning me some fable. These little yarns went a long way in building my tactical and strategic psychology.

He had another yarn I thought was terrific. The old lion was too slow to hunt or fight for his food so he decided to use his wits. He lay down in a cave and pretended to be sick and when any animal came to visit him he ate them.

It’s a trick many humans use in various forms. The lion lay in the cave for a long time and animals from all over came to visit their sick king and all were eaten.

The cunning fox came to visit but stood outside the cave and called inside, ‘I’ve come to visit, King Lion. How are you?’

‘Oh my dear old fox,’ cried the lion, ‘how nice of you to visit. What a dear old foxy you are. Please come inside to visit.’

‘No,’ said the fox, ‘it’s such a nice day, I think I’ll stand out here in the sun.’

‘But foxy,’ cried the old lion, ‘please come in. All the other animals in the jungle have and we had such nice visits.’

The fox, being ever so polite, but not stupid, said, ‘Dear lion, I’m sure you did have a nice visit with all of them. The trouble is, my dear old fellow, I can see a lot of tracks going into your cave but no tracks at all coming out.’

My old Dad’s yarns taught me a lot. Experience and brains will always beat youth and brawn. I was strong and tough when I was 18, but I was far more dangerous when I was ten years older. I am not as strong as I once was but I am not a man to cross.

A PHILOSOPHER is someone who points out the bleeding obvious to people who are too thick-headed to think of it themselves.

Having said that, allow me to indulge in a little philosophy. Imagine that on the night before Doomsday a candlelit dinner party will be held for the 12 remaining people on the face of the earth who are not members of the public service.

The topic of the most memorable men in the history of the human race will be raised in heated conversation over the last remaining dozen bottles of Grange Hermitage that haven’t been sold to the Japanese.

The most memorable men in human history … who will they be? It’s a big question.

It’s not Doomsday tomorrow and I’m not one of the men seated at that table, but I’m betting London to a brick that in the minds of men a thousand years from now, or whenever, only two sorts of men will be remembered: poets and killers.

We look back and who do we remember in Australia? Lawson, Paterson and Ned Kelly. Look at America, a land littered with legends. Who stands above them all? Mark Twain and Lee Harvey Oswald. Look at Irish history and who do we have? James Joyce and Daniel O’Connell. O’Connell being a humble Irish politician which is the same as a killer, and certainly thought of as a killer by his enemies.

What about the history of England? My bet would be William Shakespeare and Jack the Ripper. In Germany we have Nietzsche and Hitler. In Russia we have Leo Tolstoy and Joe Stalin.

The list goes on and on. The only truly good men history will remember who were not killers or poets will be the prophet Mohammed and Jesus Christ. But neither of them were ordinary men. They had God’s hand on their shoulders.

But of the ordinary men who will be remembered – killers and poets keep coming up. It’s funny, but a great many of these men were hated or heavily criticised during their lifetime.

The reason in relation to poets is simple. Poets are rarely understood by men of their own generation and are always ahead of their time. Hence the next generation and following generations applaud them.

The answer in relation to killers is just as simple. A murder today is a tragic horror, but a murder yesterday is history and all men have a fascination with history. And then there is the elite class – killer poets like my good self who can write, fight, bite, light, smite and, when need be, say goodnight.

While I very much doubt that my name will be raised at the Doomsday dinner party, I suspect that I will be thought of more kindly after my death than while I’m alive. What strange creatures human beings are. Ha ha.

Talking of poetry, I was called upon by the Spartan Debating Club recently and I thought I’d give the buggers a bit of the old Banjo Paterson.

WELL, I was no sooner into my first verse than the ignorant bastards started booing me down. It’s a sad day indeed when the immortal Banjo is mocked and booed, because it wasn’t me they were booing, it was the great Banjo. As an Aussie it was a sad thing to see.

These bums would think a poet laureate is an endangered species of native parrot.

I remember on Friday and Saturday nights at the Station Hotel in Greville Street, Prahran, they would have live rock bands playing back in the early 1970s. Cowboy Johnny, Dave the Jew, Terry the Tank, Solly the Jew and now and again Piss Ant Normie, or Robert Lochrie and once or twice even old Horatio Morris would pop in to see me.

Vincent Villeroy used to catch my act for a giggle but in general it was just me and the Surrey Road crew.

When the rock band was having its break I would grab the microphone and with it in one hand and a jug of beer in the other I would entertain the drunken crowd with a recital of Banjo Paterson’s poems.

When we got to
The Man from Ironbark
, the whole pub would stand in silent reverence while I recited. When I’d finished the crowd went mad and clapped and cheered like crazy. I’m sorry to say that the days of me knowing Banjo Paterson poems off by heart are over. I’ve forgotten the ones I knew, all except for
The Man from Ironbark
.

Of course, the people in the pub remained respectfully silent while I gave the recital. I now look back on it all and wonder if it was due to me being a latter day Leonard Teale or because the Cowboy and the Jew were both armed and crazy and big fans of Paterson. To talk during
Ironbark
was not a healthy thing to do.

IT’S sad for me to see the way poor old Aussieland is going. As I’ve said before, I call it the Americanisation of Australia, which is fast becoming a shadow of its former self.

I’m not talking about the land the politicians see, because the only glimpse of Australia they get is out the limo window on the drive from Parliament House to the TV studio.

I’m talking about the real Australia. The faces in the street. The ordinary battler’s culture has been sold to the bloody Yanks and the land he walks on has been sold to the Japs.

The Americans have even done it to our sport. What’s every bugger playing these days? Bloody basketball. When I grew up basketball was a girl’s game; boys played footy or cricket.

Yes, let’s all play bloody basketball, spit on Banjo Paterson and all become Yankee Doodle puppets.

Even the criminal world has all gone American or South American. And the police are all being trained in classic American tactics and strategies. Our schools and prisons have all gone American. The whole thing makes me spew. Australia has adopted every bad idea that has ever come out of Yankee land.

Between the Yanks and the Japs they have completely rooted us. We’ll be eating raw fish with a side order of fries, next. And if that doesn’t make you sick, nothing will.

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.