Thanks Frank, for jolting similar memories.FRANK BASILE wrote:Hi Col.
.. we had what was called the "hobby hut".
This was a hangar dedicated for car repairs/ rebuilds etc,outside was a drive on ramp ideal for doing lubes and box/clutch jobs.
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In my otherwise fairly pristine childhood there was a grungy old hole called 'the Bakery'. After school, after quinces & chasy in the creek, we would climb the bank and approach the Bakery, tentatively, and with veneration, for here loitered hoodlums. You'd slink inside, a little square victorian relic, old whitewash, greasy paw- prints. Adjusting to dark, cool oily earth floor, scanning eyes set to a bewildering floor, there scattered junk- Matchless and Ford, bits & pieces of BSA, dirt & oil, spokes, sunken bits & pieces, lying sprockets, lazy coke bottles. Clips, nuts. Chains & chunks of engines, leaning over in the dirt.
Wheels reversed ('in'). Holdens outside with patchy paint, like fresian cows. -Go-fast.
You shut up unless talked to. You'd get a crooked smile,sideways, mutters. You got ignored. Skinny blokes, one , two or three, white t-shirts with oil stains, backs bent. Engine revs, oil smoke, lashing & tink-tink of tools. Never stay too long, important things get done here. Held chin, head bowed, figuring, trying to work this thing out..
This was Tea Tree Gully, corner North -East Road & Elizabeth Street. Chris Terlet, Tony Rich, & a few others. Speedway way was our regular hit as kids, Rowley Park. Only other '66- '70 recall is MacDonald's garage at Grand Junction Road, in Rosewater. Tony Rich later bought thier excellent 8" channeled duece roadster ( it made it's way to Mexico.)
MacDonald's had thier georgeous full- body 392 Hemi slingshot in the Servo window. This was a modern servo, unlike Kipling's dirt floor galv job up at home. We'd walk to the north end of Addison Road, my grandfather & I, then go fifty-odd steps west and stop at the display windows, under the canopy, ogling this gleaming lizard thing, (an A/D). All straight lines & circles, tyres black like shiny new shoes. Red & white, no heap nor hack, unique.
