This Way Up: Where would I be without a good set of wheels?

THIS WAY UP

Where would I be without a good set of wheels?

Based on a true story

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Rhett Brown

Copyright Rhett Brown 2011

Published by AM Publishing NZ at Smashwords

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Copyright Rhett Brown 2011

The author asserts the moral right to be identified as

the author of this work.

All rights reserved.

ISBN 9781476278438

To purchase this book as hard copy or ebook please contact Rhett Brown

www.rhettbrown.co.nz

eastwing@slingshot.co.nz

+64 9 459 4123

+64 27 316 4772

First published in hard copy New Zealand in 2012

AM Publishing New Zealand

www.ampublishingnz.com

Front cover: Rhett at the ruin of Knossos Palace on Crete.

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Foreword

Funnily enough, it’s not Rhett’s, but his daughter Belinda’s words – ‘shit happens’ – that encapsulate so much of all that Rhett shares here.

Ever since I first heard that phrase a decade ago, I have loved it. The crystals crowd has come up with ‘magic happens’ as an antidote, but I’ve never been quite so convinced. I write these thoughts not only after reading Rhett’s story but after two weeks of wrestling with the darkness of Canterbury’s destructive quake. I write, too, as a former police chaplain and firefighter; there is no doubt that shit happens. On the other hand, it’s not quite the thing to say until the person who experienced the shit happening is mentally, even spiritually, equipped to hear it.

It’s a little over two years now since Rhett struggled into ‘my’ church. I don’t mean physically, as he had long since mastered the art of his new wheels. He was struggling emotionally and spiritually against the inner demons that come with adversity. It’s not easy for a bloke to enter a church. It goes against the grain. We’re trained to be hard, independent, fierce and manly.

But this isn’t one of those stories. It’s not a ‘Goddy’ account of a conversion and sanctimonious life thereafter – though there is a God tucked discreetly away in the narrative. There are so many of those tales, and while I’m sure they’re well meant, they tend to have me reaching for a bucket. Processed faith is like processed cheese. Sooner or later it leaves you with a bitter taste in your mouth. This is a story of triumph over deep darkness. Rhett’s accident was the beginning of the final descent into what D H Lawrence called ‘darkness invisible enfolded in the deeper dark’. It was there that Rhett found life and light and purpose once again.

Shit happened, but so did resurrection. It came in the form of a voice that said, ‘suck it in, son.’ But to do that, sometimes we have to lose all other options. To experience the light, we don’t need to go as far down as Rhett did, nor even to experience the kind of life awakening he did. But sometimes we need help in sorting out the mess.

Michael Godfrey MA (Hons), BD, PhD

Vicar of Whangarei

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Chapter 1

In Whangarei, a hill called Parihaka towers over the town. A road leads to a car park just under the summit where about forty steps take you to a large viewing platform at the top. Whenever we had the rellies to stay there was an obligatory trip up this hill. I vividly remember I was absolutely terrified of the place. For me, the world under my feet spun faster than I could walk, and if I should simultaneously glance up at the moving clouds, then I would be down walking on all fours, just like a crawling baby. It would take me a long time to stand up, and then only for a short time before I had to sit down again. With a fertile brain at that tender age of four, I concluded I was scared of heights. This is a normal reaction for many people, and one that was to have repercussions for me later in life.

Growing up in Whangarei in the late fifties was bliss. Some orange peel, a length of string, a stick and the ever-present pocketknife was all I needed for a day of fun. On a very good day you could add in a willow bow and fern-stalk arrows, while the ultimate day would also involve a slingshot and stones. With this gear my friends and I drifted around the streets and a large park at the back of our house. It had that most impressive play area of all – a railway track. There was a steep embankment clothed in kikuyu grass up to the tracks, and with the aid of a cardboard box pinched from the rear of Davidson’s Bakery, we could race each other down the slope as though on toboggans. We sometimes put pennies and ha’pennies on the rail tracks for the train to run over and flatten. In summer, when everything was tinder dry and I could get some of Dad’s matches, we would light fires amongst the bracken on the embankment.

The only thing that interfered with this fun existence was school. It was the juvenile equivalent of work spoiling an adult’s day. In the early days I didn’t get on so well with the education system. I saw no need for spelling, arithmetic and writing stories. As a result there was constant conflict with the teachers, and it was never my fault. I was strapped many times for many things, and looking back, I now realise each punishment was well deserved.

My earliest memory was at kindergarten in the sandpit where I had just built a beauty sandcastle. Then this snotty-nosed brat kicked it all to bits. So without hesitation I gave the bugger a bloody nose. Well, that was the end of my kindergarten education. Not that I minded because it was a silly place.

Then I got kicked out of Sunday school for bunking off and playing on the railway tracks with Ted Meredith. The teacher sent me home with a note pinned to my shirt. I was so proud until Mum read it and Dad smacked me over the ear. Still, there was no more Sunday school.

I went to Cubs and apparently was a uncooperative; once again I was sent home with a note pinned to my jumper. Dad read it, but this time Mum smacked me over the ear. However, no more Cubs either, so I was happy.

Getting me to attend swimming lessons was like trying to mix oil with water. I’d bunk off and go to the local shop with my sixpence intended for the instructor and pig out on lollies. But not before wetting my togs in the pool and wrapping them up in my towel. Mum could see I hadn’t been swimming despite my assertions to the contrary. But my hair hadn’t been wet and Mum wasn’t as stupid as I thought she was. Needless to say I never went back to swimming lessons.

I was eight when my parents moved from our Moody Avenue state house and shifted to a house they bought on Mt Pleasant Street in Otaika at the southern edge of town. This was a great move for me because I was instantly removed from a bad environment where I had been mixing with some real troublemakers and had started to roam the streets making mischief.

Up the road, not far from our new house, was a large, bush-covered hill with a muddy track running up it. The top of this track came out onto Morningside Road beside a huge, concrete water reservoir. I spent many happy hours playing in this bush.

As a teenager I was hands-on. I had a chemistry set, which I played with for hours making smells, gases and just plain ugly things. I made endless wooden boats that would float, go mushy and disappear. I was slow to learn about waterproof glue – still a new thing for model makers then. All my pocket money was spent on balsa wood, glue, paints, nails, model aeroplanes and things that needed a creative mind and busy fingers. I was always playing with Dad’s woodwork gear, all basic – just a plane, a few chisels, a couple of always-blunt handsaws and some screwdrivers that doubled as small chisels. There was also a spokeshave that chattered over the wood when I tried to use it. Yet at the end of the day I would be ankle-deep in shavings, having built a model yacht, skinned three knuckles and cut one finger.

Later in life the desire to play with wood and create things lead me along a tragic route. Maybe the wood and timber thing was in my genes – my great-grandfather was a carpenter, and his father was a builder in Canada. My other grandfather spent many years building wooden bridges for New Zealand Rail. Indeed, when it came time for me to leave school, I wanted to be a builder or cabinetmaker. I regularly won the end-of-year class prize for woodwork. But Mum, who had sway in the family, skilfully sidetracked me into a job as a banker – a fledgling career that crashed after six months. Arithmetic had never been my strong point, and accuracy with figures is essential in the banking industry.

I remember in high school I had an acquaintance named John Rigden. We were in the third form, now called year nine. One day I noticed he had not been at school for some time. I found out he had dived into a swimming pool and broken his neck and couldn’t move any of his body. Well, that’s how it was explained to us.

I thought it was a terrible thing to happen and wondered how long it would take to heal. I never saw John again, and later reports we received impressed upon us just how serious his situation was. I could not comprehend being like that, living like that. I had images in my mind of how I thought it must be.

I shouldn’t have thought about it so much. One day I would know the answers to those hard questions, avoided by everybody and thought about by no one.

So through my life I can look back and see many of the images I had tucked away into my subconscious, which one day would all collude as demons to haunt my life on a daily basis.

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Chapter 2

July 30th, 2004 was a Friday. It was a beautiful, fine day with a cloudless blue sky still fresh from a near frost. I was working as a hammer-hand for a builder. My boss had been subcontracted by a bigger building firm, which was over-committed with work, to build a beach house at Omaha, on the coast east of Warkworth. The long, rectangular-shaped dwelling was two storeys high, and the roof was unusual in that it was single pitch running the length of the house. We had begun the project in late May. On this day we were to begin fixing the first of the exterior cladding, predominantly traditional cedar bevel-back weatherboarding.

The job had gone well and progress was steady. The day before, I had worked on-site with the labourer installing metal ceiling battens onto which we would later fix Gibraltar board. I had messed up badly with this task, much to my disappointment, as it should have been a straightforward job, so Friday morning relations between the boss and I were strained.

In fact, I had been thinking for a while of changing careers. An application for a job as a council dog ranger had been unsuccessful so I was looking to do something else with my life. As I became softer with the advancing years, it had gradually dawned on me that wet, cold building sites, along with the constant lifting and humping of heavy, wet timber, the digging of footings and wheelbarrowing of concrete was best left to younger men.

Two small walls built off a balcony-style deck, giving access to the top floor, needed building paper wrapped around them. The deck was about three metres long by two deep. It was to be the landing for a flight of stairs to the front door and was framed but had no walking surface. Leading up to it we had erected a temporary set of wooden steps for our own use. From the top of these steps a couple of planks had been laid over the deck frame providing walking access to the top floor.

There was no handrail on the steps and no fall restraint rails around the deck either. Why not? Well, I suppose it was assumed we would all be careful and not so stupid as to fall off, and even if we did, it wasn’t far to fall. Besides, safety concerns were often only given lip service. When working at height, the only safety briefing would be, Be careful – don’t fall. The fact that we had inadequate work platforms for height jobs seemed irrelevant.

So, at 9.15 am, against this backdrop, I was up on the two planks stapling the building paper onto the wall studs when I ran out of staples. I intended to turn around, walk back across the planks, go down the steps, get more staples then return and