My Father

This story was originally published in Positive Words September 2015

 

There are are many things I could write about in relation to my late Father who lived until he was 103 years old.

However, I will write about his obsession with burning off.

Father was a Primary School Principal in country Victoria moving frequently as he sought promotion.

He was very much a townsman, participating in church affairs, lodge and most sporting codes, either as a player or a coach or mentor. He was a very fair man and settled in well to the various towns that we moved to.

All our moves included a house being supplied some better than others, he agitated quite strongly when there were improvements needed to either the school or the residence and invariably these repairs were made after we had moved on.

Father and Mother were keen gardeners and grew a lot of our vegetables and fruit and kept poultry which kept us very well fed.

Father loved his incinerator and burning off garden refuse and other household rubbish.

One house we lived in had a long drive and lot of trees that shed their leaves, he would rake up the leaves in little piles and set fire them, we children would see them smoldering for ages.

We eventually ended up living in suburban Melbourne where my parents continued their love of gardening so Father bought an incinerator which was behind the garage where he spent many a happy time burning off.

It became apparent that rules were changing with burning off and councils imposed some bans and the environmentalists pushed to ban burning off altogether. The councils introduced special bins for recyclable rubbish in an attempt to stop people burning papers and green bins for garden refuse.

This had little effect on my Father, he continued stoking up his incinerator.

My Mother passed on when he was 94 and he went downhill a little but still lived alone.

We employed a gardener to do the outside work and he took away the clippings and cuttings.

We discovered that Father still burnt off his personal papers in the good old incinerator.

The family told him that it was unsafe to do this and my sister purchased a shredder for him to dispose of his papers.

We thought that was the end of it!

I called in unexpectedly one day and the gardener was working in the garden and there was smoke pouring from the garage. I leapt out of the car and asked him what he thought he was doing only to be told it was Father burning off papers in an old 5 gallon drum and that he had been doing so on a regular basis. I had to apologize to the gardener.

We held a family conference and eventually convinced Father that it was time to hang up his matches.

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