The Summer of ’82 Read online

  I thought about going to sleep in Mum and Dad’s bed but discovered that Trev and Brenda were ensconced in there. Gross – but then where had I thought they would go? It was unlikely she’d share a room with Mark and Trevor in their bunk-beds.

  Glenn had met Liz on the train while going to his job at Brashs. He had an Orange Juice badge on, and Liz started talking to him about the obscure Scottish indie pop band. She mentioned that she loved the graffiti just near Nunawading Station that read ‘I love Orange Juice – not the drink, silly’. Glenn had clinched the deal by saying, ‘Yeah, I did that.’ This was not entirely true, but he had advised on the grammar. He’d scampered when he heard a car, leaving Noddy and a few others to finish off the illegal artwork.

  For some reason, along with bomb-making, we were quite fond of spraying a bit of graffiti along the train lines. We didn’t have tags; we’d simply write the names of bands we liked, like No Nonsense or The Specials. Mark had a penchant for writing smart-arse comments like the aforementioned ‘Mitcham the town of action – ha ha’, and also for quoting lines from Elvis Costello songs. He was quite poetic for an apprentice Telecom technician.

  Sometimes our graffiti would be so personal that only a handful of people would understand it. We did one near the railway station that said ‘Zonk bucks cats’. Our absolute favourite was ‘Wang pisses in bottles’. That was about one of our friends, Dave Scott, a kid who was great fun to hang around with. He looked Asian but had Anglo parents, so ended up with the nickname Wang. He was quite small for his age, and it was this that always intrigued us. A rumour went round that Dave had been taken to a doctor to try to work out why he was so undersized, and as part of a series of tests had to urinate in a bottle. So we came up with ‘Wang pisses in bottles’ – hilarious to about five people.

  So Liz and Glenn arranged to meet at the 24 Flavours café in Ringwood, where romance blossomed. Liz was a Mitcham girl, but it wasn’t surprising that we’d never met her before. She lived in one of the few mansions in Mitcham and went to a very posh private school. Her dad had made his money in parking meters; he claimed to have invented those plastic bollards that road workers used to block off roads – the orange ones that are filled with water. We didn’t know whether to believe him but his house was massive.

  The only person we knew who had a similar story was John Rossiter, Fiona’s dad, who claimed to have been offered the Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise rights for the whole of Australia! He uttered the famous words, ‘I can’t see Australians eating fried chicken.’ I would love to have been at the Rossiter house when Mrs Rossiter brought home their first bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken.

  I returned to my working life at the tile factory, and Trev waited eagerly the next Thursday for my pay packet so he could buy more tinned spaghetti and beer. I made sure I took out all the cash I needed before he got to it. I needed money for driving lessons, band rehearsals (which were now at a proper rehearsal space) and food that wasn’t nachos. Noddy was still angry with us and had left the band, so I was relegated to bass guitar and had to buy a bass as well.

  Buying a guitar was a big deal. This was before eBay or Cash Converters, so there were only two ways you could get one: you could go to a guitar shop or try the Trading Post. The latter was an institution at our house. One of us would buy it on a Thursday, when it came out, and we’d all take turns scouring the ads for bargains. We were like the Kerrigans in The Castle, in that someone would find an interesting ad and read it out for discussion. You had to get in early because the real bargains were all sorted by Thursday night.

  In the end I went to the guitar shop, although that meant dealing with a shop assistant who had long hair and a bad attitude. I walked in and he was sitting there playing a guitar at maximum level, trying to mimic Jimmy Page’s work on ‘Stairway to Heaven’, and I had to interrupt him. I could tell straight away he was a good guitarist, even before he told me how he’d played with James Freud and had been in an early line-up of Moving Pictures before they turned into ‘a bunch of wankers’.

  He showed me the bass guitars and then played each one for about ten minutes. Eventually, he handed one over to me and said, ‘Give this baby a go.’ Then he stared at me while I fumbled through the opening notes of ‘Smoke on the Water’. But in the end I got my bass guitar. It was a Dion – sure, it was ‘Jap crap’, as the ever-helpful shop assistant informed me, but it still had a ‘wicked sound for the price’. I loved that bass guitar, which was my biggest purchase to date.

  Then something good finally happened to me: my first dole cheque arrived. When I opened that official-looking letter and saw that I was going to get $150 a fortnight, I jumped for joy. My older brothers thought my HSC results had arrived and I had got straight As. But it was better than that – I was getting some sweet dole money. I resigned from my factory job the very next day.

  Drago couldn’t understand why I’d quit. We were getting good money at the factory, what with our heat and dust allowance thrown in. But I’d had all I could take. I was actually dreaming of roof tiles by this stage – the only place I wanted to see another roof tile was on a roof, where they belonged. And I needed to concentrate on the big picture: becoming a rock star, getting my licence and finding a girlfriend. Okay, sure, there was also the small matter of my HSC results. Whatever; my life was instantly better now that I didn’t have to get up at six a.m.

  Mum and Dad came back from the beach and Trev’s socialist republic was dissolved. Mum said, ‘Kev, tear down that wall.’ Brenda was relegated to the rumpus room, where she slept on the couch.

  Of course, once Mum and Dad fell asleep, Trev could often be seen sneaking out to the rumpus room for some … rumpus? And there was also Glenn’s girlfriend, Liz. She would start the evening sleeping on a mattress on the floor between our single beds, but somehow by the next morning would be in Glenn’s bed. Plus, Mark was seeing a young police officer, who would come over at the end of her shift and end up in the top bunk, uniform and all. There was so much giggling and sneaking around after ten p.m. in the O’Neil household that it was like a Carry On movie. I was like the priest in those movies, the one guy who fell asleep alone – except I didn’t even have the good Lord on my side for comfort.

  My parents did ask me why I had stopped at the factory, but I just said the work had run out. The next few days were joyful as all I did was get up late, have a driving lesson and go to band rehearsal. It was all going so well … until one day I got a phone call.

  ‘David!’ my dad yelled from the back door. ‘Phone for you. It’s Greg.’

  I was lying on the banana lounge after a swim. ‘Greg?’

  ‘Yeah, Greg.’

  Did I know any Gregs? There was Greg Davison from school … but he was one of the sporty, good-looking kids who lived in Donvale, and I had once laughed at him because he had a photo of Dire Straits on his school folder. So it wouldn’t be him. Who else? Greg Brady? No, he wasn’t real. Greg Evans? Maybe he was actively recruiting for Perfect Match, looking for eligible bachelors. Unreal – I might meet Dexter the robot! Or perhaps it was Greg Macainsh from Skyhooks – maybe he was looking for a new bass guitarist. Hang on, he was the bass guitarist.

  Dad handed me the phone. ‘Keep it quick. I’ve got an important phone call coming through.’

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘David, this is Greg from the CES.’

  Massive letdown. ‘Oh, hi, man,’ I stumbled.

  ‘I’ve been keeping a lookout for a job for you.’

  ‘Oh, great – is there anything going in the music industry?’

  ‘I did check with Brashs, but they have no vacancies at the moment.’

  Yeah, because my brother took the last job.

  ‘But I’ve got a good part-time job for you. It could be a great entry into a rewarding career.’

  ‘Okay. What is it?’

  ‘You’ll be working in the restaurant industry.’

  All right … I could see myself as a maître d’, or maybe working the ba
r at The Keg like Tom Cruise in Cocktail. Definitely a step up from the tile factory.

  ‘What restaurant is it?’ I said.

  ‘It’s an assistant retail position in a hot dog shop.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Hot dogs.’

  ‘Hot dogs?’

  ‘Yes, Electro Hot Dogs in Toorak Road. I’ve organised an interview for you with the owner, Dudley Canuld, at ten a.m. tomorrow.’

  Really? I needed to have an interview in order to sell hot dogs? Greg was droning on about the details, but to be honest I’d zoned out after the words job and hot dogs. I certainly liked hot dogs, but I’d never seen myself working in the hot dog industry.

  I got up early the next day and caught the train to South Yarra, then walked down to Electro Hot Dogs. The owner had just parked his flash-looking Rolls-Royce out the front and was getting some hot dog rolls out of the boot. Yes, getting the rolls out of the Rolls! I introduced myself and he told me to get the rest of the rolls out of his boot. Hey, Mr Capitalist, I’m not working for you yet, I thought, but it turned out that was the first part of the interview.

  The shop was painted in bright red and yellow, and all it sold was hot dogs. That was it. Apparently it once had a brief dalliance with nachos, but they were too hard to eat, especially when you were drunk and it was three a.m. A hot dog was the perfect food for an inebriated punter; the whole thing was contained in a roll, which was then contained in a bag. It was the perfect mess-free design – unless the bag broke, and then it’d be a disaster.

  The counter had eight metal spikes, on which you would stick the hot dog rolls to toast them. Next to the spikes sat twelve jars of sauces. I can still remember them all: tomato, barbecue, mayonnaise, cream cheese, gherkin relish, mint jelly, fruit chutney, American mustard, French mustard, English mustard, chilli sauce and Electro sauce, which was just a mixture of mustard and gherkin relish. Behind the counter was what looked like two large fish tanks, and these were filled with bright red saveloys (or frankfurters, as some foreign types called them). That was the whole operation. It was more like a kiosk than a shop.

  Dudley sat me down; well, actually there was nowhere to sit. He leant against the counter as he looked me up and down. He was an older gentleman. I already knew he drove a very expensive car, so I assumed he was loaded. But not too loaded, as he was still picking up the rolls and delivering them himself.

  ‘Do you like hot dogs?’ Dudley asked.

  ‘Yeah, I love ’em!’ I said enthusiastically.

  ‘You don’t love them too much, do you?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You can have one free hot dog per shift, but that’s it. I can’t have you eating the hot dogs, or giving them away to your mates.’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t do that.’

  ‘Okay, you’ve got a job then. You’ll work Friday and Saturday nights, from six to four.’

  ‘Six? Do people really want hot dogs that early?’

  ‘No, six p.m. to four a.m. You get five dollars an hour, so that’s fifty dollars a shift. One hundred dollars a week, total. And it’s cash.’

  The hours sounded better than the tile factory’s, but could I stay up till four a.m.? Had I ever done that? Once that I could recall, on a Scout camp. And this job would blow my weekends out – but then again, I didn’t exactly have a hectic social schedule. One hundred dollars cash would be great.

  ‘Of course, it’s up to you to declare that money to the government,’ Dudley added.

  As if. That money would not be declared; it would top off my dole beautifully. Sure, I got the job through the CES, but I guessed that the communication between them and the DSS would not be that great. This was before computers, before the internet and before the government was really mean to people cheating on the dole.

  ‘You’ll be working with Cindy,’ Dudley said. ‘She’s the manager.’

  I hadn’t realised this hot dog empire would have a hierarchy. Then Cindy walked in; she wasn’t what I expected.

  The name Cindy immediately made me think of that little doll from the ’70s. I thought anyone called Cindy must have blonde hair and look like an extra from an American teen movie like Animal House. Well, I was wrong. Cindy had dreadlocks, she was wearing Doc Martens boots and she had overalls like Andy Pandy’s. I’d seen this look before …

  Then it hit me: she looked like one of Haysi Fantayzee! You know, the band that sang ‘Shiny Shiny’ and other hits like … ‘Shiny Shiny’.

  ‘Cindy, this is David,’ Dudley said. ‘He’ll be working with you on Friday night.’

  Cindy dumped a bag of change on the bench next to the cash register and started counting it. She didn’t look up. ‘Yep.’

  ‘So, you’ll show him the ropes, okay?’

  She still didn’t look up. ‘Okey-dokey, Dudley Do-Right.’

  Did she just call him a character from The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show?

  ‘Right,’ said Dudley, backing out of the shop. ‘I’ll be off.’

  Cindy said nothing. Was the boss scared of this girl in overalls?

  I didn’t know what I was meant to do. Should I be having training right now? Surely there were food hygiene standards in the hot dog world, or at least a code of conduct? But Cindy wasn’t offering anything at all.

  I thought I’d break the ice with a bit of light conversation – maybe about popular music, my favourite topic. That was usually a bit of a winner with the ladies. ‘So, are you a fan of Haysi Fantayzee?’

  She spun around and glared at me. ‘Why would you say that?’

  ‘Ah, just … you know …’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘I mean, they’re a good band. That song “Shiny Shiny”, and the other ones, like …’

  ‘Just be here on Friday night at six p.m.’

  Like Dudley, I backed out of the shop.

  So that Friday at six p.m. I began my glorious career in the hot dog industry. To say I was a little scared of my ‘manager’ would be an understatement. I was certainly never going to mention Haysi Fantayzee again. I walked in, and this time Cindy was dressed as Boy George. I swear, she looked exactly like him. I bit my tongue for a while, but then I started singing Culture Club songs – some ‘Do You Really Want to Hurt Me’ and ‘I’ll Tumble 4 Ya’.

  After working just one shift in the hot dog shop, I had total sympathy for anyone who has ever had the misfortune to work in retail. I had no idea members of the public were that stupid. Seriously, the number one question people would ask when they walked in was: ‘Do you sell hot dogs?’ The sign in the window said it, the fluorescent lights out the front said it, and the only thing you could see in the shop was hot dogs, rolls and sauces. What did they think we sold?

  The second-most common question we were asked was: ‘Are your hot dogs hot?’ No, they’re freezing cold. Actually we’re trialling a new type of hot dog … we call it the cold dog.

  And the third-most common question I heard was: ‘Can you have sauce on your hot dog?’ No, we absolutely forbid it. Oh, what are those twelve sauces sitting right in front of your eyes? They’re for display only.

  There was one question that infuriated me even more than these. We’d have the front lights turned off and I’d be mopping the floor, and still people would knock on the door – which was locked and had a ‘closed’ sign on it – and yell, ‘Are you open?’

  As it turned out, Cindy and I got on like a house on fire. She was fun. And a bit crazy, too. She would refuse to serve people if she didn’t like their fashion. One time two guys walked in dressed like they were in a bad Van Halen cover band – the big hair, leather jackets, tight jeans and so on. She just looked at them and said, ‘Nup. You’re not getting one of my hot dogs.’

  They didn’t make girls like Cindy in Mitcham. She had dyed hair, crazy earrings and a bad attitude. I didn’t know where she came from, but I guessed it was somewhere exotic – Fitzroy? St Kilda? Maybe even Adelaide? Like me, she was a big fan of new wave music, so we had the ghetto blaster pump
ing out the hits. She’d brought in a stack of mixtapes she’d made, so one minute we’d be listening to a bit of Dead or Alive, and the next we’d be digging a bit of The Triffids.

  The only problem was that I’d told my friends that I was starting work in a hot dog shop. Late in the night, with the shop packed, who should walk in but Zonk, Drago and Wookey.

  Cindy looks up and goes, ‘Oh, hi, Zonk.’

  ‘You know Zonk?’ I said. I was stunned.

  Zonk just shrugged his shoulders. ‘Cindy lives at the end of my street.’

  My head nearly fell off as I spun around to face her. ‘You live in Mitcham?’

  ‘Yeah, why? Where do you live?’

  ‘Ah, Mitcham!’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah, Mitcham, Victoria – the gateway to Ringwood.’

  Here I was thinking she must have come from some bohemian suburb and been raised by intellectual parents who wore cravats and drank red wine, but it turned out she was just on the other side of the railway line. She went to a Catholic school, which was why I didn’t know her, but still this felt like a weird coincidence – maybe even fate.

  When it got to midnight I was wondering why the hot dog shop was still open – who on earth gets a hot dog that late? Well, I can tell you: drunk people. Oh, and guys who haven’t picked up. Sad-looking men would come in with an expression that said: ‘Oh well … I might as well find comfort in some processed meat and sauce.’ Between midnight and four the shop was heaving. Sometimes the crowd was four deep. No wonder Dudley drove a Rolls – this place was a licence to print money.

  Cindy, of course, kept everything running smoothly and professionally … As if. She came out from the back at one stage with a giant squeezie sauce bottle and started squirting me and the customers. If it was getting too busy she would go out the back and turn the power off, and then come out and say, ‘There’s a blackout in the area – sorry, no more hot dogs.’

  At four a.m. precisely we closed the shop. I was exhausted after being on my feet for ten hours, with only one hot dog – okay, three – to see me through. Cindy did the till and I said my goodbyes. ‘Okay, see you tomorrow.’