RACING IN THE STREET by BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN. Story by Annette Trevitt.

Karratha, Western Australia.

February 2016.

Dad’s coffin was carried out into the glare and baking heat of the Pilbara. The funeral director, another out-of-towner, led the procession down the Dampier Highway to the cemetery. My sister and her mother and I followed the hearse in a borrowed car. My brothers behind us in Dad’s ute.

As we drew closer, the director flicked on the left blinker.

Oh no, I said, he thinks the Karratha Leisure Centre is the cemetery. Quick, what do I do. Turn with him or go straight ahead? Quick.

We laughed as the hearse approached the turn off.

Quick, what?

The hearse slowed down. The blinker flickered and went off. The hearse accelerated towards the cemetery but not before I had pictured the funeral procession doing a lap of the leisure centre’s carpark.

*

Something always went on with a vehicle when Dad was involved. Nothing was straightforward about how he, and the rest of the Trevitt family, related to cars. This is evident in the way we bought, ran and got rid of cars.

Some of the he cars my family and I have owned:

1. the car that didn’t start
2. the car that had no brakes
3. the car with the busted radiator
4. the car with the broken accelerator
5. the car with the steering wheel that fell off
6. the car that couldn’t be driven on a wet night as the headlights wouldn’t work at the same time as the wipers or the blinkers
7. the car driven into the ground
8. the car that was a present to replace a dog
9. the car that sounded like a chaff-cutter
10. the car that crossed Sydney during peak hour in second gear
11. the car kept to keep another company
12. the car that moved sheep across town
13. the car with a horn that went off whenever it pleased
14. the car that rusted to a shell in a paddock
15. the car bulldozed into a gully
16. the car bought with cash out of a shirt pocket
17. the car that caught fire under the backseat
18. the car with hammered dents of frustration
19. the car that took corners like a shopping trolley
20. the car that was a bargain
21. the car that was a lemon
22. the car that was stolen
23. the car that didn’t have first gear
24. the car that brought the family into the 21st century
25. the car that made the previous car look less of a shit-heap
26. the car that ended up straddling a verge.

After Dad’s death, I was the sole executor of his estate – a spectacular mess of hoarded junk, a bank debt in the hundreds of thousands, a portfolio of rental properties running at a loss and lost deeds – all in a town that had gone bust. The sheer complexity of sorting out his estate was overwhelming and often distressing.

Among the chaos – emotional, financial, bureaucratic – I took great comfort in a song on a Springsteen CD we found when we cleared out Dad’s house. I doubt it was one of Dad’s CDs – it was most likely left by a former tenant.

My father lived in Karratha, a mining town in the Pilbara, for 42 years. Thousands of miles from his family over east. He ran away in his mid-30s after going bankrupt and losing everything – a farm, the house, his family. He went to the North West and fell in love with the place.

Every summer he drove across the country in a clapped-out vehicle to see us kids, but he always went back. Back to where he had a stool at the bar and a nickname he loved: the Professor.

Often during his visits, he took us on road trips. We spent days in the car with Dad testing our powers of observation:

• The car at the turn off: what colour was the driver’s shirt?
• How many horses were in the top paddock?
• Whose initials were on the numberplate of the truck that overtook us?

Maybe focusing on the details and quizzing us settled his mind. His way of coping with his three kids, who for 11 months of the year, were growing up and changing without him.

*

In the car following the hearse to the cemetery, Springsteen’s Racing in the Street, was on. For months, years, afterwards, I was unable to drive anywhere in Karratha, and Melbourne, without playing the song over and over.

The calming effect of the opening piano chords was instant. It put me back on the road to the cemetery. It reminded me what I had to do and what mattered. In the final stretch, while it played, all I thought of was my father up ahead, in the coffin, on his way to be buried.

Stereo Story #802

 This story is an extract from I Had A Father in Karratha, published by Upswell Publishing in 2022.

 Annette narrated the story, backed by the Stereo Stories band, at the Williamstown Literary Festival in June 2024.

 Annette will be presenting the story once again, at our Tempo Rubato show on Saturday 30 November 2024.

Given that today is Bruce Springsteen’s 75th birthday, readers may like to mark the occasion by browsing our collection of 16 Springsteen stories.