WHAT I AM by TEX, DON & CHARLIE. Story by Bernhard Sayer.

The shed. Over the years.

Almost all of my childhood memories of him are of me walking into his shed.  Working alone, always working.  Me wandering in aimlessly, asking him what he was doing, not really taking in the response.  I could never quite think the logical or practical way that he did.  As a kid, I had no sense that he had the pressure on his shoulders all the time to provide for his family, his wife, three children.  He was the breadwinner.  Working alone, always working.

Working at his bench.  His bench seemed to be as long as a railway platform.  Surrounded by tools, by machines, by saw dust, by the surfaces lightly imprinted with the oily dust that seemed to settle on everything in that shed.  Gentle light pouring in through the front windows and louvre windows over his shoulder.  Piles of timber in all directions, at ground level and above.

Years later, we all talked about the appropriate song to play with the slide show we’d made for the farewell service.  We wanted to make the right choice, much as he disliked modern music.  My nephew, the musician of the family, agreed to sing Billy Bragg’s Tank Park Salute on the day.  We all agreed that Dan Fogelberg’s Leader of the Band was a good choice, and I don’t regret that selection.  His line ‘My life has been a poor attempt to imitate the man’ can’t be bettered for mine, although the verse of gratitude is just as good.

I did make one other suggestion.  Don Walker’s What I Am.  (Yeah, it’s a Tex, Don and Charlie album, but it’s Don.  Tex might sing a verse or two, but it’s Don.  Through and through).  The others didn’t think it really fit the occasion.  I could accept that.  But it’s my song for him, every day of the week.

The verses are him.  Alone in the shed, working.  Never was a company man.  He came out to Victoria in 1950 on a two year contract for a company.  He lasted two months.  There were other places to see, and he set out on his own.  He never got to be the trouble in the chain because he made his own path.  Always working.  He romanticised about the lakes he saw on the maps, and imagined the trees down to the shoreline like those he’d left at home.  He didn’t have to trek through South Australia too far to see that he had the wrong idea there.

Never was a union man.  He was a one-man army.  Grown men marvelled at his physical strength.  He did indeed trust the skills of his two hands.  I told people he was a builder, but he was everything.  Could do seemingly anything except play cricket with me in the back yard.  The one day he played golf with me he lasted three holes before his frustration called time on it.

Never was a party man.  Not really.  His colours were different to mine as I grew up into adulthood.  It didn’t get in the way of anything.  If Don intended the other meaning of the word (and I don’t think he did), well, no, he certainly was not a party man.  He was a hard working man.  Never had a day off.  Every day, there we was.  Working.  Working.  Working.

He’d help out when he felt he could.  But not being born where he settled, he was never embraced as he might have been, and he worked out early that there was little point courting it either.  I cannot change what I am indeed.

The song, like him, is drenched in space.  The unhurried chords set the scene perfectly.  Space.  We had people from his homeland come to visit, and we’d talk about the beautiful land he left behind.  ‘But he loved the space’, we’d say.  He always said that you could walk into the forest where he spent his youngest years, and get to a spot where you were sure you could enjoy some solitude, and within 30 seconds you were saying good morning to someone.  You were never on your own.  Where he settled in Australia, he had space and peace to burn.  He loved it.

The song’s bridge ain’t him.  Let it be.  And there are many, many memories.  There’s no grave, no head stone.  But we know where his ashes flowed, and forever there are memories.  He’ll never be forgotten.

I walk into my shed today, and there in the corner is the bench that he and I built together a few years before he died.  My wife doesn’t spend a lot of time in our shed.  Just me.  I wouldn’t call it work, but I love being alone on my bench.  It’ll always be his bench really.

Stereo Story #806