In a recent exchange of e-mails I got to reflecting on how my uncle , Ottar Abrahmsen and my father, Jack Smith taught me as a boy to do various tasks on motorbikes.

Specifically the discussion centred on how to start a Chang Jiang motorcycle. My background is that I have owned and operated a Chang Jiang for over eleven years. Now to quote from my e-mail:

I never use the choke when starting.  The coldest I have ever started it would be around 6 degrees Celsius.

• How to change a tyre;
• how to grind in the valves;
• how to decarbonise an engine;
• how to clean and adjust the carburettor;
• how to recork the clutch;
• how to lubricate the cables;
• how to grease a motorbike;
• or any of a dozen other things.

Looking at that last list, maybe there are some more articles I need to write while I can still remember the details . . .

This morning, Wednesday 23rd September, 2015, I was having a cup of coffee with my daughter at a shopping centre in Everton Park when a family walked past. The young daughter of that family, I guess about eight years old, a pretty slim girl with longish blonde hair, was wearing a pair of sunglasses. For some peculiar reason this shocked me for a split second and I wondered why.

I got to thinking about when I was the age of this young girl, say about 1952, what would have been said back then about a kid wearing sunglasses.

My Mum and my Dad both possessed sunglasses, and on fairly rare occasions we grabbed them and looked through them and marvelled at how everything underwent an apparent change in colour.  We would have liked to have had our own sunglasses, but in those days, sunglasses for children were absolutely forbidden.  We were told that if we wore sunglasses at all often, then our eyes would be ruined and we would no longer have normal vision.

The grown-ups in our lives, Mum and Dad, the occasional aunt or uncle who visited, our neighbours, the shopkeepers in our town, and so on, would basically wear sunglasses to cut down on glare when driving towards the sun in the morning or afternoon, but otherwise wouldn’t wear them at all. When we went to the beach, where the sun was reflected brightly off the sand and the water, then our parents might wear sunglasses even when they were not driving.

But even at the beach, sunglasses for children were absolutely unthinkable.

As we became older and our family made excursions to the snow, again our parents would use sunglasses to reduce the glare of the sun reflecting off the snow.  But sunglasses for kids were still impossible!

I remember getting my first motorbike licence on 16th July 1964 and beginning to regularly ride my old side-valve BSA to work every day. I wore a canvas flying suit, a pudding-basin helmet, and a pair of goggles to keep the dust and mozzies out of my eyes. I lived at Tyers and worked at the LVWSB in Traralgon. When riding towards the rising sun in the morning and again riding towards the setting sun in the afternoon, I would have to squint to be able to see the road ahead because of the glare of the sun. But I wouldn’t get sunglasses, because they were “bad for my eyes”! See how the mantra with which I had been brought up was affecting my choices as a near adult.

My family moved to Ballarat while I continued working in Traralgon and living at Tyers. Almost weekly, I would ride my motorbike to Ballarat to visit my family and then ride back to Tyers again for the next week’s work. Straining my eyes and squinting hard to try to see where I was riding was giving me a face-ache. I went to Safety House and bought myself some safety sunglasses to wear under my goggles. Wonderful relief!

In the “Green Horror” (universally popular nickname for The Australian Motorcycle News, which was, at that time, printed on green paper) I read an article about a scientific study or survey of some type in Britain which had concluded that motorcyclists lives could be saved if they wore yellow-tinted glasses while riding at night.  So it was back to Safety House where I bought some yellow glasses for night driving. I soon ditched my goggles and just wore safety glasses to protect my eyes while riding.  I also bought a pair of plain safety glasses to wear on dull or rainy days when I judged that darkened glasses were unnecessary.

During the sixties and seventies, I would wear plain glasses during the daytime, sunglasses during the couple of hours per day when glare was a problem, and yellow glasses for riding at night.  I would always made sure that all three sets of glasses were in my kit wherever my motorbike was at any time. So obviously, I still stuck to my childhood upbringing which said that sunglasses were basically bad, unless they were necessary to reduce glare.

During the eighties, I began to need prescription glasses.  For a short time I used clip-on sunglasses attached to my regular prescription glasses, but soon I had prescription sunglasses made for when I was riding a motorbike or driving another vehicle.  I asked about getting yellow prescription glasses made for night riding, but was advised that newer scientific evidence suggested that wearing any kind of tinted glasses or goggles at night was now strongly discouraged as being a dangerous thing to do while riding or driving. It’s funny how ideas change over time!

Now in 2015, my regular prescription glasses are multi-focal so that I can drive, read, and use a computer while wearing the same glasses, and they also change to dark glasses automatically when I am out in the bright sunlight. Additionally I keep two more pairs of prescription glasses in the boot of my sidecar: wrap-around prescription distance-vision sunglasses for riding into the sun, and a pair of wrap-around sunglasses frames with clear distance-vision prescription lenses for riding in normal daylight or at night.

So in practice, I am still more or less sticking to my childhood ideal of using sunglasses only when they are strictly necessary.

But what does everyone else do? My observation here in Queensland is that very large numbers of teenagers and even little children seem to wear sunglasses whether they need them or not.  It is more or less a fashion statement.  Somewhere in the last half a century, things have changed – whether I caught up with them or not!

So thank you to the little girl who caught my attention this morning. I have no idea who you are, but you certainly started this old bloke thinking . . .

I wonder how many ways in my life I am still sticking rigidly to what Mum and Dad taught me donkey’s years ago?

This morning, Fathers’ Day, Sunday 6th September 2015, I got to thinking about my own father who passed away in about the middle of 1979. One feature of being about to commence the seventieth year of my own life, is that off the top of my head, I cannot remember exact dates, even if they were important to me back then.

Dad had been born in 1923, so must have been about 56 years old when he died from a heart attack resulting from the diabetes that had caused him several strokes and had resulted in the amputation of both of his legs. He used to joke with us that God was taking him to heaven on an instalment plan, one piece at a time!

One Sunday morning, I was attending the Holy Communion service at the Church of All Nations in Carlton. When the Rev Dr Peter Moonie opened the altar rail for the communicants to receive the sacrament I went forward and knelt as normal and prayed quietly while awaiting my turn. Suddenly I heard a message: “Today, after lunch, your father will visit you. This will be your last time to see him in this lifetime.”

I looked around to see if anyone else had heard what I heard. There was no reaction from anyone around me. Apparently the Holy Spirit had decided to give me the gift of a Word of Knowledge ( see 1 Corinthians 12:8 )

My parents were not expected that day.

We walked home wondering about the message I had heard. I was searching my own heart to determine whether there was anything I needed to set right with Dad.

After lunch, indeed, there was a knock at the door and there stood Dad and Mum.

Almost straight away, even before the cuppa had been brewed, Dad asked whether he and I could go to another room for an urgent talk. While my Mum talked with my wife Wendy, Dad and I went into the spare room at our flat in Kernick House, Queen’s College, and sat together facing each other.  I did not at any stage mention the word I had heard at communion that morning and, although I am certain that he knew, Dad never mentioned that this would be our last meeting. He did, however, ask whether there was any resentment of him remaining in my life and whether there were any outstanding matters in our lives over which we needed to pray. Neither of us was able to recall anything about which we needed to forgive the other, but we prayed extensively for each other anyway.

After a cuppa Dad and Mum headed off to drive to their new home in Ballarat.

That was Sunday.

On Tuesday evening at about dinner time, the Rev Dr Doug Fullarton knocked on our door. He brought the news that my father had been taken to Ballarat Base Hospital after a heart attack and was not expected to live through the night. Wendy and I should leave for Ballarat immediately. As we knew Dad would die before we arrived, we waited for my brother Mick to arrive from Morwell and then the three of us rode to Ballarat on my motorbike and sidecar.

I had kind of done my grieving in the intervening couple of days so Wendy and I were enabled to be strong as we greeted friends, relatives and family and prepared for the funeral.

At the funeral, while delivering the eulogy, I read Dad’s favourite scripture: Psalm 18.  It is 50 verses long but, remembering that Dad would never, ever let me leave a few verses out to get through it more quickly every time he asked me to read it aloud to him, I read the whole psalm. While Dad himself preferred to hear the psalm in the King James Version, I elected to read it at his funeral in The Living Bible version in order for it to be more easily understood by the unchurched relatives who would be present. I read it fluently and with great strength until I reached verse 46: “God is alive! Praise him who is the great rock of protection.” at which moment my voice cracked and I began weeping setting almost the entire congregation crying as I did so.  After somewhat gathering my composure, I was then able to clearly read the last five verses and conclude the eulogy.

During those days surrounding Dad’s funeral, my mother told us that during the last couple of weeks before he died, Dad had been extremely busy contacting almost every person he had known in his lifetime to find out whether they held anything against him for which he needed to ask their forgiveness or for which he needed to make amends. From all this activity, she knew that his time was very short. Indeed, on the very afternoon of his last day he had contacted our family’s long time good friend Alwyn Sobey (always referred to as “Sobe”) to ask him to come around to see him as he wanted urgently to talk. By the time Sobe arrived at Dad’s place, the ambulance had just arrived to take him to the hospital.

I should probably write more about my memories of my Dad, but that will suffice for today and I shall get back on here with more some time later.