Sartorial Splendour (3)

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In 2005 David Paton, good friend, mentor, example, and inspiration died after experiencing an aggressive cancer. I flew to New Zealand to attend his funeral. On the flight back I started writing some notes that were intended to capture something of what David meant to me. Taking a deep breath I thought I would share them more widely here on this blog. They are less coherent than I would like but they tell a story of what a difference one life, honestly lived, can make to those around them. These notes are offered up in 15 chapters which I will post out over the next fortnight.And in order that you can put a face to a name, here he is, on the Stewart Island ferry, catching some “zeds”. Or “zees” depending on what part of the world you hail from.

He took the same mix of earnestness and provocation into his teaching. On Sunday evening he would lead a Bible study class in the refrigerator chill of a room that is the so called vestry of the church in Palmerston. There we busied ourselves with the golden tassels which edged the Presbyterian blue crushed velour of a table cloth and tried to pay attention. For a long period we were being walked through the Old Testament during which he once shot at me the question “What is circumcision?” I knew the answer but stumbled around – it was a mixed group. Deciding I did not know the answer he proceeded to tell us in excruciating detail what was involved in the removal of the foreskin. With such effect that I am sure girls in the group refused in later years as mothers to have their boys undergo the procedure. And a Bible Class lesson that is etched into my mind.

In the early years of the Bible Class a group of older teenagers would meet in the manse in the evening, before church. David would usually squeeze with Butch and other young men onto the couch but as the group got bigger they would sit on the floor and give over space to the girls. Some of the girls would play guitar, later Philip would play saxophone, and Mum always played the piano. In the confines of the manse lounge room that group’s singing seemed thunderous. Maybe it was really more subdued than I recall it but the hearty, bellowing singing led by David and Butch is most vivid.

But not as vivid as the bright orange/red suit David appeared in one evening. I bet that ended up in a bin sometime shortly thereafter. David was more well known for his plain, functional dressing, not for flared, lurid, sartorial splendour like this. How long he managed to wear that suit I am not sure but it certainly left an enduring impression on us. More typically he wore loose woollen clothing, including woollen shirts and woollen pants. Makes sense given the climate. The loose pants were famously held up by baling twine and that even made it in to church. Loose woollen clothes made for creating interesting habitats. The kitten of a possum killed after running foul of David’s dogs was nursed with a dropper and wrapped up in an old sock and kept in the hot water closet in Mrs Paton’s house – David and his brothers were living in a badly run down but exciting place that he would renovate later and turn into his family home. It had no mod cons like electric hot water so this little marsupial, eyes still swollen shut in purple lumps, lived in a sock in the closet a short walk up the road. Hand fed warm milk via an eye dropper, it rapidly grew into a wide eyed little creature that clung closely to David. We loved sitting behind him in church while he had this lodger. We would watch a little lump move along under David’s shirt and make its way to, say a collar, after which a small head overwhelmed by marble black eyes would peek out. Then it would move down his sleeve and appear from under the sleeve cuff. Sometimes it would climb out altogether – up onto his head, or down a trouser leg to sit on his foot. Too marvellous for words really. As an adult possum it hung around Mrs Paton’s house and was treated like no other possum before or since. I seem to recall Mrs Paton telling me it had finally been caught by the dogs which had long been driven mad by its tame presence.

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Transformation

Previous Chapter
In 2005 David Paton, good friend, mentor, example, and inspiration died after experiencing an aggressive cancer. I flew to New Zealand to attend his funeral. On the flight back I started writing some notes that were intended to capture something of what David meant to me. Taking a deep breath I thought I would share them more widely here on this blog. They are less coherent than I would like but they tell a story of what a difference one life, honestly lived, can make to those around them. These notes are offered up in 15 chapters which I will post out over the next fortnight.

And in order that you can put a face to a name, here he is, on the Stewart Island ferry, catching some “zeds”. Or “zees” depending on what part of the world you hail from.


David’s upbringing shifted gear in Easter 1966 when he and a few of his friends from the district travelled south with our family to a place called Pukerau. An unmanned, train station dot on a bleak map, but the site of a wonderful camp site where, for that Easter these teenagers were to decide that they should dedicate themselves to Jesus. It was a decision that was to transform some, afflict others and in David’s case have a “butterfly effect” into the lives of young boys and men like myself. Oddly (for I was quite young), I remember that weekend well. We camped in a storage shed full of supplies for the camp. I can still smell the musty dryness of it. Pukerau was to have a major impact on me five years later when I attended my first boys camp there in the August school holidays. David was the camp leader. But that Easter was the beginning of a remarkable journey that saw a group of newly enthused young Christians, many with limited formal education, and certainly no graduate qualifications, spearhead a Christian witness in the same way unschooled fishermen had done two thousand years earlier. And those young people grew into a team that had a wider impact on numerous others, including hundreds of boys who attended boys camps at Pukerau, and in the case of David, camps on his own farm, and those held later at another site at Waihola. Mrs Paton prayed for her own children but the response was a harvest and influence that reaches far beyond what she asked. As we might say today, she got it back in spades.

Apart from the influence of my own father David easily was the most influential person in my formative years. Five to fifteen. He did nothing with me by way of formal training. We had no mentoring arrangements. We had no counselling sessions. There was no program. But he was role model, Christian guide, manly example, and character builder all rolled into one. This is some feeble attempt to try and capture what he was in my life and to reflect on the amazing way God works through even the smallest things we do. For there is no doubt David would be surprised at the affection and respect we have for him, for the influence he had on the lives of myself, my brothers and on other young men with whom he had contact. So far as I can, this is a personal recollection. But there are matters of legend that are worth recording as well.

Who was he? A product of that kitchen no less. Steady, kindly stern, with a transparent face, dark eyes that always caught you out and a smile always waiting to break out. In our early days we were careful how we stepped with him but as we got to know him better, glimpses of larrikin would show themselves and we would revel in his adventurous thinking. I think the following catches him nicely. One of David’s favourite hymns had a chorus that went like this: “Count your blessings, count them one by one, Count your blessings and See what the Lord has done.” Younger brother Rob crashed into our shared bedroom one night, closed the door and in glee recounted a version David had just sung him with a wink and a nod – it was shortly after David’s son Paul was born and it went like this: “Count your children, Count them one by one, Count your children and see that you have done.” We were old enough by then to understand what the wink and nod was about but that paled against the deliciousness of the irreverence that simple alteration contained. Growing up in a manse, it was too easy to have everything straightened and proper. Here was an elder singing about sex but using a Sankey hymn to convey it. We sang the lines for a long time after with a grin and shake of the head. More shocking but even more delicious was his recounting to us how he had met his wife, Alison. We were sitting up at his house that he was refurbishing – just a short walk up from Mrs Paton’s – and in a moment of startling frankness he told us that during his time in hospital following his tractor accident he had been unable to look after even his most basic functions. Including ablutions. So, he argued, he figured that if someone, a nurse in fact, had wiped his backside for him for that period of time then at the end of it he had better marry her. Couldn’t have someone running around with that sort of knowledge outside the family. And he then appealed to our own sense of teenage order and asked if we would do the same. And grinning the whole time. We were stunned by the frankness of the description, appalled by the notion that adults needed that sort of care, and by the fact that this otherwise competent fellow had the need for it. He never finished off the reasoning or the thinking. Just left all this hanging in the air. But as with the chorus we revelled in the irreverence, in the latitude of the thinking, in the provocation, in the wit and in the gentleness of his care.

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The House that Jack Built

In 2005 David Paton, good friend, mentor, example, and inspiration died after experiencing an aggressive cancer. I flew to New Zealand to attend his funeral. On the flight back I started writing some notes that were intended to capture something of what David meant to me. Taking a deep breath I thought I would share them more widely here on this blog. They are less coherent than I would like but they tell a story of what a difference one life, honestly lived, can make to those around them. These notes are offered up in 15 chapters which I will post out over the next fortnight.

And in order that you can put a face to a name, here he is, on the Stewart Island ferry, catching some “zeds”. Or “zees” depending on what part of the world you hail from.

I have no memory of the beginning but for me David’s story really starts with his mother. Nell to few and Mrs Paton to us. I remember her as a grey haired, diminutive old lady. She was married to a laughing grandfather with hair growing out his ears, a tanned but balding dome – save for the occasional wisp of forgotten hair, woollen shirts and bushy eyebrows under which danced one sparkling eye and another that would occasionally drop out of its socket, to the consternation of my sisters and the delight of my brothers. A glass eye. Appearing among the mashed potatoes after grace was said. His name was Jack. He had a stumping, gruff walk – told us he had “a bone in his leg from the war” when we asked why he walked like that. Jack and Nell had three sons and one daughter. The children went off and did their high schooling at boarding school so we did not see them too often although David had finished his schooling by the time we arrived in the district. So David was always around. A highlight, and a delight, was to spend any time – a day, a weekend, school holidays – at “the Patons”. Their house was an old unpainted place surrounded by vegetable gardens, cats, fruit trees, and an old wire fence that kept poultry out. You walked through a wire gate with a frame that went up over your head on top of which for many years two little wind vanes spun, made from the tops of jam tins, soldered into shape and painted red and white by Alistair. After letting the gate clack shut you stepped across a little courtyard, rainwater tank to your right, and walked in the back door from which hung a perpetually loose brass door handle.

(If you Google Earth you can find the farm house – simply copy these coordinates and paste them into the “Fly to” box on Google Earth 45.2622752159 S 170.482736555 E )

Behind that unpainted door was a cosy den, a very special place. It was Mrs Paton’s kitchen. As you walked in, immediately at your left shoulder was a blackboard and underneath that a bench seat. Whenever we visited we drew all sorts of things on that board, the profile of a Cessna being one of the favourites of Butch Thurlow. Butch was a neighbour who would sit in this kitchen on Sunday evenings and chew the fat. I copied that Cessna assiduously (and am sure I could draw it from memory thirty five years later with my eyes shut) and which David would occasionally mimic. On this board were usually notes about the farm. Jobs to be done. People to call. Number of sheep crutched. Ear tag numbers. Phone numbers. And the occasional Cessna. I have memories of local lads, Butch, and Grant sitting jammed across that bench with David, legs stretched out into the heat of the kitchen and blocking all traffic, laughing and talking and enjoying each other’s company.

Stand in the doorway, doorhandle threatening to fall out as you hold it. Cast your eye around the room from left to right, and immediately after the blackboard is a door which lets you into the rest of the house. Let’s digress there for a moment. It was usually a lot cooler out there than in the kitchen. But out there, on special Sunday afternoons, Westerns were shown on a black and white television. A real highlight on a wintry day, with a fire choking on damp pine cones in the grate. We did not have television at home at the time so even today a black and white Western, with lots of shooting, improbable chases and even more improbable Indians falling off every rocky outcrop, transports me back to that room. But back to the kitchen.

To the right of the “close that thing, you will let the cold in” door was the source of memorable meals and continual warmth. A coal range burned night and day it seemed. The oven was warm when you went to bed. It was warm when you arose, regardless of the hour. From here everything from roast poultry – geese, turkeys, hens and ducks all headed for her table or tables around the parish. Mrs Paton was famous, in our house at least, for her sponges, made with her secret ingredient – duck eggs. I recollect that the rest of the district were familiar with them as well. Above the coal range was a mantelpiece littered with everything a mantelpiece should be littered with. Casting your eyes right and looking at the third wall you looked out across the sink, set in a wall to wall bench and backlit by a window that gazed out across the vegetable patch. Sometimes that window was the source of our undoing as we attempted covert samplings from the garden. Peas were a favourite target. In the middle of the room, but erring to the fourth wall, set on a threadbare carpet, was the wooden kitchen table, scrubbed smooth but always covered for a meal by a large table cloth. Around this we would scrunch up for meals, caught in a cosy haven, warmed by the ever radiating coal range oven, bustled over by Mrs Paton, and gleamed at by Jack who always loved all the madness. Bowls of steaming greens. A small mountain of steaming mashed or boiled potatoes with more butter melted across it than is good for anyone, and the ubiquitous roast poultry with seasoning we would ache for.

I never knew David’s upbringing. He was 20 when we arrived in the parish and I was a newly minted 5 year old, with a new yellow toy car and a fear of his dogs. It was 1966. 15 years difference at that point is more profound than at the other end of the continuum. But over the next ten years I was fortunate to have a taste of what David grew up in and what he came back to after he finished school. And, in a sense that from which he never really left. It is a context that is made all the more poignant when I later learned that Mrs Paton prayed for twenty one years that someone would come to the parish to teach her children about Jesus Christ. For those 21 years the parish pulpit had either been vacant or had been led by pastors who suffered the liberal thinking of the times. Naturally as a 5 year old I was ignorant of these things but the whispers of those dead times came to my ears as I moved into my teens.

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