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Life Story of Alex Coory

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Life Story of Alex Coory Life Story of Alex Coory CHAPTER ONE No man is an island. Events that shape a life are many and varied. Our forbears, their births and cultures in different lands, all have an effect that is ultimately ourselves. Likewise we ourselves affect others to the same degree. This is what we mean when we say no man is an island. Interest in ones own early life comes at different stages. In this case it was in the late seventies due mainly to the children’s interest in their lineage, they as a family urged me to write some account of my life experiences of all my eighty plus years. The public libraries have rows and rows of biographies and autobiographies, to add another would seem presumptuous. We hear so much about changing times, in a changing world. One often wonders if previous generations said the same thing, those hundreds of years ago. There are many who pay lip service to a creed maintaining that the more things change, the more they stay the same! It would take years of my life to ponder this belief, as its meaning escapes me. Some of these trite sayings require an athletic mind to interpret intelligently. I suspect these hackneyed sayings in any conversation are used as puffery to eke out the allotted time for speaking; or used to air ones knowledge of the subject under discussion. Much like using punctuation in writing. A strictly chronological account of ones life is difficult to maintain interest. The people who had a profound effect on our lives, have to be taken in conjunction with events that do not always coincide. I write this for my family to streamline a long list of isolated incidents. A family album of photos gives a still life version, whereas a moving picture gives a bit of life. The first seven years of my life are shrouded in mystery. All who could verify the details have passed on. Some of those details are conflicting, due mainly I have no memories of six years of them. An accurate account would be like finding a safe path through a minefield; but with less disastrous results of course. The best part was I never cried as a baby, which must have been the envy of every mother on earth. I did check with my father many years later who verified this, saying instead of crying, my face would turn black. Allowing for Dad's limited English this was the alternative to crying. As will be explained later, this state of affairs was due to my eardrums not opening at birth, until I was six years old. It was a silent world. My theory is those early silent years preserved my mind from too early compulsion to do and say things, before the real necessity to do so. I feel sure some minds are worn out from some enthusiastic parents to have their offspring perform before they are ready. The exact opposite is claimed by parents of gifted children, that they were never held back from developing their natural potential. I have no argument with either view at all, just in my case making a claim to a pet theory. My father Joseph, my mother Elizabeth, and 3 year old John, came from Lebanon via Australia, to New Zealand in 1908. Dad's brother Jacob had preceded him and was already settled in Walker Street In Dunedin. Walker Street was later renamed Carroll Street. Jacob's family was fairly well established in a semi detached unit one of four, in a block built right on the street frontage, in the fashion of Coronation Street. The land was unencumbered and plenty of it in comparison with the situation back in Lebanese villages. As I recall, each section would amount to nearly a quarter of an acre, though narrow and deep to the rear. At first Dad and Uncle got along well, both working on the waterfront, or as they termed it "on the wharf". Five more children were born to our family after settling in Dunedin. Mary in 1910, Alma in 1911, myself Elias in 1915, and Michael in 1917. One child died between Alma and me, the records customary at the time not stating whether male or female. John and Mary have both died at time of writing, John in 1972, Mary in 1997. Our mother died in 1920 of pneumonia in 1920 aged 32, leaving quite a young family. My father died, never remarrying, at the age of 92. When our mother took ill after Michael was born, Alma was allowed home three of us were fostered to an institution very similar to an orphanage. After Alma was allowed home, Michael and I remained behind till we were finally fostered out to Mrs le Fevre, a childless elderly widow who had a farm in Hampden in North Otago. She had a history of fostering children to assist her working a mixed dairy farm of cows, chickens, and pigs. More of this later. The year was 1922 when Michael and I arrived in Hampden. It was at this time I was learning to talk, and was the beginning of any memory. My life until then is blank absolutely. The disability of deafness had been removed prior to leaving the institution we had been living, my presence there at the age of six was as too old because of the rules. I owe the deafness removal to the casual visit of a doctor, taking an interest in me and discovering the eardrums had never opened at birth. He arranged this minor operation and it was many years before this fact was made known to me by my brother John. Rather than separate us two boys, Michael and I were fostered out as above. Discussions of earliest memories are rarely short of interest. Mine were of holding someone's hand and listening to the strange sounds of talking marvelling at the words and trying to form them as well. I must have spent a large part of my time at the monosyllabic stage of "yes" and "no". In 1922, we were enrolled in the Hampden school, Michael aged five, me seven, with everything to learn and the world to know. There was no memory of my mother, and strange to say I did not miss her. The life around me from now on was the only world I'd know as normal. Of course, at school and meeting others, mums and dads were what other kids had, but not us. It's quite true: "what you never know you never miss”. Until I married and had a family of my own, I never knew what being reared in a family meant. Now after over fifty years of happily married life, I realise what I missed. When my father managed to get us boys home I was fourteen and Michael twelve. The intimacy between father and son never came until I was much older, and seldom fully until it was too late. Never did I enjoy the familiarity my own children gave me, towards him. My brother Michael had less difficulty in this respect. My father must have had a grudge against life, due to the misfortune of a war on, a young family, an ailing wife who succumbed to her illness in dying so young. On top of this, to have to surrender three of his motherless children to the social services of the time, and then to have to suffer the transfer of his two youngest sons to a widow far away on a farm. For seven years he had nobody it seems, to champion his cause. Lebanon was not a land of officialdom like a distant land of the British Dominion. Whether I was a victim of a fractured family more than another is a moot question. The more that is revealed of family life in New Zealand and his own in Lebanon, there is a similarity to both. Both my father and my uncle were the only boys, and there were five girls in between, who all left home after Dad. Some to Cuba and some to America. Lebanon in those days were getting over being ruled by Turks. Keeping in touch with each other after emigrating was not their strong point, and it was many years before any contact was made by a member of one of the Cuban families, and then only fitfully. Hampden was a small town 56 miles north of Dunedin, and 22 miles south of Oamaru on the main South Island trunk road. During World War One where the primary school is now, a military training camp was established there. In those days a gymnasium was essential, which passed into the school complex. I was amazed when attending the 125th school jubilee in 1989, to see the same building still in use, and very little changed. Its lofty ceiling and spaciousness lent an air to the place providing ample room for any occasion. A lot of the appurtenances I remember as a boy had largely disappeared, along with its military association. Hampden in 1922 was truly rural. No electricity in the village despite the fact it lay on the main South Island highway running through the centre of the village. A few years later reticulation finally went through, spelling the demise of the ten kerosene street lamps on the main road, It was a novelty for me to follow the lamplighter on his journey to light the street lamps just before dark. He carried a ladder the whole way to light each lamp, and between 10-11pm did the same journey putting them out.
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