WINDOW DRESSING

I CAN’T REMEMBER WHOSE BOOT IT CAME OUT OF, BUT ALL OF A SUDDEN 20 LITRES OF DIESEL REMARKABLY APPEARED ACROSS THE INTERSECTION

FRIDAY nights in Parramatta always started in front of the Town Hall. No late-night shopping in those days, so from 5:30 on it was relatively quiet.

Anyway there would have been at least 60 of us standing around working out what we were going to do later on in the night, when this guy in an FC slowed down for the lights in Church Street, waited for the green on a rolling start, chirped the tyres and roared off in second gear making lots of noise. It wasn’t worrying us until you-know-who rolled up and accused us of making all the noise.

In chorus we all said: “It wasn’t us, sir.” But sir was having none of it and told us if it happened one more time, we wouldn’t be able to drive from the weight of the defect notices sir would issue on us. So what was a bunch of blokes like us to do?

The solution was one we had used on previous occasions when we had been wrongfully (or rightfully) accused. I can’t remember whose boot it came out of, but all of a sudden 20 litres of diesel remarkably appeared across the intersection.

Now Murray Brothers was a big department store and was diagonally opposite all of us standing in front of the Town Hall. The bloke in the FC couldn’t help himself; he had to try and impress us one more time. He rolled up to the lights, hit the light-change and the diesel at the same time, and went straight into Murray Brothers’ shopfront window! I mean he was two-thirds of the way in. There was great applause from our side of the street; he impressed us this time!

Well, alarms went off, sprinklers started sprinkling, and sir arrived. In unison, we shouted very loudly across the intersection: “See, we told you it wasn’t us!” Luckily no FCS or drivers were seriously injured. Murray Brothers was up and running by Monday morning.

Sixty or so blokes and their cars quietly departed before serious questions were asked about whether we knew which truck had dropped the diesel on the intersection. We knew it was a truck because the newspapers told us so on Saturday morning! Just another Friday night in the late 60s.