Hamilton: A long-lost friend
Weinstein saga dominates but show must go on
This is a story about home towns.
It’s a story about reconnecting with the streets where we grew up.
It’s about landmarks in life and making sense of the present by making peace with the past.
It started with a trip to the Hawke’s Bay. It was a trip I had promised to make, to show respect and love to a grand old lady, part of my extended family as she celebrated her 90th birthday party.
As the trip unfolded I was headed to the Bay in what felt like a time-travelling Tardis that would take me into the past lives of my wife who hails from the fruit bowl of New Zealand, Hastings.
Along the way, I thought more and more about Hamilton people and stories from my past.
While I no longer live here, Hamilton is always home. Hamilton is like a longlost friend. The one you have always loved, and still want to have a conversation with, but you know they may not remember you in the same way as you remember them.
Occasionally my letters home – these columns – have irked her. But they have always been written with love, not spite.
Hamilton has always been the spine down my spirit. Hamilton north is my neighbourhood. It is where I come from. It is who I am. Later the University of Waikato would shape and carve the rest of me.
A large part of my university time was spent at the Cowshed. It was home to NEXUS and student radio. Contact-89FM will always be part of my story as is that old farming building that would become a kind-of monument to my love of student life.
I should take my wife to what remains of the Cowshed to show her my backstory.
Whitiora Primary School is also a big part of who I am. It will always be my playground of childhood dreams with friends who made life interesting and who still comfort, inspire and excite me today.
These thoughts and others came to the surface as I explored the streets and landmarks in Havelock North that meant so much to my wife and companion of 30 years, former Waikato Times’ journalist Linda Thompson.
Her Hawke’s Bay touchstones, from the magnificently scary Te Mata Peak to the schoolyards that shaped so much of her growing up, were slowly and lovingly explored.
The beautiful central city park had stories to share, ‘‘... you were brave if you climbed on the Lion statue …’’ part of the monument celebrating the Bay’s past in Cornwall Park.
Later a drive out to the coast led to the discovery of Ocean Beach. It seemed so untouched it had me wondering what the early explorers must have felt when they saw the magnificent coastline for the first time. It looks today at the north of the beach like it has for centuries – pristine.
Driving around the city’s uncluttered streets to revisit her family homes had me wondering how the Bay had got their layout so right, that traffic was not an issue on a busy weekend full of people enjoying the sights, colours and sounds of a cultural festival.
It was an easy drive, testimony to the grid pattern that forms the roadways around the city that have stood the test of time, even as the Bay’s population has grown. Her late father would be proud of his involvement with such sound roading engineering.
The small local landmarks told a story of a home town that had shaped my wife’s world view and personality. It is a story shaped by geography and climate, added to by family tales and local history...’’ We knew it was tomato sauce canning week when the city smelled of Watties sauce on the wind.’’
This column is dedicated to the spirit of my home town, Hamilton.
The trip to the Hawke’s Bay inspired a reflective look at my past, and reminded me of my Hamilton stories still to make their way into the words that are shared under my name in these pages each Saturday. And so to the question my trip east inspired. If you were to return to Hamilton in 2048, 30 years into the future, where would you take your future family members to see that was your stepping stone, what piece of this city meant so much to you? What part of Hamilton lingers in the soul?
So much now of Hamilton past is gone. My beloved university Cowshed I suspect will soon be history too.
Whitiora School has changed radically from its 1919 origins.
Hamilton East is changing shape and the city centre will change further as experiments with Garden Place continue and the river takes a more prominent place in the central city landscape.
Sometimes it is wise to stop to recognise the city’s spirit within our lives and appreciate our Hamilton backstory shared between us all.
‘‘Now you can tear a building down But you can’t erase a memory These houses may look all run down But they have a value you can’t see . . . This is my neighbourhood
This is where I come from…’’
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Open Letter to a Landlord – Living Colour
RICHARD SWAINSON
How do you turn a public event into a private ritual? I’ve struggled with this question for the best part of four decades.
The Oscars beguiled me from the earliest age but the first ceremony which I recall clearly is 1978. Star Wars had by then become a central obsession. At last I had seen at least one of the major nominees. C-3P0 and R2-D2 even turned up on stage, small compensation for the fact that my film only took home awards in the technical categories. How could the Academy get it so wrong?
Under the influence of a mother who had grown up watching movies in Hollywood’s golden age, what I enjoyed most was seeing the old stars. A year later there could be no disappointment on that score. Cary Grant himself gave Laurence Olivier an honorary gong and the Best Picture was presented by a visibly dying John Wayne. The sight of an emaciated if undaunted Duke was poignancy itself.
In those days edited highlights of the Oscars played the night after the ceremony, free to air. This wasn’t perfect but it was something, sustaining the interest of New Zealand film buffs for decades. When change came it was for the better. In 1994, with New Zealanders Jane Campion and Anna Paquin nominated for The Piano, a decision was made to screen the Oscars live for the first time ever. I took the day off university, enjoying the sight of a stunned, speechless Paquin winning this country’s first Academy Award, one of the institution’s more guileless moments.
A little later The Lord of the Rings years rather spoilt New Zealand, giving us expectations of both success and broadcast access. However, somewhere along the long line, as it had done with rugby and cricket coverage, the free-toair practice gave way to subscriber television. Oscar watching was suddenly a minority sport, reserved for those with pockets deep enough for Sky TV. Or the inventive fan.
For a few years I begged and borrowed and invited myself around to friends’ houses. Hosts were more gracious than put upon but their enthusiasm was never going to match mine. I was the fair-weather guest, turning up once a year, hushing them in their own homes.
A better solution needed to be found. Why not make an afternoon and evening of the Oscars, turning it into a private party? It was treated this way all over north America, why not in Hamilton? Motels had Sky. Motels rooms could be rented.
I say all this as though it were my idea. It wasn’t. Mrs Swainson, an innovative thinker, breadwinner and – most importantly – a fellow film enthusiast, had the nous. Monday marked the fifth occasion on which our little ritual has played out, with each year, more or less, a different Waikato venue. 2017’s fiasco over the Best Picture announcement could not possibly be topped but certain expectations were raised by Oscar’s 90th birthday.
Motel Six on Abbotsford St proved a modest venue, much in keeping with the ceremony itself. Tinsel Town lived up to its name in the stage set design, literally dazzling, but the twin spectres of the Weinstein/Me Too saga and identity politics dominated any halfhearted attempt to mark the event’s ninth decade anniversary. These days Hollywood has an uneasy relationship with its past. Perish the thought that they would invite say, Olivia de Havilland, at 101 the oldest living Oscar winner, to present Best Picture. Her Gone With the Wind associations would simply prove too embarrassing.
That said, the appearance of one performer whose career dates back to the 1950s had special significance at Motel Six. Eva Marie Saint, of On the Waterfront and North by Northwest fame, was agile and surprisingly chatty for someone born five years before the first Oscars ceremony. Saint’s autograph adorns our lounge room, a prized souvenir from Janine’s Cary Grant-inspired pilgrimage to the USA. It was almost as if an old friend had turned up.
The internal contradictions of the show were more interesting than its heavy-handed messages. A bizarre tribute to American militarism, introduced by a gung ho Wes Studi, the night’s token Native American, stood in stark contrast to an earlier montage celebrating ‘‘the dreamers’’ or Frances McDormand’s strident demand that all Hollywood productions make casting decisions that correspond to the racial makeup of the nation. One wonders if Studi, a proud Vietnam veteran, crossed paths with ‘‘Hanoi Jane’’ Fonda backstage.
Hamilton is always home . . . The one you have always loved, and still want to have a conversation with, but you know they may not remember you in the same way as you remember them.
These days Hollywood has an uneasy relationship with its past.