Halls invoke a flood of memories
Remember that old song about the farmer who climbed on his tractor and drove to the dance at the hall on Saturday night?
Well the song has inspired a new book, On a Saturday Night, a study of ‘‘community halls of small-town New Zealand’’.
As I flick through it, something special catches my eye. Five halls from my old stamping ground of Hurunui feature in photos and stories: The halls at Hawarden, Waikari, Masons Flat, The Peaks, Medbury. I am immediately drawn down a tunnel of memories.
The halls of our heartland share certain attributes. Most look bland from the outside, though a few are ornate. Many bear the title of War Memorial Hall. Some are converted schoolrooms. The Hurunui five illustrate all of these.
Waikari’s is a grand edifice but the others are bland – though Hawarden’s was improved when a new foyer was added about 1954. Waikari and Hawarden cashed in on a government subsidy for ‘‘war memorial’’ structures, by applying the title to their halls. Masons Flat, The Peaks and Medbury halls were all schools until the late 1920s, when they closed and ‘‘consolidated’’ on Hawarden District High School.
Blandness ensures a visitor can easily identify a rural hall. Sheer walls of corrugated iron or whitewashed weatherboard, with lean-to kitchen and toilet additions in grey concrete block, speak of communal cost restraint, if not architectural creativity. North Otago’s Waianakarua Hall, though immortalised in a Grahame Sydney painting, looks more like a stockade than a place of celebration.
Akaroa’s Gaiety Hall bucks this trend. It is the most intricate building in the book. Others, notably Peel Forest’s, Tai Tapu’s, Hororata’s and Runanga’s, contain some fine features. But forget appearances. It is the stories a hall can tell that makes it more than an oblong box with a stage at one end.
I feel again the nervous excitement behind the stage curtains before school concerts in the Hawarden hall. How mechanically we sang My Pigeon House I Open Wide, and recited The Owl and the Pussycat Went to Sea (with actions).
We kids used to skate on the floor made slippery for dancing by spreading candle wax on it. We watched in awe as magician The Great Benyon drew doves from hats. We saw Selwyn Toogood preparing for one of his It’s In The Bag radio shows. I picked through leftover food from the lunches served in the hall on ewe fair day.
Our little neighbourhood gang used to climb on the roof and crouch behind the heightened entry facade, pretending the Jerries were coming and the freedom of all New Zealanders hung on the stealth of our ambush with wooden rifles.
On Sundays I scoured the grounds for empty beer bottles, discarded hurriedly by dancegoers who drank outside the hall when alcohol was forbidden inside and the local policeman arrived to check on proceedings. The bottles fetched a penny each from ‘‘The Bottle Man’’.
Waikari hall had movies on Saturday nights. Kids sat on wooden benches at the front. I remember tying a torch to my bike and riding 7 kilometres to Waikari when no-one could give me a ride. In one film a brave British commando threw a grenade into an enemy sentry box causing a dramatic explosion. ‘‘Up goes the sh..-house,’’ shouted Uncle Walter from the back row. The audience roared with laughter.
I was 11 when my brother Pat had his 21st in the Mason’s Flat hall. Cousin John and I pinched swigs of beer from adults’ glasses while they were dancing. A few years later I attended teenage socials there. I managed the polling booth there for the 1978 general election.
The hall now houses agricultural machinery for a farming collective. One wall has been removed for access by giant tractors. And to think my Dad sweated over spelling and sums there when it was a school.
The Peaks hall stands at a corner of Creans Rd, named after our clan. The memorial in front contains the name of Thomas Crean, killed at Ypres in 1917. Here isolated farming folk met to choose books from shelves that were stocked from the Country Library van.
My 21st was held in the Medbury Hall. I stayed sober enough to make a proposal of marriage in the grounds of the hall early next morning – with success.
Country halls mean much to me and to their communities. I relish the collection of photos and reminiscences in On a Saturday Night.
The book covers the whole country. Its 39 halls are a representative sample. From far-north Whakapara to Mossburn in Southland, they share a quintessentially Kiwi character. Enter these doors and you can still catch the whiff of table tennis and indoor bowls, the swirl of balls and dances – weddings, farewells, card evenings, Women’s Institute meetings and political addresses.
On a Saturday Night, Canterbury University Press, $45.