OUR CHIP VAN
Greg Bruce on salt, fat, sunshine, carbohydrates, Old Spice, sea air
Idiscovered the malaise of Sunday afternoons early and I discovered it hard: the end of the weekend, the last moments before the return to school, the looming revocation of my freedom. Even on sunny days, the light was wan and milky and resentful, as if nature itself was bending to my failure of positivity.
This fear of an ending stood in contrast to my other leading childhood concern, which was the fear of no ending, which was the central problem with my belief in God. I didn’t want to go to hell but was physically unable to cope with the concept of eternal life. The fear of it filled my body with useless terror at inappropriate times, specifically bedtime. “How will I fill forever?” I would wonder in the endless dark until one day I asked Mum if there would be tennis in heaven and she said yes.
The malaise of Sunday afternoons dragged on, though. Either Dad sensed it or he felt it too or maybe Mum just wanted us out of the house, because we began filling the space with father/son outings. We’d look in the paper for things to do, drive into town and around the waterfront and so forth. One day, at St Heliers or Kohimarama or maybe Okahu Bay, we found a food truck selling hot chips. They were so good we went back the next week, and the one after that, and the one after that, driving all the way from grey and distant Pakuranga.
I could have been anywhere from 7 to 11. Maybe we went there for months, maybe for years. Did we share a pot or did we get two pots? Did we call them pots or pottles? Maybe it was cartons? I can’t remember the specifics, nor the nomenclature, but I still have the sense memories: salt, fat, sunshine, carbohydrates, Old Spice, sea air and the smell of samples belonging to Downing Plastics Ltd.
I remember the truck being devoid of customers. We would park and I would stay in the car while Dad went to order. Upon his return, he’d put his hand over the carton and shake vigorously, to ensure an even distribution of salt — a tradition I hope to one day pass on to my own children. Then we would eat and, for the next 4-7 minutes, Sunday afternoon would cease.
Sometimes the van was there and sometimes it wasn’t, and disappointment was therefore always a possibility. As social media companies have learned, intermittent reinforcement is a powerful addictive force. Were the proprietors of the chip truck sophisticated entrepreneurs who were ahead of their time in understanding this? Of course not. They were probably lying on a blanket on the grass on some rural hinterland, smoking weed, lightly hung over, debating whether to roll down to the Eastern Bays for some sun and a splash. I don’t remember the day we realised they had gone for good and probably neither do they.
Dad’s primary addiction was the drink, but his problems could also be documented in the endless cascade of junk food that passed through his cupboards and himself. When he died, two years ago, he left several packets of Mackintosh’s Toffees next to the armchair he had increasingly seldom left. His body and brain never seemed to tire of the vicious push/pull of the rewards and punishments offered by the salt, sugar, fat and booze they both constantly sought. I remember one supermarket visit where he dumped two heaving armfuls of Maltesers and Kettle Stix on the conveyor belt. “Are you having a party?” the checkout person asked. “Yes,” he replied, “My own private Malteser party.” I was probably 12 or 13 at the time. Before that, I’d never realised there was anything unusual about his eating habits.
“Pretty good,” he would frequently say, whenever we bought chips in later years, “But not as good as Our Chip Van.” I have always thought of “Our Chip Van” as the platonic ideal against which every other chip must be measured, although it almost certainly isn’t. Auckland didn’t have much of a food scene in the early 80s — the city’s best restaurant was Mcdonald’s and veganism was still illegal — and the market for high-brow junk food was non-existent. In all likelihood, Our Chip Van was buying the same frozen Mr Chips chips as every other neighbourhood takeaway joint and cooking them in equally rancid days-old oil.
But that’s not the way I remember it, or at least it’s not the way I choose to remember it. I know it’s impossible to compare a taste from the present to one from 35 years ago but that’s no reason not to try. Memories are ethereal and unreliable but there comes a point where they’re the only solid things we have left.
I have always thought of ‘Our Chip Van’ as the platonic ideal against which every other chip must be measured, although it almost certainly isn’t.