This cranker was inspired by Stu's telling of The Castle.
Following on with my theme of family stories let me tell you about "Bazza". Bazza or Baz, is my father in law. Baz is old school he's part of the blue singlet brigade, has a couple of old tats on his forearms and smokes White Ox rollies. When Baz finishes his smoke he doesn't look for an ashtray he just rolls the still on fire butt in his fingers and chucks it away. He loves making home brew even thou he's bad at it. Baz is about 5 foot 6 and built like a tank with a beer gut, tough as nails.
Since I met him over 18 years ago he's never worked but he sure isn't short of a quid. Now what I've learnt over the years is, he's been a diesel mechanic, a cook in the army, he's owned a trucking company, was a horse whisperer, bee keeper, and owned and ran a big cattle farm in the Blue mountains.
Baz loves tinkering with cars he's always buying, trading, doing them up always a driveway full just like in the castle. Baz was born in Red Neckville NSW so when he first found out his daughter was dating a greek boy he was not happy. He told me I was gonna stuff up is family heritage of god knows how many generations of Aussies. The first couple of years was like my own private episode of Kingswood country. He was always greeting me with lines like "what have you been up to wog?" or "wanna beer wog get me one too".
Years passed and Bazza realised I wasn't going anywhere. He saw how I treated his daughter, the wog lines slowly disappeared also. The tide was turning & Baz and I started to enjoy our time together a bit more. One day out of the blue he threw me the keys to his 65 mustang convertible and said I could have it for a couple of weeks. Confirmation for me that I was finally accepted came when we got back from our honeymoon and drove down to visit them. Sitting in his front yard was a 20 ft fishing boat that he had just traded his red MG for .... he knew I loved fishing.
That was 13 years ago and I can say that Baz is now one of my best mates. We go fishing everytime we visit and he's like a big teddy bear with his grandkids.
I still don't know why I'm telling these stories but when I'm writing them all these memories I hadn't thought of for ages pop up.
(20min delay)