Mr Fixit and Other Stories. Mr Fixit and Other Stories. Mr Fixit and Other Stories. Mr Fixit and Other Stories. Mr Fixit and Other Stories. Mr Fixit and Other Stories. Mr Fixit and Other Stories.
By A.E. Coate
Robert F. Bahlinger Jnr.
I knew him well. In fact he was my present wife’s late husband – but about town he was most generally known as “Mr. Fixit” for whatever required fixing, he seemed to be able to fix it. A clock, a lawnmower or a washing machine – after Robert F. Bahlinger tinkered with it – away it went again.
Bob Bahlinger was a local lad born on 10th February 1909 at Carrolup in the old Tree home and educated at Katanning State School. In 1933 he was married at St. Matthews Anglican Church, Guildford to Miss Bertha Jean Jamieson of Katanning. After the ceremony they travelled to Moora. in the back seat of the officiating Minister’s car, where he and Jean lived in their rented cosy house alongside Police Officer Bunt of the local Police. Officer Bunt was later to be succeeded by Police Officer Fred Douglas and his wife Sylvia of Woodanilling. At that time Bob Bahlinger worked on the Moora paper “The Midlands Advocate“.
The couple returned to Katanning a year or two later and Bob worked with Jean’s uncle, well known Katanning sign writer and artist J.A.H. Charlton, who died in 1947.
When World War 2 broke out Robert F. Bahlinger enlisted and as WX2998, 2/16th Battalion A.I.F. served as Staff Sergeant at Darwin, NT. After discharge he joined the staff of the “Great Southern Herald” and for many years worked as mechanic, typesetter and printer until his death in 1970.
It was during those years that he worked at the “Herald” that he was given the name “Mr. Fixit” by so many who brought their typewriters, bikes, sewing machines, washing machines, clocks or lawnmowers to him for repairs. Anything mechanical from a motor car down to a doll’s pram was in his field of service. Yes, I knew Robert F. Bahlinger with much respect and admiration.
You pinched my girl!
You pinched my girl! So Torn Black of Cartmeticup complained to me one day during the late 1930’s when he came into the Flour Mill yard for some produce. “Pinched your girl?” I asked in amazement. “What are you talking about? I married Ethelwyn Hancey of West Leederville”.
“Yes” replied Tom “She was my girl”. “It all came about like this” Tom went on, “Ethelwyn Hancey and Margorie Matthews used to sing together at various Church functions at Cartmeticup and I had a soft spot in my heart for Ethelwyn, but you came along and took her so that I had to look around for another girl. Well, I found one and married her and we are happy together now”.
Yes, that was what had happened in the 1930’s, before I married my first wife in 1935, but I did not know of it until Tom Black told me. Nor did my first wife, Ethelwyn. Tom Black was too shy it appears to make his feelings known to the singing girl and her companion. Both girls knew there were those who admired their songs at the various places in and around Katanning, and when I mentioned the matter to Ethelwyn of what Tom had said at the Mill, she was perhaps more taken aback than I was. Marge Matthews became Mrs. Critchison and lives in Albany.
Strange but true, Tom’s sister Myra, was the mother of our son-in-law, Laurie Sugg, who married Alison Bahlinger in 1958, daughter of my present wife. As one said to another “It’s good to shake hands with old faces”. And by the same rule it’s good to recall old memories.
Buffers
In the mid 1920’s, whilst on Mill business, I was caught up in the buffers. Yes, that’s quite right as it was so embarrassing. The tearing results were evident for all to see.
It happened in the Katanning railway yards opposite Harry Smith’s shop in Austral Terrace where the B.K.W Co-op. is today. I was scrambling through a rake of stationary railway trucks and snagged my pants on the buffers. I needed another pair fast, and holding my trousers together with a show of respectability, I hastened to do business with Harry Smith who, at that moment, was standing in the doorway of his Emporium.
“Harry”, I frantically cried, “I need a pair of trousers, I’ve had an accident to mine here”. Harry glanced at my rent pants and without a thought for my torn pride, called out for all the shop to hear, and the town, “Marge, Bert Coate wants a pair of pants. Get him a pair”.
Marge Dadd was a nice girl to know in any situation. I knew her from her Woodanilling days. I was terribly embarrassed but not so Marge. With expert eye she measured my size and with unerring efficiency. She selected a pair of trousers from the rack and, showing me to a cubicle, drew the curtain and went about her business. I emerged a new man thanks to Marge, respectively fitted out in a good pair of pants.
Emporium advertisement in “The Great Southern Advocate” on 19 September 1932
Katanning’s first school.
We did not know at the time, when my father purchased the old tin house on Katanning Town Lot 11 of 421/422 Plan 3739 of Title Volume 977 Folio 141, comprising an area of 1 rood 14.7 perches with a frontage of 100 links and a depth of 330.6 links, that on that land there was incorporated into the old tin shed house Katanning’s first school room. No, not until Mrs. Mary Pittelkow (nee Mary Bell), the first teacher, stepped inside and calmly identified it, supported by Mr. H.V. Piesse MLC. and Mr. A.E. Piesse MLA.
We knew Mary Pittelkow from Woodanilling days when her husband Ernie Pittelkow was Secretary of the Woodanilling Roads Board as it was then known. The old house was unceremoniously condemned as ‘unfit for human habitation’ in 1966 by the Katanning Shire. I still have the Condemnation Order and Report as served on my late mother, then in her late eighties.
Also on that parcel of land, where on my late father grew oodles of vegetables, strawberries, onions by thousands, and fruit and grapes, stood at the far end next to the ROW (right-of-way) and Piesse’s Dam an old fashioned dunny many years older than the house. The inside contained a split level seat, one for the very young and the other for the adults. In the entrance court was a drum for male use.
In winter the water from Piesse’s dam would often flow over and into the the dunny area. The water from the men’s drum had to go down the drain in the ROW. Also, the convenience was home to red-back spiders and blackies, as well as the big brown night varieties, and lizards of several sorts. Now and then a chook would take refuge there in also, but the most embarrassing time would be when the ‘sandman’ called early. Yes, we had a ‘daylight receival service’ far removed from the ‘night snatch’ of other days. One had to hurry lest he or she was caught between the slip rails for the sandman didn’t appreciate waiting outside the thievery door.
When the floods of 1955 came up over the dam and past the kitchen door into Conroy Street, it was necessary to lay a bridge of sleepers from the kitchen to the old loo. This Bob Hill, the Welfare Officer and I, did the night my father died. Sometime later, with the help of Mr. R. Harris and an Italian man, a new loo was built som3 30 feet from the house.
In the 1960’s the block next door, No. 12 on Plan 3739, was sold to Mrs. L. Quartermaine, containing 1 rood, 18 perches with a frontage of 100 links and a depth of some 354 links, Title Volume 890 Folio 2. Yes, there is history in old houses and their surrounds.
Katanning had over 31 inches of rain in 1955!