Remembering Dad–100-Word Challenge

Games days, Central Australian pilgrimmages, his garden, golf, table tennis…always having to win. These are the things that spring to mind when I remember my dad. Last Monday, he would’ve turned 97 if he hadn’t left this Earth for a more perfect life in heaven in 2012.

Another defining memory of Dad was his cars, except for his first one, a Gogo mobile, the rest were cheap, second-hand and the “that’ll do for the time being variety”.

This week I look back at the memory of one of these cars in the 100-word challenge.

[Driving around Adelaide these days, I see many classic cars. Brings back memories of our family cars from my childhood…]


Bathsheba

After 50 years, I have discovered the significance of our Holden FC’s name.
My dad was called David. In the Bible, there’s a King David who has an illicit affair with a woman he spies in a bath on a roof top. Her name, Bathsheba. Bath-she-ba; an apt name considering the circumstances of their meeting.
Did Mum think that when Dad bought this car, this silver-pointed beauty was his “mistress’?
Similarities: Both Davids were master of their realms. Both Bathshebas, not new, used, yet beautiful. And both Bathshebas became parked in their David’s palace, in a harem, their love shared.

© Lee-Anne Marie Kling 2019; updated 2022
Feature Photo: Bathsheba in our Backyard © L.M. Kling nee Trudinger) 1969

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Join the Journey into Central Australia with the T-team, led by my Dad, Mr. T.

Click on the links below:

The T-Team with Mr. B: Central Australian Safari 1977

Trekking with the T-Team: Central Australian Safari 1981

Flash Back Friday–100-Word Challenge

Character Study

I have spent a few hours of this good Friday reading the diary of my Great Aunt Dora. The story begins all full of the hopes of a young 18-year-old first-generation Australian girl whose parents had migrated from Germany to South Australia around 1877. I know her story, I knew and loved my great Aunt Dora. She will never marry. One of many women of her time, when, after World War 1, there were not enough men to go around. I imagine this is what life in the 1920’s was like for her, a maiden aunt caring for her parents.

Dora

She had one once. Before the war.

He came from Hamburg. A distant relative from the family.

But the Great War intruded. He was the enemy.

Interned. Never to return.

She perched on the bench in the Royal Botanical Gardens. Watching. Men promenading in pale pinstriped suits, on their arms women in their frilly-white Sunday best, giggling.

Easy for the men, she thought. Pick and choose. Pick and choose. Even the damaged men, the cripples, have a chance.

She sniffed.

What about me? Is that my future? Caring for my aging parents? No choice but to be an old maid?

© Lee-Anne Marie Kling 2020; updated 2024

Feature Photo: A lone date palm, Botanical Gardens © L.M. Kling (nee Trudinger) 1986

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Want more memoir? Some travel?

Take a journey into Central Australia with the T-Team…

Click on the link:

The T-Team with Mr. B: Central Australian Safari 1977

Trekking with the T-Team: Central Australian Safari 1981

Or

If Sci-fi is more your thing

Check out my War Against Boris series…

The Hitch-hiker

Mission of the Unwilling

The Lost World of the Wends