Mum and Dad's Early Married Life

After the service we had a Dutch “wedding breakfast” at my sister’s home in Johnsonville, with speeches, drinks and food galore. It lasted till late that night. The next day we set off on our honeymoon destination, Kaitangata, where many of my old friends lived. I wanted to show off my wife to them. All went very well, and after 10 days we were back in Johnsonville to stay with Gerrit and Bep for a while.

We were lucky enough to find a house for rent, not far from them. It was in Morgan street, opposite the school playground. Soon Ans arrived to live with us. That was very handy as far as the rent was concerned as at that time we didn’t have much money. Rie was expecting, and we travelled regularly down Ngauranga Gorge to Wellington Hospital on the motorbike to see the doctor.

Our neighbour, I forgot his name, had promised to take Rie in when the baby was due. That occured late afternoon on the 19th of February, 1957. As far as I can remember, William Otte came into the world at five minutes before midnight, but years later, when he applied for a full birth certificate, he was told that he was born on the 20th.

After mother and son came home, our neighbour confessed he had been dead scared in case the baby had been born in his car. That had happened to him before. William was our pride and joy, and a very easy baby. We were a happy family indeed. Ans and I went to work on the motorbike every morning. I worked on the wharf while Ans had a dressmaking job.

It was nice having her staying with us, because I often worked till nine p.m. And Ans was then good company for Rie and the baby. Then, one day at noon, Rie got a shock. We both came walking in - Ans with her arm in a sling and me limping.

On the way to work we'd had an accident. We  were taken to hospital by ambulance, but were discharged later on in the day. Ans had suffered a broken finger, and I had a badly bruised leg. The bike was only slightly damaged. But we were meant  to stay in bed for the time being. The doctor would call in a day or two.

Poor Rie had to run back and forth from one room to the other. As it was cold, and so as to save on the cost of heating, she put William’s cot in the master bedroom and told Ans to get into bed with me. "That way we only have to use only one heater. You’re both too miserable to do anything you shouldn’t."

At about eleven o’clock the following day, the doctor called. Rie let him in and showed him to the bedroom. He looked at us in the bed, then to Rie, and asked, “But you are Mrs Lucas, aren't you?” He looked puzzled as I said, “ That's our custom in Holland. Wife or sister-in-law, it doesn’t make any difference.” We three started laughing. After a while the doctor saw the joke too.

We had no income for a while but still had to manage to buy groceries. But one day when Rie asked for money to buy some potatoes, I found that I had none. I'd expected that she'd have some hidden away. Normally Rie always managed somehow, but this time we were stuck. And for the first (and last) time I had to go to the greengrocer and humbly ask for some potatoes “on the slate”. He was very obliging, but I felt sick at heart.

We lived in Morgan street for a year and a half. William was doing well, and the financial situation had improved greatly. Everything seemed to be going fine when a letter arrived from the owner of the house. He had been living in Gisborne but planned to return to Johnsonville and: "Would you be kind enough to vacate the house within six weeks?" We did not have the means to buy a house of our own and wondered what to do next.

Then a letter arrived from Wim, Rie’s brother who lived in Dunedin. He had just bought a house there. Now, he and his wife had decided to go overseas for a year. Would we be interested in coming down to Dunedin and live in it for a small rent, and look after the place? I did not really want to give up my job on the waterfront, but after talking it over with Rie, I finally accepted.

We packed all our belongings into crates. I gave in my notice at work and asked for a transfer to the wharf in Dunedin, which they could not guarantee. I booked a plane for Rie and William for the 30th of August, 1958. I was to go on the ferry that day, to Lyttleton. From there I would ride to Dunedin on my motorbike.

With mother and son safely on the plane, I crossed on the ferry that night and started early the next morning from Lyttleton to Dunedin. It was rather chilly but soon the sun broke through and all was fine until I reached Oamaru. It got colder and darker and even started to snow. Helmets were not worn in those days, and I had to wrap a shawl round my head. I felt more miserable the closer I came to my destination. By the time that I got there, I'd lost all feeling in my legs.

It took hours of sitting by an open fire to thaw out. I could not help thinking what I had myself let in for. It took a while to get a job, as there were no vacancies on the wharf. Anita, Bill’s wife, worked at the Roslyn Woollen Mills. She got me work there, so we used to go to work together on my motorbike.

One day, coming home from work, we were driving through town past the Oval. We had to pass under the Anderson's Bay railway viaduct where there used to be a street called Wharf street on the left coming from town. I saw a car standing still waiting to turn right. I saw the driver talking to his companion. Just when I was passing, he accelerated. I had no time to go left or right. He drove straight into the left side of the bike, throwing us onto the road.

I could not move. Soon an ambulance arrived. They put me on a stretcher, my left leg broken in two places. It was a compound fracture. Anita came off slightly better with a broken finger. In the meantime, Rie had heard the sirens from 37 Oxford street where we lived. She came out to the street and asked a woman on a bicycle coming towards her what had happened. The woman turned out to be Dutch too. She asked Rie if she knew of a Dutch family living here, because the injured man was from Holland. That's how Rie learned that the siren had been for us.

The Dutch lady, Bep Spronken, offered to look after William in case Rie wanted to go to the hospital. Rie took up her offer and caught the bus. I was in agony in A & E when a doctor came to see me. He straight away offered me a cigarette and I accepted thankfully. Imagine a doctor doing that nowadays!

In the operating theatre my leg was put in plaster, but after ten days it had to be reset and a pin put in that I still carry to this day. After three weeks I came home, but I had to be in plaster for nine months before I could start work again.

During this period, the police took the driver of the car to court for dangerous driving. I was a witness for the police. However, the driver of the car had a clever lawyer. The case was dismissed by the magistrate, a Mr. Willis. But I was convinced that I had a very strong case and took out a civil case against the driver.

At first my lawyer was optimistic. A few weeks later, however, he called me up to say that my chances were poor. He suggested I drop the case. I couldn’t fathom what he was up to and insisted on pursuing the case. He replied, “Well, Mr. Lucas, don't forget that you are a foreigner and he is a New Zealander!” to which I answered: “If that is the law in N.Z and you approve of it, then it’s time I looked for another lawyer.”

My threat made him change his mind and he asked me politely to wait a few days so he could contact the insurance company. About three days after that he told me they had offered to settle out of court for 1300 pounds. The amount was for suffering and being nine months off work. I was so fed up with the whole business that I reluctantly agreed, not realizing that the lawyer would deduct 500 pounds for doing absolutely nothing.

While this was going on, on the 28th of January 1959, our second son was born at Queen Mary Hospital. In those days husbands were not allowed to be present at the birth, so Rie had asked the nurse to ring me as soon as the baby arrived. Therefore, when I came and visited her at 2 o’clock in the afternoon, my first words were: “ haven’t you started yet?” In tears Rie said that the baby had already arrived at 10 in the morning. She couldn’t understand why she had not heard from me yet.

We gave each other a big hug and adored our son, whom we called Michael Henry. He would turn out to be a very lively, mischievous, and a nice playmate for William. 

When my brother in law and his wife came back from Holland, we felt it was time to move on.

We bought a leasehold dairy in Hanover Street at the corner of Grange street. It was an old ramshackle two-story place. Over the years it had sagged in the middle. We had to keep the pram upstairs, as there was no room on the ground floor, and we had to put a block of wood under the wheel to prevent it from running down the stairs.

The shop was a seven-day-a-week dairy, open from seven in the morning until ten at night. The shop was a decent size, but the living quarters were very small. It only had a little room measuring three by four metres behind the shop plus a lean-to kitchen with a small shower room off it. Our cooker was a small Atlas one-plate electric with a small oven just big enough to warm six pies at a time. But we managed fine. We had a big turnover at lunch time. We even sold hard-boiled eggs.

Before long, we had to get up at six in the morning to make sandwiches and so on. Rie always said that she hoped the next baby, our third, would not arrive on a Monday, as this was our busiest day of the week. But sure enough, on Monday the 2nd of July 1962, when we got up at five to start to butter the bread, the waters broke. But we carried on as well as we could and had everything ready by half past eleven.

We called Christine, a good friend of ours from our Oxford Street days, and she came directly. At seven p.m. Rie got in the van, with her pains coming regularly at ten-minute intervals. I rushed her to Redroofs Hospital, the only place we had found which would allow me, the husband, to stay at my wife's bedside during the birth. We arrived there at half past seven, and the baby was born at five minutes past eight. It had been a close call.

We were overcome by joy when the baby turned out to be a girl. We called her Hendrina Katrina Barbara, after Rie’s mother, eldest sister and stepmother. When mother and baby returned home, we soon got back into routine but decided not to carry on the business much longer. It would be too much of a strain for Rie with three children. What made us even more determined to sell up was a terrible near-accident.

It happened that one afternoon we were both busy in the shop. The baby was sleeping in the pram upstairs. The two boys were in the room playing. It was cold, so the electric heater in the room behind the shop was turned on. The door had into the house a large ribbed window. Rie and I were both serving customers when I happened to look at the door and saw large flames through the glass.

My reaction was so fast it wasn’t funny. I rushed in and saw a large cardboard box fully alight. I grabbed my leather coat that was draped over a chair and threw it over the fire. Soon everything was under control, but we had almost had a catastrophe on our hands. We both got a terrible fright and were now really ready to take action. Quickly I put our business on the market. It took a while, but by late September we were successful. We sold the shop for a profit to a Chinese gentleman.

We moved out at the beginning of October and moved to a large flat in Queens Drive in Sth. Dunedin. We hired a large van and shifted everything ourselves. Rie and I were unloading the truck and the boys were running around in the large garden. But boys are boys and after a while we heard them crying. We didn’t take too much notice. Then Rie carried some linen inside, heard muffled crying and saw the large cabin trunk with its lid closed, when before it had been open.

Her knees started trembling, she dropped the linen on the floor, rushed over to the trunk, opened the lid and out popped two red-faced boys. Thank God! We could have lost them. Even today they maintain that Mum exaggerated, but we know the score.

The 6 to 8 weeks that we lived in that flat was like heaven after having spent nearly 3 years working in a 7-day dairy. I took a temporary job at Woolworths to cover the rent and living expenses, and we had great times with the children at St Kilda beach, only a few minutes' walk from the flat. We were having a holiday even before the big one started.

On the 2nd of January, 1963 we flew to Auckland where we spent two days in a motel. We boarded the Fair Sky, an Italian owned ship. Our cabin was right down on the lower level but it was comfortable. The stewards were Italian. They were very fond of us and helpful, especially towards little Katrina, then 9 months old. “Little bambina” they called her, and they made a big fuss of her.

Traveling to Europe by ship, the clock gets put back one hour every so often, so the children woke up earlier and earlier. We didn’t want them to wake up other passengers, so we used to take them upstairs to the upper deck to the swimming pool. We taught both boys how to swim. And later, passing the equator, Father Neptune came on board. On that occasion sailors jokingly threw some passengers into the swimming pool to get “baptized” in order to receive a certificate that acknowledges the fact that you have crossed the equator.

While this ceremony was taking place, our young Michael threw a little playmate into the pool and one of the sailors had to jump in to save the youngster from drowning! His parents, a German couple, never talked to us anymore. Poor Mike ran off to our cabin and didn’t show his face again for quite a while.

There also was a fancy dress party for the children. Our two boys entered as Adam and Eve. We also had baby Katrina participate as a little aborigine. We had darkened her face with Nescafe and had her carry a cardboard boomerang, but by the time of the judging she had been crying and her wee face looked a mess. The boys won first prize, but she got nowhere.

We were on board for 6 weeks and had a wonderful holiday. Even a storm in the Mediterranean Sea didn’t worry us, although at one meal all the dishes, cutlery and food slid off the tables at one stage. People were seasick all over the place, but our whole family came through unscathed.

Just think, six whole weeks with all meals provided for only 300 pounds for a family of six! By plane, it would have cost at least five times as much. We did loose a certain amount of money, in Naples, however. We went ashore to buy some warm clothing and shoes for the boys. I had been told that it would be profitable to change Aussie dollars for Italian Liras, not at the bank but in the street.

As soon as we came off the boat, a man walked up with us and asked if I had money to change. After some haggling we agreed on an exchange rate. He took me with him to a deserted spot and started counting out the paper money. Then suddenly police sirens sounded. He shot away and left me standing there without completing the transaction. I was disappointed, but Rie wanted to go back to the ship. 

We bought some coats and shoes and went back. As we got aboard, I told Rie that there still was some time left, and that I would try again. Back at the square where I had first seen the man, he suddenly turned up again. He indicated for me to follow him.

We walked a fair way and ended up in a dark alleyway, where we met another chap. He counted his notes again, then put them away and I started counting my notes. I had almost finished, when we heard the siren again. “Quick, change over”, he said, pushing his bundle into my hand, while grabbing my money, and they scurried away. 

It took me roughly ten minutes to walk back to the quayside. There was a bookstall and I bought some comics for the boys. Taking the bundle of notes from my pocket I nearly died! There was only one big Lira banknote there wrapped around a stack of newspaper 'banknotes'.

It gave me a nasty shock and an instant headache. I felt weak at the knees. As I walked unsteadily to the gangplank, I  heard the ship’s siren. I walked up the gangplank just in time to see Rie standing waiting for me. She was almost crying. “Where have you been?” she shouted, “You are the last one to come on board. The ship almost left without you!”

But then she saw the look on my face. It probably looked green from misery. When I told her what had happened, she got a shock, too. However, she said that it didn’t matter. As long as I was safely on board in one piece.

In hindsight, I had been lucky not to notice what was going on. I’m sure I would not have been here to tell this story, but lying there dead or wounded with a knife in my back, if I had discovered the men's trick. Losing our hard-earned 80 pounds in this way was stupid, but it had taught me a lesson. Consequently, we had to borrow some money from a friend to see us through till we arrived in Holland.

Our ship arrived at Holland in mid-winter. The Noordzee Kanaal was frozen over, and an ice breaker had to clear us a path. We berthed at Amsterdam and  almost all of Rie's entire family were standing at the quayside.

Rie went ashore first because I had to search for our hand luggage. When I finally came ashore, I was warmly greeted by Papa Ottema. Then I turned to Alie who was holding a baby in her arms. "So you are Alie," I said, "And is that your youngest one?"

"No," came her reply, "It's your youngest one!"

That broke the ice and we all laughed heartily. We first stayed with papa Ottema for a few days. He spoiled us with plenty of coffee and meatballs which the boys loved. 

Then we traveled to my parents in Arnhem. As soon as we entered their home, Michael managed to throw the front door key in the toilet. 

Next we went to Dinie and Henk in Utrecht, where we celebrated William’s 6th birthday. He got a big surprise when the barrel-organ played Happy Birthday for him.

After a few days there, it was off to Alie and Huub in Goirle. We had a great time with them, but after six weeks on the move we felt that it was time to get a place of our own. 

We bought a big house nearby in Tilburg. It had six bedrooms, so we rented three of them out to students. That money paid for the interest on the mortgage. I got myself a job as a telephone operator at the local Energy Works.

1963 was an eventful year. There was the Cuban crisis that nearly plunged the world into the 3rd world war, and President Kennedy was assassinated in November. 

We had our own eventful time. Just before I started my job, we took the boys to the big local fair. We only had about 100 guilders left to last us until my first pay, but we had promised the boys a ride in a bumper car. They enjoyed it so much that we gave them a second go. After that we went home quickly as a storm was brewing. We arrived at the house just as the first raindrops started to fall.

The next morning Rie asked me for the purse. She wanted to buy some milk. But try as I might, I could not find it. I searched for it everywhere, but the purse didn't turn up. I must have lost it, I realized, so I rang the police station hoping against hope that some honest person had found it. To my great surprise and relief I was told an address at which to ask. I went there and, yes, a boy had found it. He'd handed it in to the police. 

Thanking him and rewarding him with 10 guilders, I left, bought a bunch of flowers and gave these to Rie when I came home. I told her that it had not been my purse but that I had pretended that it was. You should have seen the look of disgust on her face! But when I showed her our own purse, all was well.

Soon after, I collected my first wages and our financial crisis belonged to the past. My job was a pleasant one. My two colleagues were jovial guys. The senior one, Henk, said to me on my 40th birthday that I could still make 25 working years at his job. That would guarantee me a better pension when I turned 65. That thought shocked me as I never intended to have a permanent job.

That evening in bed, unable to sleep and looking through our bedroom window, I saw the cross on the steeple of the nearby church lit up with neon. Noticing that Rie was still awake, I asked her if that would be our lookout for the next 25 years. This amused her greatly, but she admitted she had been thinking along similar lines as well. This was the moment we both began to think in terms of returning to New Zealand.

Then, we received word from Arnhem that Opa Lucas was in hospital. He had suffered a stroke. Opa and Oma Lucas had spent Christmas with us only a month earlier. We had found it strange at the time that Opa had asked to return home shortly after. He must have had a foreboding, I guess.

Taking William with me, we went to Arnhem to see him, and to see how Oma was coping. She was doing as well as could be expected, but my father looked bad. He would hang on for 9 months, unable to speak or walk. (He never really improved and he died in September, on the day that we landed in Wellington. He was then 74 years old.)

In April, 1964, we decided to return to New Zealand. We booked a passage on the Rangitane, a ship belonging to a N.Z. shipping company. The sailing date was at the start of August. But first, we had to put our house on the market and sell it. It took about eight weeks before a buyer turned up. We sold the house for a decent profit which enabled us to bring a sizable amount of money with us back to New Zealand.

All in all, we had lived in Holland for over one and a half years. We had enjoyed it. William could complete a full year at primary school. Michael had gone to kindergarten. Katrina was now two years old, and Kristina was almost eight months old when we departed from Holland - first by taxi from Tilburg to Schiphol at Amsterdam, and then by plane to London. From there, we took a taxi to the East London docks where the Rangitane lay waiting.

The whole trip had taken nine hours, and by the time we arrived at the quayside Katrina was fed up and screaming. Whatever we tried, she was beyond reason. Then the purser came down the gangway and gaciously led our whole family on board first. We are still grateful to him for this gesture of goodwill.

Our cabin was very roomy. It even had a round porthole. The whole family occupied it together. The journey was very pleasant and rather uneventful. We first came to the island of Curacao where we were allowed ashore for half a day. There I took the radio I had bought in Holland to a repair shop because it wouldn’t operate on the boat. The shopkeeper then switched it on and found nothing wrong with it. The batteries were fine, but because the ship's cabin was all iron it would not work. I looked a bit sheepish at him. I hadn’t thought of that.

I remember that the boys dug a cactus out of the ground on Curacao. We took it with us to New Zealand. We sailed through the Panama canal and then on to Tahiti, but we were not allowed off the boat.

When we sailed on from there, Katrina got a sore on her lip. The ship’s doctor treated it with penicillin to be administered twice daily. But after two days she developed some blisters and became very miserable. Rie stopped giving her the medicine (and that probably saved her life). That same evening, Rie went over to the cot to check on Katrina. When she lifted her up, she discovered that her skin had blistered and come loose. Rie could see Katrina's raw flesh underneath.

I hurried to get the doctor and he immediately took Rie and Katrina to the ship’s hospital. Katrina was very ill, and had blisters from head to toe. We really feared for her life, and so did the doctor. There was talk of flying her to land on a helicopter. This dire situation lasted for two days. The morning after that, Rie was woken by the sound of singing. Katrina was sitting up in bed! The crisis had passed and the girl was on the way to recovery. We both thanked God that moment. Apparently our child was allergic to Penicillin.

By the time we arrived in Wellington, Katrina's skin was peeling head to toe. She made a game of it, and would say “Papier hier” as she showed us each bit of old skin  pulled off. It means: paper here. She remembered that phrase which the talking rubbish bins at Efteling theme park in Holland uttered whenever you threw something inside.