Quandaries of Belonging by Michael Jackson

Author:Michael Jackson [Jackson, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781785276415
Google: 8JMFzgEACAAJ
Publisher: Anthem Press
Published: 2020-12-15T05:17:29+00:00

Though I’d always wanted to find out “what went wrong” for Joe Pawelka it wasn’t until the winter of 1994 that I set about the task. But my search did not stop with Joe Pawelka. It led me from the past into the present and brought me to consider questions of fate and belonging that are as pressing now as they were a hundred years ago. Inevitably, too, my research implicated my own story. In looking for Joe Pawelka I began to come to terms with my own small-town New Zealand upbringing, and rethink my own New Zealandness in the light of my increasingly attenuated relationship with the country I still called home.

In the National Library and Archives, I covered ground that previous researchers had covered, and formed a picture of a close-knit family of working-class Catholic Moravian migrants struggling to make a living in the predominantly Protestant and Anglo settlement of Kimbolton in the years before the Great War. Joe was the first born, a “smart boy,” but given to “morose moods.” Pampered by his mother and at odds with his quick-tempered father, he felt bitter and bereft when obliged to leave school at 13 and become a butcher’s apprentice. A letter to his mother, written in the winter of 1905, gives us a glimpse into his life at this time.

My Dear Mother

I suppose you are wondering where in the world I have got here in a place a little smaller than Palmerston Since I came here I have got a job butchering in the town and intend to stick to it if I dont have a row with the boss This place is not so bad to live in and since I have been here I have met Cruden and his missus the Richardsons and the Gensons who are all living here Cruden is as big a skiter4 as ever he was his Mrs has grown like her mother about as broad as she is long Well Mother how have you been getting on I hope you are quite happy and well and am not working too hard I suppose the kid5 gives you enough bother though Oh Mother what about the Photo you promised me I should like to have a separate one of the lot of you Agnes Jack and yourself Tell Agnes to get her Photo taken as soon as she can and you too mother for I often wish for a separate Photo of you all so try and satisfy my wish if you can I hope you got that Photo of mine all right I have been wondering whether it went astray or not Dear Mother I wonder whether you have been why I asked for my school certificate in such a hurry for the truth is I had a chance of obtaining a government billet as Guard on the Railway train at Masterton, but I would not take the billet on account of the wages too small If I had been 21

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