So this is one I'd not heard before, which is unusual. Forgive me, Dad, if I've missed something ...
Take yourself back to the fifties. It might've even been before the harbour bridge, it was certainly before the Auckland motorways carved up the city properly. Elvis was banned on the airways and transistor radios were still a faraway dream for many.
It's hard to imagine Dad as a teenager (he might've actually been older than a teenager - in those days you were a teenager until you were about 28). So he was tall, over six foot foot. He was skinny, skinny as. He was Catholic, which sends you one way or t'other - either rebel or saint. Dad veered towards the halo ... mostly.
A club in town, I think in Swanson Street, was reputed to be a veritable den of iniquity. It was called Heaven and Hell, apparently two separate bars in a Victorian building. You can guess the decor, one more virginal, the other screaming in hot, hot red. I doubt Heaven recceived much attention.
Dad, unlike most normal teenagers, both then and now, told his mother that he was going to the club. Hello? He also noted that on the night he was going to drive his mates in, there was to be adult entertainment in the form of a stripper. I blanch at the thoughts, both telling my grandmother and my father at a strip joint.
'How could you!' Nana exclaimed. 'And your father a lawman. How could you! That place is full to the gunnels with criminals and law breakers.' I'm sure smelling salts and cushions would've had to be sought upon Dad's announcement.
My mother, sitting in the lounge during the recount, noted 'I wasn't allowed to go there.' Which is saying something, as Mum veered towards rebel, and still does today
Luckily for my Dad and his curiosity, my grandmother's companion, Aunty Mary, was also part of Dad's revelation. 'Syd, should go,' she said, I can imagine very matter of factly. 'It will do him good.' And I'm sure she was right.
And with that said, Dad took off into the night in his '36 Chevy with his friends steaming up the back windows. Hooning into town, Dad (a non-smoker) procured a packet of cigarettes somewhere along the way. Dutch courage? Rite of passage?
The old Chev was parked up and the boys made their way directly to Hell as any good Catholic boys would. The atmosphere. The music. Smoke. Booze. It was a teenage dream. Soon the lights were dimmed, the music setting a sexy tone. It was only a matter of moments before the lovely young woman would be on stage and slowly derobing.
I can practically feel the throb of anticipation, as the boys held their breaths and widened their eyes.
At about that moment, Dad lit up one of his purchases. Somehow inhaling all the smoke with his eyeballs, he was blinded by smoke as Candi's clothes were peeled and dropped to the stage floor.
He missed it. Missed the whole tantalising show. Missed it completely.
When he regained his sight, he drove home, leaving his friends to find further fun in the Auckland night. Disappointment and itchy eyeballs were his only companions on his journey home.
Dad's cloak of morality remained inadvertently still intact. I wonder if he ever told his Mum? I somehow doubt it. I suspect Aunty Mary knows.
