Back to the Future

A holiday job at Auckland Museum imprinted 100 year old songs in my head

At the end of 1971, my father got me a job at the Auckland Museum, working a 100-year-old printing press, with articles that had been reproduced from the NZ Herald of 1871.

W Notting. 1896. Albion Type Press, 1978.927. The Museum of Transport and Technology (MOTAT).

In my role as a printer’s apprentice, I printed thousands of A3 single page newspapers on different colours of paper and gave them to visitors who watched me ink the type on the flatbed printer, place the paper on the ink, then pull on the handle of the press to produce the paper.

Kids were fascinated and I had big A3 sheets of paper of different colours and they were able to choose the colour, I would print a collector copy for them to take home. I wasn’t allowed to let them try the printing myself, because of the age of the printer and the risk of damage.

This exhibition timed to coincide with the launch of Centennial Street, a reproduction of a street in Auckland, mostly Queen Street 100 years earlier. My father spent a lot of his time over probably a couple of years, helping bring this awesome project to fruition. He brought many artifacts home to work on including some amazing music players and musical instruments.

The exhibition featured many artefacts from that Auckland 100 years prior, including a reel of music tracks, that cycled tracks of 30 or 40 songs, which I learned by heart. These included I’ll Take You Home Again Kathleen and the Tennessee Waltz.

I really enjoyed that time, even though it took up pretty much my entire school holidays. I was part of a living exhibit and enjoyed the environment and the fellowship accorded me by everyone including the ‘Attendants’, who were mostly returned servicemen, it being a War Memorial Museum. When the museum was recruiting for staff, for that role, priority had to be given to veterans, including those with disabilities.

As always, because my father worked at the museum, I had the run of the place and in my breaks, I often went down to the library and read through old newspapers. I think they had a copy of every New Zealand Herald that had been published right up to that day, in big folders and I pored over stories and pictures, trying to imagibe what it had been like to live in New Zealand in the 1800s.

The end result of my labours was the ability to buy a Diplomat electric Dobro, and a small 10 Watt amp, which was my pride and joy for several years. It played well accoustically and electrically and the fretwork allowed me to play it as a normal guitar (with a resonator sound) and as a slide guitar. Being a big blues fan and student, this allowed me to learn both finger styles and how to play slide.

This picture is of me playing that guitar in the chapel at Auckland Alternative School, where I finished my school education.

I have been a fan of the slide guitar ever since I bought that Dobro and have played slide in a variety of gigs over the years, including country, blues and rock. I built up a collection of steels or slides. A couple of years ago I made up a video to demonstrated different slides you can buy and why you might want more than one. I found a great one on a Chinese website called Ali Express, you probably know of them. The one I am holding here is excellent and I think it shipped to New Zealand for the princely sum of $3. I have to admit to having used it to play the Tennessee Waltz from time to time, remembering those days at the museum.

I missed the job when it was over and I went back to school, even though it took all of my summer. And the songs stayed with me forever.