Heroes and Villains

Information about the changing world entered Marewa mostly from the USA — the home of innovation and invention. This was despite the fact that we all referred to England as 'the old country' and we weren't English ourselves.

About that time the exchange rate for New Zealand currency was greater than the American dollar. Many American cars of the 1950s, now collectors' items, are a reminder of that happy event. This was an era of especially large, impractical and ostentatious vehicles symbolised with grandiose names such as Chevrolet Bel Air, Ford Thunderbird, or Cadillac El Dorado.

Elvis

All American vehicles were heavily chromium-laden and huge inside the cab. This spacious design was in sharp contrast to the small, ugly English cars like Vauxhall, Austin, Morris, Rover, Standard, or Ford Prefect that our parents traditionally bought.

Elvis was a 19-year-old teen when he rose to international stardom.

Other American icons and idols exploded on to post-war Marewa as they did everywhere. The most significant American export was Aron Presley. He was so completely radical that he impacted an entire generation for change.

As a 19-year-old teenager, had became a world-wide sensation. We copied his greasy hair fashion and leather jackets and stove-pipe pants. Up to that time fashion denim was not available in New Zealand so we had to improvise the tight pants. Also T-shirts were unheard of here so we wore our jerseys back to front and it looked like a round-necked shirt as seen on the silver screen! At high school, many young boys shaved our faces to stimulate an early beard and we grew sideboards just like .

There was no television in those days. We had to learn this fashion stuff from movie newsreels and magazines. At home at night there was the radio and with school friends I would tune in to American commercial radio stations which beamed out from the deep South and Western States. We listened to their hit parades and learned quite a lot about their music which was completely different from anything available in New Zealand.

In our country there was organised resistance to change from the older generation and from civil authorities. There were no commercial radio stations in New Zealand and government effectively blocked all but the few approved entertainers from broadcast and confined public airing of rock'n'roll new-wave music to a once-a-week hit parade.

Rockin' Down the Highway: The Cars and People That Made Rock Roll by Paul Grushkin; foreword by Mike Ness

This did not stop or even slow the popularity of new music which was available in retail stores. Also there were 'listener request' radio shows such as the Sunday lunchtime session where we tuned in to popular choices.

A wide range of top American entertainers were available in the record stores where the shopkeepers would import anything you asked for (remember the exchange rate was good).

Of course it was not just the music. The entire concept of rock'n'roll was a symbol of change and defiance, a new freedom of thought and fashion. Basically, it was a social revolution with the goal of overthrowing the older pre-war values.

This new order brewing in the back streets of Marewa was a microcosm of massive social and economic change that swept the world after World War II. Unknown to the community at Marewa, global social change was much greater elsewhere, especially in Japan, the USA and Europe.

Leader Of The Pack?

At that time anyone could obtain a full motor vehicle licence from age 15 and I was no exception. On my birthday, my father drove me to town where I went once around the block with a traffic cop as passenger. Then he took me inside and showed me a wall display of horrific car accidents and asked me the basic road rules. With that I became a qualified driver.

Soon I purchased a 1931 Norton Panther, 500cc single, motorcycle for £10 including registration and warrant of fitness. It was a fabulous old warhorse, single cylinder in a rigid frame. But go, how it could go. It never let me down and had great handling. The handling proved to be important as I found motorcycling to be an on-again-off-again experience. I rode the Norton to school at St Johns College, Hastings, and took the long way home whenever I could afford the petrol.

The Word's Fastest Indian ... Burt Munroe.

At 15 and new to motorcycles I discovered my old Norton often threw me on shingle roads and in wet conditions. More usually accidents were caused by too much speed and, anyhow, the brakes were feeble. Brakes and other engineering problems of the era were issues discussed at length in the recent hit movie The World's Fastest Indian.

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