34-37 Degrees South: Easy reading version

Perfect
Ron Pretty
It was a little Austin with a Prefect
motor. Perfect, yes? he said. Reconditioned.
A perfect beauty. Well, the boy was young, green
about the gills as his father used to say.
So he bought the pitch and the car. The Austin
had pitch on its roof. Was a convertible
in an earlier life. The youth used it to
drive from Helensburgh to Balmain. A Teachers’
College kid. Product of a sickly youth, but
they were short of males, so he was pressed into
the footie team just the same. Hooker. Safest place
for a bloke so skinny. They didn’t win much,
but he was liked for taking some of the team
to their matches. Hair-raising, it was, crossing
the Bridge with a steering so loose he struggled,
white around the gills, to stay in the proper lane.
It had to end someday, and it did, with a
metallic rattle. At Waterfall, he was,
going home after another defeat when
the car carked it. Got out, looked at the trail of
oil and metal fragments littering the road.
NRMA said, piston through the crankcase,
wasn’t it. Perfect end to a less-than-perfect car.
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