Thread: My dad's old plane

Originally Posted by Chesand

.......There is a fair chance that the depression ended your father's apprenticeship as it did for my father who was born in 1912. He was an apprentice butcher and had to give that up to take his own father's job at a lesser wage to keep the family afloat. As a result my father vowed and declared that my sister and I would never have to work as hard as he had. We were encouraged and had a good secondary education which enabled us to follow our chosen professions. I often say that our generation was the last that was affected by the depression because of the effects on our parents.

True, Tom, I think it was probably so. Certainly the timing fits, & he may have told me the reason at some stage, but I can't remember (along with quite a few other things ).

And indeed, my dad was very keen to see all his children educated, too, including his daughters, which was a pretty enlightened attitude for his time & place. Most of us ended up completing some sort of tertiary education in the end, which I think gave him much satisfaction. I can only imagine how disappointed he must have felt when I became a rebel without cause in my teenage years & dropped out of school. I actually started an apprenticeship too (radio tech.), but in a twist of fate, it was Mr. Menzies "credit squeeze" (another recession we had to have) of the early 60s that ended that and started me on my 'wandering' years.

As they say, life is what happens to us while we make other plans....

Cheers,