Some chronology for John Joseph Ray
1964
A Brisbane autumn
My second job in Brisbane
After my job clerking at Abraham's Paper Sacks, I got a job selling transmission machinery from a shop in George St., Brisbane. It rather strangely had 3 names: Gearco, Irvine's and Munro Machinery. That is such a strange job for a literary type like me that I think I should say a few words about how I got that job.
There were not many jobs advertised in the local paper for experts in Middle-English poetry -- which is what I knew most about -- so with some optimism I applied for a job as an engineering equipment salesman.
I was interviewed by Harry Beanham, who owned a chain of similar shops in other capital cities. I turned up for the interview in a green suit wearing a green fuzzy felt hat. That was not a good move. But Harry was a cautious man so he just asked me two questions which should have sent me on my green-suited way. He asked: What is a tap and what is a reamer? Being a country kid I answered both questions correctly. And if you think a tap is something you get water out of you don't know engineering machinery. Harry was so delighted to meet a kid who actually knew something that he gave me the job straight away.
Harry was usually resident in Sydney but he visited his interstate shops occasionally. His Brisbane shop in George St. was mostly called Gearco. The job was to run a business selling second hand factory machinery and some new machinery: Mostly to do with lathes and other machine tools. I found it interesting.
Harry
Harry was in partnership with a very smooth man (Bob Naesmith) selling new and secondhand photographic gear. I ran my (engineering) side of the shop and the other side of the shop was run by George Smith and Mrs Staer. I had for many years a SLR Pentax camera I acquired from the other side of the shop when it came in second-hand.
I once had a Pom come in to buy some chain off me. He was a bit vague about what he wanted but assured me that he was a great British engineer. I gave him some 1/2 x 3/16 inch chain which he accepted. He came back next day rather irate because the chain did not fit. It turned out that he wanted 1/2 x 5/16 inch chain. I was a bit mocking about a great British engineer not knowing something as basic as the difference between 1/2 x 3/16 and 1/2 x 5/16 chain. He couldn't recognize the difference between pushbike chain and motorbike chain. He went away very angry with me! A sad soul.
I made my mark in Harry's mind by being a very successful seller of diehead chasers. There was a complexity to them that interested me. He eventually sent his total stock of them up to Brisbane for me to sell. Don't ask what they are. You don't need to know. Mechanical engineers know already.
Harry was pleased to find that I was a motorcyclist as that was very much his hobby. He was riding them well into his later years. His favourite bike when I knew him was the Velocette, a high quality British bike. He had one stored in the basement of his Brisbane shop for his use when he was in Brisbane. It was a bit like a motorscooter so I am pretty sure it was an LE model.
A 1953 Velocette LE
Harry seemed to monitor my sales and orders fairly closely and would send me up handwritten notes about them. I suspect that he couldn't work a typewriter. On one occasion he wrote that something I was doing was NBG. He was a bit on the grumpy side but never unpleasantly so. He saw it as his job to teach me things about the business -- which I was glad to learn.
As well as selling new lathe gears and other new machinery. Harry had a big stock of secondhand machinery which he had bought at auctions. Auctions were his second favourite hobby, I gather. So there were various things I had to do with his second-hand stock to get it ready for sale.
There are a number of affectionate stories about Harry online -- e.g. here
Anyway, while I was working there in the shop, most people in the area seemed to know of a Greek cafe nearby called "Griffo's". And people flocked there to buy a lunch called "Pik a hot pak". It was yummy. It was basically a toasted bacon & egg sandwich but with other stuff in it as well. At that time in my life I was busy saving money so my lunch was usually a cheese and pickle sandwich that I brought from home. But the Griffo's product was so attractive that I did splash out on one at times.
Sadly, however, Griffo's eventually vanished, as so much does over the years. As one gets older, however, one does tend to reminisce about "the good ol' days" a lot and the memory of Griffo's came to me recently. So I decided that I would try to recreate a "Pik a hot pak". I am of course not sure how close I got to the original but the taste is at least pretty similar -- and super-yummy.
So what's in it? The first constraint was that it had to contain pretty familiar ingredients. Any "foreign muck" would not have been well received in Brisbane of that era. So I used absolutely routine breakfast and lunch ingredients as I knew them at that time. So it is something that any cafe would be able to put together for you to this day.
It is simply bacon, fried egg, cheese, sliced tomato and fried onion topped by a small dab of tomato sauce all piled together into an ordinary toasted white-bread sandwich and cut into four. My local cafe puts it together well for me and it's the best toasted sandwich I have ever had! So some long overdue thanks to Griffo's.
Warning: If you try it you could become addicted!
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E.&O.E.
My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Personal); My Home page supplement; Subject index to my short notes. My annual picture page is here
Email me (John Ray) as jonjayray@hotmail.com