Arbeit macht frei: - Fredrick Töben

My parents did not join in club activities but saw it all and so ultimately
remained private persons. After over 40 years in the community, they saw
strangers come and go without putting down roots, and that is now also the
sadness facing mother. Parents’ social group of the sixties grew ever
smaller throughout the decades. Some newcomers overspent and oversocialised
and found that the bank manager cut the credit line; others
moved on to seek the bright lights of city living. Except for a few
individuals, my parents outlived their own group.
And so, together my parents whiled away their time, watching and
participating in the natural life-cycle. When they arrived in the area to
claim their bit of land, their three lakes were full, something that
continued until a few years ago. Now, after a six-year drought, they are
empty; it is the first time in recorded history that all lakes on the land have
dried up. It is almost symbolic for them that they arrived during plenty
while young and now faced the drought in their twilight years.
Still, for both father and mother, their joy has also been in their children’s
productivity, having made them grandparents and great-grandparents.
Although happy with all his own children, father did indicate that he was
worried by my activities. He felt that what I am doing is important and that
I should certainly continue, but that it should enable me to make a
reasonable living - something that is, of course, not the case.
Out of the six of us, parents and four children, it was only father and I
who had the ability to make a divining rod bend. Although I am quite
sceptical about it all, like father, when I hold a forked willow branch, or a
couple of copper wires or bars, the things move.
During the late fifties father would advertise in the Weekly Times, then on
weekends he would take the family for a drive in the Mercedes, and go
water divining at the same time. He offered customers a money-back
guarantee. No-one ever complained that where father said they would find
water, none was found. I still am rather sceptical about all this because I
have in mind James Randy who so graphically exposed Uri Geller’s spoon
bending exercise as a fraud. Few know that Geller throws legal writs at
critics that question Geller’s work. Geller charges any critic as preventing
him from exercising his right to make a living. I think it’s something to do
with fair trading.
When my parents reached their 60th Wedding Anniversary, the usual
congratulatory telegrams arrived, from Queen Elizabeth, the Governor-
General , Prime Minister, State Premier and Governor, and local Shire
Council President, among others. They enjoyed that kind of social
recognition, though guardedly. As members of a small farming
community, my parents were realists enough and not overvalue such social
matters because farming life can be quite sobering.
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