Pat Ritter. Books

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Matilda’s Waltz

The title Matilda’s Waltz reminded me of a book I’d read named Matilda’s Last Waltz written by Tamara McKinley.
Before I read this novel I must admit to not reading many novels. It instantly devoured my mind. I couldn’t put it down until I’d finished it. It was a true Australian story of intrigue and storytelling at its best.
The story began in Outback Australian with the major character named Jenny who inherited Churinga Sheep Station after the sudden death of her husband. Prior to his death she had no knowledge her husband owed the sheep station.
With nowhere else to turn she goes to Churinga Station to find a harsh, unforgiving place but with its own quiet beauty. It also had its secrets.
Jenny’s new neighbours seem reluctant to talk about Matilda Thomas, Churinga’s former owner. But the longer Jenny spent on the property, the more she became aware of her predecessor’s lingering presence.
Jenny discovers Matilda’s diaries and finds herself drawn into a tale more shocking than she could possibly have imagined. And the deeper she delved into the past, the more Jenny wondered whether inheriting Churinga was a blessing or a curse.
With twists and turns mixed in the storyline Jenny finally discovers the truth from the word of a dying priest. Father Ryan tells Jenny, Matilda was her mother and died giving birth to her. Her father placed Jenny into an orphanage and left her to be raised by the nuns. On her 26th birthday she inherited Churinga Sheep Station.
On hearing this news from the dying priest tears filled her eyes. Pain turned to rage, then sorrow. She lost all sense of time and place as she stared through the tears. Then the faint, distant chords of an orchestra drifted back to her and she thought she saw a woman in a green dress, waltzing with her handsome husband. They were smiling at each other, lost in happiness.
They turned towards her and Matilda whispered, ‘This is my last waltz, Darling - just for you.’
Word count: 345
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The One Reason Why I’m Not Rich.

In one word, gambling, I am a gambler. My parents gambled, their parents gambled and most of my relatives and friends gambled. If there were two flies crawling up a wall, a wager was laid to bet which fly would first leave the wall. I knew of no other way of life. It was exciting and the adrenalin rush was unbelievable. To win was the rush. To lose was disappointing.
I’ve never been a drug user, but I can imagine the comparison between the two. Endorphins in the brain must almost explode into ecstasy when a person is using drugs. My brain certainly went to dizzy heights seeing a horse win a race after I waged a bet. It wasn’t the money invested, but the thrill of winning when the feeling of excitement fluttered through my body. It was better than having sex. I couldn’t stop shaking with excitement and pleasure, and that Toyota feeling of stretching your arms wide and jumping in the air always took over.
I think it may have started when I was a child living in Roma. Around Christmas each year the Ambulance Service, QATB as they were known then, had what they called a chocolate wheel in the main street of Roma. The chocolate wheel stood on a stand – round in circumference displaying numbers on the outside of the board. Each number was divided by a wooden peg. On top of the board, apart from the wheel, a piece of leather strap stopped on the number after being spun by the operator.
People gathered in the hope to win the prize of either a leg of ham or a can of ham for Christmas. They purchased a ticket for a prize and waited for their number to be spun on the wheel.
Tickets sold for a shilling and I purchased one ticket. I remember it as if it happened yesterday. The ticket I purchased was number 56. This time it stopped on number 56. I won. The initial feeling of winning a prize was the best feeling I had ever felt in my ten year old body. It became a drug and I wanted to have that winning feeling again and again.
If it was possible to stop gambling at ten years of age and deposit the amount of money in a bank account I’ve wagered since then, I would no doubt be rich in wealth alone. Unfortunately, I continue to gamble and like the druggie am waiting for that adrenaline rush to have that affect not only on my mind but also on my body and you never know one day it may return.
Word count: 451
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A Story Centred On A Key.

All through my life I have been gravely concerned about something terrible that happened during my childhood. I’ve often wondered how quickly habits are copied by children from their parent’s behaviours.
For instance, my grandmother, my mother’s mother, was a wonderful person. She’d hug me when I needed comfort and told me wonderful stories to soothe my mind.
One habit she passed down to me was seeing things through rose coloured glasses. Everything was always better than it actually was. It wasn’t telling untruths but close enough to it, more exaggeration than telling the true story. My mother possessed a similar habit and therefore this habit passed onto me.
As I grew older this habit became strongly engrained into my mind, so much, that when I was in trouble for any misdemeanour, a defence mechanism popped up to protect myself from getting into further trouble. This defence mechanism at times was a blessing and at other times a hindrance. I had learned well from my mentors.
In my early twenties I joined the Queensland Police Force. Suddenly my thoughts were mangled to such a degree at times I couldn’t disseminate between what was fact and what was fiction. One important role of a police officer is to bring wrong doers to justice. Thereby arresting them and presenting them before a court of law.
Sometimes the person would plead ‘guilty’ and other times defend their innocence. Unless the police officer had a photographic memory or recorded each second of the arrest and circumstances, many questions were asked by defence counsel about the arrest. In my case I possessed this defence mechanism of protecting myself from ‘getting caught out’ as I’d done all through my life. Many times this habit was embarrassing.
I wanted to do something about it. The key I used to open this door was to learn always to tell the truth. At first, it was hard to break the habit, but as an instructor once told me if I was going to succeed, I needed to work at changing it and it would take three weeks to change any habit.
She told me each time I was about to exaggerate, if I didn’t tell the truth, then I should immediately stop and tell the person the information I told them was untrue and recorrect what I’d said. I worked hard to break this habit.
I am pleased to admit I no longer carry this habit in my mind and found the key to tell the truth at all times opened the door to make me realise it is always better to tell the truth than to exaggerate. I am a great believer in karma. If you do the wrong thing then expect it to come back and bite you on the bum.
Word count: 473
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The Last Word.

If ever you wanted to know anything in our family than Aunty Mickey was the ‘go to’ person. There wasn’t anything that Aunty Mickey didn’t know from the correct way to tie your shoe laces to the latest gossip.
She was my mother’s sister, bless her soul. She passed away only a couple of years ago and I bet she had the last word even when she met St Peter at the Golden Gate.
Memories instantly flow back at the sound of her name. Visions form in my mind remembering her features, thin face, brown mousey hair, trimmed short, blue eyes bulging from inside her eyelids when her temper rose above the normal level. She had a fiery temper and was a pocket rocket.
In my early teens she became my surrogate mother after my parents decided to abandon me and move interstate. I lived with Aunty Mickey and Uncle Vivian and their children, two girls and a boy, throughout the remainder of my teenage years. Their home was my home and the memories I hold will remain forever.
Many times I heeded her advice. She always told me I was stupid to do the thing I asked her about. Like the time I wanted to purchase a car. She was against the idea and put her two bobs worth in.
In those times I attended college at night and to return home I had to hitch hike a ride with whoever would pick me up from the side of the road. One night I received a ride with this fellow who told me after I was comfortably seated in the front seat of his car, ‘I’ve got a gun under the front seat and if you try anything funny I’ll use it.’ That was the final straw that broke the camel’s back. I wanted my own transport.
Without consulting Aunty Mickey I purchased a car suitable for my means at the time. She didn’t say a word and was pleased to ride in it whenever she wanted to go anywhere or for me to take her.
Three years ago she lost the love of her life, Uncle Vivian who passed away from a heart problem. When I visited the home to pay my last respects, her comments were, ‘he was going to die anyway. He had a bad heart.’ She even had the last word on her husband’s death bed.
It was difficult for her to cope without her long time friend and husband. She moved into a Nursing Home. For a reason I can’t explain I wanted to visit her and I was too late to tell her how I loved her dearly and to thank her for how she’d enriched my life. She’d passed away before I could tell her.
Unfortunately I couldn’t attend the funeral. When the clock chimed the time of her funeral, I developed a huge pain in my stomach and needed to visit the toilet. For four hours I sat on the throne and couldn’t move because of diarrhoea. Aunty Mickey had had the last word.
Word count: 519
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The Gate.

Unfortunately this gate didn’t swing like any other. It dragged along the ground. With years of torture from cattle crashing into it, a bar missing and others bent in all directions. How it kept any animal from escaping was anyone’s guess. At times it didn’t.
Actually I felt sorry for the gate because if it had a mind of its own no doubt it would have wanted to be repaired. So, being a kind person as I am, I decided to bring it back to life? Unscrewing the hinges from the top of the gate it gave way with a sigh of relief. How it survived this long was anyone’s guess. The top bar was mangled and twisted.
Normally these gates had three steel tubes equally spaced from the top to the bottom running along the length. One was completely missing whilst the other two hung by a thread. I laid the gate on the ground to decide how to repair it. What a task. Perhaps it may have been better to purchase a new one rather than repair this old one. I wanted to repair it and bring it back to life.
Taking a sledge hammer to it as it laid spreadeagled on the ground I continued hammering it with all of my might. A slight dent here and there and after more bashing with the sledge hammer finally the gate again looked like a gate; the exterior of it anyway.
There it lay bare with only two bars running from left to right across. At least now it had straightened a little more than it had when swinging from the post. When repairing other gates I always stood them upright to take an eye view of the straightness and shape. My eye was better than a tape measure to measure the distance from corner to corner. If I saw it was straight than other people who looked at the gate would also see it was straight.
To make it stronger I welded three pipes running along the gate between the top and bottom in equal distance. To finally complete the task I welded upright bars from top to bottom in equal distance.
The gate was now reborn with the strength of Samson. With a coat of silver-frost paint it rose from the ashes of death and now happily swings from the post at the cattle yard where it should last for a few more years.
Word count: 412
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How To Mend A Broken Heart.

My mother once told me, ‘you’ll know when the right one comes along.’ She always had an intuition of what was about to happen. What is stranger than my mother’s intuition is, only recently, I had been thinking of my first love or whatever it was. And now this story has been given to us to write.
Let me share with you my first love, or perhaps it wasn’t love – it may have been something else. Whatever it was broke my heart. I honestly thought I was going to die. The thought of not being with this person shook the earth below my feet. I felt devastated and hurt. Every bone in my body ached and I kept asking, ‘why me?’
There was little to do in our neighbourhood where I lived and one afternoon I decided to go for a walk. Entering a park a girl around my age walked toward me. Our eyes met - hers brown and sparking. I couldn’t take my eyes from her, she was beautiful.
I stopped and wanted to speak with her and couldn’t. The cat had caught my tongue. Nerves twisted and turned in my body.
‘How are you today?’ Her sweet voice echoed in the air. I was gob smacked. Why would this beautiful and delightful girl want to speak with me? We chatted for a time, exchanging names and where we lived. She asked me to walk her home.
Her Irish parents greeted me with warmth and care and wanted me to stay for afternoon tea. Was I in a dream or was this actually happening, I thought.
From the day we’d met we continued to see one another either at her home or mine. By this time she’d met my family and it was deemed she was part of my life.
Life couldn’t be any better for a fifteen year old teenager who thought he’d found true love. We’d been inseparable for fifteen months. By this time I turned sixteen years of age. Actually I thought I was in love, but at the age of adolescents I really didn’t understand what the term ‘love’ actually meant.
One afternoon I introduced ‘my love’ to my ‘best friend’. Their eyes glued together and within a week I was told me get on my bike and move on. I felt the world had ended. How could my best friend do this to me after I introduced them?
I remembered the words told to me by my mother, ‘you’ll know when the right one comes along.’ Obviously this first encounter with the opposite sex wasn’t the right one.
Anyway eventually I did overcome puppy love and found the right one.
Word count: 456.
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The Troubled Man.

Bundy Quicksilver staggered from the public bar of the Railway Hotel. It was closing time. Each night he visited his watering hole to catch up with his mates. On this particular night his mates left at six o’clock stating they were going home to their wife and family. Bundy couldn’t understand why after an hour of drinks they wanted to go home. His session had just begun.
At eight o’clock he looked at his watch through blurred eyes to see it was almost time to leave. The next he remembered was the barman shouting, ‘last drinks gentlemen.’ He couldn’t explain how the past two hours went so quickly.
His trusted steed, the iron horse, Hillman Minx was tied to the hitching rail as he almost fell while stepping from the kerb. The police station was across the road so he thought he’d better act right. They’d be on the lookout for drunks driving their car home but Bundy was sure they wouldn’t catch him because he was one of them.
The iron horse knew its own way home, thank goodness, because Bundy had little sense of how he arrived home. He found his house in darkness, and thought no one was home until he almost fell up the front steps and stumbled falling to the floor. Picking himself up, he staggered into the bedroom and the bed lamp illuminated. Ada, his lovely wife shouted, ‘don’t think you’re sleeping here tonight – you’re drunk. You sleep on the lounge’.
Bright and early next morning Bundy committed his daily ritual by emptying the contents of his stomach on the back lawn. He’d slept in the clothes he’d worn the day before and vomit splattered over his new shoes. His mouth felt as though birds had built a nest and his head thumped as if someone was banging a hollow forty-four gallon drum.
Ada wasn’t happy. When Bundy walked into the kitchen to the smell of fried bacon and eggs, he almost vomited.
‘You come home drunk tonight; I’m taking the kids and leaving. I’ve had enough’, she shouted. Bundy couldn’t believe the words his wife blurted out to hear them clearly.
‘Is there a problem with my drinking?’ He wanted to know.
‘You come home drunk every night and I don’t know where you are half the time. I’ve had enough, and enough is enough.’
A cold feeling overcome him, ‘I PROMISE YOU NOW, I WILL NEVER DRINK AGAIN.’ He told her.
Bundy kept his promise and never drank alcohol again and that was thirty-four years ago.
Word count: 430.
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Chasing The Sun.

It was a time when the Beach Boys sang about surfing and celebrations. Lester and Danny, my mates from those days wanted to chase the sun with their surf board. They’d been mates since childhood and I felt I was the third wheel. At times I felt I would never fit in and to tell the truth I doubt that I did. Until one day they wanted a set of surf board racks made to carry their surf board on top of Lester’s car.
My expertise was welding and making anything from cement trowels to surf board racks. This was a time before surf board racks were publically manufactured. Instead of carrying the surf board on top of the car, half of it hung out of the back window or if you had a panelvan, it was carried in the back.
Surf board racks, simply made, were two rods, usually the domestic straw broom handle, fastened by a locking devise to the gutters on the roof of the vehicle. It was ingenious at the time and never in my wildest dreams would have thought the idea would spread world-wide.
I manufactured four couplings and fastened them to the gutter on either side of the roof on Lester’s Austin A40 Sedan. A triangular steel plate held them in position, together with a threaded steel rod passed through a tube welded to the plate. When tightened, the triangular steel plate locked into the guttering of the roof on the vehicle holding the roof rack in position.
To complete the surf board racks, the handle of a straw broom minis the broom head, was passed through steel tubing welded on top of each coupling. It looked fancy and all there was left to do was lay the surf board on top of the rack and fasten it to both wooden handles.
Leslie and Danny chased the surf that summer without me. I continually felt I was the third wheel and they weren’t too keen to have me along. On their return from their escapade they abused my workmanship because during their trip the surf board racks broke and they lost their surf board.
With the speed of the vehicle together with the cylindrical force against the roof racks holding the surf board caused the roof rack couplings to loosen and break from the guttering of the vehicle.
Looking back on the event some fifty years later I may have been slack in welding the racks to the proper standard or perhaps it was I knew they were more interested in going with themselves rather than have me chase the sun with them.
Our friendship didn’t last past those years and I wonder why?
Word count: 456
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Thank you dub for your thanks: Here is the story for today: 'Awesome - OMR - Stories' - Page 12:

My Uncle’s Donkey.

When we received this story to write, I didn’t have the slightest idea on where to start until I checked on Google. To my surprise after typing in ‘my uncle’s donkey’ in the search field revealed a novel ‘My Uncle’s Donkey’ written by author Tohby Riddle. Before searching the name I’d never heard of the title of the book nor the author.
Eagerly I read the notes published by the author and was astonished to read the idea actually came when he had a ‘silly’ conversation with his then three-year-old niece. The author told his niece he had a donkey in his apartment where he lived. This lead to questions and sparked the imagination from each of them. She ed at his answers. This small collection of words became an idea for a book.
Speaking about a donkey living in an apartment, as a book, on our recent Christmas Tour with Sinclair Tours, I was seated beside an aged lady who loved to talk. Could she talk? Our bus was nearing the town of Cooma when she asked me what I did. I told her we bred miniature horses.
‘What do you do with them?’ She asked in her inquisitive voice.
‘We invite them inside the house and each has their own small lounge chair to sit and watch television.’ I told her with a straight face.
Her hand went to her mouth, ‘Oh – you’re telling me lies, you don’t do that.’ She was aghast by my comment.
‘No I’m not – each miniature horse has their own chair and when we have our meals they sit at the table with us.’ I continued to share with her. She almost called me a liar until the owner of the bus whispered in her ear he had personally seen them sitting at the table eating their oats and chaff.
My imagination went wild seeing these small horses only 34 inches in height sitting in their lounge chair watching Mr Ed on television and whinny with ter at the jokes. This poor woman didn’t know what to believe and later asked me if she could come to my home to witness such an assembly. I invited her.
By the end of the trip she didn’t know who or what to believe but thinking about what Tohby Riddle wrote about the conversation between he and his niece to plant a seed for a book ‘my uncle’s donkey’, I think a book could be written about ‘my miniature horses and what they get up to’.
Word count: 426.
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Sophie’s Unicorn.

It was in the fifties and I reckoned my grandmother was the greatest cook in the whole wide world. I was either ten or eleven – I’m not certain, however I clearly remember my birthday party and the cake my grandmother made. This birthday would be remembered for a number of reasons. Not only from the gathering of school friends and relatives who attended, but for the delightful and elegant birthday cake she made.
She’d spent hours preparing the filling for the cake of mixed fruit; flour; butter; milk; eggs and all of the other ingredients. Her speciality was not baking the cake but how she decorated it to become a masterpiece of elegance and delight. This particular cake affected my life forever. The base was round and coloured blue – my favourite colour. Green grass made of marzipan icing – thick and hard to hold and glisten in the light. My name and a Happy Birthday written in dark blue inscribed with more marzipan icing.
Appearing on the second level was a bright coloured blue unicorn lying down gazing out from the centre. Its eyes seemed to follow you whenever you moved. A huge horn projected from its forehead. This moment was surreal; I couldn’t understand why my grandmother had made a unicorn. Covering the unicorn was another layer of cake resembling a stable with straw bedding made from marzipan icing.
If ever a person was gobsmashed, it was me. I couldn’t believe that anyone would make such a glorious gift. It should never be eaten, I commented. At first when I saw the cake I must admit to being a little bemused about the unicorn. I couldn’t understand until my grandmother enlightened me with her story of Sophie’s Unicorn. Her words penetrated my mind to remain there forever.
If ever I wanted anything in life, all I needed to do was to touch the tip of the horn of Sophie’s Unicorn and my wish would come true. This was like having a genie in a bottle. There was one condition in touching the tip of Sophie’s Unicorn. My thoughts had to be for the good of others.
Ever since the first time I touched the tip of horn of Sophie’s Unicorn, a magic entered my mind to do a good turn for a person rather than a bad one and to treat people how I wanted to be treated and this is with trust and honesty.
My grandmother was a wise person.
Word count: 416
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