It’s A Drag

I’m the seventh baby of thirteen children. I’ve got seven brothers and… Without dentures, still shapely, perhaps early-40s. (Many would judge 10-15 years older.) A few weeks before the lady had blasted an older chap for looking too hard, when there had been no indication. The woman was in company with Archie Roach’s great niece, a younger, robust lass missing one of her incisors, crossing together to the bottle-shop. Recently the great uncle of the younger had won a substantial Vic Premier’s Prize, for songwriting it may have been, or else life-time achievement. The former tent boxer from Charcoal Lane and Gertie Street made good; a beacon for his people. Earlier, a handsome young Ethiopian lad sitting on the boot of his Toyota was mock-warned by one of the other gals to get offa her car. Cool as you like lad fielding—slow head-turn, shake and finger pointing to his chest straight outta smoky jazz joints. Enjoying his fag perched there, a sneeze had dislodged another loose ciggie from his pocket it must have been, dropping onto the street. After he briefly went back to his café seat further along there had been a 2-3 minute window attempting to alert one of the guys hanging. Unsuccessfully, it turned out. A number of the guys here combed the pavements and ashtrays on the tables both side for far less.

 

                                                                                                                Nicholson Street, Footscray