To the right is the latest collection of short stories. Each new one will be put up below for a while, and the previous one shuffled off to the side.

        I have no idea how many will be in this collection, with so much material at hand it could be anything.



Trev Edmonds      



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12th June 2025       

        This is the second of a four part story, each part going up in sequence over the next week of so.


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EVOLUTION

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(2)

The Age Of Cleverness

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It’s 1967.

He’s 28.

His year is up so he bequeaths the moon-buggy to his mate and they move back into their old lives, finds work in a ski-boat workshop. The place is – well, unpretentious – a scabby heap of galvo that was once a fibrous plaster factory, perched on the edge of a cavernous brick-clay pug-hole. But they do meticulous work, have a decent lathe, a camshaft grinder, and a reputation. A reputation for excellence and innovation. Speedboat and hydroplane addicts, and vintage car restorers in the know, all bring their engines here.

Surrounded by so much high-end engineering, he breathes in, lustily, and his hands and his head find new skills, as their trailer-maker and engine converter-fitter. He comes to know the euphoria of taking a pristine Holden 186 mill from its factory crate, breathing on it gently, slipping it into a sleek 16 foot fibreglass ski boat, hearing it make sweet music.

He goes on to be initiated into the heady world of the two great small block V8’s – the 289 cu inch Ford and the 283 cu inch Chevy. When he hears these two beasts sing he touches the hem of Heaven, and he’s fired by far more sophisticated dreams than is good for him.

Just when there seems to already be bliss at every hand, he takes over the camshaft grinder, and goes deep into the arcane world of high-lift and long-dwell, and the boss designs their own logo and decal and the word goes out over the high performance wire that there’s a new player in town.

And so he rises to a whole other level of dreaming and scheming, of wheels, wheels that once, for him, could only exist in some distant galaxy, and he conceives of a rear-engine dragster, and the design harmony begins to flow and the boss is so impressed he chips in a Peugeot 203 engine and space to work after hours. The boss understands what’s happening.

He hunts down a Volkswagen transmission and marries it to the motor, and there seems to be no end to the new-found cleverness that streams from his head and out of his fingers, as he fashions a svelte frame of lightweight steel tube, with its unique (even revolutionary many say) front end and steering and sexy wire wheels, roll cage fully to specs that fits like a steel hoodie. And the way he shortens the Vee-Dubs half-shafts is a joy to see, and the frame’s mountings for the power unit would be a classic piece of work in any gas welder’s handbook. He finds it hard to believe he has this in him. Workshop spectators are seriously awestruck. He grows noticeably taller. Maybe a touch more arrogant.

He gets the dragster to the point where all it needs is some decent carburation - preferably fuel injection - and a slinky fibreglass shell, done out in jazzy ‘I’m A Serious Drag Racer’ duco of course.

But two things happen.

He runs out of play money, and he gets steadily sucked into the world of Associations and Federations and nitro-powered entrepreneurs and serious business management, because, surprisingly, they ask him in, and that’s when he finds he has something of a flair for that too. This primitive organism is surely evolving.

He leaves the ski-boat place and goes chasing after a siren, a promiscuous siren, who promises him a successful career in national motor racing management, salary, office, and secretary attached, trips interstate to control and steer the frenetic energies of a sport that is becoming the worry of the cloth-cap and driving-glove adults who seem to believe it’s trying to push them aside, which makes them quietly manoeuvre, bringing their toffy connections in The Establishment to bear.

He steadies the ship before it flounders, does it so well that fifty years from now, when they themselves are the adults and have become respectable, they will hunt him down and bestow on him “Legend Of The Sport” (but spell his name wrong on the presentation plaque, but by then he’s old enough and wise enough to find a laugh in just about anything).

It's around here that he learns the true nature of moving fast, of true velocity, but not on his beautiful wheels. His beautiful and arrogant wheels are about to come off.

 

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It’s 1969.

He’s 30.

There’s three kids now and they think they’re doing well, so they move a touch up-market. It’s a sort of Californian Bungalow Aus-style, in a new foothills suburb, and has a big back yard, so up goes a double garage like a statement of permanence.

He installs the dragster, in its trailer, but now he doesn’t have time to get back to it. So he tells himself. He will in fact do nothing at all in this shed, and in his few quiet moments he will sense that something is slipping through his fingers, as if he’s only passing through, transiting to somewhere else, transiting to some-one else.

Life gets bumpy. The bawling brawling high octane thing that has hold of his life is actually two hormone-driven teenagers who share a deep passion for cars and superb engineering, but with significantly different ends in mind, one aggressively active, one doggedly passive. And they’re growing up rapidly, and no matter how well he dances, and negotiates, and compromises, they seem intent only on pulling it all apart, as he hits the reality wall of petty politics and the grand schemes of the money-men, who seem to be at every hand, and he completely loses momentum, loses sight of the goals he thought were the be-all and end-all of his new life. His fire goes out and he steps aside.

He finds temp work in a local servo, and he’s on his back once more, under mundane city cars that are without sex appeal or pedigree.

So, why wouldn’t he think he’s a failure. At career-making. At bread-winning. But the reality is, he’s actually laid the first stone to his foundations, as a true Homo sapiens.

 

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It’s 1972.

He’s 33.

They sell up before the Bank does it for them, go back to the bottom of the real estate ladder, start again.

It’s an 1860s rock-and-pug-walled cottage in a small inner country town, simply four rooms in a row, lime-rubble floors, no two window-frames quite the same, and a bucketed outside loo. It’s steeped in time, but it’s suffering, so it’s going cheap, just block value. The locals presume any new owners in their right minds will knock it down, build something of value, enhance their one and only main street. But these two have nothing but energy and practicalities, have never known how to be idle. He can fix most things, and she – as he always tells it, with some pride – could make a home with two quid and a piano crate, make a garden out of six rocks and a bucket of dirt. They buy it and move in.

It's been partly derelict for some years, the grass all around is lank, the roof leaks, and there’s bales of hay in the “lounge”, as the owner has only been using it to doss down in on weekends, with his mates, to escape their lives and their wives, and drinking more than is good for them. So the rumours go.

Out the back there are ramshackle sheds and an assortment of derelict out-buildings, on a huge block with fruit trees, from an Age when people lived a simpler life, grew vegetables, kept chooks, ran a cow, made their own butter. It oozes potential but little else, so in every sense it’s time to re-build.

He buys a wheelbarrow, a post-hole digger, and a crowbar, and they set about mending everything in sight, and for a while they feel like pioneers, taming a frontier, creating a better world, and there’s a simple joy in everything they do.

But the world’s realities are always just over the other side of the fence.

When the last of their money starts to wane he casts about for a job, but the idea of laying under a car’s belly again for no more than a living wage fills him with a weird kind of dread. It’s like he’s left his primitive roots behind, and now he needs to find a new version of himself, a more civilised one.

So he goes back to school, and against all odds and the narrow imaginings of his youth, he strives to become – of all things – a Qualified Beancounter. And, as it turns out, his personality makes him ideally suited – he’s a bit pedantic, leans towards the obsessive, can juggle numbers, and imagination is a turbine constantly humming in his head. And as he sees it, Double-entry Accounting and Manufacturing Costing are just other forms of Engineering. But a bloody sight cleaner. With a wider career potential.

One of the small local wineries takes him on as Office Manager cum Bookkeeper cum Cellar Door Salesman, with an office and a staff of three, and damned if it doesn’t pay well into the bargain. And that’s when he feels it, feels his feet on the first rung of a whole new ladder, like he’s a Professional at last, a Professional Something. Who shaves every day. Wears a tie. Has clean fingernails. Drinks some of the world’s best wines.

At weekends he ploughs on in his old calling, of Home Handyman, even cranks that up a gear, because he has to, because he feels himself being challenged, by this sweet old cottage that’s on its knees and deserves better. What it really needs is one person with a degree in Civil Engineering, and one person with degrees in Agriculture and Domestic Science. But they step up like superheroes, because when they’re in sync and in harmony, these two have always been a formidable team.

He installs a complete septic tank sewerage system, resurrects the “bathroom”, adds a flush toilet, resuscitates the hot water contraption, straightens and paints all the verandah posts, re-whitewashes the walls, fixes loose roof iron, rejigs the gutters, builds in the back porch, ceremoniously knocks down the outside loo, puts up his first pergola. She waves her wand and the inside of the old place hums and shines, so they set about landscaping the back yard.

Her green fingers go about their God-given magic, and they dig holes and hump boulders, and to cap it all off he carves a house name into a chunk of redgum slab and hangs it out over their new post-and-rail front fence. Like job done. Norman Rockwell Downunder. Tourists start taking photos in passing.

And while all of this is going on, the dragster, in its trailer, is parked in what passes for the main shed, and one day he stops to take a breath, and feels an odd guilt, like he’s neglected something that also deserved better. He sets about a major outbuildings remake, turns the shambles of lean-tos and add-ons into one large garage and workshop, fixes the doors, installs his tools in old cupboards and on shelves, lays a massive concrete floor, as if he’s creating a new foundation.

He fiddles about with the dragster, sits in it, tries to get enthused, but can’t, and the large trailer is just a damn nuisance, takes up too much space. He packs the whole thing up and sells it, feels only an odd sense of relief when it pulls out of the drive, like an unburdening, and truly knows another Time has ended.

It’s then that he casts about, to fill the empty space, and a mate gives him Kris Kristofferson as a gift, and something shifts in his head and a big chunk of it will never be the same again, because he grew up on ‘40s and ‘50s music, didn’t have time for the ‘60s, but the ‘70s music of the living breathing singer/songwriters, with all the lyrics of life attached, surrounds him here, and they stab him clean through the heart, make him think he can be eighteen again.

But what the fool doesn’t understand is that Time has no reverse gear, and you only get one shot at each Age.

He grows a beard, learns guitar, buys a motorbike, reads Henry Miller and Krishnamurti, and tells himself he’s found wings, and starts thinking about making new things, this time with words. Even though he doesn’t understand it yet, what he’s really found is the shed in his head, where there is no limit to what can be made.

But then, like Icarus, he flies too close to the sun and he and his innocence crash, and burn, and on the ground he’s stoned from all sides, and rightly so, because he’s been a bastard and a total fuckwit. But, don’t judge him too harshly, he’s simply an evolving member of the species, but one, for the moment, who is lost in a wilderness that has no signposts.

But he’s not completely without currency, as he has attributes that at least the Business World values, and so he’s saved, saved by that rarest of beings, one of Nature’s True Gentlemen, who has been watching from the sidelines all this time, and knows there’s good bits in this wreckage, and steps in, and helps him to his feet, and tells him to be a man.

 

 

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It’s 1979.

He’s 40.

The career part of him is flourishing but the rest is still in the wildwoods. He’s well respected for his skills with costing and calculating, and sorting crucial manufacturing data into such orderliness that he can even predict the future, so he’s given a transfer to Head Office. It’s back in the city, where the two of them opt for anonymity amid some genteel old-suburb respectability, while they lick their wounds.

There’s a small toolshed already in the back yard and he sets up his Home Handyman stuff in there. But it’s a touch claustrophobic so he buys a garden-shed kit, then sort of cannibalises it, puts it on top of the other, and adds louvre windows up high, tells himself it makes it feel like a “studio”. Sort of. It’s as if he’s trying to get closer to something in his head, but for the moment he’d be hard pressed to see the connection.

He starts his new round of rebuilding with two pergolas, but big buggers, one attached to the back of the house, covered with glory vines, the other one out under the huge old nectarine tree. Once again they are as an act of permanence, of good intentions.

But his “studio” in the back yard does nothing for him. It’s his office at his new workplace that now becomes his true studio, as he’s been head-hunted, and there’s nothing more uplifting to the soul than being specifically sought out on the grapevine.

His new office has no windows, but somewhere along the way he’s learnt to see through walls, and every morning he starts early, and in this haven goes off into the past for half an hour, back to when he was a kid, when his life was simple and he understood his position in the universe. He’d touched this place before, in his moon-buggy, out in the back country where the world was wide, and hugely uncomplicated, and the distant ranges were an exquisite shade of pale blue. His heart place.

And so he begins to truly write, because the genie has been coaxed out of the lamp and is never going back, and now shows him how to write with a clear mind, to manufacture stories out of the words laying about in the storage boxes of his memory.

And in this way he finds the rest of himself again, and more or less how to love himself again, and so becomes the two people he was always meant to be, one word at a time. It’s what sheds should be for.

 

© T. R. Edmonds 2025

 

{ continued... }