Fog, dog and father's weird machine

The mum of the 3 year old smoking the pipe wasn’t his mum then. He hadn’t made it into the world at that point so neither was he a glint in his father’s eye or Chadstone’s youngest pipe smoker. He was literally nowhere or no one.

Had there been no dog, maybe his mother would never have made it back that winter’s night in 1957 from the outside dunny. If she hadn’t, the father’s glint would have amounted to nothing. Life’s evolution and how moments decide whether someone is born and to which parents is so random.

Had the yet to be mother of the 3 year old Chadstone pipe smoker married the American serviceman she met while he was stationed in Sydney during WW2, then instead of smoking at 3 this boy may have been chewing tobacco or learning how to use firearms. But because of other events beyond the control of her American fiancé, (such as Japanese military might in the Pacific) he wasn’t able to come back and pick up where he had left off, marry and take the Sydney girl back to the USA.  No, he was strafed while in the water and died a horrid death.

Maybe the woman, who ended up the mother of Chadstone’s youngest pipe smoker, was thinking about whether she would have been out in the fog on a winter’s night going to the toilet had she ended up in America. She doubted this and it made her slightly peeved because it was dark and freezing and she was busting. As a result she lost focus.

Whatever she was thinking about, it wasn’t useful in helping her gain her bearings after she had been to the toilet and tried to make her way back to the house. That the toilet was some 10 metres from the back door was not ideal. 

She would not have been happy that her bladder had decided to give her a sign so late at night and it gave her no real choice but to go outside in the pitch darkness and the fog soup. It wasn’t ideal either that the woman’s baby daughter (the only child at that time) was asleep in the house when the woman started heading out through dense fog in the black of night across paddocks and away from her house and daughter. The woman became slightly panicky that she had become so disorientated. The outside porch light and the whole house were lost in the eerie evening fog.
Instead of walking around in circles the young mother from Sydney, whose only association with fog was related to Sherlock Holmes novels where he would peer out his window to look down at the freezing streets of London, stopped and considered what to do. Wisely, she called the dog’s name ‘Kim-Bo, Kim Bo’.

She called it twice. So that means he didn’t have a first name that was the same as his family name or just a first name, or just a last name like some Brazilian soccer players.

Being a loyal and smart dog he was upon her in a couple of minutes sniffing about and wagging his tail. He may have been curious but would not have asked questions for dogs back then were outside and this was unexpected company. (Also, though smart, he couldn’t talk). Now there was a woman and a dog lost in the fog. However, the woman was confident the dog would be able to help her find the way home and she was right. He did. Fog is apparently not an issue for dog’s and directions.

Had the 3 year old been born and in the house with his sister, he would have been chain pipe smoking, worried that both his mum and his dog were outside and lost in the fog. He may well have got bored with the typewriter because whatever reason his dad sat by it for so long as if playing the piano, the boy could not fathom. He was up for a short play and a photo shoot but beyond that there was nothing going for it.

His dad happened to be a journalist and writer and not that the boy knew at the time but in the 50’s and 60’s there was a definite link between writers, beaches and pipes.