Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples
Hastings. A boy’s own adventure
Dick Frizzell
Massey University Press
RRP $37.00
Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples
Many geniuses are recognized early on in their lives. Mozart had written 10 symphonies by the time he was 14, Pablo Picasso was turning out some skilful nudes when he was 14 and Dick Frizzell did a drawing of Christopher Lee as Frankenstein’s monster at the same age.
However, neither Mozart nor Picasso wrote a decent autobiography about growing up which is where Frizzell has the edge over the other two.
His new book recounting his early years, “Hastings, A boy’s own adventure” is an entertaining set of stories which probably mirrors the life and times of many young men growing up in provincial New Zealand in the 1950’s and 60’s. It was a time of complete freedom when young men like Frizzell were learning the first of life’s lessons and enjoying life’s experiences.
In thirty chapters Frizzell recounts his adventures which provide portraits of his family, descriptions of Hastings and sketches of his encounters with the day-to-day activities he was immersed in. Through these he manages to provide an insight into his growing awareness and understanding of the world around him, conjuring up the experience of most young boys of his age, encountering the world of adults – aunts, uncles, family friends and teachers.
We also get a sense of how he became Dick Frizzell the artist with a mother who had been to art school and taught him some artistic skills and a father who was well read and a technically accomplished engineer with his own enquiring and adventurous nature. There are also his experiences of the landscape – Te Mata Peak and the farms of relatives where he worked or holidayed There is also his love of comics and movies, his interest in working environments and workmen It’s what we see in his artwork – a celebration of landscape and culture, history and everyday objects.
Frizzell says of these early years “I felt that I had the town covered: our Parkvale kingdom, Uncle George’s market gardens, Aunty Molly’s frock shop, Dad’s freezing works, my high school . . . the town was pretty much ring fenced by Frizzell’s! And I was there growing up with it. Rock ’n’ roll came along, the town became a city, Fantasyland was built, hoodlums trashed the Blossom festival, I learnt the Twist in the Labour and Trades Hall . . . everything I took within me towards adulthood came from Hastings.”
‘If I’d been asked to vote on it I would’ve said I’d landed at the centre of the universe. Standing on our corner of Sylvan Road and Victoria Street, with Te Mata Peak, the Tukituki River and the mad wilderness of Windsor Park to the back of me and the distinctly non-wilderness of Cornwall Park and the misty vista of the Ruahines in front of me, I was the master of all I could barely survey.”
We learn about his jobs, the same that probably every youth got living in Hastings – spells at the Tomoana Freezing Works (where his father worked) and at the Wattie’s canning factory.
But while his portraits of his mother and father and the likes of his aunts Molly and Nora the figure which we most appreciate is the author with his achievements, blunders, successes and failures.
While the artist may have gained the image as the suave man about town. his early encounters with the opposite sex by his own accounts were less prepossessing. He recounts his inauspicious attempt at the seduction of Bunny as well as his fleeing from the amorous advances of the older Trixie.
It’s a coming-of-age book which will resonate with many older readers with its half-remembered tales of family life, friendships and growing awareness of one’s place in the world.
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