Coupons

So, not too long ago I came into possession of several boxes of seriously old stuff. "Inherited" feels like the wrong word given both my parents are still alive, but it is stuff that formerly belonged to my grandfather and, before him, great-grandfather. Given the nature of their business (landscaping), most of the slides and photographs are just of trees, hundreds upon hundreds of trees, which is less than exciting for yours truly. So imagine how I cooed when, not a month after researching petrol rationing, I found this:

This, by all appearances, is the folder some WWII petrol coupons once came in, courtesy of the NRMA. The Spring Street address probably looked more like this at the time, rather than the van der Rohe-esque high-rise standing there today. And the "BO 533" phone number made the olds laugh out loud – it's just such an absurdly early number. (Apparently, the "BO" prefix was how urban telephone exchanges were designated at the time. Dad says their phone number when he was very young was a "J" followed by just two numbers.)

The 1945 date means this thing is now nearly eighty years old. "Mrs Sorensen" would've been my great-grandmother, while the, "& family" would've been a tad smaller than it had been a few years earlier. Their eldest son Derrick had joined the RAF and been killed in a training accident in 1943, while long-time readers of this blog will need no introduction to second son Neville. That just left my grandfather to carry the burden of their expectations going forward, and the hints of hopes and dreams for Derrick & Neville contained within these boxes suggest it was a hefty burden indeed.

The big question we're all asking, however, is the identity of the "Captain E.R. Wynder" named on the front ("Wyntor"? "Wyndham"? I have a terrible time with handwriting). He's very likely to be the well-dressed older gentleman in some of the photographs inside, but who is that? None of us can even identify where they were taken, let alone who's in them, but they certainly look authentically 1940s. Most likely he was a client of my great-grandfather's, one of many commissions for new gardens in those days. It's simple to deduce that after getting the photos developed, Nanna absent-mindedly packed them away in the nearest thing she had at hand – an old, leftover ration card. Among all the endless photos of trees, it's likely neither she nor Grandfather ever would've imagined I'd be more excited by the wrapping the pictures came in, but I can promise that wouldn't be the biggest source of disappointment with me. I love trees, I think they're beautiful, and I continue to resist all suggestions to cut down the jacaranda outside my window, even though it fills my gutters with crud that has to be cleaned out before major rains or I won't fill my tank. But I don't find them fascinating the way I do cars.

Anyway, the back cover concludes with an ad reminding the bearer that Third Party Insurance is now Compulsory, so why not ring BO 533 and talk through, "the particulars" with one of the NRMA's friendly staff? Just another piece of the modern world that turns out also has a beginning.