REMINISCING DAD - Part 4

There are many childhood memories from the 10 years stay at the 3 storey shop house.

In the earlier years, there was only one single bucket toilet on the ground floor for the whole building. This had to be shared by our family on the 3rd floor, the extended family that rented the 2nd floor and the shop employees on the ground floor. In all about 25-30 people shared one communal toilet. Imagine that you had an upset stomach and were purging. You were bending over with pain and white in face. You stumbled down 3 flights of stairs only to find that you are no.3 in the queue for the toilet. Urghhhhh!!!!!!!!!

I think we had worms in our stomach when we were kids. So we were always on the look out for worms in our stools when going to the toilet. Besides the big buzzing green houseflies, you also see all kinds of things floating and swirling in the bucket that will gross you out. I think the bucket toilet system also encouraged people to take up smoking. The smoke helped to camouflage and lessen the over powering stench. People who were reluctant to go and keep postponing the urge ended up having hemorrhoids. To beat the queue some people might prefer to do their business late at night when it was quiet and cooler. However, it was not without peril and timing was crucial. You might be in the middle of “making cake” when the night soil carrier was making his rounds. He yanked open the lid, popped his head in (complete with oil light tied to his forehead) and see you squatting over the bucket. There was no place to hide within the small cubicle. I don’t know what they said to each other then. It would be unlikely to be talking about the weather. Probably just an embarrassed “Oops….. Hi”.

Dad would avoid using the toilet at all cost. There were days when you would see him rushing out of the house and driving around the block to the MBA’s club to use the toilet there. Thankfully, a septic tank was later installed and we finally had a flush toilet on our own floor.

To minimize the daily trips up and down the 3 flight of stairs, someone came up with a brilliant idea of using a basket and rope system for some simple errands. The roti man came around 4:30 p.m. each day. We will call out our order to him and lowered the basket containing the money. The roti man picked up the money and put the correct change and bread into the basket. We then just pulled it up. The same system was used for retrieving the house keys. We didn’t carry the limited set of house keys with us when we went out. People coming back home had to shout to be let in as there was no door bell then. Faster than the basket and rope system, we just wrapped the keys in a rag and threw it down to the person.

Back to the subject of making cakes, i.e. real cakes and not the other type of cake mentioned earlier. Baking cakes was a major event in the household, a once a year affair in preparation for Chinese New Year. Back then, there was no Astro AFC channel. Cake recipes and methods of preparation were a jealously guarded secret. Mom’s friend, Aunty Jiang Lai Sou, who lived across the Merdeka Padang only reluctantly agreed to teach elder sister after much persuasion. My favorite was the pink marble cake baked in a Planta tin. No household owned an oven back then. After the cake batter was laboriously prepared and poured into the tins, they had to be transported to the rotiman bakery a few miles away. He would allow us to use his oven only after all his baking for the day had been done. It was years later that we bought an oven of our own. A “Butterfly” brand black box that worked over a charcoal fire.

simon - 28 December 2009