The unfinished story of a classic workplace con job.

Playing practical jokes on workmates was once a very popular pastime. It is not so prevalent these days. This is no doubt due to the arrival of the Political Correctness Virus and the propensity for some people to sue at the drop of a hat.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       My father often used to have us laughing at the family tea table as he told of tricks played by workers on one or more of their co-workers. A frequent and fairly basic story was of the foreman telling a young, newly employed  lad to go to the hardware store and get a left handed screwdriver, or chisel, or hammer or shovel. Another variation was to ask the victim to go to the paint store and buy a tin of striped paint.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 Of course, other schemes were much more complicated. One of the most complicated schemes I ever heard of was one devised by Maurie Carr. The bizarre thing is that this story was told to me as I entered the church for Maurie's funeral.

Maurie was a very well-respected journalist, although, he  actually preferred being a sub-editor, where he could re-write somebody else’s words. The fact is that he wrote wonderful words full of whimsy and wit. He finished his colourful newspaper career  as a much-loved columnist at the Daily News.

Maurie started at Perth’s Daily News in the early 1950s. He moved to the Melbourne Herald in 1956. It was at the Herald that Maurie started having severe differences of opinion with its new proprietor, Rupert Murdoch. He had these differences throughout his career when working on a Murdoch paper. From 1958, he worked on the Sydney Truth, The Daily Telegraph and the Canberra Times. He even worked overseas for The Times of London in the late 1960s. For a while in Canberra, Maurie was press secretary to the Deputy Prime Minister, Country Party leader, John “Blackjack” McKeon.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            In the late 1960s, there was another stint in Melbourne on the Sun newspaper, also owned by Murdoch. In the early seventies, Maurie returned to The Daily News where he soon became a much-loved columnist until the dear old Daily News folded in the 1980s
Maurie and his brother, Raymond, were my much loved cousins. We were more like brothers, really. Maurie and Raymond’s father, Maurice Carr died of a miners’ lung disease in 1930, when Maurie was three and Raymond was just six months old.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                My father, Jack Bourke became a surrogate father to my two cousins when he was courting their aunty, my mother, in the 1930s. After my parents married in 1936,  Maurie and Raymond used to spend a great deal of time at our house in Inglewood. After the war, when my parents were waiting to get a building permit to build a new home in Mt Lawley, we all lived together with my extended family at 8 Aberdeen Street, from 1947 till 1951. Maurie's mother, my Aunty Millie managed the boarding house. Living at the big two storey boarding house at Number 8 were my parents, my two younger sisters, my grandmother, my Aunty Millie,  Maurie and Raymond, and my mother’s two unmarried siblings, my Uncle Ray and Aunty May. A few other interesting people also boarded in the big, rambling two storey house. Every day was a great adventure.

Maurie enjoyed a joke. He and his newspaper workmates often played pranks on each other. Most of the journalists and sub-editors at the Daily New were all ex-servicemen from World War 2. Most of them were ex RAAF. It seems that playing practical jokes on each other was away of relieving the tedium of the war. That practice carried over into peace time.

The story I am about to relate was told to me as I entered the Catholic church in Palmyra to attend Maurie’s funeral Mass in February 2007. I entered the church filled with great sadness, and some anxiety, as the family had asked me to deliver Maurie’s eulogy. I was hoping I could hold myself together through it all. On entering the church I saw a very old friend of Maurie’s sitting in a seat at the entrance. He was Keith Flanagan, an old reporter mate of Maurie’s from the 1950’s at the Daily News. Maurie used to often talk about Keith and some of the escapades they got up to.

I had met Keith over fifty years ago. In those days Maurie worked on Saturdays for The Weekend News, a subsidiary of the Daily News. He used to write up the football. He always covered the East Perth games at Perth Oval. Invariably, at about twelve thirty on a Saturday, Maurie would breeze into 8 Aberdeen Street, with a newspaper mate, to have lunch with our extended family. Then he would head off to Perth Oval. I remembered that Keith had been among those unscheduled lunch guests more than fifty years ago.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              I introduced myself to Keith and thanked him for coming. Keith, older than Maurie, was very frail. He immediately grasped my arm and said, “Maurie was a real wag. Do you know some of his stories?” I replied that I knew Maurie had led a colourful life. That he and his good mate Ron Saw got into all sorts of mischief in Perth and later in Sydney, where Ron was a columnist for the Bulletin Magazine.                                                                                                                                                                                               “I bet you don’t know this one”, said Keith as I watched my wife and other family members walk on to sit in the front pews. This is Keith's Maurie Carr story...

One Monday morning at the Daily News in the early fifties, Maurie and I were sitting at our shared desk. A young journalist came into the newsroom looking as  he had seen a ghost. Maurie called out, “What’s up Bill? You don’t look too flash.”
They young fellow replied, “Oh, I have done a terrible thing. Oh! I don’t know what I’m going to do.”  He was very upset.

“Want to tell us about it?” asked Maurie. “Sometimes, talking about a problem can help.”                                                                                                                                                                                               Bill said that nothing could help his problem. He told us that for a few weeks he had been seeing a girl named June. On Friday night he had called around to see if she  wanted to go to the pictures, or maybe have a drink somewhere.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             June's mother answered the door. Her name was Shirley. She was war widow; her husband having been killed in action in New Guinea in 1943. She told Bill that June was not home She was at friend’s house. She was going to be her friend’s bridesmaid in a month or so and they were planning the wedding. June was going to stay overnight.
Bill continued, saying that , “Shirley is blonde, in her late thirties or maybe very early forties. She could pass for June’s older sister.” Bill told Shirley he was sorry June was out because he wanted to ask her if she would like to go to the pictures or maybe go for a drink somewhere.

“We chatted for a bit. I said goodnight to Shirley and was turning to leave when she said, ‘Well, would you like to come inside for a drink?’”  Bill had nothing else planned, so he said OK. Shirley opened a bottle of beer and offered him some cheese and biscuits. “ After we had had a few drinks she put on a record and then we danced. And…then...and…then...I stayed the night!” blurted out an embarrassed Bill. “What am I going to do? I will never be able to look at June again. Or Shirley!"

“Nothing to worry about, Sport,” Maurie replied, soothingly. “Shirley’s never going to tell June what happened. Just carry on as usual.” Bill, of course, was not so sure, but Maurie was very persuasive.  Bill calmed down and walked over to his desk in the newsroom.
Later that day, Maurie visited the newsagent’s in Zimpel’s Arcade, across the road from Newspaper House in St George’s Terrace. He returned to the newspaper office and visited a girl he knew in the typing pool. He asked her to write on a lavender blue card that had “Thinking of you” embossed on the cover. In her feminine hand, the young typist wrote, under Maurie’s dictation, “Dear Bill. Thank you for a truly wonderful evening. I look forward to seeing you again. Love, Shirley.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   Maurie put the card in an envelope and addressed it to Bill care of Newspaper House, St George’s Terrace. He posted it in the post box on the ground floor of Newspaper House. The next day an ashen faced Bill came to Maurie and Keith’s desk. ‘She ‘s written me a note. A note! She wants to see me again,” said a very disturbed Bill.
She’s just being polite,” cautioned Maurie. “You obviously made her very happy. She’s just letting you know. You’ve no need to worry.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        Well, of course Bill was extremely worried, but Maurie again persuaded him that everything would be alright and Bill moved off to his work desk. Maurie purchased another card that day. Its cover said, “To my Sweetheart”. This time Maurie had his friendly typist write, “ My Dearest Bill. Please call me soon. I cannot wait till I am once more lost in your loving embrace. Forever yours, Shirley.”  Maurie posted the card that afternoon.

 A day later, Bill burst into the newsroom waving his latest card from Shirley. He was bereft, until the very persuasive Maurie calmed him down and convinced him that Shirley would not really do anything about it. "She'll be thinking of her daughter's feelings" Maurie told him.
That afternoon, Maurie had a longer conversation than usual with the Copy Boy, a young lad who took reporters’ stories to the compositors in the Print Room.

On the Friday morning, Bill entered the Newsroom. Maurie cheerily asked if he’d had any more cards from Shirley? With a relieved smile Bill said that he hadn’t. Maurie smiled and gave a big thumbs up as Bill moved to his desk.

At Around about 10-00 am the copy boy went to Bill’s desk. He told him there was a lady at reception asking to see him.

“A lady. What lady? What’s her name?” asked a very agitated Bill. The copy boy, who had been well schooled by Maurie, told Bill that she was an older woman.

”Maybe, it’s your mother” suggested the copy boy, quoting Maurie’s line word for word.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           Bill went white. “Tell her she can't see me. Tell her I am too busy to see anyone today.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            The copy boy left the newsroom. He reappeared about two minutes later and told Bill, “The lady said she won’t leave. She said if you don’t’ come down to reception within five minutes, then she is coming up here.

Bill gave out an agonised cry and fled the newsroom, via the door to the print room.
Keith Flanagan described Bill’s departure with great glee. “Oh, yes, Maurie was a wonderful fellow. We had great times together.”

Well, by now the mourners were all seated and the priest was moving out of the sacristy on to the altar. Maurie’s funeral was about to begin. I said goodbye to Keith and hurried to take my seat next to my wife and family.

I did not see Keith Flanagan after the funeral. He lived in Lesmurdie. A fellow journalist told me Keith caught a taxi straight after the service concluded. Two months after Maurie’s funeral I read Keith Flanagan’s death notice in the morning paper.

So, I did not get to ask Keith how the story finished. Did Bill eventually marry June? Maybe he married Shirley? How did Maurie and Keith act when a shaken and dishevelled Bill turned up for work the next day? If he turned up for work, that is. How did Bill react when he learned he had been conned.

My belief is that Bill showed up for work and Maurie confessed that it was all a joke, that Shirley had not written on any cards or stalked him at newspaper House. No doubt Bill would have been justifiably angry at the way he had been treated.

In his fury, did Bill try to knock Maurie’s block off?  Probably not. Maurie was the heavyweight boxing champion at Aquinas College in 1943. After he left school he joined the air force  and spent a lot of time in the RAAF boxing at Inter Service bouts in Melbourne and Perth. He did quite well against some of the U.S. Navy’s best boxers.

Maurie was a very charming and likeable chap. People liked being in his company. Bill would not stay mad at him for too long. If I was ending the story, I would say that Bill, relieved to have Shirley off his back, eventually came to see the funny side of things. Maurie, with his charming smile, would sincerely apologise.

Then he, Keith and Bill, after a few laughs, would wander over to the front bar of the Palace Hotel, where most of the Daily News journalists and sub editors finished up after the country edition of the paper went to press at 10-30a.m. each day.

Maurie would have bought the first of several rounds. So, everything turned out alright in the end.
But, we'll never, ever know, will we?