He could be described as a pharmacist, a dog lover or the only person I know of to be blessed by Mother Teresa against his will. But he is best described as the man who loves a joke more than anyone else in the world. It’s his defining characteristic. How he came to be the best practical joker in the world was decades in the making. Dad grew up in Footscray in the western suburbs of Melbourne. These days Footscray is undergoing something of a resurgence, with rising property values, declining crime rates and a burgeoning restaurant scene worthy of its multicultural community. But the post-war Footscray of my dad’s black and white memories was a very different place. For nearly a hundred years this town on the banks of Salt Water River was the epicentre of Melbourne’s brick-baking, meat-canning, fat-boiling and candle-making industries. It was the kind of suburb that terms like ‘working class’ and ‘industrial’ were invented for. And in amongst it all lived my dad, Ron, his mother, Wilma, and his grandma, Grandma.
