I moved to Pekina in 1971 and had four children, two girls and two boys. Linda was my first child and was born when I was twenty five years of age and then came Glen, Josh and my youngest child was Vicky. In Pekina we operated the General Store, Post Office and Telephone Exchange. It was very busy. At that time there were no telephones in Pekina and everyone living there needed to come through the exchange to make and receive calls. The exchange was open between seven thirty am and nine thirty pm weekdays with one hour for lunch. You would also have to time the calls and say, “Three minutes, are you extending?” or, “Six minutes, are you extending?” All this needed to be done during the week as well as Saturday mornings and an hour on Sundays. As well as operating the telephones, customers were also served in the shop. Pekina then was a thriving community with a number of families and many children hopping on the school bus to get to school each day.
There were about twenty seven families connected to the exchange in Pekina when we lived there and most of the families were young with children. There were the Dalys, who had three children and the Whites, who had nine children. I can recall the White children always coming over to our place particularly at Christmas time and birthdays to show us their presents. There was Glen and Peter who were the mechanics. They used to work all hours of the night, pulling bikes apart and then putting them all back together again and it all progressed into what they both do now. Josh and Joseph were good friends and whenever the White boys could come over they would good heartedly pitch in and work together with my boys. Television was strictly rationed and there were no computers so the children were required to work around the house erecting gardening fences, weeding, digging and helping with the household chores as well as answering the telephone. The children were always doing something. They would spend time rabbiting or maybe they would climb up one of the hills after kangaroos and they would say to me, “Would you drop us off at the base of a hill?” I would agree to leave them there for hours on their own with some lunch, their nets and traps and maybe ferrets and then pick them up later on. The White kids and my kids used to have so much fun together when they were young living in Pekina.
Written by Samuel Wells
