Baz

Before Gerry, there was Barry.

When I joined the Brunswick Trugo Club, I became part of Gerry Strachan's team. But Barry was the first to take me under his wing and offer me pointers and encouragement. At that point, about two years ago, he was still fit enough to play the game, though it strained him. Mostly, he sat on the bench behind me and scrutinised my swing. He barked advice while smoking ("Fuck, you hit it too hard, mate!"), in a hoarse, gravelly voice that sounded like a sea lion. This past year, the effort of playing trugo was too much for him, but he attended the games and played cards with the others on practise days.

Left to right: Gerry Strachan, me, and Barry Smith.

The competitive season over for now, I don't usually go to the clubhouse unless there is a special reason to. But a local community group had rented the facilities for a small event yesterday, and a few of us had been asked to help represent the club and explain the game to those attending. It was then I learned Barry had passed away about two weeks ago.

Somehow, I'd missed getting the message from the other players, and therefore the memorial service. That disappointed me, but it was an honest oversight. We'll miss Barry, but his mallet, labelled "BS" in block letters (Barry Smith), remains on the rack among the many others in the equipment room. He'll stay close.

The Premiers

They even spelled my name correctly.

The big news in trugo? Well, the competitive season has just come to a close and the motley crew from Brunswick won the championship. (That's my team, by the way.)

I'd refrained from writing more about trugo during the season. This blog is still too brief to support more cute reports about ring-chasing dogs and cranky, chain-smoking pensioners, so I held off. Things weren't looking too rosy for Brunswick anyway. Of seven teams in total, ours was fourth or fifth on the ladder, depending on the week. Only twice during the entire season did we have a complete team (eight players) present on a game day, requiring first-half players to play again the second half, and giving us a severe point handicap nearly every match [players who compete twice in the same game can score no more than 16 points out of a possible 24 their second time up].

I'd been performing fairly well for a first-seasoner, but then I ducked out of three games to fly back to the United States in September. Team captain Gerald Strachan's son Patrick plays extremely well, but due to his work schedule he'd been available only half the time. Doc is a hypochondriac and spent half the season in physicians' waiting rooms, and Gerald himself had a hernia operation and other similar internal maintenance to take care of. And at least a couple of times, certain folks just forgot to show up.

But as soon as the finals began, we started winning. Big. Weaker players suddenly found their swing and grew confident. Gerald healed. Doc became more interested in playing than in worrying. And Percy decided, apparently, that having a few beers at the pub before the game might help him limber up a little. Before we knew it, we'd beaten top dogs Port Melbourne by a healthy margin and claimed the title.

We got our Soviet-looking trophies last Thursday during a small, post-sandwich-and-coffee ceremony at South Melbourne. I'm not sure I'll be able to play next season, so this is a great way to end my first.

The Typographer

On Friday, I visited Melbourne typographer Stephen Banham. Stephen became of interest to me when I agreed last week to research and write an article about signs and "signage" for Design Quarterly, a regular client of mine. His studio, Letterbox, is conveniently close, just a few blocks east of me on Sydney Road, on the first floor of the Hardwick Building, and gave me the chance for a face-to-face interview without having to spend an hour on the tram.

Banham's new book.

Stephen has written several books about typography and, having grown up here, possesses deep institutional knowledge of the signs of Melbourne. A few days earlier, I'd requested a review copy of his new book, Characters: Cultural Stories Revealed Through Typography, and I managed to thumb through just a few pages of it prior to our meeting. It reveals some of the hidden narrative facets of the signs-- the most public medium for typography-- found throughout Melbourne. It's a neat premise, and one that I suspect will keep me from passing this book on to someone else, as I've done with so many other review copies.
For my article, I wanted to get Stephen's take on some of the trends in sign design-- the transition from static to interactive electronic signage, for example, and what's driving it. I had already spoken a couple of days earlier with a representative of Diadem, a large "brand delivery" company that designs and produces signs of various types for some big clients like BMW, ANZ and Tullamarine Airport. My goal with Stephen was to get a more detached perspective, and perhaps some better-informed and less self-conscious quotations.

The Chinese take-away building on Victoria Street.

I suppose I got all of that-- I haven't listened to the recording I made of our conversation. But I was a little distracted by the fact that Stephen and I both live in Brunswick, a neighbourhood rife with typography and signs of all kinds, much of which is left over from the 60s and 70s, and many examples of which I've grown fond of. Here, at last, was an opportunity for me to exchange some favourites with someone who could appreciate what I was talking about.
Immediately, though, I felt like I'd become the character Chris Farley played on Saturday Night Live's recurring sketch "The Chris Farley Show" during which, in his struggle to come up with an insightful question for actor Jeff Daniels, for example, he recalled a moment in one of Daniels' movies and asked, "Do you remember that?" Daniels smiled politely and answered, "Yes." With nowhere to go, Farley's reply was merely, "Um, that was awesome." There was nothing in the way of typography I could help Stephen discover about Brunswick-- not even the Chinese take-away building on Victoria Street...two blocks from his studio. He knew it all, and smiled politely.

New Mallet / New High Score

After a two-week hiatus due to Easter and holiday closures, I played trugo this afternoon with the gang at the Brunswick Trugo Club. My first round was shockingly bad. I scored 13 out of a possible 24 points, leading me to reconsider my choice of mallet. I pulled two more from the rack to see how they performed; one was very short and heavy, the other long and heavy with a slightly crooked handle. But both had a striking face at least a centimetre wider than the mallet I'd been using. The long-handled one improved my game immediately, and I finished the afternoon with a game against Helen in which I scored 20 points. Helen scored a new personal best of 21.

Bad hit: Champ the Trugo Dog pursues an errant ring.

Champ the Trugo Dog was supervising play again today, but his enthusiasm flagged a little bit early, perhaps because his owner, Gerry, wasn't feeling well himself. He'd managed to pull a rib muscle this past weekend and figures he'll be out of action for the next few days. 

Orange Juice for Sale

A couple of weeks ago, I went into the city to drop off some film I'd exposed of the Coppin Masonic Lodge. As I walked home from the tram stop I noticed two girls, both about ten years old, who were hawking orange juice to passers-by.

"Would you like to buy some lemona--, I mean orange juice?," one of the girls asked as I approached.  "It's only 20 cents."

Orange juice sales is less than brisk in Brunswick West.

"No, thank you," I replied. "It looks good, though, and good luck with the project."

She dropped her head, dejected. As I moved on I could barely hear her mutter "Why not?" Three steps later, and I asked myself the same question. Sure, I'd lied about it "looking good." There was no ice to keep the juice chilled. There was too little of it in the bowl to make it look appealing. Their sign was too small and hard to read. But I gave them points for continuing a suburban tradition. I spun around and said, "I changed my mind; I'll have a cup."

From the look of the till, I was their only customer, so I tossed a 50-cent piece into the basket. In return, I got half a paper cup-full of syrupy-looking yellow-orange liquid.

"It's pretty tart," they warned.

One sip and a forced smile was all I could manage.

Brunswick Trugo Club

For months I'd wondered about the Brunswick Trugo Club. I'd seen signs pointing the way, but never bothered to discover where they led. Given the large immigrant population in my neigbourhood, I thought it might have been the name of a private association of ethnic Italians.

Headed for the trugo club? Not this way, you're not.

Nope. Trugo is a sport invented by Melbourne rail workers in 1924. Last week, I called Gerald Strachan, the president of the Brunswick Trugo Club, to ask if I could come by to see the place and learn about the game.

"You're absolutely welcome to," he said. "The season ends soon, but we meet on Tuesdays at 11AM, and we also have a hit on Sunday afternoons."

The clubhouse and grounds are are at the back of a small public park nearby, tucked into a verdant corner and enclosed by a high chain link fence. I arrived thirty minutes early, but Gerald and some of his clubmates (about eight people well into their retirement years) were already setting up. The game is relatively simple. Players hit a dense rubber disk with a heavy, double-ended wooden mallet, the striking surfaces of which are cushioned with swatches of rubber from either recycled crepe shoe soles or thongs (flip flops). The disk has a hole in the middle, and is about the size and density of a hockey puck. It's an industrial product, once used on train couplers as a cushioning device. The object of the game is to hit the disk hard and accurately enough to have it roll between two posts at the end of a 90-foot green.

A trugo match at the Brunswick club in 2008.

Gerald demonstrated the correct stance and swing-- back to target with feet planted on either side of the disk for a vigorous backwards swing through the legs. Then he handed me a mallet and, before I realised it, I was playing a game against another club member. My first hit rolled dead centre.

"That always happens with beginners on the first few strokes," Gerald remarked. "Then it all goes to hell."

So true. Whereas my first four disks rolled smoothly and briskly between the yellow posts, the next four, then eight, wobbled crazily off course and veered out of bounds. An ill-timed soak at my end of the court from a malfunctioning sprinkler didn't help my accuracy, either. My fouls were retrieved eagerly by Champ, Gerald's 7-year-old Jack Russell terrier. Champ is a trugo fanatic and a daredevil. He routinely positions himself at midfield, in the direct path of the hard rubber puck (which, should it skip high at the receiving end, could knock your teeth out) prepared to pluck it off the green if it's a bad shot.

"He only takes them if you muck up the hit," Gerald explained. Champ was having a ball.

Things improved dramatically at halftime, when my opponent and I switched ends. Now I had the dry end of the court and he had the wet one. Suddenly, my game got better and nearly every one of my hits scored a point.

I have no idea what the final score was, but everyone was having a good time and no one seemed to care. I went inside the clubhouse to make myself a cup of coffee, then returned to the courtside bench where the others sat in the sun, smoking heavily and barking friendly gibes at another pair finishing their match. ["That was a shocker, Lois! You're miserable!"]

Trugo is a threatened species. Only six clubs exist, and it's a game played almost exclusively by pensioners. Public awareness is a serious problem; very few Melburnians know of the game, so recruits are scarce. When a club member dies, there is usually no one to take their place. The Footscray Trugo Club, which had been Melbourne's oldest, closed in 2009 for lack of players. The smoking probably doesn't help, either.

I don't want to see trugo disappear, so I'll do my part. I've got my eye on the start of the competitive season in August.

Coppin Masonic Lodge, Part I

Yesterday morning I joined my lodge brother, Nick, for a perusal of the Freemason hall on Weston Street, in Melbourne's Brunswick neighbourhood, not far from where I live. A couple of weeks ago, Nick mentioned to me that the building would soon be sold, and likely demolished. I'd ridden my bicycle past this edifice (called Coppin Masonic Lodge) several times, and admired its facade-- a dignified two-storey structure of red brick appointed conservatively with decorative ionic columns-- settled cheek-by-jowl in rows of single-family residences. It alarmed me to learn it's days were numbered.

Google Maps image of Coppin Masonic Lodge (Brunswick, Victoria, AU)

Nick explained there was only one remaining Freemason group (a "lodge" in Masonic parlance)  that still used the building, and that their last meeting would be in late April. After that, the place would be vacated permanently. A large, multifamily development is clearing ground immediately adjacent to the hall, and, given there is little financial incentive for the building to be coddled by the developer, the Freemasons expect it to be razed. The members of the remaining lodge (called Weston Street United) will meet thereafter at the hall on Davies Street, about three kilometres northeast. With regard to Coppin Lodge, however, it was Nick's job to decide what artefacts, among possible hundreds, would be saved and moved with them. Everything that remained would be thrown out or left for a wrecking crew.

Nick and I arrived together at 10:00 AM, meeting three other people inside (two Freemasons from Weston United, and the wife of one of them) who were on hand to answer questions, and take notes of what Nick planned to rescue. I had come equipped with two cameras, three rolls of colour film and a digital voice recorder and, while I managed to take a few photographs of the interior, it soon became clear that it was more important to capture as much of the conversation among the group as I could. I could take pictures later, but the anecdotal and nostalgic chatter interested me, and would not be repeated. For the next ninety minutes I followed the group from room to room, asking the occasional question, but mostly listening and making mental notes of what, after Nick had identified items to be saved, still lay in peril. Among them: a large, wrought-iron gate inlaid with the symbol of Freemasonry-- the compass and square-- that secured the stairwell to the upstairs meeting room; a chronological arrangement of colourful, hand-painted banners, each emblazoned with the name and insignia of various Freemason subgroups and the year in which they convened, and, among my favourites, two largish portraits of Queen Elizabeth II from the early 1950s. One of these portraits still hangs, as is custom, from the wall in the dining room and receives a toast from the lodge members during their dinner functions. The other was covered with a thin layer of dust and propped unceremoniously atop a row of cabinets in the ladies' wardrobe.

By 11:30, Nick had made the rounds and was ready to leave. "Nick, I have to come back," I said. "This was really interesting. I want to take more pictures, and there just wan't enough time to do that this morning." He seemed pleased to hear this, and said he'd help make the necessary arrangements to get me back inside.