Anything But the Wrestling Part 2

Ron was a work colleague of mine. In his fifties, he was a big fellow who shuffled when he walked, a momento of bygone rugby injuries. In his prime, he had travelled around the countryside, hitching himself to semi-professional rugby league clubs, some of whom would arrange a job for him for the duration of his stay, at other times Ron would find his own work, nicely supplementing his rugby earnings. He had settled in Sydney where apart from finding work with us, he also was a successful greyhound trainer. Not too long before he joined us, one of his greyhounds had won a major Sydney race and Ron showed us a copy of the Daily Telegraph to prove it. There he was on the back page, pictured with the dog and its owner, with whom he split, fifty-fifty, the prize money of twenty thousand dollars.

Ron was a great bloke, with a very laid back attitude to life and a similar sense of humor to myself and another work mate Lou, who was of Hungarian heritage, (in fact his birth name was Lajos, the same Christian name as LouThesz. For a period, the three of us sat in a small area together and we shared a lot of laughs throughout the day. Ron was pretty smart and he quietly and efficiently went about his job, however unlike some people who would finish their work and perhaps go looking for something else to do, maybe help out someone somewhere in the office, or even pretend they were busy but actually scive off, Ron was ‘different’. Once satisfied his work was done, no matter how early in the afternoon or sometimes day it was, Ron would settle back in his chair open up the Telegraph, or more likely ‘The Racing Greyhound’ and wile away the rest of the day. Yes, even when the boss popped his head in, Ron would carry on reading, the boss and owner was a younger man and obviously felt a little shy to remonstrate with his elder, but as there was no office manager at the time, he didn’t have someone else to do it for him. Sometimes he’d go away, then later come back and say he had a project for Ron, who would politely put his paper down, listen intently and then get on with his assignment. Once he had finished, it was back to his paper. Worse still, at the commencement of boardroom meetings, Ron would pull his trousers up to his calves (they were so big, the trouser bottoms couldn’t go any higher) fold his arms, lay back in his chair and go to sleep! At these times you could say that there was an elephant in the room, as the boss had to pretend that he either couldn’t see Ron, or didn’t care that the big fella was oblivious of him waxing lyrical, while the rest of us in the room had our hearts in our mouths, stealing glances at him and wondering when the boss’s patience would be exhausted.

One day, Ron brought a favorite greyhound of his to work, as it was racing that evening somewhere outside of Sydney and Ron wouldn’t have time to go home, collect the dog and then get to the meet in time. The dog was perfectly comfortable in the back of the car as the day was mild, greyhounds are lazy and also, Ron would take it some water and a little treat every couple of hours. Now this was the dog that Ron had told us about some months earlier. It had been a good racer in its day and Ron was easing it into retirement. He had explained with a smile on his face, that the dog had a slight problem in that it required help when it needed to pee! Laughing, he painted a picture of himsel, having to ‘flick’ the dog’s testicle for the pee to evacuate! So we were all thinking the same thing, would Ron, in the outside,open car park ‘fiddle’ with his dog while we all watched behind the glass windows of the office.

On Ron’s second visit to his greyhound, he did just that, calm, cool and collected, he strolled up to the ‘dish licker,’ kneeled down and expertly (?) flicked the animal’s bag sack a few times until a thin yellow stream hit the asphalt. From where we stood on the first floor, staring out across the car park, we could see the look of astonishment on the faces of passing lorry drivers as they witnessed a large old man, fiddling with a greyhounds’ undercarriage, in a works car park. We all applauded!