Cornbread, Harmonicas, & Alkies Birthday

This one of my memories of Lightning Ridge, New South Wales , Australia back when I had mined there for ten years. I remember one particular old reprobate fellow who was much alone most days at his barstool but had an air of respectiblility and gentility about him. He spoke like a university professor. Altho I didnt hold much with drinking, I still had time for his brighter thoughts and wit. I heard it was his birthday so raced over the dirt track back to my camp. I took the plastic grocery bag down that was hanging from the rafters of my rough as guts mining camp at Pigs Hill. The sacks hung up there to deter consumption by field mice. The place had a gravel floor and a wood stove with a sink that had a bucket under it to catch the water as there was no plumbing save a garden hose leading from the 200 gallon rainwater tank outside. I had punched a hole thru the corrugated tin wall to bring in my drinking and washing plumbing. I said rough as guts... Anyway all I had for a birthday cake was the fixin's for cornbread. I added extra flour and baked it in my wood burning wood stove oven, bought a six pack of cold beer for my friend's present and drove my rattletrap car thru the meandering rough old dirt tracks in a somewhat unfamiliar terrain in one section of the opal field that I wasnt usually known to travel. I had to stop and knock on a ratty looking camp made of tin to inquire as to where his camp may be. Well lo and behold if it wasn't Billy Capp and a rhuemmy eyed friend leaning tipsily in the doorway. Told them what I was up to and they said lets make it a party.Billy used to be in vaudville in Sydney and was tiny, toothless and stringily capped in white hair with glued on opals running up his thread bare suit jacket sleeves. I tumbled them into my car and we scrubbled thru the dirt to my Mates door. We knocked loudly and when the door opened, a dark cloud of smoke billowed out and there stood "the Professor" all gangly and boneskinny and stooped shouldered in his striped bathrobe and lopsided slippers. We sang happy birthday while Billy Capp played the harmonica. Wasnt he shocked and I dont think that his look of the following extreme delight has ever been duplicated for me since. They drank beer, ate cornbread (a first for these Aussies), and we sang and laughed. I never knew any of them really well but we came close to something familial and tribal as in the Tribe of Man that day.Birthdays they come real regular but they needn't be "regular". To see what I do and why I do it, go to www.ParchedEarthOpals.com and www.outbackgems.com too.