Jack Webber interviewed by Mary Swenson

Grade 7 teachers had a hard job in those days. Grade 7 was a big class. I remember a kid having a fight with a teacher. He ran out in front and the teacher tried to stop him. He ran back and then jumped out of the window. I’ve got a feeling that some of them in grade 7 had been there for a couple of years because they had to get about 350 marks for their Qualifying Certificate.

I went to Thebarton Central School, the public school, because of the subjects they did. Thebarton Boys Tech had been going for ages. That was for trades. I did not want to be a tradesman.

The headmaster was Mr Berriman. At the end of the year we were all told we were going somewhere else. They were closing down because there were not enough people. Most of the boys went to Adelaide High and for a short time so did I.

We lived in Rose Street, Mile End and mainly walked to school because there was no extra money for fares. Sometimes we hopped on the open part of the tram where we could hop off quickly. The open section was not just in the centre then, sometimes it was at the front, sometimes at the back. We started from town and went over Bakewell Bridge, hopping off just before the end of the section or when we saw the ‘connie’.

My parents had no money for books or going to sport. There was a school charge for sport and books were very expensive. When the teacher wasn’t looking I tried to get a look at those of the boy I sat next to but he wouldn’t let me.

I left school when I turned 14 in April of that year. Dad had no work. My brother was working at Unbehaun and Johnston, Currie Street, Adelaide. They were spare parts and battery people. He got me the job. Things were pretty tough at the time and you were put off as soon as you got older because of the wages. I worked as a messenger boy on my bike until I was nearly 15. At 16 I started driving the little Morris Minor truck doing deliveries all around Adelaide and the suburbs. When I turned 18 I was put off, like my brother who had driven the truck before me. Then I had mixed jobs for about a year.

I was very fortunate as my brother had a job at Pilkington Bros. at Woodville and he helped me get a position there. They were glass merchants – mainly car windscreens and windows. They were an English firm, specialists in armour plate glass and I worked on the furnaces. They had three small furnaces and one big one. The glass cutters cut the glass to size and we put it on special frames, on hooks, and lowered it into the furnace for varied times as required. They had three shifts a day and I worked there till the war. I did night shift – security work on an alternate weekly basis.

I joined up in 1940 in May. They had a fixed period where, if you joined up before June, I think, the firm made up the army wages to the basic wage. I was in the army for five and a half years and went back to Pilkington and Bros until I began the government training programme. I did a course in post war construction after I had looked around a bit. We were tested to see what suited us and I was given a carpenter’s course and the builder was paid by the government.

By that time I had married and lived with my wife’s parents as housing was in short supply. This was before there were Housing Trust homes. A mate, Alec and I, started together as builders about 1960. About 20 years ago the business became Webber & Son. I retired but I still keep an eye on all stages of what is being built.

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