STORIES
OMR
(One Minute Reads)
By
Pat Ritter
© Copyright Pat Ritter - 2014
Published by Pat Ritter.
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Each week in 2014 I attended the Pomona Writers Group. The facilitator asked us to write a story about a topic he chose. These stories less than 500 words are OMR (One Minute Read). I hope you enjoy reading each one.
I want to express my gratitude to Melissa Smith. Thank you for doing a great job of the cover. If you want Melissa to create your next cover, I highly recommend you do: she can be contacted on
[email protected].
If you have enjoyed reading this book, or if you haven’t enjoyed it, still let me know. I would love to receive your feedback. You can contact me on my e-mail:
[email protected]. I’d love to receive your feedback.
Pat Ritter - Author/Self Publisher
www.patritter.com.au
A Blast From The Past
In 1903 my grandmother was born at Cunnamulla Hospital, her parents Hannah and Joe Ryan. Within a decade three more children were born to the same parents.
Birth of the fourth child, Nellie, Hannah died giving birth. Joe couldn’t take on the responsibility of raising four children under the age of ten and therefore gave them away to townsfolk of Cunnamulla ‘like a litter of pups’.
Relatives travelled from Warwick to Cunnamulla and accepted Nellie as their child. My grandmother never saw her sister Nellie again not knowing where she’d gone.
Throughout my grandmother’s life her thoughts always were on hoping to see her sister Nellie again. She never did. Although she lived an excited life giving birth to seven daughters with her husband Thomas, they lived a useful life together with love and affection.
My grandparents met shortly after the end of World War 1. They married and raised their family. Many years later my grandfather died and my grandmother remarried. She passed away at eight-three years old. Her only remaining wish to see her sister Nellie, this didn’t happen. She’d outlived two husbands and two World Wars.
My grandmother told me the story of her life and particularly about her father giving his children away after the death of her mother. She lived a tough life full of hard labour until she married my grandfather to raise her family.
In 2001 I established a website. To start the ball rolling I’d written many short stories and decided to post these stories onto my website. These were early days of the internet.
One of these stories I’d written about my grandmother for a competition, in this story I mentioned her mother dying giving birth to her sister Nellie who was taken away at birth.
Out of the blue one day, many years later, I received an e-mail from a person who’d said she read my story about my grandmother and she was Nellie’s eldest child. She’d been searching for her relatives over forty years. This was indeed a blast from the past. It had been ninety-nine years since Nellie was born.
After sending backward and forward information about our family background I satisfied myself this person was genuine. Through her research she located Hannah and Joe Ryan’s marriage certificate, his birth certificate and was almost at the end of her research when she read my grandmother’s story.
To say I was overwhelmed was an understatement. We’ve never met only spoke on the telephone and corresponded through e-mails. She is also a published author, so evidence must go back to the genes of either Joe or Hannah Ryan, our great grandparents, who had the initial writing genes. Now that is a blast from the past.
Word count: 463
A Contented Man Can Be Happy With What Appears To Be Useless
On my journey to our weekly writers group I tune the car radio into ‘The John Laws Show’. He begins his session with music to raise the dead, and shares with his listeners ‘useless information’. This information is ‘useless’ according to John Laws but for a humble person like myself I find this information quite invigorating and sensible.
John Laws is an icon on Australian radio, a personality to rival no other broadcaster in the nation. He entertains his audience with wisdom and candour. His reputation goes way beyond any other broadcaster in the nation, at times abusing the listener for being a ‘goose’ or some other insult, and gets away with such comments.
I am one of his biggest fans. Personally I don’t know John Laws but after watching him sing on television when he was twenty-one years old, knowing at the time he suffered cancer, I have remained a loyal fan. His rise to fame presenting commercials on television, with his golden voice which seeped into the minds of each listener coaxed them to rush out and purchase the product. After all of these years he continues to do the same. His golden voice is his most treasured gift to the people of Australia.
The question is, ‘would he be contented and happy given out this useless information?’ My personal opinion is in the positive. I don’t think John Laws will ever retire from radio. What would his listeners do? What would I do for my daily tonic of ‘John Laws Show’? Many listeners agree he is an Australian icon.
From interviewing the Prime Minister to the lonely pensioner who finds difficulty to pay the rent, he represents his radio public. Some callers abuse the crap out of him, does he switch them off, not on your life, he listens to their argument and if he can find a way to help the concerned caller, he does so through his hand maidens and Princess.
Would he be a contented man and happy when providing his listeners with useless information? I think he would be contented. After hearing some of this useless information he delivers, I giggle at some of this useless information because it’s so obscure and ridiculous. His focus to entertain his listeners with useless information is part of his show.
If he wasn’t happy providing this entertainment to his audience why would he waste his precious time on radio each morning for three hours instead of being home with his Princess? He loves to entertain listeners with his way of the world, the way he sees the world through his eyes and his listener’s ears. Yes, John Laws would be happy and content with what he does.
Word count:466
A Fractured Fairytale
Ever since I can remember from the age of four years of age, I always wanted to become a police officer, moreso a detective.
My wish was granted when I turned twenty-one years old and passed the entrance examination to the Petrie Terrace Police Barracks in Brisbane for training as a Probationary Constable.
After four months training my wish became a reality which commenced my fairytale of becoming a detective; first posting as plain clothes constable a dream working with detectives from the Licensing Branch.
My role to enter hotels and detect unlawful starting price bookmakers betting in a public place; this became my world. Success followed creating a place in history of detecting more unlawful betting than any other trainee.
After four months my identity became known to these persons and I was transferred to a western town as far from the city as possible to perform general duties in uniform.
My fairytale continued in policing and after a couple of years in uniform I rejoined the role of a detective in the Criminal Investigation Branch. Working in this field pushed me into some dangerous situations.
Seeking further experience I transferred to a country Criminal Inv
estigation Branch and there realised my fairytale continued.
After nine years of investigating some of the most horrendous crimes, I received a promotion to Detective Sergeant-in charge of a Juvenile Aid Bureau in an outer suburb of Brisbane.
This position gave me an extra string to my bow to learn different part of investigation particularly with juveniles, children under the age of seventeen years.
Ambition became my goal to reach the rank of Commissioned Officer. My fairytale continued when I received a promotion as Sergeant First Class at the Police Computer Branch. This promotion enhanced my knowledge of computers which at the time were in their infancy.
To think nothing more could happened with my fairytale I was selected out-of-the-blue to establish ‘Crimestoppers’ programme for the department which became my baby. To think after twenty years service I was rewarded with receiving this opportunity to establish a programme to work with the community to reduce crime.
So successful became this programme I received an invitation to attend a Commissioned Officer’s Course to become a Commissioned Officer to make my fairytale complete.
Two days before I was to attend this course my fairytale fractured because of my heart. I underwent a pacemaker implantation to end my career of a police officer after twenty years service.
Word count:416
An Echo From The City
Brisbane National Show or