This particular clipping was cut out and retained by my later mother (who died in 1995 at 75 years of age) all these years later, I pondered on what factors in her life at that time may have caused her to keep it.
My mother in 1939 was 19 years of age, having arrived from England in 1933 six years earlier, to live at first with her uncle and aunt in Blacktown, Sydney. Although young, she then worked in a series of governess roles on N.S.W. properties around the Singleton area (Hunter Valley).
By 1937 she was back in Sydney boarding with two girl friends whose father was left a widower. These girls had common interests, Christian youth and hockey. At this time, she worked for a time with a woman who owned a small business making plaster and pottery ornaments, and she made friends easily.
Her letters of that era, 1933-39 reveal a great deal about rural N.S.W. and life in Sydney for a young woman.
There was not much money about and she often told me how she would press her nose against cake shop windows wishing that she had the spare money to purchase one of the delicacies. She made up for it years later and there was nothing she enjoyed more than to take my wife Delma and our daughters for Devonshire Teas, (morning or afternoon).
This period leading up to the War (and in fact, similarly leading up to World War I) was extreme drought in Australia. In January 1939, there had been the worst 'Black Friday' bushfires ever, and the hottest-ever temperature recorded in Sydney (43 deg C; 113.5 deg F).
So the welcome rains that started in Victoria in February and continued over NSW in March and April were welcome relief. In the end, they did not break the long drought, which continued up to 1945, followed by ten years or more of unusually wet weather before the current dryer spell.
But harking back to the weather in Sydney in autumn 1939; although she would have welcomed the promise of the breaking of the drought, and the beginning of some cool weather after a long hot summer, I can speculate that there might have been two specific practical issues that would have concerned my mother with such heavy rain.
Church youth weekends were a feature of Christian youth in the late 1930s. Fine weather would have been something to aid such entertainment. The other factor was Saturday hockey.
There may have been two additional reasons why this particular article may have been retained in the archives. I learned years later that my mother was 'very keen' on a young Christian leader and that weekend may have been the first occasion he showed a little interest in her.
We will never know.
It may have also been retained in later years, because it struck a chord when she read it again after marrying a farmer (my father) whose milking dairy was at Crediton, up on the Great Dividing Range west of Mackay in Queensland. Reading her diary of that era there was a seven month drought which severely affected the Crediton farming community and which left a lasting impact in their collective memories.
Being in the tropics, that area usually has more reliable summer rainfall than Sydney, further south, so seven months without rain in the normal 'wet' season would indeed be unusual.
As I pondered these things, I was reminded of what the Scriptures said about Jesus' mother Mary, and how she kept all that the Angel has said in her heart. There are many 'special' incidents in our lives which remain part of our 'sacred' memory.
One of my 'sacred' memory incidents occurred when I was eight years of age. This story is also recorded in my book "No Orchestra, No Trumpet" published in 1994. It was near to Christmas and I was living in Mackay, and Santa Claus was seen at a service station the north side of the Forgen Bridge.
My brother, my sister and myself were all lined up readying ourselves to ask Santa Claus (at the service station on the north side of the Forgen Bridge) what we would like for Christmas. My elder brother asked for a Crystal Radio Set and this what he received. I wanted a toy grader, but behind me in the line were two pretty girls from my class in school, and I wasn't going to seen dead asking for a grader. I never got my grader.
'Sacred' memories are fascinating and are only 'special' to an individual! Perhaps this article kept by my mother was one of her 'sacred' memories.