{"id":137372,"date":"2021-02-17T14:23:19","date_gmt":"2021-02-17T03:23:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/?p=137372"},"modified":"2021-02-18T12:20:12","modified_gmt":"2021-02-18T01:20:12","slug":"read-an-excerpt-from-the-new-alf-taylor-memoir-god-the-devil-and-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/2021\/02\/17\/read-an-excerpt-from-the-new-alf-taylor-memoir-god-the-devil-and-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Read an excerpt from the new Alf Taylor memoir, God, the Devil and Me"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Alf<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Alf Taylor spent his childhood growing up in New Norcia Mission, Western Australia, and upon leaving he worked around Perth and Geraldton as a seasonal farm worker, before he joined the Armed Forces. After a marriage, seven children and a divorce, Alf found his voice as a writer and poet.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, we have an excerpt on the blog from the new memoir by Alf Taylor — God, the Devil and Me<\/a><\/strong> — which tells of the life and desperation of the young children forced into the care of the Spanish Nuns and Brothers who ran the New Norcia Mission. Read on …<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n
\"Alf<\/a>

Alf Taylor<\/p><\/div>\n

At the Door<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Another incident involved a few of us boys falling through a door \u2013 choo, that was shame. This brother invited ladies into his o\ufb03ce and we were at that age when we knew that when a man and woman get behind closed doors, it does not necessarily mean they were about to talk of Jesus, the weather, Mother England or even Mary, Jesus Christ\u2019s Mother. I just happened to walk around the corner and caught this boy peering through the keyhole of this brother\u2019s o\ufb03ce door, a double door that swung inwards towards the o\ufb03ce. I knew he was up to no good as I crept towards him and put my hand on his shoulder, which startled him. He realised it was me and put his \ufb01nger to his lips to be quiet and indicated by his hands that they were muntjin\u2019 inside. I peered inside through the keyhole and couldn\u2019t see them. There was a lounge suite blocking the view and this other kid had the better view; he and I were jostling for a better position, bumping our heads together and snarling into each other\u2019s face with no words being spoken. The next minute, there were \ufb01ve or six boys all pushing at each other to take a peek through these keyholes.<\/p>\n\n\n

Eventually me and this other kid got a keyhole each and this other boy put his hands on the doorknob. Well, I couldn\u2019t see nothing but there were four other heads pressing into our heads. I don\u2019t know how it happened but these two big doors just \ufb02ung themselves open and there were six of us boys all lying on top of each other and trying to get out of the o\ufb03ce together. Choo, pandemonium was everywhere \u2013 the brother, and his lady and us kids trying to get o\ufb00 the \ufb02oor, onto our feet and make a bolt for it, which we eventually did and headed way up the back. Questions were \ufb02ying thick and fast \u2013 all I heard was, \u2018You see him muntjin\u2019?\u2019 or \u2018Um, sure he was muntjin\u2019 her\u2019 or \u2018I dunno, everybody fell on me.\u2019 When I was asked, all I said was, \u2018I never saw a thing. I just wanted to get out.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At teatime we were given six cuts across the hand for being silly little boys. But the yarns that were \ufb02ying around the Boys House were rippers. One boy said he saw legs in the air but he didn\u2019t know whose legs it was in the air. Another said he saw the brother on top of this lady. Another saw this lady run naked from the o\ufb03ce. I couldn\u2019t o\ufb00er a story of any kind even if I made one up. To be quite honest, I didn\u2019t see a thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I mean, those were the things we had to put up with during our adolescent years. In the eyes of these religious people, we were still children, but to us, our bodies were changing. We were caught, or should I say, I was wanting to stay in the eyes of God as one of his little children. But as you approach your teens, your body has a mind of its own. I know, because I nearly shit myself when I found out that I was growing pubic hair on myself. We weren\u2019t told of these things, and when I\u2019d take a shower with the rest of the boys, I would hide myself, thinking I was unnatural or it was God\u2019s way of punishing us for all the sins we\u2019d committed against him and for beginning to take notice of the girls, and that something was happening to their bodies too. That was to become very frustrating and also very confusing. We had no one to talk to about the changes in our bodies, and girls were forever in my mind. Gone were days of rescuing my ebony maidens from the blazing castles \u2013 now I was making hot passionate love to my co\ufb00ee-coloured beauty on the highest cloud in earth\u2019s atmosphere with the lightning and thunder exploding in our young bodies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

—God, the Devil and Me<\/a><\/em> by Alf Taylor (Magabala Books) is out now.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alf Taylor chronicles his life growing up in the infamous New Norcia Mission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":137376,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[6677],"tags":[12497,715,1910,11407,12498,3639],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/AlfTaylor-Social.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137372"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137372"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":137519,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137372\/revisions\/137519"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}