1.
SANG LEE.
Sang Lee was the given name to the Kilbirnie fruit shop of my father Chun Yee Hop.
It was situated at 25 Coutts Street, Kilbirnie and sat between Evans Bay and Lyall Bay.
From memory my sister Mavis told me they lived in a house around the seaside in the Lyall Bay area but in what specific area I am not sure but I did know it was a long and spooky walk home in the dark after work.
Several of the sisters worked and even slept at the shop.
Ena, Ina, Rosie, Mavis, and Rona.
I am once again not sure about Phyllis and Doris as my recall is the strongest when I worked there after finishing the school day at South Wellington Intermediate in Russell Terrace, Newtown.
David and I were seconded to Sang Lee and having no money to pay for the tram fare [ I recall you caught the No 3 tram going to Lyall Bay] we had to run to work from Newtown to Kilbirnie.
It was down with the schoolbags at 243 Riddiford Street, our home and other shop Hing Lee then a fast sprint down the main street to Constable Street, a stiff run up to the top where the local fire brigade was stationed and then we took a short cut by running over the Crawford Hills and ending up around Burke Brothers the motor mechanics and petrol station which is still on the corner of Coutts Street.
The run took about 20 to 30 minutes but we simply and literally took this in our stride as part of the day’s work or activity.
Sang Lee was located a chemist shop away from Onepu Road which led directly to Evans Bay beach.
The chemist shop was owned by one Claude Arthur and I believe he was also our landlord.
On the right of the shop as you exited was Star Stores a grocery shop run by Mr Frank Radcliffe a lean and serious looking character.
Several shops away was the famous Adams Bruce who had the most wonderful ice cream cones and maderia cake available in New Zealand.
Outside Claude Arthur’s shop was a large concrete tub like affair.
This was for watering the horses that was used for milk deliveries in those days.
2.
There was a galvanized iron curved verandah outside the fruit shop proper which made the interior look rather gloomy.
What walls that were exposed was tongue and groove and was either painted in a sickly green or a yellow that resembled sour cream.
Baskets of fruit or vegetables stood on apple or banana cases outside the frontage of the shop hugging the window which had the fairly standard display of triangular stacked fruit on display.
Typical of most fruit shops the vegetables were displayed on a long counter like shelf under which were sectioned off compartments for the root crops as carrots, parsnips swedes etc.
Opposite this was the fruit shelves with all the apples, pears, tomatoes and so forth stacked neatly like miniature pyramids.
Most were identified with the variety of apple or pear and were generally described as ‘Quality’ or “Fresh” or “Crisp” or “Value and under this in waterbased inks, usually black was the price indicated by the pound [lb].
Scales were strategically placed around the shop and were the spring type Salter hanging from chains hooked into the ceiling.
These vied with the lengths of electric wires hanging down bearing 100 watt Osram light bulbs that was used for illumination when it got dark.
Really well lit shops were a rarity in those days due to the cost of electricity but Sang Lee opened until about 10.00pm at night from Monday to Saturday in the hope of catching stray customers coming out of the Rivoli picture theatre in Bay Road around the corner.
Around about 6.00pm the public bars closed so the occasional drunk would stagger into the shop to buy something to eat.
Once a week the floor which was wooden tongue and groove was scrubbed with broom and water so although the shop was old it was kept clean.
Dave and I would pop through the front of the shop and go through a door that was half mottled glass into the rear of the shop.
This was the main inside area and consisted of a table surrounded by apple boxes for seats , a shelf with ink and brushes and a phone of the old dial type with the number 25589 written on a circular disc in the centre of the phone proper.
The rooms in those days had very high ceilings and to the left of the entry were the wooden struts that held up a loft about 10 feet long and 6 feet deep.
3.
It was here that often the girls would sleep.
Under the loft one of the walls was lined with tin.
On this was chalked a part of Alan’s talent a drawing of Dartagnan of the Three Musketeers fame complete with thrusting rapier and broad rimmed hat.
Alan actually did this in various colours with his chalks and was very good with this type of illustration.
I think Tom and Jerry the cartoon cat and mouse and also Popeye the sailor man was also his work of art on that wall.
The table occupied about one
third of the space as it was used for virtually everything from opening up the local newspaper for wrapping veges with, chopping pumpkins on, cutting cabbages, writing placards or mainly for the evening meal of which newspaper was always the covering for the naked unstained wood top.
At the far end of the room was a cast iron fireplace and oven branded Orion.
One had to light this with wood of which we had plenty from the apple box tops and the hot plates were useful for boiling large pots of beetroot on.
Cooked beetroot was sold and was quite popular.
To the left of the Orion was a narrow corridor which led to another room which was used as a store room cum bedroom.
Before getting to this room though there was a door that opened into a very small room about 12 feet by 6.
This was used to ripen the green bananas in.
There was a long gas pipe at the far corner of the room with a tiny butterfly knob which turned on the gas.
Lighting this would give out a small amount of heat which if the door was kept constantly closed would build up sufficient damp heat to ripen the bananas.
They would colour unevenly so had to be sorted several times until the whole batch was done.
It was very easy to over heat and over cook the bananas and in those days they arrived in long heavy bulging cases from Fiji or Samoa.
Rather than being in clusters or hands as we see them now in the supermarkets they were all stacked into the boxes singly and any cold snap could chill the fruit making them turn brown instead of the golden yellow we associate with a ripe banana now.
4.
On the side of the shop where stood the loft there was a narrow corridor to the rear yard of the store.
In this small section was a Champion gas range and a small sink and bench where the cooking was done.
Thursdays were just great as Rona cooked on that day and always made Dave and I something great to eat in that tiny kitchen.
She called it her ‘Special Treat’ and to us it was pure luxury.
Beyond the kitchen was another area like a lean to which was open to the cold and where I spent many a hard hour bagging potatoes or pealing the loose leaves off onions.Here we stacked heavy sacks of potatoes and pumpkins and they were really heavy compared to the 10 kg packs we see these days.
Potatoes, carrots and other root crops could weigh about 120 to 140 pounds and pumpkin even heavier.
They arrived in heavy jute bags which we later used for bagging up all the waste products of cabbage and cauliflower leaves.
Dave and I used to fear seeing sacks from the South Island usually Southland Swedes or Red Dakota potatoes bearing three blue lines running the length of the sack.
These usually weighed 160 to 180 pounds and we would lug them from the truck to the store room on our back or shoulder.
There was three worn wooden steps that led down to a concrete yard.
Next to the steps was a long wooden tub which we had to dump the carrots or other root crops into for cleaning off all the soil attached to them.
We used a long broom with heavy bristles and a hose to half fill the tub the push the crops back and forth until all the soil was removed. The water was drained and the crops blasted with cold water.
In winter it was really cold.
We suffered chilblains in the hands and feet from shoes that got wet through and hands that had to plunge into frigid water to get the washed root crops out into wooden containers ready for stacking in the shop .
It was a wonder we did not turn out with abs as strong as Arnold Schwartzenegger from the constant pushing and pulling of the heavy broom in the tub.
5.
Each bag of crops took dozens of strokes and I would always end up wet from top to toe.
Then there was the huge pile of cabbage and cauliflower leaves to bag.
Alan had already chopped the excess leaves off the vegetables which also included celery and silverbeet plus rhubarb and by the time he had finished a pile of leaves was around 3 to 4 feet high and 10 feet in diameter, so it was out with the jute sacks and a shovel and generally we would fill 18 big sacks full of these waste leaves which were picked up by people running piggeries.
If they did not turn up it was off to the tip with all the refuse which filled the truck from end to end.
After the root crops were cleaned they had to be stacked neatly in individual compartments in the shop.
Then there was potatoes to be bagged into 3lb lots to 28lb larger packs.
No plastic bags in those days.
They were all in paper bags.
Once all the preparatory work was done it was then time to serve customers.
No calculators were used it was all memorized.
Firstly the cost of the weighed item was calculated and stored in your memory bank. If the customer bought 5 or 25 items all the calculations and totaling was done mentally in the same time you could have been chatting to ‘Mrs Jones’ about the weather or the quality of the beans.
Thursday was usually busy with incoming stock and Friday we always called ‘Late Night’ as we opened officially until 9.00pm but usually until 10.00pm, with a cautious eye out for the Trade and Industries Inspector who could fine you for opening beyond the set times.
By Friday evening we would have a truckload of ordered or purchased fruit and veges to deliver.
So we would leave about 6.00pm with them and Kilbirnie was a tough place to do deliveries. The main areas on the flat was okay but some were up very steep streets which I still remember as Rodrigo Road and another which we named ‘One Mile Walk’ because it was like walking a mile with the deliveries on your shoulder.
6.
If we got home by 11.00pm with another stiff run then onto the homework we considered this just another day in the life of a fruiterer.
And that was only part of the operation.
Bill had to attend the early auctioning of the fruit and vegetables and load the stock onto the truck probably with Alan.
The girls served mainly the customers and did lighter chores but it was non stop work for all.
Being situated between two bays everytime the door between the shop and the back rooms was opened a virtual blast of frigid air shot through from front to the back yard.
Speaking of the backyard we could exit this area through a narrow lane into Onepu Road and every Saturday it was Toffee Apple day.
A small table was set up on the footpath and the girls would make toffee out of bags of sugar and tint it red with cochineal.
An apple was pierced through the centre to the core with a shaped stick from a wooden box and usually Jonathan apples were used.
They were dipped into the hot toffee and brought out shining and allowed to cool and harden on a plate .
These toffee apples were then sold off the table in Onepu Road around the corner from the shop.
Those were also the days of the tramcar and they used to stop right outside our shop.
One day though a big fidusha tram derailed and tipped over just a few feet away from the shop itself.
Strangely it was number 243 the address of our Newtown shop.
Bill later went off to the war in the Pacific serving in Guaducanal and the Emirau Islands.
When he got back he changed the shop entirely updating the shelving, the paintwork and the lighting. We had in the centre of the shop a beautiful Zontillier fluorescent lighting unit which hung like a chandelier and had three bars of bright light.
Other fluorescent tubes brightened the shop and his handwork on the placards gave a change to the standard terms of ‘Quality’ or ‘Fresh’ by using more imaginative and descriptive terms.
7.
The name Sang Lee was changed to the Pacific Fruit Supply and even the order invoice books were upgraded.
He had the window completly decorated outside with removable paints so that at Christmas time there was a giant Father Christmas reclining across the whole pane of glass.
The old 1938 Chevrolet truck that ran sans power and brakes was replaced with a big blue American Ford V8.
Sang Lee had not only a change of name but a complete overhaul.
Some time later Bill bought the Zenith Seed Company off his father in law Ted Ting at 25 Manners Street and the Pacific Fruit was sold to his friend Young Chan.
We worked in the Zenith Seed shop for some years then Bill converted it into two shops one which he ran as Zenith Seeds Ltd and the other was taken over by the family and managed for a period by brother Arthur.This was the Zenith Fruit Company.
I think I was going to Wellington Technical College then and at 18 left for a stint of 14 weeks Compulsory Military Training in the Royal New Zealand Air Force at Taerei near Dunedin.
The fruit shop work was tough but it helped us get on our feet.
I later took over the running of the fruit shop when Arthur left for Otahuhu and some years later sales of fruit and produce diminished due to the number of supermarkets opening and people changing buying habits.
I had to change with the times and introduced eastern fancy goods as cane and bamboo ware, Chinese bowls and woks and cooking ingredients. The shop was chock full of rice paper or silk lanterns and had a plethora of goods hanging from the ceiling.
But this was to end about 20 years ago when redevelopment was the new word for the city.
And that was the beginning of an end to an era of the fruit shop guys and girls.
Tough though as it was I have no regrets as it was in a different time to today.
Stan Chun 14th November, 2007.
