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Preserving days of tea and roses
Stevenson's Country, February 15, 2005
By Philippa Stevenson
It's sad when neighbourhoods go to hell but for elderly Hamilton sisters-in-law Audrey and Micky Moltzen the neighbourhood has simply gone.
The pair have lived in their quaint, central city home so long that its become both a relic of a bygone era and a leader in the new trend of inner city living.
It's only taken the best part of 70 years.
Their smart, blue-grey Tristram St house with its well-tended garden is the last one standing in what was once a lively residential area two blocks from Hamilton's main street.
It's now flanked by carparks. The china rattles as cars and trucks thunder between its front gate and that of high-rise Wintec over the road.
The street from which the Moltzens and neighbours once set out on foot to walk around town has long since become a swiftly flowing bypass-cum-feeder road.
I indicate as long as I can before I turn my car into their gate but still get beeped by the unheeding van hard on my tail.
But from the moment I step under the shading magnolia, past the prettily blooming roses and over Shadow the cat basking on the cobbled driveway the blaring city fades despite being just a few feet away.
Audrey greets me by French doors swung wide to catch the breeze on a hot day and guides me through a lounge busy with family mementos to a wood paneled dining room. Another set of wide-open French doors looks on to a pergola hung with bright begonias.
Dressed coolly in white and with beautifully styled steel grey curls, Audrey looks every bit a lady and has hospitality to match. She brings out a tray of coffee, cucumber sandwiches and homemade shortbread.
She's a lady who revels in telling tales of the past and for two hours keeps me enthralled with the stories of her family and the history of the house she first lived in 58 years ago. Sister-in-law Metta - always known as Micky - arrives home from an outing to Raglan and adds more colour.
Micky has lived in the house for 77 years, moving in when she was 12. Audrey, who admits to being "dangerously close to 80", first moved in after marrying Micky's brother John who was subsequently hospitalised with TB. It was 1947 and she stayed with her parents-in-law for 18 months.
She and John planned to build their own home but when, in 1951, one of the elder Moltzens needed care they moved back to repay the earlier kindness. Somehow, new reasons always cropped up to keep them there.
John and Audrey raised their daughter, Joanne, there and eight years ago John died there.
The Moltzen's seamless occupation means that in its around 115 years the house has had only two owners. The Waugh family built it in the 1890s: the Moltzens bought it in 1928.
It's a prime location but Audrey says there's been no new offers for years for what she describes as "a cottage with no pretensions."
"They know we won't sell."
In her well tended back garden with its large vegetable patch she tells me her stock response when people ask where she might move to. "To Newstead, I hope." (Hamilton's cemetery is at Newstead.)
Micky says simply that "it's home." She adds her ironclad reason for staying put. "My brothers came back to this house after the war."
It's still handy to town though neither can walk the distance any more. They don't notice the traffic noise. Neither do I as we talk about exploits of cherished neighbours long buried and their more recent counterparts - the ones Audrey dismisses as "miscellaneous types".
One by one the houses of the old neighbourhood disappeared as their owners died, relatives sold them off and Hamilton's commercial district expanded.
Gone went Ella McSweeny whose father once owned the boggy farmland between Collingwood and Hill streets. Away went Mrs Hall whose neighbour, Mrs Williams, never had a good word for her but cried at her passing. Away went Mr Hall who became forgetful and wandered off in his jacket, polished boots and long johns. Away went hardworking Mrs Henwood who hoed her garden on crutches.
Later, there were flats next door. During one tenancy Audrey noticed the lights on all night but didn't realise the significance until the police closed down the marijuana growing operation and carted the occupants away.
As had happened many times previously, they inherited the dope growers' pets. Shadow (because it's grey) and Fancy (because it's so ugly it needed a fancy name) are the latest of what Audrey calculates are 58 cats which she and Micky have given temporary or permanent home.
Other neighbours have included a boys' home and Periodic Detention workers. The carparks, by comparison, were not unwelcome.
Audrey and Micky never feel lonely.
"We have a lot of visitors. Sometimes I wonder whether people think we run a knocking shop we have so many callers," Audrey jokes.
For a moment she contemplates their splendid isolation and laughs again. "All the neighbours have left. We must be the neighbours from hell."
Or the kind you don't find any more.
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