The World's Fastest Indian
The World’s Fastest Indian, beaut movie, the story of Burt Munro (1899-1978), I could experience a flashback to old New Zealand: motorcycles, sheds, analog machinery, doing it yourself, Tim Shadbolt and student protest marches, windy beaches. I know that era is passing rapidly, especially in Auckland, and especially with many immigrants from other cultures who were not influenced by exposure to rural life and the effects of the Great Depression (eg my parents' influence of never throwing anything away), and by modern kids whose turf now is the shopping mall in place of overgrown back sections and creeks with cockabullies and tree huts. But we are all shaped by the culture we grew up in.
Not that the fifties and sixties were exciting times, I mean, when all shops closed at 9 PM Friday night and reopened 9 AM Monday morning, it resulted in a fixed routine of rugby on Saturday mornings, lawnmowing, shedwork and ginger beer making, bottling fruit Saturday afternoons, church on Sunday mornings, Sunday midday roast dinner. Sunday afternoons, when even all the Small Talk had died out, were pretty dire. So little wonder NZ produced a lot of rugged individualists like Burt Munro. They were looking for an alternative meaning of life for those windy weekends.
