By Rhonda Bartle

A mother who loved pearls

Pearl Wildermoth's strong, wise spirit shines through her elderly eyes and the thought of revisiting her own history makes her smile. Memories of her early life on a farm carved out of the Taranaki bush near Stratford are sharp and clear.

Pearl describes her mother as 'pretty churchy' but someone who loved pearls. She always wanted a little girl called Pearl. "And there was this plainest little girl who ever lived," Pearl says. 

Though she was always known as Pearl, she was officially called Margaret Pearl after her mother and grandmother because every Kilpatrick family had to have a Margaret - it was a family tradition.

"But Granny Kilpatrick called me Peril," she says. "She used to talk very sharp."

Irish through and through

The Kilpatricks, of course, were Irish. "Mum was born here, a Kilpatrick, but Dad's family, the Hunters, came over from Ireland," Pearl says. "We lived on East Road, on the road to Toko. Hunter's farm.

"Granny's house had a lounge, front bedroom and two more bedrooms and that's as far as the house went," she says.

"Then you went down the stairs and there was a scullery where you kept all the food.  But outside, there was a sort of bench and tubs where they used to wash, and then you went along a boardwalk to the cookhouse."

In Granny Kilpatrick's cookhouse stood a great black stove and all the pots sat around on the big white hobs. A stock whip hung behind the door and, as Pearl says, Granny could certainly use it. A piece of leather on the plaited end meant Granny could make it crack!

Batten fences surrounded the yard - so close that a cat couldn't climb through - and then over by the cowshed sat the horse stalls and milk stables.

"Well, Granny used to get out in the yard and crack this whip and it used to scare the hell out of us!  She must have teased us a lot because we were scared stiff of her!"

Taking on Granny

But it didn't pay to take on Pearl's Irish grandmother. Pearl describes a particular day when her brother Teddy Boy sought revenge.

"This day, Granny had a sugar bag and she was going out to get some wood for the stove. Teddy said, 'Pearl, you get in one side of the woodshed and I'll get on the other, and when she comes through, I'll poke her with a stick.'

"Well, afterwards, he went for his life, but she got me and caught me and I cried. She shook me. She used to shake the liver out of us, and of course she'd lost all her wood, so she said, 'You pick up every chip!' She was very severe."

The Spanish Flu

Not all Pearl's memories are such good ones.  "I can remember when I was quite a little girl, right back to when I had the Spanish flu in 1918," she says. 

"Mum said I was such a determined little brat - I was only just walking - and though the flu took all my energy, she said I was determined to get up and walk. I'd take a step and then I'd fall and I'd get along on both elbows."

But she adds with a wicked grin. "Of course, I've been determined all my life.  There's nothing wrong with being determined, is there?"

Pearl Wildermoth already knows the answer.  There is nothing at all wrong with being strong-willed - it's simply part of her Irish heritage - and she continues with her story.

"I was the only one in the family who caught Spanish Flu. Mum's two brothers came home from the war (World War I) but they didn't get it. Henry, the youngest, took a fancy to me, this little baby girl, and I can remember him down on his knees, holding out his hands to me."

Infantile Paralysis

Pearl can also pluck vivid pictures out of the past of the polio epidemic, or infantile paralysis epidemic, as it was called in her day.

"In Standard One, I was eight. We used to sometimes see three funerals a day going to the cemetery. Our school work was sent home and Mum sat us out on the veranda to do it if it wasn't too sunny. There were people Mum knew who died. In the wintertime, we went back to school."

The polio epidemic of 1925 closed all schools nationwide. Witnessing the funerals that went past her gate had an unexpected effect on Pearl and her siblings Teddy, Jim and Jean.

"We'd seen all these funerals go past. So, well, I buried my doll. It was a rag doll, stamped front and back on a piece of cloth that you cut out and sewed around and filled with sawdust.

"Well, Teddy Boy, my brother, carried her and we all did something. Then Teddy put her in the grave and we buried her. We found some of the field daisies and put them on the grave.

"Weeks later, Mum asked about my doll… 'Where's your doll?' And I couldn't tell my mother a lie - she had that way about her - and I told her I'd buried her. Well, we had to go out and get her, and of course she'd perished with the dirt and the rain."

A doll collector now

It could be Freudian that dolls play a significant part in Pearl's life now. She has a large collection that is continually being added to. Perhaps it's from losing that first one, and possibly her second doll, too.

"One Christmas, one of the boys got a cricket set and Teddy, Jean and I both got a doll. The head was moulded with the shape of hair and there was a piece of wire that held a bow.

"The feet and the hands were made of porcelain and it was dressed. And I went out and the dog had got my doll and tore that doll to bits. I cried and cried and Mum said I'd never get another one."

Christmas memories

Talking of Christmas presents brings back scenes of family festivities which were quite different to those enjoyed today, in more prosperous times.

"We used to get an orange and a banana and a stick of chocolate in our stockings," Pearl says. "Oh, and muscatel raisins and we used to eat them with the chocolate and it was like raisin chocolate."

There was always a goose for Christmas dinner. "Yes, a young goose. They're beautiful, you know. Not strong, and with nice stuffing. And Dad used to boil up the plum duff in the copper - it was so clean you could see your face in it. That was his job.

"Mum used to grow broad beans, and she always made a sponge and an apple pie with a special crust. We took the cream off the milk cans to go with it. For tea, we'd go to Sherriff's house, to Mum's sister. We'd go in the gig, with the lamps on, and she'd make cream puffs. 

"We'd all share tea, trifle and jelly, nothing really flash, and always cups of tea.  And a Christmas cake and bottles of drink called Green River, different to what they have today.

"The men would all play accordions and we'd have a musical until about 10 o'clock, and then we'd have a big pot of tea and go home."

Stratford in 1930: From Puke Ariki Pictorial Collection

A long walk to school

Living nearly 5 ks from Stratford meant a long daily walk for the Hunter children to and from school. 

"Mum used to push us up to town in a pram, and then when I started school at six, she'd walk me there and Teddy would walk me home. Then Teddy and I used to run to school, and if we got to school at half-past eight, we had a little game before the bell rang!"

 The weekend wasn't for resting, but meant a long walk to Sunday School, and then on to the cemetery.

"Every Sunday we'd go down to the cemetery to visit grandfather and the boys could wear their own clothes, but we girls had to stay tidy. We used to have to hold hands and walk in front of mum so she knew we were behaving.

"Then we had to go to Grandfather's grave and I had to sit there with my skirt over my knees and my hands clamped. And then when it was over, the adults talked, and we'd have to go around the cemetery to see this one's grave and that one's grave.

"And finally, we got to the gate, it was 'now you can go.'  And us kids went hell bent for leather!"

A bigger farm means extra work

When Pearl's father leased an additional 4 hectares alongside the original farm, the family moved from a tiny cottage into a house with high ceilings.

Pearl worked beside her father as though she was man. "Everything Dad did, I did," she says proudly. 'The only thing he didn't ask me to do was calve a cow."

He made her a bag so she could carry and sow manure. She also sowed seeds, as well as helping to cut wood. "I'd pull the saw then Dad would pull. I always seemed to know what he wanted. We were close."

She also worked the harrowing discs, which she sat on to keep straight. "I fell off once and one of the blades cut me across the arm. I could have had my arm cut off, but luckily, it just drew blood."

Pearl soon became indispensable on the farm. "I could work a horse and sledge. When Dad ploughed, I used to hold the reins. He couldn't hold the horses because he was too short and always got broken ribs."

Together, they removed all the tree stumps from the paddocks with a big wooden jack and Pearl and her father pooled their resources with neighbours at haymaking time.

"I'd help out on the stacker. I had to use the horse to pull the hay up. Dad liked me on the stack, no one else."

From Stratford to Tikorangi, Okato and Urenui

Eventually, she left the farm to work for a woman in Tikorangi whose children had whooping cough. There, she met Charlie Rumbal at a euchre party in the Tikorangi Hall.

"When I met Charlie, I was 18 or 19. Then naturally I went to Tikorangi as often as I could!"

They married when Pearl was 24, and lived first at Okato, and then at Urenui. After Charlie died she married Charles Wildermoth. Sadly, Pearl and Charles were together just over a year when he passed away.

Always active in Women's Division and gardening circles, for many years Pearl was president of the Horticultural Society. These days she lives in a small butter-coloured house in New Plymouth with her beloved dolls.

"I look back on my life this way," she says. "I'm from the old mould. I've done the best I could for people, and if I couldn't help them, I kept away.

"I've had a tough life. I've worked hard, bloody hard, but I've had a good life. I'm still going. There were probably things I would have liked that I never got, but it passes by.  I've been content with my life. I have nothing to grizzle about."