By CATHY ARONSON
When 22-year-old May Booth drove her family's new Studebaker car to Hamilton's general store to top up with a four-gallon tank of petrol, frightened horses scattered.
It was 1912 and her father, Jackie Davies, was one of the first in the Waikato to own a car but had struggled to adapt to the technology.
May was delegated the job of driving when her father crashed into the family garage while trying to brake by pulling back the wheel like the reins of a horse.
But May, the youngest of nine children, was used to doing her part on their Rototuna farm. Water had to be fetched from the well, clothes had to be washed in the copper, and the cows to be milked before she walked 6.4km to Hamilton East School.
May Booth, born Ethel May Davies on Christmas Day 1890, was believed to be New Zealand's oldest person when she died peacefully at her home for the past 20 years, Trevellyn Home in Hamilton, on Sunday. She was 110.
But she lives on in the next four generations. She had three sons, 11 grandchildren, 31 great-grandchildren and two great-great-grandchildren.
Sons Roy, Bob and Gordon, all in their 80s, have fond memories of the mother who brought them up on her own after their father, Edward, died in the First World War.
Mrs Booth struggled through the Depression and, without any social security, brought up her children with one cow for milk, rabbits - cooked seven different ways for each day of the week - and clothes made out of flour bags.
She made some money by working the swampy 21ha land with her brother Bob and selling wood for fences.
Her eldest son, Roy Booth, aged 85, remembers that when he was about 10, her shopping list read: tea, cocoa, candle, soap, butter, sugar, vinegar and salt.
He recalls that even though times were hard, his mother was sympathetic towards those for whom it was more of a struggle and would always take in beggars, a common sight during the Depression.
He said she adapted to new technology and was one of the first in the district to have a telephone.
"Long, short, long was the ring. But you couldn't gossip because about seven other people shared the line."
She was not impressed by fast cars, space travel and planes - she flew only once, to Australia - and was more taken with those life-changing inventions washing machines and refrigerators.
Grandson Colin, 48, remembers having to hide the ladder from her when she was 75 to stop her from painting the roof.
At 80, she was dared to swim in the river in return for a new bikini.
"She couldn't swim, she could only float, and she only had a knitted bikini on. I will never forget as a young boy rescuing her from beyond the breaker and the wool had stretched down to her knees. She never got the new bikini."
When Roy Booth moved to Tauranga 24 years ago, he promised to visit her every fortnight. He kept his promise. "I know every bump on that drive. But I'm 85 and still driving because a promise is a promise."
Today he will make one last trip to Hamilton to pay his respects to the mother he remembers as honest, independent, generous and intelligent with "a happy soul."
Curtain drawn on happy soul
AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.