Steve Braunias discovers a love story in Mt Roskill.
It was a strange interview. I talked to Jock Hume, 74, in a glasshouse. He dressed in the costume of his legendary character The Singing Cowboy, a country and western music entertainer who has walked the earth these past 50 years as a kind of wandering sheriff of New Zealand, there to maintain good cheer with a song in his heart – he wore cowboy boots and a cowboy hat, a Texan tie, a red check shirt and white trousers. He lives in a village just as elaborate and fantastic. He is a resident at the Claire House Rest Home in Mt Eden, designed as a Victorian fantasy of copper kettles and fine china hanging on the walls of six large white villas.
"We have," said manager Glenda Kingsbeer, "250 rose bushes." Head gardener, Alf Simpson, 86, walked past at that precise moment in his gumboots; "251," he corrected her.
The glasshouse is used as a visitor's centre. We met on a winter's morning. It was freezing in there, a narrow icebox with heavy drops of condensation crawling down the glass, and throughout the interview one of the Claire House garden crew set up a very noisy weed eater and, later, a very noisy leaf blower. We were both dying to escape but Jock's urge was greater, more profound. He became agitated. He spoke rapidly, and his breathing was fast, laboured, like he was gulping for air in a cave where the oxygen was running scarce. I had gone in with the very best of intentions and Jock was such a kind and lovely man but the interview had plainly become a kind of torture, and finally, I said, "Are you okay?"
He said, " Yes. Yes, yes! Yes." He meant no to the bottom of his heart, but he laughed or tried to laugh - it sounded more like a cry of pain. "Yes," he said again. He had a slender body, with a long face and very bright eyes. "But. It'll be ending soon. It'll be over soon. It's making me a little stressed. A few minutes more. You're seeing Mary tomorrow, she'll verify everything."
He meant his sister Mary, 84, who knows Jock better than anyone alive. His bedroom in the little state rental house in Mt Roskill that he shared with her these last 24 years is empty since he moved into Claire House on April 11 after a stroke in March. "I'll show you Jock's room," she said. The back of the house looked out on to a plum tree, its branches black and bare in the thin light. She walked slowly down the hallway into a room with a single bed and a dressing table. There was an invoice book from his days when The Singing Cowboy was in demand at RSAs, rest homes, and children's parties. The sums ($75, $350, $500) were written in a tidy hand and with every good standard of efficient book-keeping. That was his best subject at school.
He took after his father in that way, and in another respect, too; Neil Hume, bank manager at the BNZ in Devonport, when the family lived in Glen Rd, Stanley Bay, and later at Three Lamps in Ponsonby, when the family moved to Hamilton Rd in Herne Bay, was an all-round sportsman, and young Jock was a fast and nimble tennis player, winning the Stanley Bay men's singles title in two consecutive years. But actually, he was nothing like his father and that was the problem, that was the bane of his existence until something amazing happened – an epiphany, an apotheosis – and out of it was born The Singing Cowboy.
"The rest is history," laughed Jock, wringing his hands in the glasshouse. "Hoo boy!"
***
Mary was just as gentle as her younger brother, and she spoke in beautiful prose – "deprecating", "apprehensive", "calibre". She had taught primary school at Jean Batten in Māngere, and Ōtāhuhu Primary. It was very cold in her weatherboard state rental, and when I left she wrapped up a fruit loaf in greaseproof paper. When I first arrived, I told her that Jock was like a caged tiger in that glasshouse, and I asked if he was okay.
She said, "Oh, yes. If something upsets him, he has a good night's sleep and the next day it's as if it never happened. He lives in the moment. That means he's at the mercy of whatever. Most of us have an emotional security that carries us through just about everything. He doesn't seem to have that."
I asked her, "Is he happy?"
"Sometimes," she said. "He'll ring up and say, 'Mary, I'm on a high.' I'm very grateful that we have a good relationship. I've been acquainted with mental illness for a very long time. I joined the Schizophrenia Fellowship in 1987 and I've met a lot of people with that illness. So I have learned a lot, and one of the most crucial things, if you have schizophrenia, is that you're very lucky to have a good relationship with at least someone in the family, and with a doctor.
"For some people that doesn't happen. Their family reject or abandon them, or they're cold and unsympathetic, and they never find a good doctor, whereas Jock and I were incredibly lucky. We found a marvellous man. When I say found him, he was already my doctor. He was exceptional. Dr Mervyn Gatman. He and his wife, Margaret, were both doctors, in Lake Rd, Takapuna.
"My father was puzzled as to why Jock couldn't hold down a job. This was in the 1960s. There were hundreds of jobs, Steve, in the 1960s. Hundreds! It was easy to get a job. But some of the jobs that Jock got, urged on by our dad, he lasted only a morning or a week, and of course, Dad was furious, and so I asked Mervyn would he see Jock. And he did.
"But of course when Jock came home, he couldn't tell me anything. I just thought that was a waste of time. I used to see Dr Gatman every three months because I had mild diabetes. And I said, 'Thank you for seeing my brother,' and he looked curiously at me and said, 'He's schizophrenic, isn't he?'
"And I nearly fell out of the chair with surprise. I had heard the word but I didn't know much about it. I was so blown away that he would put a name on what was ailing my brother. I said, 'Doctor, would you treat him? Would you take him on?' And he did. He saw Jock whenever Jock needed it.
"I said to him after a year, 'Why don't you send my brother a bill? You're not invoicing Jock at all.' I've never forgotten his words. He said, 'People with mental illness are the unluckiest people in the world, and Margaret and I don't charge them.'
"And do you know, Steve, I have told that story to so many people and I can tell you that young people rarely believe me. After Dr Gatman died, Margaret took over Jock, and between them, they treated Jock for a good 20 years, and he never paid a cent. Wasn't that wonderful? But one of my great sadnesses is that my parents never thanked him. They never rang him up or wrote to him."
I said, "Jock told me your dad rode him hard."
"Yes," she said. "He spent his whole career with the BNZ. He was born in 1907 and he was so lucky to have a job in the Depression. He had that focus, that a job was the most important thing, ahead of everything else. The poor man. He had a very bad relationship with his mother. I think it crippled him emotionally.
"But my grandmother was honest enough and smart enough to identify the problem. My parents got engaged in 1934, and Mum told me that Nan called her into the bedroom when the engagement was announced, and said, 'You won't have an easy life with Neil. He's been the most difficult of my five boys.'
"She told Mum that she had the most dreadful time giving birth to her first child and that when she discovered she was pregnant with Dad four years later, she was quite sure that this time she would die. So she explained to Mum that she felt she had harmed the baby by her negative feelings. Her fear. She herself was not an affectionate person. I didn't enjoy holidays with her. I did admire her for warning Mum. But it was too late then."
I said, "Was it a kind of fair warning?"
"Yes," she said. "Mum had a bloody difficult life with Dad. Dad harmed all three of his sons. My sister and me didn't matter so much so we didn't get leaned on and Jock was the one he leaned on the hardest.
"Dad used to badger Jock at the dinner table. Jock would put his knife and fork down, and a sick look would come over his face, and he would ask to be excused. And that's when he started losing weight. He got down to 32 kilograms."
I said, "Wasting away like that – was he trying to disappear, do you think?"
"I can't really imagine how it feels," she said. "He went to hospital, things got so bad. Mum said Dad was furious. He raved on about the benefits of fresh air and exercise! You must know from your work, Steve, what an amazing capacity for denial human beings have. It's writ large in my family.
"I could see how miserable Dad was in his old age. He died in 1991. The thing is, Steve, we need personal resources all our lives, but we need them more than ever in our old age, because everything else deserts us, you know. I'm at that stage now. But I'm fine."
I asked, "What about Jock? What are his personal resources?"
She said, "He leans very heavily on his reputation as The Singing Cowboy. It's like a treasure. It's his identity."
***
Every word of the origin story of The Singing Cowboy is true, but it has the force and power of a foundation myth. It liberated Jock Hume, released him. It also achieved something I thought of as a motive behind his alarming weight loss as a teenager – it made Jock Hume, made of flesh and blood, disappear.
After he was sent to hospital as a teenager and put in the psych ward, he made a recovery – he talked in our glasshouse interview about how good the food was at Auckland hospital. He went back to school. That was good. But he was forced to look for work. He found plenty of it. The problem was holding on to it.
"Hospital orderly. Reading power meters. Delivering groceries," said Mary, remembering some of his jobs. "One employer rang Mum up and said he'd never met a young man so apprehensive about making a mistake. I'm crying to think of the hell he went through trying to hold down jobs. He just wasn't equipped for it. When Dad came home for lunch in Herne Bay and found Jock at home, because he'd fled another job, there was hell to pay."
And then: epiphany, liberation. He had always liked music. His brother Ian was given a ukulele when they were kids, but it was Jock who wanted it. His parents got him a Suzuki guitar when he was 12. At 13, he entered a talent quest at Takapuna Grammar and sang the cowboy hit Streets of Laredo. He learned more country and western songs and also discovered Auckland's rich network of country music clubs.
"I seen a sign," he said, and you could tell he was picturing it in his mind, as fresh as when he first saw it. "It was in Newmarket. The Auckland Country Western Club. It looked so good. It stood out so well. So I thought I'd suss it out, I made inquiries and found they met every Monday night. A chap by the name of Rusty Greaves ran it."
He meant the great country music entrepreneur and father of 14, a carpenter and yodeller, a man of tremendous decency, generous with his time and support. He made Jock feel at home. "I went every Monday night. Catch the ferry from Devonport, bus up to Newmarket." He got up and sang, learned yet more country and western songs. But still, the problem of work got at him, made life a struggle, actually a nightmare.
Until he seized on an idea, or the idea seized him – what are the exact mechanics of an epiphany? It happened on a Sunday afternoon in the summer of 1970. His parents had gone for a drive. He sat out on the porch. Beautiful day, the sun sparkling gold on the blue waters of Stanley Bay.
"I've heard this story many times," said Mary, but it was a story she never got sick of hearing.
Jock said in the rest home glasshouse, "It was nice and peaceful. I sat there for a while thinking about things. I was 22, and I'd had a number of jobs but hadn't been able to hold them down. And then I thought: 'I'll be an entertainer. It's something I haven't tried before. I'll give it a go.' And, gosh! That was the start. It's been my lifeline for more than 50 years."
Mary said in her little state house, "And he thought, 'I'll pretend to be a cowboy. A singing cowboy.' And he did. I'll tell you a story.
"He used to play at Georgie Pie, 1987 it was. Best job he ever had. Do you know, Steve, for eight hours' work a week he was earning more than I was earning all week? He was singing two hours a night from Thursday to Sunday for their family hour. But without telling him – I am an interfering sister I suppose – I made an appointment with the guy who hired Jock. I wanted him to be aware of Jock's difficulties and background.
"He was very nice. He said Jock arrived for the audition in his civilian clothes, carrying a bag. This guy told me he thought this wouldn't come to anything. And Jock said straightaway, 'Can I go to get changed?'
"And he did, and came back as The Singing Cowboy, and the man said he was like a different person. He got the job."
I asked her, "What's the difference between Jock and The Singing Cowboy?"
She said, "There isn't one. He is The Singing Cowboy."
I asked, "But what happens when he isn't?"
"He's nothing," she said. "He doesn't exist."
***
He has achieved one of the most remarkable entertainment careers in New Zealand. The Singing Cowboy is also The Travelling Cowboy: just like his induction into country and western music, when he caught the ferry and the bus to the club in Newmarket, he has always gone from town to town on public transport, sometimes hitch-hiking. Mary said he averaged 16 trips every year. If he wasn't playing at a venue, he was busking. It earned him a rare accolade: he was an urban legend who was also a rural legend, always on the move, forever on the road in both islands, singing Folsom Prison Blues and Ring of Fire and Coward of the County and, of course, The Streets of Laredo.
I called three of his peers and they spoke of him with deep respect. "Everybody in New Zealand country music would know who he was, without a doubt," said Tom Haines, 88, who was involved in the Maraetai country music club, and had known Jock since 1985. "He was known all over the place. You'd see him everywhere and he was well-liked wherever he went, very well-liked. He was like a New Zealand character of yesteryear." Tom's wife, Joanie, 87, called out, and it was almost like she was defining a New Zealand character of yesterday: "Jock's a beautiful man who would help anyone."
"He's travelled New Zealand, hasn't he," said Pam Austin, 82, who ran the country music club at Bucklands Beach. "I would say he's been everywhere. We'd go on holidays and lo and behold, there's Jock, busking or playing at a carnival. You'd see him everywhere! And kids just loved him. He was a cowboy. He wore all the gear. He'd sit down with them and they'd fuss over him. He was such good value."
The Singing Cowboy continues to perform, busking in a spot just around the corner from the rest home, on Dominion Rd. His stroke has weakened the volume of his voice and affected his strum, but busking is a practical and deeply enjoyable method of rehab. "We certainly let him go out there," said Claire House manager Glenda Kingsbeer. "But he's very determined. He said to me, 'I want to go to Hamilton and play there.' I had to tell him no, we have to be sufficiently protective. No public transport. Stay close."
I said to her, "But the reason I thought to interview him and write this story is that I saw him busking last weekend at the shops in Te Atatū Peninsula."
Glenda's mouth fell open, and she blinked. She said, "What?"
I said, "Yeah. Te Atatū."
She laughed and laughed. "Oh God," she said. "But that's Jock."
His sister Mary said, "He trusts everyone, and expects to roam the country. He hated lockdown. He said once it was over he'd be going on a cheer up New Zealand tour. That's his mission in life, to cheer up New Zealand. He believes in himself. When he plays for kids, he doesn't pretend to come down to their level; he is at that level. He's one of them, and they sense that."
I said, "He's an innocent."
"Yes," she said. "That's a lovely word."
Country music veteran Estelle Crooks first saw Jock play in 1974. "He always had a very unique guitar strum," she said. Tom Haines had put it another way: "He was his own keeper." They meant that a striking feature of his music was his timing. To listen to The Singing Cowboy was to listen to a man who seemed to play songs wildly out of time and yet did it with total conviction. It was haphazard, not at all correct, but it makes you lean in closer, partly because his music makes you feel in the presence of something unique, partly also to try and figure out where his strum is going and if it will catch up with his singing.
"He had a lot of kudos with country music clubs," Estelle Crooks said. "He was independent, self-sufficient. Always on the bus! He was an unusual person. He probably had lots of problems but he always put on a jovial front. He was just such a nice, kind person."
Mary Hume had placed a photo of Jock on her dining room table. It showed him being presented with the Variety Club Unsung Hero Award in 2005. "Read the words, Steve," she instructed. My interview with Mary was sometimes like being in her classroom. I did as I was told, and read out loud from the award citation, "In recognition of his remarkable zest for life and acknowledging the delight his entertainment has given so many in NZ over so many years."
She gazed at her brother's happy face in the frame, and said, "We had a wonderful night at the top table. We were treated like VIPs. Beautiful dinner, and Jock's smile when he got the award – you will never see him looking happier than that."
That was typical of Mary. She always made everything about her brother. She held him up as a star. Her devotion to him was beautiful to behold. The little state house that backed on to a park, the two little bedrooms on either side of a narrow wallpapered corridor – the ballad of The Singing Cowboy is one of New Zealand's most touching love stories.
***
Mary ran into her younger brother in downtown Auckland at Christmas 1973. She talked about this like another origin story; it marked the start of something. The details were fresh, profound. She said, "Mum and Dad retired in Kerikeri, and they set poor Jock up in a little flat on Albert Rd, Devonport, and expected him to live on his own, which was monumentally wrong. And just seeing him at the bottom of Queen St - he looked shocking. He looked pale. Thin. He looked so sick. My heart snowed me."
What an unusual phrase; she said it again, with real feeling. "My heart snowed me. And so when he rang in February '74 and said, 'Mary, I'm not happy, can I come and stay with you?', I said, 'Yes, of course.'
"It's funny he said stay and not live. So he came to stay, and never left."
They lived together in her council flat in Greys Ave, near the central police station, for 22 years, and then 24 years together in Mt Roskill. All that time she looked after him, took care of him, allowed him to live his amazing fantasy life as The Singing Cowboy. She meant the world to Jock. He told the story about moving in with her, and said, "It was perfect from then on. Perfect. Mary would cook me a nice breakfast, and go to work. She'd get up first. I'd get up and have a cup of tea and biscuits to keep me going, and then have my wash and shave, and eat my breakfast ... I said to her when I moved in, 'I like it here, Mary. I would like to stay here till the end of my days.' And I just about have."
I said, "She's really looked after you."
"Yes," he said. "I'm terribly grateful."
I said, "She's very proud of you."
"Yes," he said, "considering what I've achieved despite all the difficulties."
And she really was; in fact, she spoke about Jock not merely with pride, but awe, too. He meant the world to her, too. "He's taught me a lot. He sees the world so differently."
I said to her, "Jock's story could have been tragic. It's sad, definitely. But really it's a story of triumph."
"Yes," she said. "I like that word. I do like that word. Very good, Steve. When people are so different, and unique, and Dr Gatman's word, unlucky, that's an opportunity for other people to respond well. And many people have with Jock.
"But Mum was embarrassed or ashamed about Jock's mental health. I remember one day there was a job that needed doing around the house, and she said, 'Jock should be able to do that. After all, he is a man.' I didn't know how to cope with that.
"The next time I saw her, I said, 'What you said about Jock was wrong. Jock's a child in an ageing body.'
"Mum didn't answer. She just looked away. It's quite interesting, isn't it? She took it in but she didn't like it and she didn't like me saying it. She never referred to it again."
I asked, "How do you think Jock sees the world?"
"I'll give you a little example," she said. "He's often shocked, stroke, amused me. We were watching the news one night and there was a story about the Steven Wallace killing in Waitara, when he was shot by the police [in 2000]. And do you know what Jock's comment was? 'Waitara has never been good to me.'
"Not Steven Wallace losing his life, not the impact on the public or the police, but when he's gone there to busk, they didn't appreciate him. Don't you think that's funny?"
I said, "He might have been making a comment. Maybe he was saying, 'That's a bad place.'"
"Yes," she said. "Yes, to some extent. 'They never treated me well.' Perhaps."
I said, "He was maybe getting to a truth about Waitara. 'There's something wrong with that town.' And he felt it."
Mary said, "I don't really know how Jock's mind works. It's so different to ours…"
She was very graciously saying I had no idea what I was talking about. The range and dimensions of Jock's mind were a mystery, something to marvel at, but she was on certain ground when it came to his heart. You could walk a long day's march before you found a husband, a wife, a lover, a parent, a child, or a long, close friend who spoke of someone with as much love in her voice as Mary Hume, the shining star in the ballad of The Singing Cowboy. We sat in the living room of her Mt Roskill house on a cold winter's day. She kept a magnifying glass close to the phone, there were photos of cats on the walls. She said of Jock Hume, legend, entertainer, brother, "He's a really good person. I really admire and respect him."
That was the thing about The Singing Cowboy: maybe all his songs, all his stories, were his song, his story. I asked him, "What do you love about country music?"
One of the great troubadours of the New Zealand road said, "It tells a story based on true things that have happened over the years."