I was surprised recently by how many pairs of different sorts of footwear I have. All manner of boots, shoes and sandals. I even have a pair of ski boots stored away in the basement in readiness for winter blizzard conditions.

Life wasn’t always like this. Prior to rising to rugby grade 8, at which stage in one’s career one was allowed to wear boots, my footwear collection comprised a pair of roman sandals (summer school uniform), a pair of black lace-ups (winter school uniform and for “best”) and a pair of green-band gumboots for farm work and garden chores. These were replaced either as one grew too big for them or, in the case of gumboots, when they wore out. Working on a dairy farm meant lots of hours spent on wet concrete, the natural enemies of rubber gummies. Two pairs a year were usually consumed.

Growing out of things wasn’t confined to shoes. This was probably why we didn’t have a vast array of clothes either.

Clothing choices were based on intended location, with standards that were strictly supervised by Mum. Helping around home and the farm meant that work clothes were required. Venturing outside the front gateway usually involved either going to school, where a school uniform was required, or into town where “best” was the officially approved garb. The only exception for farm clothes being worn outside the front gate was when one was helping out at the neighbours, or accompanying Dad into the local stock and station agent. Going to town in one’s farm clothes came with a real rebellious rush.

Mum was always immaculately attired whenever she ventured off the ranch, and so had to be everybody else who accompanied her.

Mum has many claims to fame. One of these included a heavy traffic license.

When she and Dad first met, she was a telephonist for the Post Office and Dad was a dairy farmer. Mum didn’t have a driver license and Dad’s only form of transportation, other than a Little Grey Ferguson tractor, was a truck. He taught Mum to drive. In doing so he broke that long-standing, unwritten tradition about not teaching one’s partner to drive or to play a sport. He survived and Mum could expertly drive a truck before she ever drove a car.

Farm fertiliser was delivered by the truck load. Several tonnes of it in one hit. The local transport company would arrive early in the morning with a truckload and leave the truck for the day while Dad furiously spread the stuff. The deal was that the unloaded truck should be returned to the local depot before five o’clock in the afternoon.

One time Dad ran out of day and the evening milking had to take precedence over him returning the empty truck. No worries. He had a wife with an HT licence and son with a car licence. Mum could drive the truck into town and I could collect her and drive her home.

So off I went, arriving in the trucking company’s yard where I parked and waited for Mum’s arrival. It was nearly going-home-time at the depot and the smoko room was full of big, burly truckies waiting for the clock to strike five o’clock.

I will always remember the looks on their faces as the truck rolled into the yard, stopped and a small, demure woman wearing a twin-set, pearls, tweed skirt and sensible shoes dismounted from the driver’s door, brushed herself down before handing the keys in at the office. What were they expecting? Mum always got dressed up when she was going to town.

Once upon a time I had a white laboratory coat. I wore it in laboratories, as one does when one is required to study in these facilities at a university. The purpose of such apparel is as personal protective equipment in the same way as a fluoro vest is. Totally useless, apart from making the wearer feel safer and recognisable as an approved person in a restricted space. I became quite fond of Whitey.

If I had invested as much time in learning about the mysteries of chemistry as I had in embellishing my lab coat I may have earned myself a Nobel Prize by now. Whitey and I spent many memorable hours together.

Chemistry and I really didn’t connect that well. Which is unfortunate when one is an agricultural science student and required to have a sound knowledge of the inner workings of living things. But that is another story which, for the purposes of this one can be summarised as “C+”.

Whitey was a legend. The corners of his pockets had been eroded by acid burns. He was festooned with a spectrum of colourful reagent stains. The piece de resistance was a tyre mark from a Firestone Cavallino Sport 200 radial that ran the length of his back. In tar. He was just gorgeous.

At the end of my second summer, when I returned home for vacation time, Whitey came too.

Mothers are multi-talented people who are often up for a challenge, particularly when their children are involved. When it comes to hygiene, mine definitely is. It is a gene she inherited from her mother, from whom I learned the Dark Arts of polishing brass, silver and linoleum, as well as the inner nooks and crannies of a Shacklock coal range.

This particular summer my Mum met Whitey. Indeed they bonded strongly. I didn’t know this had happened until my first laboratory session of the New Year. I was stunned. Whitey had been transformed. His sins had been washed away. He was unrecognisable. Not a mark blemished his whiteness. All holes had been repaired. I felt betrayed.

Mum must have spent hours on this task. Litres of cleaning products and many Newton-metres of Elbow Grease™ must have been expended. Procter and Gamble’s development team could have observed a master class of their products in action.

Maybe it was this transition that impressed chemistry department staff more than my academic efforts. I never asked and will never know.