THE TALES OF THE LION QUEST

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[Peugeot 404]  The One That Got Away

By John Pascoe - Rotorua

Anthropologists tell us that smells are the things we humans remember most vividly. I can't remember everything about growing up in Whakatane but I remember many of the smells. The mustiness of vinyl seats on a hot day brings back memories of summer afternoons traveling in the car. The tang of salt-spray reminds me of winter storms at Ohope beach. But the smell of dead fish brings to mind one particular tale which is etched deep in our family history.

My father was a vacuum cleaner salesman and traveled many hundreds of kilometers each year in the course of his work. Affectionately known by some of his regular customers as "Mr. Hoover", Dad was regularly to be seen in and around the small forestry villages of the eastern Bay of Plenty. Due to these high mileages, the family car was replaced about once a year. Over the years we owned a string of Peugeot 404's and 504's, Dad valued their comfort and reliability.

In 1973 we were living in a bach at Ohope Beach while our house was being built in Whakatane. It was Saturday, the August school holidays were almost over and Mark (my brother) -and I were dying to get down to the wharf at Ohlwa Harbor. Fishing is a favorite pastime in our family. Dad had gone into town with his work-mate Robbie. They were going to stop off at "the club" so wouldn't be home until dark. The family car sat in the driveway beckoning us. At the time this was a light green Peugeot 404. After several polite though persistent requests, Mum agreed to drive us down to the wharf.

By one o'clock we had our lines in the water. The fish weren't biting but it was good just being there on that brilliantly fine winter afternoon. There a few other people there so Mark and I spent most of our time swapping yarns with the other kids about how many kawhai we had caught last summer and highlighting our stories here and there with sightings of giant kingfish.

Susan, our sister, had come along as well but didn't enjoy the social aspects of the wharf experience. After two hours and no fish, she wanted to go home. Mum agreed it was time to leave. Despite retrieving our lines as slowly as possible, we didn't catch anything before our bait broke the water's surface.

In those days the green-lipped mussel beds had begun to develop in the channels of the harbor. Taking advantage of this food source, a population of octopi had also established itself in the area.

As we walked back to the Peugeot, Mum noticed something moving in the shallow water under the wharf.
"Hey, look at that!" Mum called, pointing to a dark object beneath the surface.

"What is it?"

I squinted into the water trying to see through the glare. There, basking in the late afternoon sunlight was a small octopus. Mark and I looked at each other, thinking the same thing...'Bait!" We raced off the wharf, down the bank and then stalked slowly up to the water's edge. As I waded into the water and moved closer to the octopus, it reared up and then started coming towards me. I retreated slowly until the water was only knee deep. Grabbing it, I quickly tossed the animal up onto the beach, narrowly missing Mark who had been watching from what he thought was a safe distance.

Together, we manipulated it into the bait bucket with a couple of sticks. It had now changed to an orange color and we weren't willing to risk having those tentacles attach themselves to our hands or bare feet. Putting the bucket in the car boot, we made the five minute drive home. I couldn't wait to show our catch to the neighbors.

As soon as we arrived I flung the boot-lid open to find... an empty bucket. Convinced that it must be in there somewhere, we removed everything including the spare wheel. There was no trace of the octopus.

When Dad got home he decided it must have crawled out through the drain hole under the spare tire. We skeptically agreed on the basis of what we had learnt about octopi on The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau a few weeks before, how they can manipulate themselves through very small gaps.

On the following Tuesday, Dad went to Hamilton for a sales meeting. When he returned to his car that afternoon he couldn't help noticing the distinctive smell of dead fish inside. It didn't take him long to realize that the smell and the missing octopus were related. The smell became so intolerable that he drove the whole way home with all the windows down. Once home, a careful examination of the roof lining revealed a small brown trickle coming from a seam above the left hand door pillar. Between the two of them, Dad and his mate Robbie prised off the trim, which held the edges of the lining. As soon as they had done this and quite unexpectedly, a brown foul smelling blob of what had once been an octopus slid out, ricocheted off the rear seat and landed on the ground with a plop. Feeling slightly nauseous after cleaning up the residue, both men declined dinner that night. The silver lining in this story was that Mum got sole use of the car for the next two weeks. Dad just couldn't handle that smell. He and Robbie worked from Robbie's Morris 1300 instead.

Not surprisingly, we bought a replacement car shortly after-wards. We had to drive over to Te Kuiti to pick it up. Predictably, Mum got to drive the Peugeot back to Whakatane where a local car dealer had agreed to buy it for cash. Susan accompanied Mum and they decided to take the back road home via Benneydale. The middle section of the road was metal in those days. Unfortunately Mum lost control of the car near Pureora, rolling it and destroying a section of farmers boundary fencing, including a strainer post, at the same time.

Mum credited their lack of serious injuries to the strength of the 404's construction and said that if she had to be in an accident she was glad she was in a Peugeot. Our insurance company decided the car was worth repairing, much to Dad's disappointment. Needless to say, the sale to the dealer in Whakatane was off.

Finally, some months later, the deodorized, panel-beaten and re-painted car was sold privately. But even now after all those years, the smell of dead fish stirs up visions of a light green Peugeot 404 and a very fishy story.

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