Mum

00:04 My name is Mary Pickering. I am 54 years old. Today is Thursday, July 21, 2022, and I'm speaking with Karen Pickering, who is my mother. We are recording this interview in Christchurch, New Zealand. Mum, would you briefly introduce yourself, please?

00:30 Hi, I'm Karen Pickering. I'm 83 years old.

00:34 I always think that you were 30 when I was born, so I always add 30 to my age. So you're only 83, not 84?

00:43 I was nearly 30.

00:45 Nearly 30. Okay, so I'm going to be talking to Mum about being a dental nurse in the New Zealand dental nurse program. So, Mum, would you tell everybody a little bit about the New Zealand dental nurse program?

01:02 Well, the school dental service, as it was known, was begun in New Zealand just over 100 years ago. The state of the children's teeth, I think, in those days was not good. And it was expensive for families to go to a dentist. So some of the dentists, I think, in the health department, I'm not sure, began planning this program and began training young women to become school dental nurses. And they would be stationed throughout the country at little dental clinics which were eventually built often onto the end of the school buildings or in the school grounds.

01:58 Why was it mostly young women?

02:03 I don't know, Mary. It may have appealed to young women as nursing appealed to young women. And in those days, in the 1920s, as when I trained in the 1950s, there were not many career opportunities for young women.

02:32 So tell me about why you wanted to become a dental nurse.

02:38 I'd gone through a number of other possibilities. I was interested in drawing and artwork. It was one of my small gifts. But my father had pointed out what was quite true at the time, that there were very few openings for women in commercial art in New Zealand at the time. And I wasn't dead set on a career in art. My sister had been a school dental nurse. I began to think about it, too, and thought it would be a good thing to do.

03:18 Where did you have to go to train?

03:21 Well, I lived in the lower Hutt Valley and I trained in Wellington, which was a train ride away. It was an especially built dental clinic which held probably about 50 or 60 dental chairs. And the trainee dental nurses worked on the children who were brought in from the surrounding schools.

03:53 So what do you remember? Your first day on training?

03:58 Yes. We were all told to meet in a certain room, went to the school, dental school, and we met in a certain room and we were asked to sit alphabetically and ever after for the next two years, everything we did was Done alphabetically. It was quite a military regimen in a way. And my surname began was C. Clarkson. So I was in the front row. I made some good friends there. I remember meeting a very dear friend there. And the reason she came to say hello was because I was wearing Scripture union badge on my new blazer, of which I was very proud. And she also had a script union badge. So we got together and talked and we were told that first day what to expect, that we would be having lectures so many a day and that we would have duties that we had to perform. The whole two years would be divided into four lots of six months. I think at first we were called juniors. The next six months we were senior juniors. I think the next six months we were intermediates. And the last six months, once we were seniors.

05:40 And what was the big difference? Did you get to treat children in those first six months or did that wait until somewhere else some other time?

05:51 It waited for the second year. The first six months we had lectures about the anatomy of the head, something called histology, which I couldn't tell you what is now first aid. I've forgotten a lot now. One of the other things we did was learning about the shape of the teeth. And we had something called soap carving. We went down to the basement. There was a big room called the soap carving room and it smells of soap. We were each given a large block of sunlight soap with some carving tools and we had to carve the shape of a molar. So we learned an individual tooth. Yes, we learned the shape and the hills and valleys of a particular type of tooth.

06:55 Did that include the root?

06:57 I think so.

06:59 Did you do that with every tooth?

07:02 I can't remember. Sorry.

07:05 Well, that was a way of bringing some creativity.

07:08 Oh, yes.

07:09 Bringing your art into.

07:11 And that was one of the things we had to be adept at using our hands and being able to mould things, do things. And incidentally, everything was done with the right hand. And some of the people in my draft, as draft was called a draft, some of the people were left handed and they had to learn to work with their right hand. And amazingly they did.

07:43 Wow, that has got to be so hard for them. And you have to kind of work upside down too, right?

07:52 Yes, except we all work upside down to a certain extent. Because you stand behind a child with a mirror to work the upper. The upper jaw.

08:02 Did you have lectures on how to deal with children's fears? Because I remember going to the dental nurse and it was scary.

08:18 Yes. We were introduced to children gradually in the Clinic and I think taught as we went, so to speak. In my second year, our group treated a lot of children who actually had cerebral palsy and they were from a particular school. Lovely children with lovely smiles, but their bodies moved quite a lot at the time and it wasn't easy to actually work on them, but patiently you learned to cope with it and they trusted.

09:00 That's lovely. When you graduated, you said it was a two year program.

09:05 Yes.

09:06 When you graduated, were you then sort of an apprentice or did you. Were you a fully fledged dental nurse at that point?

09:17 Yes, yes, we were. And once we graduated, we were given one week to find accommodation and transport to the place where we were sent. There was no choice and often the places we were sent we had never heard of. We stood round in a circle and our names were read out. Nurse Brown, Nurse Catchpole, Nurse Clarkson, Patiya, Nurse Da da da da Da. We all looked at each other and said, where's Patea? Where's Wangomomina? Never heard of them.

09:57 So you went home and got out a map.

10:01 I was very, very fortunate. I was at our youth group and church the next weekend and I told my friends where I was going and one young man said, oh, you want to board with Mrs. MacKinnon? I stayed with her in Ptea and she's absolutely delightful and will always take the dental nurse. I was very, very fortunate. I felt. I felt the Lord was looking after me.

10:28 And where was Patia in relationship to the Lower Hut Valley?

10:35 I couldn't tell you how many K's, but it was about. Probably about two hours ride in a train or rail car and I travelled up there in the rail car, got off at the station, couldn't even see the town. The station and the freezing works, which were very obvious by the odour, were together and the rest of the town was way up on the hill. I didn't know what to do, so I went into the office at the station and asked if I could use the telephone to call a taxi. I was a real city girl come into the country and I'd never seen a telephone like this before. I had to hold it on one ear and wind it up with my other hand. But I got through that, I got the taxi and Mrs. MacKinnon welcomed me lovingly. She was delightful.

11:43 Were you the.

11:44 The next morning I had to start at the school, so I just had to go down and find my way to where the school was and the school dental clinic.

11:53 Were you the only dental nurse there?

11:56 No, there was a charge nurse. We were Never more than two. There's one or two dental nurses in a dental clinic. My charge nurse was very nice. Her name was Jean and she was there for six months and then she moved away and I became charge nurse. Another of our draft came with me and later on I moved back to Lower Hutt and served in several dental clinics in the Hutt Valley. People today even still surprised at some of the things we did, because we treated the children exactly as a dentist would treat them. We did examinations, drilling, filling and inspections.

12:57 So this was 1950.

12:58 I graduated in 1958.

13:01 So in 1958, when you were doing fillings and extractions, was there any anaesthetic for the children?

13:14 No. Oh, well, sorry. Not for drilling and fillings, but for extractions? Yes. We gave an injection into the gingiva at the side of the. Of the tooth. And one thing we were taught was to turn our backs on the patient, get the injection ready so they couldn't see, turn around and hold it behind our back as we approach the child, then let your head back there and put the injection.

13:56 Do you remember your first patient in Patia?

14:02 No, I don't. I don't remember which. There was a number of children, quite a lot of children from even out, like further outlying areas. Quite a lot of little Mori girls and boys. And one or two of them, intriguingly, had names, probably after where their grandfathers fought in the First World War. There was a little boy named Jutland.

14:31 And children came to the clinic during school hours?

14:36 Yes.

14:37 And were all children scheduled on a regular basis?

14:43 No. We went over first thing in the morning to a particular class. We would have a list of the number of children which were due to be seen and when they'd last been seen six months before. And we would ask for a particular child and they would come along. When they were finished, they went back and asked for the next child to go back to the dental clinic. But they all felt like I felt as a child when I had to go to the dental clinic. Oh, dear, I don't want to go to the murder house.

15:20 Do you have any children that you remember, particularly for whatever reason?

15:31 It's too long ago, I think. Mary.

15:36 Do you have any particular favourite or less than favourite memories of being a dental nurse?

15:46 I suppose I have a lot of memories going back to training. We had a lot of duties to begin with that involved nothing more nor less than scrubbing and polishing. We looked after the whole dental clinic in Wellington. In my second year of training, we'd actually moved to a very, very Old house in Wellington itself called the Annex, which incidentally is now Premier House, where the Prime Minister lives at the time was very, very old and full of mice. And one thing I do remember, which was a little bit amusing for me, I was walking past the matron's door and she called, nurse, Nurse. And I went in and she was standing on a chair, literally holding her skirts up, and there was a mouse running around on the floor. Fortunately, I had the presence of mind to grab the waste paper basket, throw it over the mouse and edged him out the door. That's nothing to do with actual training.

17:01 I think that one of the things that I've always appreciated about you, Mum, is how pragmatic you are and how when push comes to shove, you just roll your sleeves up and get done whatever needs to be done. And that's a good example of that. Are there other ways in which your training and your experience as a dental nurse has helped in other aspects of your life, do you think?

17:32 I suppose one or two things. I was naturally liked to be tidy in training. We learned to be very organized and we had to be tidy and clean and hygienic. I suppose through running a vicarage, I also had to be organised. One other thing that I didn't like doing part of the job was to give dental health talks to the children in the classrooms. I didn't like speaking in public. I was fairly shy in those days. I suppose I had to do it sometimes. I avoided the job by getting a film that somebody would run for me on dental hill. And I guess in later years, when I ended up speaking in public at meetings and church and so on, at present stood me in a good stead there.

18:47 I remember when I went to the dental nurse, that I would come away with little creatures made out of cotton wool.

18:59 Yes.

19:01 Was that something that you all practiced, that you learned as part of your lectures, or.

19:09 Yes, somewhere along the right line. We were taught to make what we call buzzy bees out of a cotton roll, which is the thing that's a piece of cotton wool rolled into a firm oblong and you hold it in the child's mouth to keep the tooth dry while you work on it. And we must have had some kind of perspex because we made little wings of the perspex and used dental floss to tie it onto the cotton roll, plus a long tail to hold it with. And we used iodine to make stripes. So there was a little buzzy bee and the children took her home.

19:53 I can imagine that that might not have made up for having fillings without anaesthetic. But the best, the best that you could do to make it, make it fun for the child and not. And not fear the murder house. So how long were you in P tier before you came back to Wellington? And then how long were you in Wellington as a dental nurse?

20:20 I was one year in P tier and two years in the Hutt Valley. And just of interest, the school dental service has changed, changed over the last hundred years and sadly it's not doing now what was done when I was practicing because of certain, I suppose, privacy or politically correct rules or something. In some cases, dental nurses are not allowed to touch the children unless the children give their consent. This is very difficult. If it's known that the child's teeth need treating and if they say no, they don't want to have it done, nothing can be done. Partly because of that, I suppose, the number of dental nurses has reduced. Also the number of dental clinics has changed and I believe now there are mobile dental clinics that go around the schools, I suppose, like a caravan. And obviously some work is done. They do carry on some very good work. But you can't just go and get the children from school. They have to have a scheduled appointment now and the children are asked to take home a note to their mother to bring them along at a certain time. And I guess some children who don't really want to go don't really take the note home to their mothers. I'm not sure how well it's working now.

22:20 A couple of years ago, a few years ago, when I had to have some pretty major work done on my teeth and I saw various specialists and, you know, they always ask me where I'm from and I told them, New Zealand told this one, I think he was an endodontist where I was from and he knew all about the school dental nurse program and he told me that it was famous. And I've since heard that there's a lot of acclaim for the New Zealand school dental nurse program. How do you feel about your part in that?

23:00 I suppose I feel a certain amount of pride at being part of the. Only for a short time being part of that service was a service. One of the things which did happen in the 1950s, soon after the end of World War II, something was set up called the Colombo Plan, named that because it was set up in Colombo, Sri Lanka. And there were about seven countries involved, including New Zealand and Australia, Sri Lanka, I think, Thailand and one or two others. And it was formed with a view to Helping countries who had been suffered during, possibly suffered economically or commercially during the war. And this was set up to help those countries and also almost as a preventive to stop communism coming into these countries. And New Zealand's contribution to this Colombo Plan was to take some young women from some of those countries and train them in New Zealand as school dental nurses. And then the school dental service was set up in those countries. My sister remembers training with some young women from Sri Lanka. And I remember in one of my clinics in the Hutt Valley working with a young woman from Thailand who was going to go back to Thailand as a school dental nurse, although I think she may have gone on and become a full blown dentist. But I don't know how much those dental clinics are still used today and in those countries.

25:09 I didn't know that. So why did you leave the school dental nurse program service? Sorry?

25:18 Well, I was getting married to a man who was about to be ordained as an Anglican clergyman in a different area. And I felt I couldn't give my best, my best efforts, my dedication to what I believe was a calling as well in a ministry like that. While I was working full time, some people have carried on working, but I decided not to and I haven't regretted it. But I look back fondly of the good years I did have when I worked as a school dental service.

26:12 So that was essentially a second career for you. And how long did that last?

26:23 40 years in full time ministry. And we might say it's ongoing because people say we still have almost a telephone ministry or a ministry among our friends or among our church family.

26:37 Once a minister, always a minister, something like that. And did you get any training? You had two years of training to be a dental nurse. Did you get any training to be a partner of a vicar in running a ministry?

26:56 Not as such, but I believed strongly. It was the thing that Christ that I put my faith in was calling me to do. And we learned on the job.

27:12 On the job. So, mum, do you have any questions for me? Is there anything that you've always wanted to know but haven't asked about?

27:25 What?

27:26 Anything. What I do for a job, what I, what I think, what I do, where I live, how I spend my days, what I think.

27:39 How was it for you moving to America after being brought up in New Zealand as a young woman?

27:48 We moved first to California and we found California to be. Everything that you've ever seen on TV is true. And I remember my very first impression of Los Angeles was how hot it was because we arrived at the end of August. And also I was surprised at how green it was coming from New Zealand. I was expecting Los Angeles and Orange county to be just all buildings and freeways, but there are actually lots of trees. But it was hard, you know, the first. The first 18 months, we were pretty homesick. And after a few months, after about a year, year and a half, we realized that all we were doing was complaining. We would just get together with other people who were especially foreigners, but other people from outside California, and we'd complain. And we realized that if we did that, we were going to be there for seven years, and if we did that, we would regret our time there. And we didn't want to regret our time there. So we had an active change of attitude. And we said to ourselves, we need to find something good to say and to think about Irvine and Orange county and Southern California and California and America every day. And so we tried to do that. And then by the time we left seven years after seven years, we really missed California. So. And that was, I think, the first. The first example of what Mark and I have done several times over the last 30 years. And that is sort of sit ourselves down, have a really good hard conversation, and realize that we needed to change something dramatically, whether it's an attitude or our jobs or the way we were conducting ourselves and sort of being very deliberate about making a change that was. Would be better for us. So in the end, it was good.

30:25 That sounds very, very good, Mary. Yes. I'm glad you thought like that.

30:32 I don't like to live without with regrets.

30:36 And we all have regrets, but do you? We can do things about it, have to recognize that, but move on.

30:46 Yes. Learn from it. I think we all. We definitely have that in common. Another thing that I think that we have in common is, and that I have learned from you, is a love of history and stories. I always have known that if I want a fact, like who was born when and where were they born and what did they do and who were their parents and what was the story behind that king or queen, you were the one to go to for that. And even now with this trip and it's been five years since we've seen you, you still have an extraordinary memory for that kind of thing. You do? Yes. Watching, watching that television program the other day, you knew most of the answers. And you do your word puzzles. Your vocabulary is far greater than a minor's.

31:51 It is all that training as a school dental nurse and not going to university.

31:56 Mary, do you wish that you had Gone to university?

32:01 No.

32:01 Even just some courses.

32:03 I had thought. Talking of history, I had thought at one stage that after having brought up my family, if I had the time, I would like to do a course in history at university. And when we came to Christchurch in 1958 and left two of the children, including you and Blenheim, and the other was way I looked for a course in history at the university and there was nothing available. So that's why I took another art course and started again to draw and paint. But I've still kept a love of history. And as I was saying to Mark earlier, you learn an awful lot of history through novels.

33:00 Yes. Yes. While you may not have taken any university courses in history, but you brought up a daughter who got a history degree and that's nice. I love it. I love. I love history. And I might not. I definitely don't read as much as you do, but I listen to podcasts and I listen to people and my favorite ones are all about history. Good. So I have you to thank for that, I think. Well, thank you very much. Are there any other outstanding questions or things that you've always wanted to tell me? I know putting you on the spot.

33:48 Not very articulate, but I can't think of anything in particular, but perhaps to say this has nothing to do with my career or anything, but you're having moved to America has given us the chance to learn more about another country through visiting you. Even though I've always had family in America and had correspondence with them since I was a small child, I've learned so much more through your telling us about the States and our visiting three times. So that's been something positive.

34:43 That is positive. That is good, because I think that America is a country that is vast. It's 50 different countries put together. And that's something that's very difficult, I think, for a lot of New Zealanders to understand, coming from such a small place that's so autonomous. And it's good that to have people better understand it and the places and, you know, the reasons why we love it.

35:15 And I will understand that. Yes.

35:17 Good. All right. Thank you, Mum. I really appreciate it.

35:23 It's my pleasure.