A ghostly arrow, painted in the 1970s and recently uncovered, still points the way to TIDD BROS EXHAUST SERVICE NOW AT 90 HUDSONS RD, SPOTSWOOD. Except, of course, Tidd Bros isn’t there anymore. Hasn’t been for years.
The Tidd Brothers were exhaust men. Muffler men. Noisy men in a noisy trade. They were the type of men who could hear a rattle in your tailpipe and diagnose your whole life story from it. “Sounds like a ‘79 Kingswood that’s been driven hard and put away wet,” they’d say, wiping grease on their overalls.
Melbourne’s west was different then—grittier, oil-stained, a place for people who built things and made things and swore violently when they dropped a spanner.
Fred Tidd was born in 1928, back when cars had fenders like bathtubs and Australia hadn’t quite figured itself out. He spent a lifetime breathing in leaded petrol fumes and the deep satisfaction of a job well done. He married Edna Margaret May Scott. They built a life and a small kingdom of pipes and gaskets in Melbourne’s west.
The shop lasted at 90 Hudsons Road until about 2010. A good run. The arrow, though? The arrow stayed put, pointing to a reality that no longer exists.
Then Fred died. Then Edna. Same year. A couple of months apart, like the universe knew they wouldn’t work without each other. When you spend a lifetime together, fixing things, holding things together with your own two hands, it’s hard to keep going when the other half of the machine is gone. They’re buried in Shepparton now.
And in the end, all that’s left is the arrow. A signpost for a place that isn’t there. A muffler shop lost to time.
But that’s the thing about ghost signs. They cling to brick walls, peeling and stubborn, lingering in the cracks. They’re not for the people who are still here. They’re for the ones who were.
