Garvie Clan

A Memory of Caldercruix.

as the oldest member of the garvie clan .I thought I would leave my memories of the family on the Internet so that our grandchildren could always look back and see where our past started. the family consisted of Mary ,Theresa,Charles Helen and Lawrence .They started of in lonriggend before moving to cruix.my mum Mary married John Sloan from clarkston he worked in the signal box in airdrie train station .My earliest memory was going on the bus down to airdrie down to the station and when my finished work we would get a lift up to cruiix station and the driver would stop the train and we would get off .there was no passenger trains at this time as the station was closed .My mum Mary worked in the family chip shop at that time this is the betting shop we lived above the shop The Main Street at that time was a busy shopping street You had a butchers and a co-op store a shoe repair Mcgills grocery shop Mgills sweet shop Mcgills wool shop a newsagents ,barbers shop and a pub.Across the road the railway tavern ,library ,cal lenders hardware shop ,post office and also the 4shops up the top .we also had provan ,and Liddell butcher vans ,neelys grocer van coop van.The paper mill with its huge chimney which could be seen for miles was the focal point for work sadly it closed in 1968.It had a hall called the institute with a dinner hall and a snooker room it still here as 4flats at the roundabout.Just beside where the bowling green is now and the road into cruiix was the print field textile works it closed in 1950 but the shells of the buildings and the dye ponds were left we played down there The rIzzer was were we went swimming the summer .Sadly we lost one of our school friends who drowned up there.We had the rag men coming round they would shout toys fo rags money for rags and we would run out with old clothes. when I was 10 I had 3part time jobs delivering papers collecting dross (small coal)from miners coal sheds and we used it in our fire And in 1960 my uncle Lawrence bought his first ice-cream van and I worked a couple of nights .he ended up with3vans. my mum sold the chip shop in 1960 and we moved up to Dunbreck Ave across from the shops next door was my aunt Theresa garvie/gollogly.In 1972i started to work for my uncle full-time it lasted 2years then he bought the pub in plains on the Main Street.Igot my own ice-cream van in the village and I am still doing it 40 years later.There have been many changes in the village we had an old folks club in the Main Street now knocked down ,a huge swing park where the gardens are now The trains are back using the old station. a special mention must go to some people who helped the village Mr Stevens the chemist.DrArthur who came to your if you were sick,cecelia clannachan who done great work for the church and various committees .Behind cruiix was huge peat fields stretching to lonriggend the shape of the tracks down to the plains are still there the peat was dug out and left huge ditches which we used for ""hide and seek"I hope this gives an insight to what it was like growing up in the50"Looking back they were the best years of our lives though we didn't have much.