Air Force Brat

A Memory of Newmarket.

My father was stationed in Lakenheath, England in 1963. My mother and 2 brothers followed 3 months later - I was 12 at the time. Coming from Texas, November in England was a shock, and it was the coldest winter they'd had in 60 years. We rented a flat in Newmarket, in what had been the Carlton Hotel. We always joked about the layout - it was 99 feet of hallway from the front door the to the master bedroom at the back of the flat. My bedroom was the first you came to, and there was a door on one wall that connected to my brothers' bedroom. At the end of that hall was the living room, off to the right was a room with a toilet, and then another room with a bathtub and sink, then a small kitchen with the smallest fridge we'd ever seen. My mother had to go shopping about every day as there wasn't much room to put things in the fridge. There was a meter box on the stove where we had to put shillings to keep the gas coming. The oven was big enough for a small chicken. At Thanksgiving my mother had gotten a turkey, and the folks downstairs at the bar were kind enough to let her cook it in their oven. Oh, yes, between my brother's room and the bathroom was a doorway that we would open at night when my parent didn't know, and we could hear the music from the bar (we were on the 3rd floor). We could look out the kitchen window and see the back "yard" of a fish and chips place, where they would be hosing the area off while the bucket of chips was nearby. For fun, we would sail Ritz crackers out the window to see if we could land them in the bucket (we couldn't). Before we learned the monetary system, we'd go shopping and hand the clerks a handful of money, asking "Is this enough?" It was a bear walking to the bus stop to go to school. We had a weird driver who several times decided not to come, so we had to scramble for rides, and then once he didn't come to take us home either, so we had to wait until my dad got off work to take us home. Another time, the driver just stopped on the side of the road, left all us kids on the bus, and he went into a place to have his breakfast. When we'd wait at the bus stop, the Alconbury bus would go by, and we'd throw snowballs at it. Our bus would have to stop sometimes to let the racehorses cross the road from one heath to another, and we would watch the horses and riders gallop over the hills. Newmarket was a racehorse town back then. Such fond memories of that time. The scenery in England was gorgeous the people so nice. We were only there for 6 months, as my father then got a transfer to Germany, which he'd been trying for for a long time (my mother was born and raised in Germany). We should have been in England for 3 years, but 6 months was good.

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