An American Boy In Stockton Heath England

A Memory of Stockton Heath.

I was a 13 year old boy from Wilmington, North Carolina, USA. My father was a Sergeant in the US Air Force, assigned to Burtonwood RAF Station. We rented a flat at 35 London Rd, Stockton Heath. It was over Mr. Alfred Ward's Butcher Shop. His wife operated the Sweet Shop on the opposite side of the road. Their son was named Terrance.

London Road was lined with small shops; several butchers, bakery, candy shops, the post office, a shoe shop and others. This was a big change for an American boy. I enjoyed following my mother when she shopped at the different shops.
I would watch Mr. Ward in his shop serving customers just the right amount of meat or eggs, to serve their family for one day. I would also watch him in his kitchen, where he prepared boiled hams, hoghead cheese, blood pudding, and spotted dick, just to name a few of the things I had never heard of.  I remember that his boiled ham was as good as I have ever eaten.

There were not many refrigerators in England at that time. There was a stone slab in the kitchen to keep milk, eggs, cheese and meat cool, for the day, so that is why all of the villagers shopped everyday. My father bought a refrigerator from another American, who was returning home, but it was 110 volts and we had to plug it into a transformer to step down the voltage from 208 volts. While we lived there Mr. Ward removed his old walk-in ice box, that was insulated with sawdust and installed the first electric walk-in refrigerator in the village.  

Our kitchen and dinning room were downstairs, with the bedrooms and living room upstairs. The living room windows overlooked London Road. I could sit there on a cold, rainy day and watch the people going from shop to shop. There were fireplaces in the bedrooms, the living room and the dining room. The fireplace in the dining room had water pipes coiled around it to heat our hot water, so there had to be a fire in that fireplace summer and winter.

My younger sister and I attended the American school at Burtonwood. There was a bus that picked up about 6 American children at the village square. We had to catch this bus about 6:30 am and we didn't get home until about 5:30 pm. We had to make a big adjustment that first winter, some days there might have been daylight for a few hours, and others the fog (smog) was so thick the sun never shone through.

That first Christmas our tree was in the living room, so you could see it from the street. It was decorated with multi-colored lights and there were electric candles in the windows. My mother said she wanted the whole village to know where the Americans lived. My sister and I received English 3 speed bicycles for Christmas.
If the weather was good on Saturdays, we would ride in the surrounding countryside.

I was large for my age, about 10 stones (140 pounds) and 5 feet 9 inches tall, so my mother would let me ride the bus to Warrington and on to Burtonwood, to visit school friends that lived on Burtonwood RAF Station, in base housing. Some days I would take my sister along. The bus from Stockton Heath to Warrington cost 3 pence for me and 1 1/2 pence for my sister, and 7 pence and 3 pence form Warrington to Burtonwood. I rode my bike a few times during the summer.

I arrived in England about the middle of November 1956, and returned to the US on July 4, 1959. I was there while I was 13, 14, 15 and turned 16 the week before returning to the US. These were some of the best years of my life. I was able to see London, Liverpool, Manchester, Blackpool, real English castles, and Sherwood Forest. I was also able to tour parts of Europe. What else could a boy want to see.     

I was grown and had my own family before I realized what a blessing I had received. How many children have had the life I had, seen the things I have seen, or got to meet the people I was able to meet.

In recent years I have wondered what ever happened to Terrance Ward. Both of my parents have passed away and I assume Mr. and Mrs. Ward have also died.   

I have been back to places where I had lived as a child and they were not the same. I know that Stockton Heath is not the little village it was 50 years ago, but in my mind it will never change. I can stand at the rail along the Manchester Canal and watch ships from all over the world go by. I can see the candy in the sweet shops. I can see the creme puffs in the bakery shops. I can see the English workmen with their little tea pots, taking a break from work, or sitting along the small canals fishing. I can see the big red double decker bus as it goes by slowly, and I am hoping on the rear platform, the ticket lady said "ello love, that'al be thre-pence".

Memories are what makes life worth living.