As It Was

A Memory of Walsall.

I left Walsall at the age of fifteen, at the time of the date of this picture. I loved the trolley buses and watching the trolley conductor change the rails. I remember the Bridge well, as shown in this picture. It was my task on a Saturday to collect and return my younger nephew every Saturday morning from my older sister, taking him home to Mom for the day so my sister could work in one of the shops on the Bridge. On my return I sometimes waited outside the pictures in Walsall town centre, asking adults if they would take me in with them to see an A grade picture (I would not reccomend that now!).

It was a penny in those days from the Fulbrook where I lived in Brockhurst Street to the Bridge, and half a penny to either Palfrey of Caldmore. The school I attended was Joseph Leckie and Walsall Technical College, before the family moved to Bearwood, Smethwick.

I have plenty of good memories of Walsall, including watching Walsall Football Club slide up and down the divisions - I note they still do that today; going round to my grandparents' (name of Troke) home by the Cambridge Pub off Caldmore on a Saturday. All the family (thirteen sons and daughters with partners - those that returned from the war) turned up then, then turned out of the Cambridge at 10.00pm to sing and play the spoons and dustbin lid in my grandparents' home until midnight. For a youngster it was good fun, drinking Vimto and eating pork scratchins. Times have changed?

My other grandparents (name of King) lived on West Bromwich Road by the Whitehall School, my primary. Ah ... memories.