Personal Memories Of A Child

A Memory of Longriggend.

I was born in 1942 and by the time I was five years old I has a brother and two sisters. My mum and dad used to send me up to Longriggend for weekends and holidays, probably because my mum was so busy with the other three and anyway I loved going to Longriggend to the house where my father was born. My grangmother lived at No 90 Main Street (the house is still there) and I spent many long happy holidays in that house. I particularly remember the hard winter of 1947 when I was up at my grandmother's for a weekend and got snowed in. I don't know how long I was there but the bulldozers came every night to clear the roads. I remember my Great-Uncle John telling me that the snow was up to the height of the telegraph poles all the way down telegraph road that led to Eastfield and Caldercruix. He was my dad's uncle and was the only person I knew who owned a car. It was long, black and had running boards at the side and when you went inside it there was a fantastic smell of leather and all kinds of mysterious things. No car I have been in since has ever smelled anything like this. My dad's brother John (my Uncle John) worked for Calder and Watson who had a general store 50 yards along the road from my grandmother's house, he drove the butchers van and delivered orders to the outlying houses and farms. He used to take me with him sometimes and I remember him having a great big shovel which he used to dig the van out of snow drifts. The summers were very different. My grandparents owned a fairly large piece of land around the house and had hens and pigeons (they also had horses at one time but I don't ever remember that). I remember crawling in to the hen houses with my Uncle Charles when he went to collect the eggs, the smell was terrible but it was exciting when he allowed me to put my hand into the hen's nest and feel around for an egg. If I got one he made a mark on it and he always made sure I got to eat it. But they must have allowed a lot of the eggs to hatch because I remember seeing a square chicken run that had as far as I could see hundreds of fluffy yellow chicks about the size of a budgie. The house itself had only two rooms, the kitchen as they called it was the main room in the house, it was where the cooking, eating and sleeping was done. My grandmother cooked on the open fire, there were two 'rings' at the side of the fire on which she placed pots to bring to the boil, and these rings were swivelled to go on top of the flames. There was also an oven at the side which I presume was heated by the fire as well. There was a large toasting fork that hung from a hook at the side of the fire and I remember countless times watching my aunts and uncles cut a slice of bread from the loaf on the table, 'stab' it with the fork and hold the bread to the fire to toast. I can tell you it tasted great. The other room was where the piano was. My Aunt Mary played the piano and I used to sit underneath the keyboard and watch the keys she was playing moving up and down. But the greatest surprise was in the main room - there were two curtained alcoves which contained set-in-beds. My bed was wonderfully soft and it was like sleepng on feathers. When I was in bed with the curtains drawn, I could hear the quiet murmer of the adults talking softly as I drifted off to sleep. Waking in that bed some mornings there was a wonderful smell of stew with onions in it and I could hear the bell of the church at the top of Telegraph Road ringing out - it was all very peaceful and a wonderful place to be a child.

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