Schooldays In Dearne

A Memory of Bolton Upon Dearne.

It's incredible how one can recall memories from a remarkably long time ago. In fact, I still remember that on my fourth birthday, I received two identical birthday cards from different people. I can even remember the picture on those cards—a picture of a little pink pig eating his birthday cake.

This proves wrong; some research says that every time you remember something, a small part of that memory differs from the last time; therefore, the entire memory differs over time.

I believe that our lives and our deeds should continue to be remembered by our children and grandchildren. So! here we go.

Your memories of where you grew up will always remain special wherever you go. I have many quiet vivid memories of my growing years. My only fault is that I cannot put them in exact chronological order. What follows are some of those memories.


TO SCHOOL AND BACK.
It’s the 1950s; I’m about ten years old and walking to school with some of my pals; it’s only a couple of miles, but halfway is a little shop. It belongs to Graham's gran’, and she has a bakery out the back where, as well as the usual bread, she bakes some tiny loaves, which she sells for a halfpenny. You couldn’t go past without going in for one of these haypenee treats, maybe a gobstopper or a farthings worth of kaylay(sherbet).

For those unfamiliar with older currency, the pound is worth two dollars, but it was also worth four crowns, 20 shillings, 240 pennies, 480 halfpennies, 960 farthings, or 1920 groats. So, a dollar would buy 240 small loaves.

After school, you would never be in a hurry to get home; there were far too many adventures to be had. As for myself, I would often make a detour via an old disused railway line and have some fun on a rickety old footbridge, after which a few of us used to compete to see who could get the farthest by a short run followed by a leap down the embankment, It appears miraculous that we never broke any limbs. We would eventually arrive home hungry and ready for a meal. After that, it was time to polish our shoes and press our clothes in preparation for another day at school.

THE DAY I WAS A PIRATE CAPTAIN.
It is said that when a person is drowning, their whole life passes before their eyes. With the voice of experience, I can genuinely say, "It certainly does." It was one Sunday, and I was about nine or ten years old. I was supposed to go to Sunday school, but instead, I decided to go with some friends to the local ponds; we had a game of pirates, and I was the captain. Our ship was a pair of concrete-encased pipes that ran across a narrow part of the ponds. There was a time when I gave an order, and of course, a dutiful crew member exclaimed, "Aye aye, Cap'n," and playfully smacked my back, resulting in my unexpected dip in the water. To this day, I vividly remember the next few moments. Fortunately, the boy who pushed me in was a big lad with sufficient strength to pull me back out. Of course, I was too scared to go home. So! I went to my aunt's house, which happens to be located nearby. Quite sensibly, she called the doctor to check that I was alright; although, to my horror, she also got my mum. Much to my relief, Mam wasn't angry; she was just thankful that I was still alive. The doctor, however, had a different take on the situation; after a brief examination, he said, "He's fine; he just needs a good hiding." Thankfully, I was more pitied than punished. Mind you, I learned to swim soon afterwards.

SHOPPING
I bet you can’t remember the time before we had supermarkets; I can! In some ways, it was easier because there weren’t so many choices. Firstly, you would go to the grocery shop, where you might buy 6 oz (ounces) of bacon, which was cut with a hand-operated slicing machine and, after weighing, would be wrapped in paper, after which you would probably ask the shopkeeper for a few ounces of sugar and a couple of ounces of tea, which would be put in paper bags. Whatever you bought would be written on paper (probably the corner of your bacon wrapper), and the cost would be totalled and written in the shop's ledger, along with the fact that you had paid - or put it on the slate - to be paid on payday. Afterwards, you might want some vegetables, so you would need to visit the green-grocer. Then, if you still have any money left, it would be the butcher's shop. Of course, all of this used to take some time, so many shops would have chairs where the customers would sit down and chat while waiting their turn to be served. Apart from your shopping, keeping a few shilling pieces in reserve was necessary to put a “Bob in the meter” when needed; gas and electricity were provided via coin-fed meters, so! If you didn’t have any coins handy, you would be without gas or electricity.

LIGHTING CHANGES.
Thinking about gas and electricity reminds me of when both domestic and street lighting were changed from gas to electric. Grandma’s house used to have gas lighting in each room, which consisted of silk gas mantles inside a glass bowl on fold-out arms, mounted on a suitable wall. The street lighting was a more substantial version, but it did not have fold-out arms and was mounted around ten feet above ground. We used to watch the lamplighter come around every evening. He had an open flame on a long pole that also had a hook, with which he would turn on the gas and light it. In the late 1940s or early 1950s, both the domestic and the street lighting were upgraded to the far superior electric lighting.

DOMESTIC CHANGES.
During this period, households made some significant technological leaps forward. Laundry day was, for most people, backbreaking work, that was until washing machines replaced the things that most people of later generations have never even heard of; poshers, peggy legs, and rubbing boards.All of which were used on washing day. A posher was a device that looked like an upside-down colander with large holes and was attached to a long pole. It was used by simply pushing it down and upwards on top of your laundry, thereby agitating it all. The peggy leg was like a three-legged stool with a “T” handle on the top; it was used by putting the legs into the wash tub and twirling it to and fro’. As for the rubbing board, it consisted of a corrugated panel set in a wooden frame and was used for rubbing heavily stained clothes with soap. You would probably have needed lots of hot water (no cold wash powder). Granda used to have a copper tub built into the corner of the scullery. It had a fire underneath; Grandma would put the washing in the copper and stir it with a long wooden pole before putting it through the mangle, which I used to enjoy winding, possibly because it was an arduous task that used to test my strength.

Most of these things, such as vacuum cleaners and particularly refrigerators, made life much easier, and we wouldn’t want to return to the old ways. One thing that I would like to see returned, though, is the old Yorkshire range. More than just a fireplace to provide heat, the range was a cooking oven, a grill, a source of hot water, and much more. It was an ‘open range’ with a firebox that could roast meat, usually hung in front; it was also used to heat water in the adjoining boiler, which had a brass tap on the front. A flue circled the oven on the other side on its way up to the chimney. The metal plate on top was hottest over the oven, thus used to boil vegetables; the further away you got, the cooler it was, so! plated food could be kept warm on the top grid. I also remember bath time. Grandma had a tin bath that used to hang on the wall outside. On bath days, she would get it down, place it in front of the fire, and fill it with hot water from the range - tempered with some cold water so that it wasn't too hot. We then would bathe, one by one, right there, in front of the open fire.

All this seems so long ago now, and I guess that it is; yet it is all so fresh in my mind.