Happy Days

A Memory of Skares.

To me there is nowhere like Skares was, and anyone who came from there will say the same.  Everybody knew everybody else and they were always ready to help anyone that needed it.  You could go out and leave your door open without worrying about anything being pinched.  In the summer we used to all go on a picnic doon the blackwater when it was nice, and we'd go for walks roon the pluck. My mother sometimes took us up to the Covenanters monument up the Knockdunder hills. She used to take us picking rasberries to make jam in the summer, and when the brambles were ready she'd take us to pick them and scribes to make jelly.  It was guid.  We used to take our mother's clothes pole and loup the burn.  At Halloween we'd go roon knocking on doors and we'd sing or say a poem and get sweeties, nuts and fruit. We were always made welcome.  At Hogmanay some folk would go first fittin'.  My granny (Meg Stevenson) used to have big steak pies in to feed us and anybody else that came in.  I remember my granta coming hame frae the pub with auld Bally Shirkie.  Bally used to take me through to the fire in the bedroom and teach me auld Irish songs.  I don't think he could go hame till he sobered up a bit. It was a great wee place. We had no gas or electricity and the women all had their own day for using the wash hoose.  When we had a bath it was usually in a zinc bath in front of the fire with water het up in the wash hoose boiler.  It was hard work for the women folk having no electricity and having to cook on a coal fire, but they managed weel. We had the co-operative shop with Danny Hall managing it.  Ned Rutherford had the fish and chip shop.  Jean usually worked in it.  There was the mission hall where we went to Sunday School, and the Memorial hall where most folk held their wedding receptions, and sometimes we had concerts there.  We even had oor ain fitba team the 'Skares Bluebell'. We had oor ain piper as weel.  Jim Stewart used to go up the auld bing near Martin Pringles farm (Hindsward) and walk back and forward playing the bagpipes. He was good, but when you're a wean you don't appreciate it.  It's an awfa noise tae ye. I appreciate the pipes now though.  When I hear them in Sheffield, the hair on the back of my neck really does stand up.  It certainly was a great wee place and I could go on and on aboot it, but it would take too long.  I've lived in Sheffield now for nearly 46 years, and it's no a bad place to stay, but there'll never be anywhere like Skares and the Skares folk to me.  Rita Mitchell (nee Morris)