Memories Of Wooburn From America

A Memory of Wooburn Green.

My mother, Vera Brown, was born in Wooburn Green and lived at 135 Boundary Road until she came to America to marry my father after WWII. (My father was based in High Wycombe during the war.) As my gran and aunts never left the Wooburn area, my sisters and I spent many wonderful summers there. In 1965 (age eight) I remember passing every glorious daylight hour on The Golf with the wonderful friends we'd met from the village. Margaret and Mary Egan were the closest to my age, and we had a clubhouse in the overgrown shrubbery along the railroad line that ended at Loudwater. We would run to the clubhouse when a train was coming so we could feel the power of it as it passed, the rush of air whipping the leaves around us as we watched car after car chase each other down the track. Sometimes, as a deterent, the conductor of the trains would spray hot water at us as a warning to be careful.

I remember, too, while passing time on The Golf, some of the older guys, who were there because of my very pretty sixteen-year old sister, taught my younger sister (age five) and I how to play a game I believe was called Splits. The idea of the game was for your opponent to toss a switch-blade into the grass, and if it landed standing you had to put your foot there. The first person to lose his balance lost the game. Thinking about these games now they seem dangerous, they weren't though, because young as we were, back then we were pretty responsible, too.

Other than Splits we used to catch butterflies on The Golf, and sometimes look for lost golfballs to sell to golfers for a few pennies. Those pennies were like treasures because as soon as we got them in the palms of our sweaty hands we'd run right over to The Barley Mow. We'd hurry around the side to the back and ring the belll on the door to let the proprietor know someone wanted to buy candy. I loved Smarties (I used to lick the red ones and rub them over my lips like they were lipstick), Flakes and the strange potato chips you actually bought with little bags of salt in them that you had to add to the chips yourself.

All of these are wonderful memories, childhood memories that grow more special with age. Lovely as they are, though, in 1974 I spent another summer in Wooburn Green and fell in love for the first time -- and that, my friends, is a story for another day.


Added 19 October 2012

#238592

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Dear Mjcassell51,

Received word that you commented on my memories of Wooburn Green, but nothing came through. Would love to hear what you have to say so please send your comments again. Thanks.

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