Re: Looking for your story
Ron Norris (carouse@ATT.NET)
Fri, 20 Feb 1998 20:01:11 +0400
When I was six years old the second world war started. With it came
rationing, queues and evacuees. Evacuees were kids from London who
were taken from their families and sent to safer towns and into the
countryside, away from the German air-raids and bombs. One summeršs
day all the mothers on the street were standing outside their front
doors. From the Iffley road* end of the street came hundreds of kids
from London. Brothers and sisters hand-in-hand, gas masks in
card-board boxes hung on strings over their shoulders. Streams of
frightened five to fifteen-year old kids. Our mum said to the
volunteer who was herding them along ŗIšll take those two,˛ and so we
had two more kids in the house. They were called Peggy and Leonard
Lamb. All I remember about them is that they cried every night.
We had some great times during the war, even though it seemed we were
always hungry. At the bottom of our back garden, over the hedge, was a
large area of land divided into hundreds of allotments. Allotments
were plots of land, about 20ft by 50ft, which were allotted to members
of the community so that they could grow their own vegetables. Our dad
had an allotment; of course, because it was run by the government, he
had to ride his bicycle about 2 miles to get to his plot. We would
climb over the hedge and steal rhubarb from the man who had the plot
behind our house. Then we had to also steal sugar to dip it into.
Because of the danger of air-raids every house and business was
blacked out. It was called the blackout! The pubs all had a shelter
over their entrances to
* Iffley road had the famous running track where Roger Bannister ran
the first sub four minute mile.
4
prevent light escaping when the locals went in for their pint. These
shelters were perfect for letting off smoke bombs. We would get a roll
of old Kodak film, which used to be very flammable, roll it in
newspaper, light it then quickly stamp out the flame. The film bomb
would then pour out gobs of fantastic stinky smoke, which when let off
in the shelter would empty the pub really fast.
The blackout was great for our gang because we could pull off lots of
tricks and not be caught because of the cover of darkness. We would
tie the door-knocker of a house on one side of the street to that of
one on the other side of the street with thread, then wait for someone
to ride by on their bike. The bike would break the thread and knock
both doors at the same time Then the home owners would come to the
door to find no-one there. We were hiding behind someonešs wall to
watch the fun. That was a big deal to us at age 9 or 10.
We would go scrumping apples, by climbing over 8ft high walls topped
with broken bottles cemented in place to stop us getting over to steal
the apples. We threw a couple of our coats on top of the wall then
stood on Dixiešs shoulders, up and over the wall. One more tear in our
coat didnšt matter. I donšt remember how we got back over the wall.
There was a dump about 3 miles away, up by Morris Motors where my dad
worked from when he was 15 years old till he died at age 52. They had
some German airplanes on the dump, we would sit in the planes and
pretend to be pilots. The windows of the plane were made of what we
called German glass. It was really Perspex or Lucite, but it was good
for making rings to wear for our gang. I made the rings then and Išve
been able to make anything ever since. Dad could also make things, he
made us a great castle once for Christmas, he also mended all our
shoes and did any sewing on our treadle sewing machine. I donšt
remember ever getting a hug from dad. I didnšt like him anyway.