15-12-2017, 10:37 AM
11
Re: I remember the 1950s
Originally Posted by Robert Jnr.
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I was born in 1948 & grew up a council house in a very ordinary district. So the 1950’s were my growing up or childhood years. Our neighbours were poor and we were poor and we never bothered to lock the doors because we had nothing to steal.Summers were warm & endless. We made our own amusements, played out in the fresh air all day, eating wild fruit and drinking fresh water from cupped hands. We felt safe in our locality. We climbed trees , made carts from old pram wheels, slingshots from V shaped branches & rubber bands. Ate sweet chestnuts & pickled horse chestnuts to engage in the now “dangerous game of CONKERS?”.
I could go on at length about this long gone idyll.
It’s easy though to be selective in our recall for in this rose coloured existence lurked a dark side with burdens of illness ,poverty & inequality on folks.
I remember people calling by. The copper who dropped in late in the evening for a cuppa, he borrowed my dad’s collection of operatic 78 rpm records, & never came back with them. From then on we locked our doors which was a bit pointless as we handed them to him. The gas man who gave us back all of the foreign coins in the meter & which were put in by our lodger.
The stately SHIRE horses pulling dust carts . The rag & bone man & his skewbald pony & cart.
As Mary Hopkin sang “Those were the days my friend”.
Many a happy hour spent building Bogeys, swinging on tyres across the streams and kicking a football around on the rec.......our football matches lasted for hours.
15-12-2017, 10:43 AM
12
Re: I remember the 1950s
Aye,I can remember the 50s and I can also remember the 40s too
...We lived in a tenement flat above the shops...the pub/haberdashery/Miss Meeks hat shop/Liptons Grocery...We shared a large inside toilet with 2 other Families who lived on Our landing,it also housed a bike and a pram..We shared a back court with 6 other Families...it had a wash-house where Our Mums had separate days for doing the washing & a large green for hanging it out...and coal-houses which I climbed onto and run along to get onto the School shed to dreep into the playground of Our School which was next door to Us...happy days 
15-12-2017, 11:03 AM
16
Re: I remember the 1950s
I vaguely remember the end of the war, mainly because this man came into our life, my Dad. The winter of 1947, it was never ending, but as kids it was great,slides everywhere. We all later had Bikes, second hand ones, and most of us modified them.The 50s I was growing up. 1952 I went on the Train from Wolverhampton to Edinburgh, 7 hours and i had my dinner on the train, I think 7/6d with the train sat in Crewe station. met at Edinburgh by my Aunt and went on another ytrain and bus for miles.Remember watching coronation , our first telly all of 12" screen black and white. Farm up the lane had a horse and cart in those days and I had many rides on the cart. In early teens played tennis up against the barn wall in the lane, also cricket in the back yard. We didnt have a car in those days .
My Dad went back to his old firm and was a Rep for them, but they were not allowed to bring their car home ,they had to take it back to work and come home on the Bus.
One of my jobs was to chop firewood, I hated that and always got into trouble because I had cut up some of my Dads best wood.
Then when the coal was delivered it was tipped at the end of the yard, so i had to help getting it into the coal shed.
Shopping sometimes for mum on a Saturday morning, Dreadful!! having to queue at the Butchers for maybe an hour, the same at the grocers.
I suppose really they were good days for us kids , not a care in the world.
15-12-2017, 11:05 AM
17
Re: I remember the 1950s
Originally Posted by Robert Jnr.
->
I was born in 1948 & grew up a council house in a very ordinary district. So the 1950’s were my growing up or childhood years. Our neighbours were poor and we were poor and we never bothered to lock the doors because we had nothing to steal.Summers were warm & endless. We made our own amusements, played out in the fresh air all day, eating wild fruit and drinking fresh water from cupped hands. We felt safe in our locality. We climbed trees , made carts from old pram wheels, slingshots from V shaped branches & rubber bands. Ate sweet chestnuts & pickled horse chestnuts to engage in the now “dangerous game of CONKERS?”.
I could go on at length about this long gone idyll.
It’s easy though to be selective in our recall for in this rose coloured existence lurked a dark side with burdens of illness ,poverty & inequality on folks.
I remember people calling by. The copper who dropped in late in the evening for a cuppa, he borrowed my dad’s collection of operatic 78 rpm records, & never came back with them. From then on we locked our doors which was a bit pointless as we handed them to him. The gas man who gave us back all of the foreign coins in the meter & which were put in by our lodger.
The stately SHIRE horses pulling dust carts . The rag & bone man & his skewbald pony & cart.
As Mary Hopkin sang “Those were the days my friend”.
15-12-2017, 11:24 AM
19
Re: I remember the 1950s
Great post.Born in 1966 I grew up in the 70s, part of that time in rural Perthshire so not that different from what you describe.
I climbed trees, explored the countryside, ate wild fruits etc. and was generally happy. In the city things were getting a little more advanced but still I had a good childhood despite one violent parent.
15-12-2017, 11:29 AM
20
Re: I remember the 1950s
Memories of MeccanoAs a nine year old child my mother and father both worked full time to pay the rent and raise the three of us.
In the winter we tried to stay with friends or relatives after school , rather than go home in the cold & dark that was our house. Latch-key kids comes to mind.
In the summer we spent most of the holidays with my mother’s sister. I imagine my aunt felt rather put-upon, which she was.
My older brother was often there as well, I can’t remember where my sister went. Probably to one of my fathers 3 sisters.
I digress……. Meccano……At my aunt’s house my older brother and my cousin Alan spent hours indoors playing with Alan’s Meccano.
I was banished to the garden or nearby fields. Good grief nowadays we would have had social workers swooping down on
Us.
I wasn’t allowed to touch the Meccano , that was a big gripe on my part so I played endlessly with plasticine out in the garden, sniffling continuously from hay fever and constructing marvellous tableaux of my brother and cousin being subjected to various grisly endings. Being boiled in a huge cooking pot by cannibals was my favourite, with impaling a close second .
They called me Roberta, just to annoy me . I didn’t know it at the time but they were both Left handed and dyslexic (not recognised in the 1950s) and resented the fact that I was an advanced reader & had a good vocabulary & they didn’t..
Being thought ”Clever” was a handicap in those days of my life.
Fifty years later I often went out with my bro in law to antique fairs and one Sunday found us a TOY fair, old toys that is.
I espied a large display of Meccano and was disappointed to find it as under glass,
“Excuse me” I said “ I want to look more closely at your display, will you lift out a couple of trays please”
I suppose I was fingering the stuff for a good ten minutes before the stallholder realised something was amiss and he gently prised from my grasp the lovely Meccano pieces .
“Why thank you so much” I whispered “ I have been waiting over fifty years for this moment”.
Bro in law carefully led me away to a safe place looking over his shoulder and rolling his eyes at the stallholder.
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