We never believed him.

When I was a boy I loved fishing. A rod was expensive in those days. All I could afford was a hand line, that cost 2 shillings and 6 pence which is 12.5 new pence today. This doesn't sound a lot but as I got 6 pence a week pocket money it took me 5 weeks plus to save up for it. After about 7 weeks I had enough money to buy my hand line. It came with two hooks and a lead weight, the line was made of a green nylon string and this was wound on to a wooden frame and tied at one point.
I loved fishing and would spend most of the summer holidays with some of my school mates fishing on the river Taw off a brick wall.
Passers by would ask if we had caught anything or if we had felt any bites. The only bites we had were from the dam midges that seemed to be everywhere when you got close to the water.
One day an old guy came down and started talking about the war and what it was like to fly a plane over the Atlantic. We only half listened, he seemed very old and we didn't understand much of what he said. One day he started talking about the end of the war and how he had found it hard to find a job when his flying days were over. He explained that times were hard and the only job he could find was filling coal bags at the local coal depot. He painted a vivid picture of how the coal came down long shoots and had to be caught at the bottom by a man holding a coal sack. Well this all seemed pretty strange to us boys, who would want to do a job like that, sounded very dirty and dangerous and what about holding up that bag when it started to fill up. We dismissed him as just a silly old man with a vivid imagination. The next day he turned up again and showed us some black and white pictures of himself in a plane dressed as a fighter pilot. We looked at the pictures, a little interested but much more preoccupied with the task of getting our lines in the water. When he could see little interest was being shown in his album he closed the cover and said " Funny what comes down those coal shoots you know, one day I saw something sparkle and put my hand in and grabbed it, and here it is " He produced a matchbox from his trouser pocket and slowly opened it. There inside was a gold sovereign sitting on some cotton wool. We all starred at each other and looked back at the sovereign. He slowly closed he matchbox and put it back in his pocket. " Got to go now " he said " my sister is coming over for tea and I cannot be late " He walked away with his photograph album under his arm, not looking back and walking with a determined step towards home. We never saw him again and we all realised we had missed a wonderful opportunity to ask him lots of questions about the war and what a sovereign would be worth but the problem was we never believed him.

Re: We never believed him.

Sorry Bob, old mate. I don't have enough patience to read through all that.
Do you have a Readers Digest version?

Re: We never believed him.

I enjoyed every bit of it. It is a vivid slice of a time gone by. Keep it up!

Re: We never believed him.

Not at the moment mate but it might be coming out in the Ladybird short story version in the near future, of it could be in the dung beetle weekly, I cannot remember.

Re: We never believed him.

Interesting Bob , do you know what became of him .
I guess filling coal sacks must have seemed pretty mundane to you boys but for him it may have been a kind of therapy after seeing so much loss and suffering in the war.

Re: We never believed him.

Thank you for sharing that Bob I think many of us may have regrets like that but not the articulation to tell the story like that.

Re: We never believed him.

I had not considered that Meg, I new where the coal yard was and often watched the lorries delivering, it was a very noisy place. You could easily be right, it would have been a completely different type of work to being a pilot. I never saw him again, perhaps he thought us boys were to simple minded to appreciate the stories he had to tell.
Best regards
bob

Re: We never believed him.

If he did that to some kids these days he would probably get mugged on the way home.

Re: We never believed him.

I would think not Bob I imagine he took pleasure in seeing you boys fishing and having a casual chat.
A time for gentle reflection on his own lost childhood maybe..

Re: We never believed him.

You are so right MKJ haven't times changed. He would probably get picked up for talking to young boys, it's a sad old world.