The 50’s generation

The other day I watched a video on Youtube about children who grew up in the 1950’s on which I posted a comment which I thought I might share here.

“I was born in 1946. We had a small coal fired boiler in the kitchen on which we used to dry our gloves after snow-balling until the gloves were dry and crackly and then we went out again after our fingers and toes had warmed up enough. We had a fireplace in the dining room and while I was still at primary school because mum and dad were both out at work it was my job to clear out the ashes from the previous evening and set and light the fire after I’d walked home from school.

If it was difficult getting it going I used a copy of the large ‘local’ newspaper to cover the fireplace opening to ‘draw’ the fire with the increased airflow as my dad had shown me how. Sometimes the paper caught fire and I had to put it out… and I was just 8 or 9 years old.

In the school holidays I’d have to pay the Co-Op baker when he knocked. Mum would leave the money near the front door and when I paid the baker he’d give me a little paper slip that showed the amount which mum would take to the Co-Op office to collect our ‘divi’. You had to give your ‘divi number’ when you paid. I still remember ours – it was 16212.

To go to work, my mum went by bike some 7 or 8 miles each way (I’ve just checked it) uphill and downhill and thought nothing of it, or if she did, she never let on because in those days mums never did. My big sister, who’s gone now bless her, used to suffer terribly from chilblains. She taught me to jive at a very early age when rock and roll came out because she was fed up practising just using a door handle.

When she was a bit older she used to go out dancing with a full skirt and lots of petticoats that made it stand out and every time she twirled round she showed her stocking tops. All the girls did and none of them had any problems attracting admiring young men. It’s how things were done in those days.

As well as conkers we used to have amazing marble tournaments at primary school and with honour at stake, nobody would have dreamt of cheating. We also used to have contests with our Dinky cars to see who could make theirs go the farthest across the playground which was smooth newly laid tarmac after the war.

We had a climbing frame in the playground and if you fell off and broke your arm you were whipped off to hospital and held in great esteem afterwards by all the other kids who used to sign and do silly drawings on your plaster cast. No parent would ever have thought of suing the school.

In the holidays we’d go off all day under the leadership of the ‘big boys’ and get back home at teatime with dirty knees and hands, grazes and cuts and bruises from falling down holes and out of trees and be ready to do it all again the next day. We made ‘trolleys’ out of old pram wheels and any bits of wood we could find in our dads’ sheds and go hurtling along with no brakes at breakneck speed steering the front wheels with a length of rope either until it toppled over from turning too quickly or one or more wheels fell off, throwing us on the ground grazing our knees and elbows.

We had cowboys and indians fights and also knights in armour battles, bottom of the road against the top. My dad made me a wooden sword and battle-axe, a shield out of hardboard which he painted white with a red rampant lion and a ‘helmet’ from a strip of old lino held on by elastic at the back with a visor that could be raised and lowered with springy metal studs on each side as the pivots. One day the battle became so feverish an ‘enemy’ from the top of the road whacked my shield so hard his axe came right through my hardboard shield because his dad had made it from plywood. Bad form.

Would I do it again? In a heartbeat. They were great times, the best of times. Children today don’t know they are alive. I wouldn’t change a thing and remember my old friends from those days from time to time, many of whom are now probably gone. But they’re all still alive in my memories.”