Big ray

[Tony B]

A chap I used to work for always said he wanted to die like his Great grandfater: At the age of 90 the old man was served at the local hunt with a paternity suit from an 18 year old local lass. He then rode out fell of and broke his neck. There is a story the King Henry 8th Court Jester ofended the King, whosentenced him to death. Out of respect for the Jester's service the King asked him how he wished to die. The reply was 'Sire, old age!'

[Big ray]

Any schoolboy, or girl, lead a very deprived childhood, but of course we did not realise that, it all seemed quite normal to us. At school we had air raid drill, schools had their own bomb shelters and we did regular air raid drills. Although we had no toys or sweets, our parents went to great lengths to make sure that we had a reasonable christmas, we would have an apple in the christmas stocking, that was to fill the hole, and prevent the other bits from falling out. Our parents (in our case, grandparents) must have had a lot of worry , particularly in the early part of the war, but still they actually made toys for us, just to try to give some normality to our lives. Although food was rationed we had plenty of people who would be selling rabbits and other poached game, so we did not starve, infact our diet was considerably more healthy during the war than it is now. We did however suffer from some deficiences, I remember that we all suffered some effects of vitimin deficiency resulting in a rash of boils and minor skin infections, we had a school clinic to deal with such matters. I used to listen to the radio, one of the programmes that I would listen to was Valentine Dial, reading horror stories, he had a very deep voice, and on occasions when I would be listening to him on my own, I would become so terrified, I would curl up on the armchair and become too terrified to move to turn off the radio. Another of our frightening experiences would be the total darkness during the winter months, any rustling of the trees or bushes would leave us wondering if some parachuted german airman might be there, we would run home like a bat out of hell. We would look forward to the bright moonlight nights so that we could play our games. One of those games consisted of sticking a pin into the wooden window frame and tying a peice of cotton onto the pin with a button tied about 4 inches down the cotton and we would conceal ourselves behind a hedge or whatever. We would now pull the cotton and make the button tap on the window, this was all during the hours of darkness, so when the occupants came to the door, they could not see our cotton, we did sometimes get caught and a mild thrashing would be in order, well deserved I suppose.:kissoncheek:

[Minesweeper]

Valentile Dial (is that how you spell it?) I remeber well - "The man in Black"! Did you listen to Lord HawHaw as well?

 

Tony

[Big ray]

No, Im afraid that my grandparents ,who had already lived through the First World War, were not going to have any of that nonsense from Lord Haw Haw. What we should have done was play back to the germans The Man in Black, Valentine Dial, he certainly scared the pants off me, if he did not frighten the germans to death, he would have sent their laundry bill through the roof. The young kids in the cities had it bad, places like London, Coventry, Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool, just to mention a few. I dont think that the city kids ever saw a farm, living on the edge of the city as I did, we were not far from the farms, we could always "stumble" accross a few items in the fields after dark, couple that with the abundence of available wild life and we did not do too badly for putting food on the table. I remember some members of my family slaughtering a pig......... I ran for miles, I am not into killing, I remember being upset for days, yes I did eat some of the pork, makes me a bit of a fraud really.:kissoncheek:

[Big ray]

Schooling in the 1930s,40s and 50s was very good for preparing you for military service, the emphasis being very much on discipline, in fact I think that accademic learning was very much a bye-product of the school system. We actually WALKED to school, assembly would only take place in the hall if the weather was bad (Raining) otherwise we assembled in the school yard, in lines,in much the same way that the army would. We would then be marched off in single file to our respective classrooms, where we would first be marked down in the register as being present. There would be no talking in the classroom, and if the teacher had to leave the room for a few moments, he would always make sure that you had a task to perform, copying from the blackboard etc. We would of course talk in a low voice once that he had left the room, but the guy nearest to the door would always warn us of the teachers impending return, when we would stop talking immediately. Punishment (The cane) was an almost daily occurance somewhere in the school. In my particular school they had a system whereby any transgressing, and your class teacher would send you to a Mr James, another teacher, who we all knew as Jammer James, not to his face of course. You would arrive at his classroom, knock on the door and wait to be called in, you would then inform Mr James, who had sent you for punishment and the crime that you had committed in the eyes of your teacher, he would then determine the level of punishment. You would receive this punishment in full view of his pupils, this all served as a reminder to them what they might expect if they themselves did not behave. Some boys would hold out their hand to receive the cane, only to try to pull their hand back towards their body all accompanied with a very screwed-up look on the face, Mr James would now hold your wrist with one hand whilst dishing out the punishment with the other one, very often the first attempt had resulted in you receiving a blow accross the ends of your fingers, resulting effectively in a double punishment. The one thing that you never did was go home and tell your parents that you had received this punishment, otherwise you risked more punishment from them. Yet with all of this, I remember my school days with considerable affection. Another thing that we used to do during the war, and immediate post war years, was to travel by coach from the school to some farm, and work all day gathering in the harvest, potatoe picking etc, I dont think that they would allow that today. Another result of all this discipline, if we should be gathered in a group playing outside of peoples homes, generally making a nuisance of ourselves, we would be told to move on, and we did, untill someone else told us to again, we were never cheeky to our elders, there would be a price to pay. :kissoncheek:

[Big ray]

Valentine Dyall............. Appointment with Fear, that was his radio show, on the BBC from 1943. (I think that he could still frighten me!!!!! ) :kissoncheek:

[Minesweeper]

Valentine Dyall............. Appointment with Fear, that was his radio show, on the BBC from 1943. (I think that he could still frighten me!!!!! ) :kissoncheek:

 

Ah, yes - that's right. Something that I had not thought about for many years! Our only wirelss was downstairs in the house and was left on so that we could listen to it from our beds - it was on quite late - and then it was either my mother or my sister who had to go down stairs when it ended to turn the wireless off! And I think that they were both left scared stiff by that time!

 

Tony

[Tony B]

Picking spuds after school! :-D Hapy memories of being with my Mother, she used to chit spuds and pack flowers part time during the seasons . Now how many are going to ask what Chitting spuds is? :cool2:

[Minesweeper]

Picking spuds after school! :-D Hapy memories of being with my Mother, she used to chit spuds and pack flowers part time during the seasons . Now how many are going to ask what Chitting spuds is? :cool2:

 

We think of "chitting" as standing the spuds up in something like old egg cartons when they start to shoot - removing some of the shoots so that you are left with just one or two growing upwards. Your definition as well - or perhaps something a little different?

 

Tony

[Tony B]

No you've got it right. But when your planting twenty vergess of Jersey Royals, more than egg boxes are needed! :-D Knock off one sprout, the spud panics and produces a lot more, hence more spuds. They were also graded by size the large one s planted first.

Jersey Royals should be planted in sand fertillised by Vraick, dried seaweed, that way they develop no lumps or a thick skin. The other ideal place are south facing Cotils, these are the steep valley sides, and I mean STEEP! The old way of ploughing used to throw a single furrow plough over the top and winch up. One old farmer had a Series 1 88 with a pto winch on the back speciffically for the job. The proper ones have a nutty tatse, and a cheese like texture NEVER fry! Always wash, never peel! Boil till just soft, best Jersey Butter and sea salt. We also used to glean for the ones to small to sell, naturally those are the best tasting!

[Big ray]

And I thought that all this knowledge was confined to military hardware, you learn something every day...... now all this talk about food is making me hungry. Keep it coming folks, I love these little nuggets of information.

Regards all.

Ray.:kissoncheek:

[Big ray]

Just a few of the things that we had to endure during and in the immediate post war years. FOG, the last time that I experienced a serious fog was during the 1960s when driving a truck through Nottingham town, I was driving an 8 wheeler (4 axle) AEC truck, you could not see your hand in front of you. After that we introduced the clean air act, but prior to that event fog was a common occurence during the winter months, it was bad enough during the hours of light, but after dark it became impossible to drive, young people of today will never experience such conditions. It was normal to have your passenger with his/her head out of the side window telling you how far that you were from the kerb edging, whilst you strained to look to your front, and hoping that there was no stationary vehicles up ahead. After a while you began to see things that were not there. BATHING, I lived in a relatively modern house, it had been built in 1936 but like most houses of that period it was not centrally heated, all of the warmth was confined to the lounge, and was obtained from a single coal fire (Coal was rationed, and in very short supply). Unlike many of my friends, we had a bathroom (unheated) they had a tin bath that they would bring into the house from the back yard, put in cold water, boil several kettles of water, add the same to the cold water in order to get a luke-warm bath. The bath would be situated in the lounge in front of the open fire, the other members of the family would have to leave the room to await their turn in the bath. The procedure was that the cleanest person had the first bath, whilst the rest would take their turn, the dirtiest one being last. Although I was lucky enough to have a modern bathroom (unheated) I mean that the room was unheated, not the water, we had plenty of hot water on tap. It was lovely sitting in the hot bath, but once you got out of the bath to dry yourself, your wet body became extremely cold, so it was a real dash to get dried and dressed. THE BEDROOM, these were probably the coldest rooms in the house, I remember that the bed sheets were white cotton, and cotton is a very cold fabric, you would leap into bed, pull the sheets over your head and just shake with cold for several minutes, untill the bed began to warm from the heat of your body. It was not uncommon for most houses to throw an ex-army overcoat onto the bed for the extra warmth..... infact, there was a common joke at the time about two boys who had gone to bed, one of the boys would shout down to his mother and say that his brother Johny had dragged the coat onto his side of the bed, the mother had visitors at the time and was very annoyed with her son for letting her visitors know that they had an ex-army overcoat on the bed. She said, if he does it again whilst I have visitors, say that he has pulled the eiderdown onto his side of the bed. A few nights later when the mother again had visitors, her son shouted down, saying Mother, Johny has pulled the sleeve off the eiderdown. When we got out of bed in the morning, we would have to scrape the ice from the inside of the window in order to look through the window. In spite of these minor irritations, life was full of promise..... things could only get better, people had time for people, and we did not know that things could have been better, it was just NORMAL. The fog was made much worse with the smoke from the many chimneys, both industrial and every home chimney.:kissoncheek:

[Big ray]

I tend to think that the times that I have described in my previous post have long gone, and are things of the past, but maybe I have just simply been elevated from from those conditions, and in reality they still exist for some people. We should count our blessings, and look around at the people that may not be so lucky. I am thinking of elderly people on a fixed income, or simply living alone. The next time that you talk with your elderly neighbour try finding out how they are coping, thats one of the things that existed in abundence when I was a young man, compassion and understanding, the world is much poorer for its demise. I walk past down and outs, sitting on the pavement on a bitterly cold day, I put money into their hat, my wife will say, you are an idiot, they dont have to live like that....... she is probably right, but somehow it just makes me feel that little bit better about myself. :kissoncheek:

[Big ray]

Uncle Jim, he was the one that shot the two Italian civilians after the brawl in the Italian bar and his Scotts buddie was stabbed, he did several years in a military prison. I dont know why, but he never expressed any compassion for his fellow man, even after he arrived home after his time in prison, he never showed any regret over the shooting of the two Italians, in fact I think that he would probably have done the same thing again. He was of course married with two young sons, so I really only saw and spoke with him if he visited our home. He was trouble when he had indulged in alcohol, constantly fighting, he would sometimes call into our home after he had indulged in physical violence with some poor soul. He would walk in covered in blood, and my grandmother would say, Oh my god, what have you done?, and he would ALWAYS reply in some matter-of-fact way, dont worry, its his blood, not mine. Only time and the inevitable slowing down with age finally calmed him down, in fact sometimes when talking with him after he had been drinking, I would compliment him on the fact that he had behaved himself, his eyes would light up, and he would say, you can come drinking with me and you can do my fighting for me.... so obviously, he never did really calm down. I remember when he first arrived home from prison after the war, he showed me a photograph of a German soldier, obviously taken when he had been on leave, he was standing with his wife and two small children. I said, who are they ?, he simply replied, I dont know, but I took this photograph off him when I shot him... all just so matter-of-fact, with no remorse.... he was a very cold hearted man. :kissoncheek:

[Big ray]

On our first holiday to the states, my wife Margaret and myself started with a few days in New York, I thought before we went that we would be retiring to our hotel room by 8. o`clock in the evening and locking the door. I could not have been more wrong, we were down in Times Square after midnight, felt perfectly safe, and had a wonderful time. We did the sights in New York, including a trip up to the top of the Empire State building. I dont like heights, but my wife convinced me that I would regret not making the trip up to the top, so up we went, WOW, the lift rocketed us up so far, then we had to change for the next lift up to the viewing platform. I had no sense of height, because you could not look directly down from the platform, but the view out over the city skyline was fantastic. The next day I was determined to go to Grand Central Station, I did not even know if it still existed, so I asked a local guy if it did, and if so, where was it. He said sure it still exists, and its only a couple of blocks away. I walked into the station and stood under the clock, fantastic, one of my ambitions acheived, and the station was even more than I had expected it to be, extremely large and the signs over each entrance saying, Track 1, Track 2, Track 3. and so on. I had seen it all so many times on films, it gave me goose pimples. We left New York and travelled down through the Carolinas, over the Mason / Dixon Line into the southern states. I had always wondered why it was called The Mason / Dixon line, that was the names of the two gentlemen that had marked out the divide between the north and the south. Whilst travelling through Virginia I was looking into the wooded area, this area was not dense with trees and undergrowth, but quite open, giving a good view into the woods. I must have been looking with a great deal of intensity, when an american lady asked of me, What can you see? I replied, I can see union troops around a camp fire, with there rifles piled in stacks of three, she replied, so can I, you and I must do a tour of the civil war battlefields, I would have liked to have thought that that was a possibility, but somehow I feel that my wife just might have objected. Wonderful country, wonderful people. :kissoncheek:

[Big ray]

A few of our 1940s Taxis lined up outside a 1940s dance in 2010.

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Constructing a diorama at our place of work, 2010, depicts a shell damaged cottage in Normandy, France......... it now stretches to about 100ft wide, and growing.:kissoncheek:

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A recent visit to Arnhem, Holland and going through the underpass (Railway) a Jeep will just pass through here with the windscreen down on the hood....... and the driver and passengers bent over somewhat.:kissoncheek:

[Big ray]

Try to picture a young boy walking down to town during the latter months of WW11, I spotted a Federal truck and trailer parked at the bootom of town (What then was the by-pass) I very quickly caught-up with the trucks occupants, two young G.I.s, making there way up into town. Like all kids of that time, I was fascinated with all things american, remember these people came from another planet...... impossible to convey what sort of impact that these young men had on young boys like myself. They were something straight of the movie screen, they even sounded like the film stars that we were so familiar with. I remember very clearly that one of these G.I.s was wearing a belt and holster complete with a 45 Colt, I remember asking him if it was loaded, he replied No..... he has the bullets, meaning his companion. Only little things, but they stick in your mind like glue. The other thing that sticks in my mind was the fact that the belt was worn very loosely, making the holster hang low, just like the cowboys that I had seen so many times on the screen..... I was mesmarised. All seems like yesterday. I very often wonder how many of the G.I.s that I saw prior to June 1944 actually made it home....... we really do owe them a great debt. When you consider that their own homeland was not under immediate threat, its incredible that they were prepared to make such sacrifices, its given me sixty years of relative peace, I just hope that it was all worth it for the families that made such great sacrifices.:kissoncheek:

[Big ray]

The site that we occupied in the 1950s cutting all of the war surplus stuff had an internal orbital road (dirt road) The railway line ran through the centre of the site, one side of the railway line was the flat area of the site, whilst the other side was elevated, but not so much so that you could not store and work on stuff. The orbital road was at least half a mile long, that will give you some idea of the size of the site. Looking from the flat side of the site the road was raised about a third of the way up the bank, giving a good view of the other side of the site. Although we must have had scores of batteries, it was easier to just stick a rope on any vehicle that would not start, and tow start it. If you can remember Harold, he was the guy that sat in the truck when we pulled it off the back of another truck under the tree, when all that he should have done was release the handbrake, and make sure that it was out of gear and then get down whilst we snatched the truck off...... he stayed in the cab. One day down on the bottom road we had a truck that needed a snatch to get it started, so we told Harold to bring up a tow truck and we secured a rope. I climbed into the none-starter whilst Harold was told to give me a tow.....Harold did not take up the slack in the rope, he just took off, of course the rope just snapped, and Harold set off, with the engine of his truck screaming, I jumped out of my truck, shouted, whistled and waved my arms, all to no avail, he just carried on oblivious to the fact that I was not on the back. Finally, Cyril just said, stop whistling and shouting, just wave him goodbye. The really amazing thing about that episode was the fact that when he passed us on the other side of the railway line, he was still screaming along not realising that I had been left behind, only when he glanced over and saw us all waving did he stop.......... what a dipstick.:kissoncheek:

[Big ray]

We eventually came to the conclusion that telling Harold to do something took longer than actually doing the job, you just had to be so precise when telling him, I think that he spent more time watching than actually working, and he learned zilch, but he was worth having around for the entertainment value, never a dull moment with Harold. We told him to gas-cut some armour plate on one occasion, he was wearing knee length wellington boots with his trousers worn on the outside of the boots. He stood on the steel plate cutting the steel, I looked over, and his trouser legs were on fire ( at the very bottom)....... Cyril just said, where theres no sense, there is no feeling. They were great days, times were very different in many ways. :kissoncheek:

[Big ray]

As you will see, all of the stupidity did not emanate from Harold, there were quite a few more incidents involving other people, myself included. :kissoncheek:

[Big ray]

In the mid 1950s we had hundreds of oxygen and acetylene bottles on site, the type that you would have seen on a Diamond T 969 Wrecker, they were all destined for scrap. The bottles were all fitted with brass fitments at the top, now brass was valuable compared to common steel scrap, so we started to unscrew the fitments from the bottles. This system was far too slow and not cost effective, so we decided to check all of the bottles to ensure that they were empty, and then use a sledge hammer to smash the brass fitment off, leaving only the screw thread in the bottle, making this a very cost effective way of dealing with this job. We checked scores of bottles with a bottle key, only to find that they were all empty, so after some considerable time doing this particular task, (I) assumed that all of these bottles were empty, and decided that we should dispense with this time consuming job and just smash the brass fitments off. Well all was going well until we hit one bottle, and it turned out to be full, not only were we extremely lucky that no one was standing in line with this brass fitment when it left the bottle like a bullet, but the bottle itself took off like a rocket, was deflected by something in its path and shot into the air like a rocket and flew over a truck, just missing my grandfather by a few feet when it landed on the other side, I received quite an earwigging from my grandfather for that stunt...... so you see we are all fallible. I dont think that Harold was even with us on that occasion, so we could not blame him. :kissoncheek:

[Big ray]

In 1955 we sold three mobile cranes, one Thornycroft Amazon 6 wheeler, c/w Coles crane, that was sold to someone in the U.K. Two Bay City (Michigan) cranes, 6 wheelers, one was sold here in the U.K. and the other went to Holland, somewhere near the German border. This particular vehicle had to be broken-down into its component parts and exported as spare parts, thus avoiding the import duty. Jack supervised the dismantling of this machine, and he had to go over to Holland to supervise the re-assembly...... I remember that when he returned home all hell broke loose because he had spent such a lot of money living the high life whilst over there. Cranes were very much in demand at that time, as were bulldozers. We never managed to get our hands on the bulldozers.

Drive axles were bought by farmers in Devon, they could stick them under farm trailers and couple the prop shaft to the tractor power takeoff, giving the trailer traction going up the Devon hills...... neccessity being the mother of invention, there were some real bright bunnies up and down this land. :kissoncheek:

[Tony B]

I remembr old truck chassis having the front hacked off and a drawbar attached. The tractor PTO was then connected through the truck box to drive the axle. Flaming nightmare to use!