|
Children and the
Family Business
At 34, Mary was pregnant with Gary
and she was going down to the local nursing home to have
him. I was a regular visitor there because people would
rush over and ask me to take their wife in. When I took
Mary in, she was near, but the matron said it would be a
day or two. That was when my life turned into a turmoil.
During the night Mary was in terrible pain, but when she
told the matron, she said she was being a baby.
In the middle of the night Mary
crawled down the corridor to the nurses' room and said
that if they didn't call the doctor she would be dead.
When they did send for the doctor he went mad at the
matron. Mary was rushed to West Bromwich hospital where
she underwent a caesarean. The first I knew about this
was when a nurse rang me and said that they had my wife
and they needed to operate. I had got someone to help me
in the shop, but when the phone rang and I heard the
news, I went out of the front door of the shop with all
the folks inside, and locked it behind me.
When I got to the hospital I sat in
the Waiting Room and a gentleman came in and told me he
was the surgeon and that the operation had been a
success. I could go into the operating theatre. Mary and
Gary were just being cleaned up. When I said to Mary
that he was a lovely boy, I don't think she was bothered
at all. The one surprise I got was when I went to see
the surgeon's assistant and it turned out to be an old
friend of mine. As a child we used to call him Little
Lord Fauntleroy because of the way his mother used to
dress him.
Gary was born on 13th March, 1957
and Mary said the next one we had would be in private. |
|
I often think of the mistakes you make
in a lifetime. We were doing well in the shop and each year
Mary's cousin's husband, Bob, would run the shop while we
went away for a break. He had got a very good position as a
manager in one of George Mason's shops in Dudley.
If we had used our heads we would have
got together and started our own store. In the time I am
talking about, there were no Tescos or Asdas, I think the
only supermarket was Sainsbury's. What a chance missed.
Three years after Gary was born, Mary
became pregnant with Nigel, so we started looking around for
a place in the country.
One day we had a drive out to my cousin
Tom's. His father-in-law had a holiday bungalow in a place
called Kinver, so we called on them. As we were travelling
back, we had only gone about ½ a mile when I saw this red
bricked house with a bit of ground. I stopped the car and
Mary asked what I was doing. I asked her if she hadn't seen
the place for sale, she said she had but it looked like a
jungle. Anyway, we went back and got the agent's number.
When we got back to the shop, I phoned them and they wanted
£2,500 but said that there was somebody else interested. I
said that we would pay the money now and that was how we
came to own Rosewood in Kinver. |
Mary, Reg and Frank before a 3-a-side
football match. Nerves showing! |
|
Mary, Reg and Frank on holiday. |
Rosewood consisted of the house and 5
acres of land with 5 caravans on it. Dad and Reg moved with
us. Dad said he was only interested if there was a pub
nearby, luckily there was one in the little village of
Wolverley. As all our capital was still tied up in the shop,
Dad said he would buy the property and we could pay for the
alterations.
We left the shop in 1961. The brickwork
on the house was a lovely engineering brick, and the house
was built on sandstone so it was lovely and dry. Mary and
myself worked in taking out old fireplaces and grates and
replacing them with new ones. We also had central heating
installed. My younger brother had got married and moved to
Durham in the North, but Reg was still with us. He helped a
lot with putting in the drive and with a lot of the outside
work. As we were still in the shop and Reg was still working
at Wesson' s at Wednesbury, we did a lot of travelling, but
I think we all enjoyed it.
We sold the business in 1959 and moved
to Rosewood. Dad said he would not be bothered about the
pub, but the first night down he asked if Reg or myself
could take him down. He soon got settled in with the locals,
playing cards and dominoes. |
|
In December 1961 Nigel was born in
Bromsgrove Hospital and I was able to win many bets. People
said that there was no way that I could know Nigel was going
to be born on 21st December at 9am; another caesarean.
That Christmas, Dad cooked the dinner.
He said that we would have a change and have duck instead of
turkey. When he put it on the table nobody noticed anything,
but when we tasted it, it was terrible. On looking at the
duck we found out he had cooked it with its webbed feet on.
Mary said she wanted to be in private,
but when Nigel was about three years old she started looking
around for a job. She got one delivering samples to houses.
She had four people working with her and they had two or
three streets each. The samples were washing-up liquid and
the garage used to be full.
When we had finished the house I
decided to build a 40ft x 20ft building at the bottom of the
garden. At the time I had no idea what I was going to do
with it, but in the end finished up rearing pigs. I bought
five pedigree pigs and used the boar from the local farmer,
and went into pig producing. |
Mary posing in her swimsuit. |
|
Mary and I enjoying some sun. |
|
Mary used to call it a labour of love.
During the day I helped a friend who looked after a forest
but also did some tree felling for himself. At that time the
Elm trees had developed a disease so they had to be taken
down to stop it spreading. There was plenty of work. Later,
I worked in Kidderminster in a hardware shop, and then I
finished up driving for the Territorial Army.
When Nigel was five years old we looked
around for another business. Plenty of funny moments
happened when I was working in these different occupations.
When I was working with my friend Stan Wall on the Elm
trees, he was felling a large tree and I asked him if I was
alright standing where I was, he said yes, but I was not so
sure, so I moved. It was a good job because the tree fell
right on the spot where I had been standing.
In the hardware shop we had to cut
glass for people. A gentleman came in and I asked him the
size glass he wanted. He said he needed five pieces, and
then he held his hands apart and asked me to measure
in-between. I said that I bet the glass wouldn't fit, he
said that he bet it would because he hadn't made the frames
yet!
When I was driving for the T.A. I took six men to a place
called Otterburn in the North. This was a firing range for
artillery guns. The gun was towed behind the lorry. The long
barrel of the gun was attached to the tow bar. Going up we
stopped to have a drink, but as we were late I rushed them
out of the pub, thought they were all in the back and drove
off. I heard some shouting from the back and saw people
waving at me. I stopped driving and went round to the back
of the lorry. One of the men was sitting astride the gun
barrel and holding on to the back of the lorry. He was very
sore for the rest of the week. |
|
Dad and Bob at the beach with Gary. |
As I have said, on the five acres of
land we had caravans, but after three years the council told
us take them off, but it helped us to decide on a caravan
park in the future. Kinver was a very nice beauty spot and
while we were there we enjoyed it.
The boys had plenty of space. Nigel
liked horse riding so we bought him a horse, Firecracker.
Then we bought them two little Shetland ponies and tried
breeding them. This did not last long. The first foal was
beautiful but when it was not very old it got into the
garage and into a food bag at night. The next morning I saw
him lying in the field and went down and found him dead.
That stopped us breeding.
|
| As the lads were growing up, Mary and I decided to go
back into business. We looked around for a newsagents. One
was advertised in the paper at Stourbridge, which was about
ten minutes from where we lived. I sat outside the shop, on
and off, for two days just to see what sort of trade they
were doing. It looked very good and the area around was very
upper class. |
|
A family gathering. |
|
Today in 2005, everywhere, such as
garages, supermarkets etc., can sell papers, but at that
time we had complete control of an area of about a mile
around the shop. The man who owned it previously only got up
in the morning to see the newspaper boys and girls and then
went back to bed, leaving his wife and assistants to look
after the shop. The papers usually came in about 5am, so it
was all so, but the return was very good. For the morning
and evening rounds we had 24 boys and girls. Mostly they
were children whose parents were in high positions, such as
doctors etc. They would say to their children, if Mr. and
Mrs Smith give you a pound we will give you the same. This
helped their children to know the value of money. One
father, a director of a firm, came in one morning to ask me
if his chauffeur could take his son Jeff around, as the lad
was late in getting up. I said I didn't mind, as long as
they told the customers the Rolls Royce didn't belong to me.
It seems silly, but I never worried if
one of the boys or girls didn't turn up as I loved to take a
round out in the morning fresh air. We could never get Gary
to deliver. Mary and myself built the business up to a very
high standard by bringing in toys which had a very good 33%
profit margin. |
Mary and I enjoying a stroll. |
|
We kept Rosewood on, but lived over the
shop because of the early mornings. Reg and Dad still lived back
in the country. There was a surprise about two weeks after we
took over the shop. There was a knock at the back door and there
was Reg and Dad with their beds. They said it was lonely on
their own, but I knew with Dad it was because there was no-one
to take him down to the village for his pint, and at the shop he
only had to walk down the road.
When Gary was eleven, he took the eleven
plus exam but failed. He said he would like to go to a boarding
school near the shop. As we delivered books etc. there I knew it
was of a high standard and we didn't want to send Gary
somewhere, where he would be below the rest in education. So,
Mary phoned the Worcestershire Education Department to ask about
the eleven plus papers. They told us that Gary's papers were
good but that there were not enough places available at the High
School. So we sent him boarding.
As we lived close to the school, Gary still
came home for a few hours each weekend. For the first two or
three months he would moan about the boys who were bullying him
and so he might run away like some of the other boys had done.
One day I said to Mary that I knew where they came out of school
to go to a tuck-shop, so I would hide and watch. It did not take
too long before he came down the road with his friends, their
arms around each other and fooling about. When he came home I
told him what I had seen, so that stopped him from moaning
again. After that, we did not see him very much on weekends. |
|
Enjoying a spot of fishing. |
|
The newsagents was a very hard job, getting up
at 5am, but while we were in it the profits were very good. I did
most of the mornings and then Mary and two assistants came in at
9am. The assistants meant that Mary could catch up on her written
work, which she was very good at. If the papers or books went up or
down you had to alter them the same day or you could loose a lot of
money.
I had one of my customers, who came in quite
early, say to me ' Tony, I'm not coming in here again.' I asked him
why, and he said it was because I was always laughing and joking in
the morning. I said 'if that till's taking money I will joke with
anyone.' He still came in every morning. |
|
