NOW ITS LIKE LOOKING THROUGH A WINDOW
by Mary Morgan
Chapter 1 page 3
GROWING UP
Later memories are of busy days working in our shop, school, and
getting the chance to go out to play with my friends. In those days we
would play in the street, park, or even the bomb sites and make our own
entertainment up. There were very few toys to be bought - even if your
parents were lucky enough to have the money to buy them, so we made our
own. The wheels off an old pram would make a go-cart and the body would
make a great sled for the snow in winter. The tyres from a car or truck
would be used for bowling along the road or pavement - until that is,
Guy Fawkes night when they would be used to make the Merridale Street
bonfire the biggest in the area.
From the age of about eight I was "chosen" to help my mother run the
shop, and every day except Sunday I would have to get up the same time
as my mother - six a.m. My father was into his sixties by then and
always ill, so while my sister and brother were still tucked up in bed I
would have to get up and clear out the dead fire ashes, clean and polish
the big black firegrate and lay the paper and wood ready for them to
light the fire when they got up. Following this I would get dressed in
my "old" clothes and Wellington's or shoes.
My mother would have gone out already to catch the bus that passed the
top of our street. This would travel up Worcester Street and Victoria
Street, where she would get off outside the big departmental store owned
by the Beattie Brothers - which was the first departmental store in
Wolverhampton. She would then walk along North Street, past the Town
Hall, up Wulfruna Street, through the Retail Market - where the Civic
Centre is today. Then onto the Wholesale Market where Wolverhampton
University was later built, in order to buy all the fruit and vegies
that she needed to stock the shop for that day's trading.
Meanwhile I would be emptying out the ashes from the fire grate into a
bucket and I would tip them into the bin or "ashbin" as we called it.
Those days we "invented" recycling because those ashes would be riddled
and the unburnt cinders would be tipped onto what was called a
"slack-heap" then mixed with any other combustible rubbish from around
the house and used to "bank up" the next fire we lit. This was a way of
life then - never waste anything!
