Memories of Childhood
by John Appleby

~ 3 ~

Our neighbours on one side were a rather genteel and kindly couple with a son much older than us. On the other side lived a more colourful family with a daughter and a son of my age. He and his younger sister, with my brother and I would delight in listening to their father rattling off tunes on his melodeon. The mother displayed a card "Board Kept Here". I assumed in later years that it referred to a winding board. I believe that she may have also been a midwife. An older son lived in Canada, where we were told, he was a cook and fed Red Indians!. True or not, we boys were mightily impressed by the huge American coloured comics that he would send. In fine weather, Andrew would spread one on the footpath, and we would kneel, entranced by the multi-coloured characters with names like Little Orphan Annie and The Katzenjammer Kids.

The whole concept was alien - the streets, the way people were dressed, the vehicles, - it was quite exciting. In fine weather we children would be sent out to play in the street. The boys played marbles along the gutters, each boy hoarding his marbles in cloth bags. The big shiny steel ones were Penkers, those lovely glass ones filled with gleaming swirls of colour, were Glassies. The white glazed were Potties, and the brittle clay ones were Muggies! Cigarette cards were swapped and games played with them until they lost their looks. Another exlilerating pastime was bowling iron hoops, whacking them along with a stick, to great speeds, sometimes losing control and watching aghast at the demolition they caused.

Stevensons shop on the corner displayed a luscious array of sweetmeats. There were jelly babies, twists and straps of liquorice, Pontefract cakes, smokers mixture (liquorice pipe and a packet of shredded brown coconut), aniseed balls, gobstoppers to bulge the cheeks and change colour as they dissolved, yellow paper tubes full of sherbet with hollow liquorice tubes for sucking then eating, and dolly mixture. there was also the revolting liquorice root which addicted boys would worry into an unsightly pulp. How long can it take for a boys and girls to choose to spend their halfpennies?

© 2003 John Appleby, New Zealand

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