 |  | | | School Memories from the 1930/40s | There are 5 messages in this section. |
Betty McNulty from Glasgow. Posted 27 Mar 2002.
I have always been gifted with being able to make people laugh; many a time it got me into trouble. At school one day I was put outside the classroom, and I started to do some handstands to pass the time.
So busy was I that I failed to hear the Priest; he shouted - what do you think you are doing? I told him that I felt it was a sin to waste time, and thought that if I practised my P.E. it would help me. He didnt tell the teacher but he told my Mother, which was worse for me. | | |
|  | Alan Cameron. Posted 10 Apr 2002.
My mother was a champion recycler. I think all mothers in the post war period were. I had this home knitted zip front cardigan, the zip having been salvaged along with the wool. As I grew, my mother simply ripped out the first two or three rows of knitting, and knitted in more rows. She was able to add extra width somehow using a hook. This was a great arrangment, until she ran out of the correct wool. Something fetching in a similar knit and contrasting colour was the order of the day. I ended up with the coat of many colours. The zip got replaced with salvaged duffle coat toggles. It was unique, and warm as well! I was never a "pet" to the primary teachers, though I think a few took real pity on me for my apparent poverty as I strode around in my unique winter cardigan. I remember one Christmas being selected as a dancer for the nativity. I was about seven, and "guttys" or dancing pumps were just a bit dear. I told the teacher, and she said very kindly "oh, just wear your shoes dear." Socks were not allowed, I think mainly for hygenic reasons. It was winter, and tacketty boots were the order of wear, because they were great for sliding with. Nobody really noticed me sitting on the lovely polished wooden floor with my boots on. I got up and a look of horror crossed the teacher's face. The music started and I skipped as lightly as I could as the music started. About two turns round a very big janitor lifted me bodily out of the formation and carried me under his arm out of the hall. He then gave me guttys left behind by forgetful pupils. I remember whole families who would all arrive with their mouths and chins a bright purple colour, a sure sign that the farm types amongst us had got ringworm and Jensen Violet had been liberally applied overnight.
We were pioneers as well, because the BBC in conjumction with the Board of Education would broadcast the schools programmes. One of those for us 7 year olds was a series of books in differing colours, which denoted the difficulty of the French Language they were attempting to teach us. All part of the get to know your neighbours thing popular after the war! The big plywood tannoy would be turned on and a very polite Home Counties man or woman would do songs, phrases and understanding.
I amazed my older brothers by reading the HP sauce bottle at very young age. Girls at playtime would bounce a tennis ball off a wall, performing seemingly impossible acrobatics and would sing or chant to the beat..as well, amazing! Other girls played a cats cradle type game for two using elastic bands, which they jumped around in. It also involved chants. Too complicated for me. I had the honour of owning a half-size leather 'team ba'. Almost a family heirloom, having come from a cousin who emigrated, it was used constantly. British bulldogs, a hopping and bashing game, tig, one after a', kick the can were all played with gusto at dinner time. Very seldom did we get inside, only in the very severest weather.
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| | Nancy Roy from Alloway. Posted 11 May 2002.
My wartime schooldays were spent in Alloway Primary. Many memories remain but few stronger that of harvest time 1943. Surrounded by fields we had been forbidden to enter them, especially during harvest time and this for safety reasons. Reasons we country children well understood. One particular day some boys disobeyed the order and returned to school after lunch carrying a handful of field mice they had found in the newly harvested field. I remember looking at the tiny hairless little creatures and the softness of them to my touch. I remember too Mr Campbell, our Headteacher's, wrath!! Every child in that school was lined up, marshalled past him and made to scrub our hands with carbolic soap!!
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| | David M Robertson from Montreal, Canada. Posted 28 May 2002.
My class photo adorns the wall in front of me, just beyond my desk -
Charlie McConnell and Robert Mucklow, ties slightly askew, face the
camera with what seems to be a look of grim uncertainty - and Diana or
is she Leslie (what is her name?), her sandy locks drawn back from a
lovely, shy face to form a loose bun, sits in the second row with hands
folded demurely in her lap - and theres me, in the second to last row,
fifth from the left; the only one with a tartan tie, grim look, eyes
straight ahead, big ears and a pre-beatles haircut chin tucked and my
rigid, skinny shoulders squared to the camera. Where are you David
McAllister and you Jean Tucker, and where is the Whiteford girl from the
farm near the loch? Does Billy Williamson remember, with fondness, his
days as a football star with the Rangers or for that matter his time as
our physical education instructor at Lenzie? Does Mr. Williamson still
kick a football and enjoy a round of golf?
In the meantime:
I left Lenzie Academy Primary School as a 10 year old, and emigrated to
Pickering, Ontario, Canada - February 16, 1952 with my Mother and
Father, and two younger brothers - Donald the youngest (too young for
the Academy) and Peter Wellesley Robertson, also a student at Lenzie.
Donald lives in London, Ontario whereas Wellesley is in Haliburton,
Ontario. Our parents, Catherine and Peter are, alas, deceased. I
presently live in Montreal, Quebec.
Do any of you know if the Mile still exits my path to and fro the
Boghead house where I was raised and Lenzie railway station my daily
trek from home to the Academy? Does anyone recall one sunny day in the
mid to late 1940's when an American fighter plane, a P-51 Mustang,
accidentally dropped its underbelly fuel tank somewhere on Lenzie? Where
were you that memorable day when I spotted the fighter the pilot
flying his gleaming bird, west to east, just above church-spire level,
across the north end of town? I stopped, turning to look, when I heard
the wonderfully glorious sound of the approaching aircraft, the Merlin
engine screaming full bore, as I crossed the Lenzie Station footbridge.
I can remember cracking the eggs and breaking a jar of marmalade when I,
overtaken by the excitement, dropped the shopping packages I was
carrying home to my mother shopping picked up from the grocers shop,
located nearby the station entrance. Another time I clearly remember a
squadron of three Lancaster bombers, diving below tree-top level, aiming
to hit an imaginary target with dummy practice bombs. The nondescript
target was in a farm field and I crouched nearby in the hedgerow,
clasping my home-made wooden Tommy gun waiting as I watched with
delight as they circled to begin yet another of several runs my best
recollection is that the field was on the east side of the road to
Kirkintilloch and just north of its intersection with the Boghead Road
does anybody else recall this late 1940's event or similar ones? So
many post-war memories! Do any of you recall seeing platoons of German
soldiers, prisoners of war, on forced exercise marches on Boghead Road
or picking peas and bringing in the hay on numerous small-holdings and
farms throughout the shire; or did you see the Heinkel bomber flaming
downward in a death spiral on a clear winter night sky, crashing into
the Campsies? Does anyone remember another night, before wars end,
when an anti-aircraft shell, from one of our own ack-ack guns stationed
near the Boghead its fuse having failed, turning earthward to explode
where it landed on a stable just west of our Wester Boghead Road house,
alas, killing and maiming most of the stabled horse. Do you remember the
barrage balloon dropping paratroopers in training from a suspended
gondola during the post-war summers of the late 1940's and early 1950's.
This activity took place west of our small-holding and well within view
of my brothers and I who spent hours thrilled by the soldiers jumping
repeatedly onto a training field located in what I think had once been a
POW camp during the war, and what I believe today is a penitentiary?
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| | Ann Young. Posted 12 Jun 2002.
Dear Betty,
Why is it that the worst school stories seem to come from Catholic schools? Like yourself I was entertaining the class in housewifery (before Home Economics) by holding up a toasting fork and hanging from the pulley. The teacher was so outraged I was instructed to wash her brother's hankies, he was a priest. This was one instance when I would have preferred the belt. Ugh!
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