Walks with my dad

 
A few scenes with my dad are rather special to me. Times when I discovered something about how he felt; things that helped shape the way I see and feel about things today. I was about eight years of age at the time of the following events.

There always seemed to be so very many people in Lune Street, Preston; a busy, bustling street with so much to see and take in. I guess we had gone about a quarter of the way along it when I heard the sounds that roller skates make as they move across flagstones – a sort of click-clack as the wheels cross the join between two stones.

The sound quickly got closer, and suddenly there he was: a man aged about 55 with thin, grey hair, scuttling in between the legs of the passersby whilst seated on a square, padded piece of wood with small metal wheels at each corner. He propelled himself along with the aid of two short sticks, his hands protected by pieces of cloth. Very skillfully he manoeuvred himself around, and was gone as quickly as he had appeared.
There was something else about him, something that only registered in my mind after he had passed by. The man had no legs, just two short stumps also wrapped in pieces of cloth. I was just about to as Dad about him when we came across this next scene.

An elderly man was seated on a box in a doorway to our left. His fingers were moving slowly across the page of a large open book that he held on his knees, and he was talking at the same time. The man was blind, and he was reading from the Bible which was in braille. On the ground at his feet was a cloth cap into which people had thrown a few coins. Dad dropped something into it too as we passed by, and the man paused in his reading to quietly say thank you.

When we had gone a little way down the street I asked Dad what had made the man blind (because Dads are supposed to have the answers to many questions, aren’t they?). “I don’t know, lad,” said Dad as he stopped and looked at me. “But every time I see him there like that, it makes me think how fortunate I am and I thank God that I have my sight.”

Those two encounters have stayed with me all of my life.

Dennis Crompton © 1994

Becoming a father changed all that...

Unidentified girls, Spanish Civil War

My friend, Robert asked me one day,

What did Hiroshima mean to you as a young man?’

 *

Well … nothing really, I’d never thought much about it, I said,

back then in 1945, I was only fifteen and patriotic,

I mean, I saw around me bomb damaged houses,

streets of them and lots of temporarily bomb-shocked humans, vacant-eyed …

scrambled-minded wrecks shuffling along the streets of my home town.

I heard the pilot-less flying bomb one night, its engine suddenly quiet overhead,

felt my heart thumping loudly in that sudden … very frightening silence

I hear it yet at times and if I should perchance forget,

I can Google it onto my computer screen - if I wish…

 *

Ground Zero for Hiroshima, August of that same year …

Oh yes! They reaped Churchill’s promised whirlwind

and that was fine by me.

 *

Becoming a father changed all that, it sure changed me…

it gave Hiroshima a meaning, a meaning that was thrust upon me one day

when I imagined my daughters there, back then, and thankfully

I’d lost my soul-destroying callowness…

 *

Now I’m part of that history, have changed, am changing now

with still more to come …

so in a way, Hiroshima had a point,

for all of us, I’d say.

 *

Dennis Crompton © 1997

(first published www.denniscrompton.wordpress.com 2013)

The dreadful being knocked at the door...

I've always been glad that humans possess imagination giving us the ability to extend and colour our knowledge. Where would we be without it?

As a young boy I was honing my imagination by continuing various dramas in my head well after the film had ended, the book was closed or the radio switched off. One story I heard on the radio called, ‘The Monkey's Paw’, was one that I'd have been better off not hearing. I sat listening with the grown-ups around me, pulling my feet closer and closer towards me and the storyline developed. I was in a pretty scared state already before the real horror began and, '…the dreadful being knocked at the door'. Help! Fortunately my dad noticed how it was affecting me and hurried me off to bed, sharpish. But, alone.

I was still well tuned in to the story as I made my way up the stairs in double-quick time, and leaped from the door straight into my bed. I switched off the light and tried to sleep. If I didn't move and breathed quietly, I could still hear the radio downstairs, and a variety of increasingly terrifying and tantalising sounds began to do their work on my imagination. Then, from the radio, I heard more frantic knocking on a door, and the agitated murmurs of grown-ups, mingled with the most awful sounds.  

How can they bear to listen? Are they not terrified themselves? At least they've got each other to scream with, but what about me?!

The darkness now concentrated my thoughts on where I was…alone, completely alone, in the dark, and with potential horrors all around me. With my hearing now on full alert I was certain that something was stirring in the wardrobe, creeping up the stairs or slithering about under my bed, where, oh horrors! I'd failed to check. It was too much for me! I'd heard enough! Really scared now, I curled myself into a ball and pulled the bedclothes tightly round me. At some point, thankfully, my Sunday-school teacher's beliefs must have kicked in, for I imagined, "bands of angels gathered around me as they sang me gently to my rest." That was enough for me to find some peaceful relief, and I fell, gratefully, into those angels' arms and slept in a tight ball 'til morning.

I'll never forget that, and the fear I felt, all alone. Still, a scare is good for you sometimes, isn't it? Gets the adrenalin pumping, adds a bit of zest to life now and then.

Dennis Crompton © 1996
(first published www.denniscrompton.wordpress.com 2013)

A step into reality

There was one August Bank holiday in England that stands out very clearly in my mind as a nine year old boy. It was 1938, and the once a year passenger train would travel up the line from Preston to Longridge for the event; a distance of about seven miles. At all other times, only goods trains travelled the line.

By gum, it’s quiet, I thought to myself as I walked over to the style in the stone wall across the street from where we lived, the vantage point where I kept my eye on things. It was about 9.15 in the morning, it was a Saturday in August, and the weather was warm. There should have been people about; they couldn’t all be sleeping in, I thought.

Then my ears caught the faint shrill sound of a distant train whistle and I turned to face the direction of the railway line. Yes, there it was, pulling up the slight incline with a line of carriages behind it; puffing and panting, smoke and sparks flying out of the engine funnel. Of course! The realisation now came to me; it was the Holiday Train, come to take the folks of Longridge to Preston and then on to Blackpool holiday resort by the sea.

I remember suddenly getting quite agitated thinking of who I could ask so that I might be able to go too, knowing deep down that it wasn’t possible but my mind just wouldn’t let go of the idea. My excitement at seeing the train made my brain think fast and furiously: ‘What could I do to make it possible for me to go?’ Then the train whistle sounded again and…oh…it’s coming back down again! Little sounds of frustration bubbled up from my stomach and throat, in small, panicky snatches as I hopped from one foot to the other. It was all so unfair, I thought to myself very close to tears now.

The train was slowly picking up speed as it moved down the incline, its carriages crammed full of people leaning out of every window, waving or holding long, coloured streamers of paper and calling out happily to other people leaning out of their windows. As their journey began, they were unaware of the lonely boy standing on the style, watching them go with a very heavy heart, taking another step on his journey into the world of reality.

All too soon it was quiet again; there was no one else around and my mind turned over the various reasons why it wasn’t possible for me to have gone to Blackpool too. It was all very clear, really. We just couldn’t afford it. I knew that if it had been possible Dad would have made sure that I was on that train.

I didn’t tell anyone how I felt at that moment; we all had to face such times of disappointment; so I wiped away my tears and after a while found something else to occupy my mind.

Dennis Crompton © 1996
(first published www.denniscrompton.wordpress.com 2013)

Memories of my early days

I don’t know if anyone is ever quite sure when speaking or writing about one's early days, whether what they recall is really a memory of the event, or a mixture of what happened and what you have been told has happened. My first memory is this: I vaguely remember being in a room where there was activity all around me, with folk going out somewhere while I remained where I was, which was under a table eating cake apparently…(this from my brother, Fred, who found it amusing).

My next memory is of lying in a cot on the first floor of Shepherd Street Mission Children's Home in Oxford Street, Preston, listening to the sounds from the street below. The window of my room was immediately about the entrance to the home. I was cared for at this time by Sister Mary Smith but I have no real memory of this care, only of having my bed apple-pied one night and not being able to sleep properly. At some stage I slipped out of the trap by wriggling above the sheets. This took place in the girl's wing where the small room for infants was.

Then I was moved over to the boy’s wing where my brother Fred introduced himself to me, and for the first time I felt a person in my own right. My two sisters, Hilda and Jean, were in the girl’s wing. The few things I remember happening there is of bath time, when the bed I occupied was closest to the bathroom door and a constant stream of lads came and went, smelling of soap and looking fresh and clean. I don't remember having any baths myself, only of one boy who, the first time he saw me, came over to me in this area, put me down on the floor then picked my up by the feet and let my head bump on the hard floor. It gave me a splitting headache but nobody knew and I slept it off anyway. He's in a photo I have; four lads standing around a rocking horse. I'm seated, the rest are standing close by. I think he could have resented not being on the horse himself.

I wasn't unhappy there; the days seemed to pass without my being aware of much. I went to school and came back up a cobble stone street with gas lamps to light the way in winter. On the way back one day, a small white dog yapped at me and gave me a nip on my hand which made me cry and with no one around to care for me it just became another small event that registered.

The small boys sat at one long table for meals, with the big boys at another table. Nothing stand out about the meals except that on rare occasions we had a dab of golden syrup on our bread, and in winter we lined up for a rare spoonful of malt, which I enjoyed. We might all have used the same spoon too.

We all dressed in grey pants and shirts, although at one stage after my move from the infants to the boy’s wing, I wore a grey pullover over darker coloured pants. One photo shows a button missing, and the pants were held them up with cloth straps for braces. I'd tied the strap through a hole I made where the button had been, making me lean forward a bit to compensate.

Our jackets and caps were on hooks in a small area just outside the door of the dining room, which was also our day room. A great jumble of coats and caps hung there and you had to remember just where you'd hung yours every time you needed them. So as far as having any place to call your own, there wasn't one.
On Sundays the girls would come over to our day room, someone played the piano and we sang choruses of a religious and uplifting nature. My sister Jean sang a solo once, 'Jesus wants me for a sunbeam', which later made Fred smile every time he heard it.

Then some weeks after that, Fred told me we would be leaving to go to our own home. And then I turned seven. Surprise, surprise, Mr and Mrs Slater arrived. Mr Slater was the superintendant and looked after the boys; Mrs Slater looked after the girls, helped by a cook and Sisters Anne and Mary Smith. They came in with their son, Tommy, I think, and he handed me a ‘Happy Birthday’ package. It was heavy and turned out to be a fire truck: the first present I ever remember being given. I don't remember having it with me when we left, nor ever seeing any other boy get a birthday present. It may have been from Dad, but I never knew.

On two occasions Mr Slater surprised us, calling the boys out into the play area outside the cloak-room, when we all stood in a semi-circle to listen to him, when he threw handfuls of sweets. I took a while for me to realise what was happening but did I did manage to get a couple to enjoy. The second time I was ready and got a few more. Another time Mr Slater came in with several large cardboard boxes which had lots of strings hanging out of the thin paper coverings. Each of us knew we could pick any string and pull out whatever was on the end, which was a small packet of sweets each. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to create that delightful surprise for us.

The last Christmas we were there, we had a concert of some kind. Carols were sung, words were said, and then Father Christmas came. Excitement and happy sounds all round us as one by one, names were called, a present given and received, until each held a gift in our hands. All except me. 'Has everyone got a gift?' someone called out. Those around me knew I hadn't, but I said nothing, being somewhat bewildered, sad and confused. 'Go on Den, tell him you 'aven't!' someone prompted me. Eventually I called out: 'I 'aven't got one'.

‘Who was that?’ someone at the front said. Then I heard Sister Mary Smith say, 'That's our Dennis Crompton'.

'Come on out here then, Dennis. There's one for you here too.' All was sorted out and the day ended happily for us all. The ordinary, good-hearted folks of Preston saw to it that we were not forgotten at Christmas time.

Come the day we left. We'd seen other boys leave from time to time. This time I was taken through a door I'd never been through before to Mr Slater's office. As I stood there, my two sisters Jean and Hilda came in and a short time after my brother Fred joined us, just as Dad walked through the door. There were hugs all round as we stood together as a family after five years apart. The journey up the street took us away from the Children’s Home to the bus station.

I don't remember everything about that day, but I do remember getting on the bus to leave Preston to take the seven mile trip to Longridge, where our house was, and where we could be together as a family again. As we walked through the door of 1 Pump Street, I saw large stone paving stones on the floor, with several hand-made rugs here and there. A table covered in a nice red cloth, a big armchair and several smaller chairs round the table and a cheery fire warming the room as we entered. Two smiling women were there who'd worked to make this a home for us left a short time after so that we could be on our own at last.

Dennis Crompton © 2012
(first published www.denniscrompton.wordpress.com 2013)

The face at the window

One of the scenes that I retain of my time in the village where I lived as a boy holds a mystery. It's not a deep mystery but it's one which an inquisitive mind such as mine finds rising to the surface from time to time, to ponder on, tease at and enjoy with a sense of wistfulness.

My mate Kenny lived round the corner and had the same cheeky grin as me, according to my big sister. We generally went to school and came home together, passing the big stone house on the corner. On a rise opposite the house stood the village church and graveyard, covered with trees in the kind of picturesque setting you see on postcards. A road passed below the church with a smaller side road heading off deeper into the countryside.

Each day as we passed the house my eyes were drawn to the large window facing on to the street. The largest section in the centre was unusual because it had a circle of glass with four round holes cut into it. It was some time before I figured out the circle could be turned to match up with holes cut into the window glass, providing ventilation.

Sometimes, behind that window, I saw the shadowy figure of a woman. Kenny and I wanted to know more about this lady, so we asked around. Grown-ups who heard our questions told us to, 'Mind your own business, ya cheeky monkeys,' or, 'Keep your nose to yourselves'. Then someone added, 'Curiosity killed the cat,' which didn't make any sense at all to me. It all became quite frustrating and in the end we made up stories about who the woman might be. Betty, the tall girl who was in our class and had a sniff, said she knew something but we had to give her half of our lunch before she'd tell us. When she said the lady was a refugee from Russia, we didn't believe her and burst out laughing.

Then a few days later, Freda Nuttall, the plump lady with tiny pink spots on her skin just below each eye and who owned the small shop in the centre of the street, started talking about the White Russian lady to Mrs Yates who took in washing. We pretended to be glancing through some comics and heard Freda say that the lady might be connected to Russian royalty. 'I’ve seen her,' she said, 'wearing fur-lined boots, a long flowing dress and a tiara in her hair, when she'd taken some groceries round. And ordinary people don't wear tiaras do they?'

That's when Freda caught Kenny and I shaking our heads in agreement. She stamped her foot and growled us out of the shop, with, 'Ee look at those two eavesdropping. Go on, clear off ya nosy beggars,' closing the door after us before we could hear any more. I don't know why grown-ups insisted on keeping such interesting stuff about people to themselves. For days after that, Kenny and I made up stories about the lady which became more and more fanciful. As for eavesdropping, neither of us knew what Freda was on about.

My days were filled with activities involving Kenny or other mates, but each time we walked to school my mind would switch to wondering about the lady behind that window. It didn't stop when our family moved away. Kenny and I met occasionally and one time he told me he had some news about the lady. He said his big sister had been out with her boyfriend, looking at the headstones in the graveyard. He gave a big wink when he said that. I didn't know why then. He was streets ahead of me when it came to knowing things boys weren't supposed to know. They'd seen a horse and cart come down the road and stop outside the rear entrance to the old stone house. As the man driving the cart got down they'd seen this women come roaring down the path, shouting angrily and shaking her fist in the man's face. It was difficult to make out what she was saying but according to the boy friend, she was no Russian. He recognised the accent; she was from Wales. My little world fell flat then, until I remembered Kenny didn't have a sister.

I wasn't angry with him for having me on. It was one of the things I liked about him but I was very relieved because it left me with the mystery you see. One day I intend to go to the Public Records Office and look up the Census Roll. I've got this theory about Anastasia…

Dennis Crompton © 1999
(first published www.denniscrompton.wordpress.com 2013)

Readings from t' paper wi' Grandma

The grandma in the story is not my real one, she is the mother of Mrs Usher, the family that took me in as a boarder when Dad kicked me out of home. 

Grandma and I would often be on our own; she reading the newspaper and me about my lawful business, eating or whatever. But they were very rarely dull affairs for me for no matter what I was doing, Grandma would be sure to start up a conversation of one kind or another, even if it was rather one-sided.

Picture us both in a small living room, me seated at the table doing my thing, she in her favourite chair giving out all kinds of signals that soon, some gem of historical interest which she knew I ought to know would hit the airwaves. I would finally stop what I was doing, look over in her direction and ask, ‘What is it then, Grandma?’ and the following kind of communication would take place:

‘T council’s going to pull down t’ Jamieson’s Garage. You know, that place on’t corner of Clyde and Everton Gardens?’

‘What Gardens?’

‘Come on Dennis, you know ... Everton Gardens.’

By now I’d got into the mood a bit and would egg her on. ‘Oh, you mean down by Robinson’s factory?’ knowing very well it was miles away from there. She’d give a little chuckle showing her gums off to their full glory.

‘No, down by t’ bus station,’ and then she’d stop, afraid of losing what she’d started to say, and carry on from where I’d caused the diversion.

‘Well Mrs Jenkins, who used to live in t’ flat above the garage is not ‘aving it. It says here ...’ and she would proceed to read whatever Mrs Jenkins had to say about it. If she got through that snippet without another side-track issue, the communication would continue. ‘Anyway there’ll be ‘ell to play if t’ council does pull t’ garage down, because ...’, she’d pause, look over at me and say, ‘Ee, yer not listening are you love?’

I’d carry on with what I was doing, saying, ‘Yes, Yes I am Grandma, go on,’ and thus encouraged, on she’d go, and she could keep it up through several pages of the paper. If I’d had a tape-recorder in those days I could have recorded a potted, convoluted history of all kinds of very humorous but totally useless local information.

Then she’d stop, look at herself and rising suddenly to her feet in danger of bringing on a dizzy spell, and say with a trace of dismay on her face, ‘Ee, look at me, sat wi’ mi apron still on. What will people think?’
‘Don’t worry about it Grandma, nobody’s going to see you.’

But that didn’t stop her, she was now almost upright. ‘Oh, but I know. No, it’ll ave to come off.’

Now a journey would begin from her chair to the kitchen; a matter of about five steps for an ordinary person not anxious to go to the loo or put a fire out but taking her three steps for every ordinary one. I’d look at her and say, ‘Slow down Grandma, it’s thirty miles an hour in a built-up area you know. You’ll have t’ police on to you next.’

She’d stop in mid-track, wobble a little, look at me with a twinkle in her eye and say, ‘Ee Dennis luv, you are cheeky,’ and she’d laugh in her thin, reedy voice, holding onto her side before continuing her trek to the kitchen. I’d hold my breath as I now caught sight of one of her stockings threatening to slide a little further down a thin spindly leg with also a provocative inch or two of pink bloomer showing above the leg elastic.

Thankfully, she was unaware of such erotic revelations and would eventually reach the kitchen safely with no mishaps.

There were many communications like the above as Grandma and I sat together in that little room. She was a warm and lively soul and I must have learnt quite a bit from her ‘readings from ‘t paper.

Dennis Crompton © 2013
(first published www.denniscrompton.wordpress.com 2013)