I remember the 1950s

I was born in 1948 & grew up a council house in a very ordinary district. So the 1950’s were my growing up or childhood years. Our neighbours were poor and we were poor and we never bothered to lock the doors because we had nothing to steal.
Summers were warm & endless. We made our own amusements, played out in the fresh air all day, eating wild fruit and drinking fresh water from cupped hands. We felt safe in our locality. We climbed trees , made carts from old pram wheels, slingshots from V shaped branches & rubber bands. Ate sweet chestnuts & pickled horse chestnuts to engage in the now “dangerous game of CONKERS?”.
I could go on at length about this long gone idyll.
It’s easy though to be selective in our recall for in this rose coloured existence lurked a dark side with burdens of illness ,poverty & inequality on folks.
I remember people calling by. The copper who dropped in late in the evening for a cuppa, he borrowed my dad’s collection of operatic 78 rpm records, & never came back with them. From then on we locked our doors which was a bit pointless as we handed them to him. The gas man who gave us back all of the foreign coins in the meter & which were put in by our lodger.
The stately SHIRE horses pulling dust carts . The rag & bone man & his skewbald pony & cart.


As Mary Hopkin sang “Those were the days my friend”.

Re: I remember the 1950s

You are older than me Robert but although we all had our problems as kids I too remember the good times.

Life seemed much simpler then, I remember scrabbling around looking for the right type of stone to draw a hopscotch on the pavement, it had to be the correct stone, a girl has her standards

Re: I remember the 1950s

Hopscotch, that takes me back some years..lol. I used to live 5 mins walk away from a marble factory where as kids we would stand at the entrance and call out to one of the workers if they had any Clicky to spare, they would always give us a couple of hand size pieces to play hopscotch with...good old care free days.

Re: I remember the 1950s

By heck, you were posh round your way

Re: I remember the 1950s

We all had Bikes, a big gang of us, nowadays, more than Three lads on Bikes seems threatening.

Re: I remember the 1950s

Summers were hotter then I remember the cracks in the ground.

Re: I remember the 1950s

I remember snow in June - the ground was too warm for it to lay, but we had a real blizzard for about 30 - 40 minutes.

I seem to recall that we had a lot more thunder storms too.

Re: I remember the 1950s

soap box carts made out of boxes and pram wheels whoooo

Re: I remember the 1950s

Ah! the 50's (I must be a touch older than you) I remember the fear of polio when it struck an area, children at school with rickets and others with their heads shaved when they got lice. The rag and bone man on his horse and cart giving away goldfish or a bow and arrow in return for old clothes. running out to feed the horses of the milk and the bread man. Going door to door collecting old newspapers with the girl next door to take to the scrap merchant for a few copper coins

The minutes silence on the radio after the death of King George VI, the coronation parade in Cheltenham for Queen Elizabeth where the Centurion (?) tanks drove past and ripped up the road - then the roasting of a whole ox in Pitville Park afterwards. My coronation mug and piece of soap (was that a hint?) given to me at school and the Dinky toy coronation coach which was not a match for my collection of army Dinky toys and my wonderful collection of Meccano which were my pride and joy.

My really crap roller skates with metal wheels and the joy of being given some 'Jacko' skates with rubber wheels that allowed me to skate like a maniac.

Climbing over the fence at Folkestone Flower Show so we didn't have to pay and lazy days on the beach occasionally interrupted by a mine being washed up on the beach followed by the excitement of it being towed off shore and exploded. Likewise playing on so many bomb sites and streets being evacuated when rebuilding work revealed an unexploded bomb. Exploring areas like the Warren to find bits of downed fighters and bombers left over from the war (a complete tail fin of a bomb was a prized possession)

Holidays at Butlins or playing in the mud at Weston Super Mare... The terror of holidaying at Hunstanton after the 1953 floods (I thought it could happen again at any moment). Travelling for hours on dirty, smoky, trains to go on holiday, always having to go to the front of the train to have a look at the loco first, putting pennies or washers on the tracks to have them transformed into massive disks.

Yes, the 50s were fun but so was any decade when you were that age.

Re: I remember the 1950s

I wasn't very hands on or practical, still aren't. I excelled myself one snowy winter (1962?)by constructing a sledge out of used GRIMSBY fish boxes from A.J. Mouncey's Fish & chip shop on the other side of our road.

I'd hardly used it for more than 10 minutes when the big brother of one of my chums insisted on giving me half a crown to buy it from me.

Later that day MY big brother took umbrage at this sale and landed a swing at the other feller, who decided to punch me instead thus giving me my first and only black eye.
Us younger boy never fell out over this & my pal went to serve 30 years in the Police Force.
I bumped into his older brother 40 years later when he was a director of I.C.I.

He apologised readily. It cleared his conscience.
I laughed , he laughed & we continued to mingle at the Store Opening launch we were both invited to ..