My first childhood recollection was hanging out of the bedroom window with my older brother watching the searchlights as they picked up the German bombers on their way to blitz the city of Liverpool and the docklands on the river. Then your parents had move you all outside to the safety of the air raid shelters.

Playing with the other kids in the street and collecting pieces of shrapnel from the bombing raids as trophies to show off with at school.

Waking up very early one Christmas morning, going downstairs and being horrified to find that Santa had left me a four-wheeled baby perambulator as a present; I was later relieved to find out the pram had been stored overnight at my home by our neighbours for their own little daughters surprise later in the morning.

Because of wartime rationing you only got 2 ounces of sweets (candy) to last you all week. This shortage led to you asking any passing American servicemen “Got any gum chum?”

All those long and seemingly endless summers when you were a child when it never seemed to rain and you explored everywhere you could find.

The best was going to the Saturday morning movie shows to watch Roy Rogers, Hopalong Cassidy, Johnny McBrown, Lash LaRue and Gabby Hayes with all the kids cheering for the goodies and booing the baddies. The Bowery Boys, The Three Stooges and then there were the cartoons; God bless old Fred Quimby for them.

There were big wartime and post-war drives on to recycle everything. Glass containers and scrap metals were the priority. We used to make wooden buggies to go around collecting empty glass jam (preserve) jars. These would be taken to your local grocery store and you received one penny for every jar returned. The older kids collected empty beer bottles and returned them to the back doors of neighbourhood pubs for three pence each.

Delivering newspapers before going to school; I can still remember some of the headlines like when Joe Stalin died, and the saga of Captain Carlson of the American freighter ‘Flying Enterprise’ which sank in a terrible storm off Lizard Point, Cornwall.

Hedge cutting was another lucrative method of supplementing your pocket money. Old ladies would pay you two or three shillings to cut the privet hedges in their gardens or do some weeding in their back yards. All done with hand shears – no power tools then.

Racing your wooden buggies down the steepest hills you could find, and afterwards ending up in A&E at the hospital with your mother (who by now had a sense of humour failure) to get your cuts and grazes dressed by a pretty nurse.

Buying five Wild Woodbine cigarettes from a vending machine and a book of matches as the boxed variety always rattled and were sure to give you away. Wondering how on earth your parents had found out you had been smoking.

My beautiful and voluptuously sexy Geography teacher Miss Seymour; she always wore black stockings with garters and you could sometimes get a glimpse of them and her long legs under her desk and they totally mesmerised me. She finally told me I would be a whole lot better off knowing that wheat was exported from Canada and the USA rather than knowing that ladies stockings were made in Nottingham. The next week a modesty panel was fitted to her desk – damn!

Being madly in love with my first real girlfriend Anita T******* and taking her to the movies. Once after a few dates while walking her back home I started getting a little too amorous and got a knee in the-you-know-whats for my trouble and she packed me in. I was heartbroken for about two weeks and then amazingly I got over her.

Joining the Navy at age sixteen convinced I was heading for a life full of romance and adventure. The harsh awakening of strict discipline and punishment drills during training that made me realise that my childhood was gone and it was no good shouting for my mother – because she couldn’t help me anymore. It was time to grow up and start becoming a man.

Peter

Where are you from? England

I could relate to some of the same things too.
Enjoyed reading this.

Bob H.

Where are you from? Arkansas