Crazy Things.

When we got home to the pub there was lots more thing we did, up the road were and still are two big parks, Princess park and Sefton park. These are big open green oasis in the middle of a brick and asphalt jungle. They had big trees and open grass that was always mowed. They were surrounded by tall cast iron fences and had great big iron gates that were locked after dark. Dad was good with his hands and decided to build himself a model aircraft in his spare time. It was a glider with a four foot wing span. He built it in a room upstairs in the pub which we kids were not allowed in, it was kept locked. When Dad brought the plane out for the first time we could see why we were not allowed in. It looked so delicate with the tissue paper stretched over a balsa wood frame. He had painted the tissue with clear dope and it had hardened like a drum skin. It was really magnificent to see this giant plane all made by MY Dad. We went up to Sefton park which was a 15 minute walk away to fly it for the first time. Dad took a long string and hooked it to the front of the plane, it had a special hook that would drop the line when the plane flew over head. There was also a fuse inside the body that had to be lit, this would burn through an elastic so that the tail fin would direct the plane down to earth after a while. Well Dad set it all up and towed it up into the air by running for about fifty yards. The plane soared over our heads and went up and up in a tight spiral. It went higher and higher for about five minutes before it suddenly started to drop in the same tight spiral and we were amazed when it came in to land not more than 50 yards from where Dad had let it go. We said “can we see it go again”, Dad was really pleased at what it had done he said,” yes, one more time”. He took his time and made sure everything was set right again. The fuse was the last thing to be lit and he blew on it to make sure it was glowing red. He closed up the body and hooked up the line, we stood and watched as he ran along with the glider going up in the air behind him, it got to about twenty feet high and he stopped running and it rose over his head and dropped the tow line back to earth. We stared as it began to rise higher and higher over the park. It kept going and going higher still and Dad started to look worried, he looked at his watch and said “ it should have started to have come down by now.” It went up and up and seemed to be going west over the houses more towards the river. When it got over the houses it started climbing faster in the spiral but was also drifting further west. Dad said “ it looks like the fuse has gone out”. I asked “ what does that mean?” “It means it won’t be coming down soon.” We all walked home so disappointed that Dad had worked so hard and it had just flown away. Dad never built another plane again after that. Next time he built a boat with  and electric motor, “that would not fly away “he said.
One thing I really got into was the American comics. Some of the kids at school had dads who were on the ships and they brought them comics home from the USA. There was a little shop on Mill street that all the sailors brought magazines in for the owner and he sold them on. There was all sorts of magazines that I was not allowed to see, he kept them under the counter, but he had Superman and Spiderman comics that were so colourful and nothing like our comics that just seemed to be about football heroes or war stories. I suppose the Eagle with Dan Dare was the nearest we got to science fiction. Any way I bought lot and lots of Superman, Batman and Justice League Comics and thought nothing of lending them out and never getting them back. This is something I really regret because I would pay a lot more than the shilling each I did as a child when I came to buy them in my fifties.

On one occasion we went out in a car to visit someone, I think in Warrington. We went south from the pub past the Speke Airport and towards Widnes. We could see the bridge over the Mersey ahead of us and I asked were we going over that, Dad said yes and I got very upset. I remembered going over the canal bridge at Burscough on the bus and that used to really upset my stomach. I did not want to go over the bridge that was so high as it would really make me frightened. I did not realise the  road ran on a flat platform that hung from the giant arch of the bridge.I did some really daft things as a boy and one of the most dangerous was playing in the old brick works above the Herculaneum docks. It had been abandoned for years and was boarded up so that we could not get in but we boys found a loose railing and managed to get through the fence. There was great big empty spaces which would have been storage for all the bricks, there were great bog furnaces with huge steel doors that had rusted in place and could not be moved. Pigeons had taken over all the upper story and it was full of droppings and feathers. They were breeding all over the place and every nook or cranny seemed to have a nest. Now I knew why no one ever saw a baby pigeon they grew up so quickly they were adult size before they left the nest. I would climb up the steel ladders to the roof and sit and watch all the mums and dads flying to and fro feeding the babies. They would go down the road to the flour mill and feed on the grain that fell of the lorries as they tipped in the grain hoppers. The chicks grew so fast they were bigger than the parents when they first left the nest. I would go home absolutely filthy but could not tell my Mum where I had been or I would be in real trouble. The other lads round the area were not interested in the pigeons, they would pretend to be soldiers and play at shooting games, it was amazing how a piece of wood could become a machine gun or a snipers rifle. Mud was a favourite weapon, it was really like hand grenades when it splattered on you mates. You could miss them and they would still get splashed like they were hit by shrapnel. We would set up headquarters and guard it while the others would try and sneak up on us. Sometimes a rope was brought down and a swing with a single rope and a plank hanging from the bottom was set up. Hours would be spent seeing who could stay on the longest while being spun at top speed round and round. There was no safety net or padding just hard concrete and there were many grazes and bumps but that is what it meant to be a boy. My shins bones today feel so rough because of all the bangs and scrapes I had as a child. You always had a cut or a graze and it is a wonder that more of us didn’t get infection or lock jaw from all the dirt. If you got a cut it was just dried off with anything that was to hand, usually your own shirt or jumper. Nobody ever seemed to brake any limbs but if someone had a plaster cast he was treated like royalty and everyone had to sign the cast. No one ever got to bring them home from the hospital when they were removed. I thought they would make a great trophy for your bedroom if you ever got one, I never did.

Another silly thing we did was during the winter we were in Liverpool it was very very cold and the docks froze over. These were the sea water docks and sea water is not supposed to freeze. We climbed in over the wall and got down the steps that were used for the little tender boats usually. At the bottom of the steps the ice was up against the stone works and we tried to test it with sticks. It did not crack, so we tried to put one foot on it and again it did not move. One boy got brave and stood out on the ice, nothing happened it was rock solid. We all decided to give it a go after him and it really was solid, someone threw the football we had brought and we all chased it running around like we did not have a care in the world. We started a game of football that must have lasted a good 20 minutes before the cocky watchman came along and started shouting at us. We ran over to the other side away from him and up the steps and out of the dock before he could catch us. When I got home Mum asked what I had been doing and I said truthfully “ Playing football” “ok” she said and left it at that. I later heard the cocky watchman in the pub telling Dad about “a gang of lads that had been risking their lives playing on the ice of the docks. It was six inches thick but if it had cracked there was 25 feet of sea water under it and they would never have got out”. I never went near the docks again.