English Vacation – 1960
After 1950 we didn’t go to England again for 10 years. My Grandpa Thorpe died in 1959 and left Dad a little money. The folks decided to use some of it to take the whole family to England. By then, there were six of us; Mom, Dad, me, Judy, Bunny, and Lisa.
Granddad hired a bus and the whole English clan met us at the airport. When we arrived we stayed with my grandparents once again. My Auntie Joan and Uncle Jeff lived at 66 Scotney Street on the way to the downtown. Auntie Barbara and Uncle Peter lived that 561 Fulbridge Road in Werrington.
Our trips to and from England were on the last of the pre-jet airplanes. We flew from Des Moines to Chicago on a United Airlines DC-3. In these days of jets that flight takes less than an hour but back then I think it took us a couple of hours. The kids got to walk around the plane during the flight. At the back of the plane there was a semicircular couch so a small group of people could sit around and visit. They gave the boys junior pilot pins and the girls got junior stewardess ones.
The next leg of our journey was from Chicago to New York Idlewild. That flight was quite a bit longer, maybe five or six hours. It was on a United Airlines plane too. I kept my junior pilot pin in my pocket and managed to get a second one out of the deal. This was also the first flight were I experienced rough weather. Strapped into the seats we would hit air pockets and drop like a rock with that lurching roller coaster feeling.
From New York we traveled to Reykjavík on Icelandic Airlines (Loftleiðer). At the time they had never had an accident. The flight took something like 14 to 16 hours. The roar of the Rolls-Royce piston engines was deafening. They did give us the seats in the front, next to the partition which had tons of leg room. Space we used to let us kids lay down. When we arrived in Iceland which is just below the Arctic Circle, it must have been very near the solstice. There was a point about midnight when the sun dipped just below the horizon but it never got dark, there was always a glowing pink, low in the sky. In the cafeteria they served us dinner which they SAID was reindeer meat. I hope it was.
From Reykjavík we flew down to Prestwick in Scotland. I think that took six hours. We spent a little time in the gift shop and I got a pewter keychain with a Highland piper.
Then on to London and the bus ride to Peterborough.
Exploring the neighborhood I soon teamed up with a couple of boys who lived down the street. One was Donny Watkinson. The other was named Lynn but I don’t remember his last name. These could have been a couple of the kids I remember running up to the gates of the level crossing back in 1950. We roamed around the surrounding countryside which was mostly rural on the other side of the tracks. Once while tramping around Marholm Woods we found a derelict World War II pillbox and when arriving at the back of the crematorium we saw a suspicious pile of purply blue ashes. Hmmm.
While I was hanging out with the neighborhood gang, Bunny was out making friends with a road crew that was working at repairing the street out in front of Granddad and Grandma’s house. He hit it off with them big time and got to ride in the street roller with them.
Granddad’s pleasure was to take us up to the “Tuck Shop,” a candy store a few blocks away. On one trip there he pointed out the Scout hut where the English Boy Scouts met. I was eager to meet up with them. I had brought my Americans scout uniform with me for just such an occasion. On meeting day Granddad walked me over. He introduced me to the scoutmaster, a guy named Mick who was from Wales. I started attending meetings regularly.
I even went on a campout with them. I had to get a sleeping bag and a mess kit for the occasion. I still have the sleeping bag although I haven’t used it for 60 years. I had been trading patches and my Auntie Barbara sewed them onto the sleeping bag for me which the English scouts said was their tradition. On the campout the place we pitched our tents was less than ideal. It was a farm field and we had to be constantly vigilant not to tread in cow pies, but in the middle of the field was the most beautiful little stream you could ever want to see. It wasn’t too wide, maybe 15 or 20 feet and several feet deep. It was crystal clear. You could see all the way to a bottom that was covered with river plants. A far cry from the shallow, muddy and barren streams of Iowa. The banks had other greenery too, rushes and the like. The most memorable activity at the campout was a contest between the patrols. We had to build a small raft, 2 or 3 feet square, light a fire on it, and float it across the stream without putting the fire out.
We had a visit to the cathedral in Peterborough. One of its front towers was never completed. They had a painting that commemorated a gravedigger from centuries ago named Old Scarlet. We also took a tour of the crypt of the cathedral. The tour guide showed us a meeting table for use by the clergy that was carved by Robert (Mousey) Thompson. His trademark was a little mouse running up the leg.
I must’ve stayed at my Auntie Barbara’s house now and then. I remember going with her on bicycles to pick up fish and chips from the local shop on a rainy night. Another time I hid behind her garden gate and when she returned from shopping, I jumped out and roared at her. She hauled back and pasted me in the chops. I must’ve made some friends in her neighborhood too. One of them told me he had an old American coin, a half dime. I told them we called them nickels but he was insistent it was a half dime. He got it out and sure enough it was a half dime. It even said so right on it. It was from 1842, made of silver, and was about the size of your fingernail. He asked me if I wanted it and I gladly accepted it since I had recently started collecting coins. My other friend said he also had a US coin and would I like to have that. It turned out to be an 1896 Liberty Head nickel, one with the “V” on the reverse.
I spent a little time at my Auntie Joan’s. Uncle Jeff had a garden allotment which he would go to after work. England is farther north than us so the sunsets were later near the solstice and they had a super sort of daylight savings time which they called Double Summer Time. That meant he could tend his vegetables late into the evening. He also raised show rabbits. When we were there they had the Peterborough Fair. We rode there on our bicycles and Uncle Jeff had his rabbit cages strapped precariously to his bike.
As we wandered around the fair, it began to rain and we ducked under the awnings of the booth tents. It rained hard for a while but then slackened off and finally stopped. The sky was still very dark. Then way off on the horizon we could see the tiniest little sliver of sunlight. As we watched the sliver got bigger and bigger and when the edge of the black clouds cleared the parade ground and the first rays of sunlight shone down, a band of Gurkha bagpipers entered the field. Pipes screaming and drums beating, it sent a shiver down your spine. It was one of the most thrilling things I have ever experienced. Uncle Jeff called the bagpipes Agony Bags.
Dad met Mom during WWII. He was stationed several places around Peterborough where Mom called home. One of the places was Alconbury Air Base. Since we were so close, the family traveled the short distance so we could see where Dad served.
We also went to the beach to swim in the English Channel at Skegness. English beaches take Americans some getting used to. Skegness had a long stretch running along the mainland before you got to the actual sand. It was made up of the most disgusting slurpy, sucky, black mud and gave you the creeps to walk through. But after that it was plain old sand which was just fine except a little cold. I made a sand castle with the buckets and spades we brought along. We also found some teeny crabs returning. About the size of a quarter
The others played on the beach while I was busy building my castle. Later in the day we went on a donkey ride. For some reason I have always thought that Happy Jack that the Who sang about was one of those seaside donkeys. Recently, my sister Lisa rediscovered this picture and had it enlarged to hang on her wall.
After spending some time in Peterborough we visited my Uncle John and his family in Lincoln. My relatives must have scouted out potential friends for us because we always seemed to meet someone to hang around with. On second thought maybe it was just me they found friends for. I was the oldest grandchild and didn’t have any boy cousins anywhere near my age. My younger siblings all had cousins their own age.
Lincoln also had a very nice cathedral. The boys they found for me to hang around with took me to it and we treated ourselves to the self-guided tour. I’m sure they wouldn’t allow anything like this nowadays, at least not in the USA. They let us through a door in the front corner of the nave. Behind it was a very narrow spiral staircase that led up to the second level which was very high above the cathedral floor. There was a narrow aisle from the staircase clear back to the bell tower at the center of the cathedral where the transepts intersected. Along the aisle there was only an arcade of delicate stonework between the outside wall and oblivion, no railing, nothing. What could they be thinking to allow a bunch of preteen boys to ram around in such a dangerous place. Once at the bell tower we found another spiral staircase that led up and back the way we had just come but at the next level higher. Then another staircase up to the third level. Each level got narrower and it was starting to give us heebie-jeebies.
When we were back at the tower for the second time we found yet another spiral staircase but this led up to the bells themselves. They were huge. They had told us not to be in the bell room at certain times because the tolling could be deafening. We made it back to the ground all without flattening ourselves in a seven-story fall or going deaf.
We went for a swim at a place called Woodhall Spa. It is a time-honored watering hole and I got a chance to demonstrate some fancy air mattress tricks.
In England in 1960 they had a series of activity books called “I Spy”. The idea was they were small enough to fit in a shirt pocket and had lists of things to find or spy. Many of them had to do with train serial numbers, but there were many others. One I had was “I Spy, The Unusual.” This book listed some of the hard-to-find things in England. One subject I found was Tattershall Castle. It’s the only brick castle in England I think, maybe one of two. I think I had a couple of other books but I don’t remember what they were. Here’s what they looked like…
An important part of the trip was to get pictures of the entire family. Grandad hired a photographer and had every conceivable combination of people taken. Here is a shot of everyone.
My cousin Andrew, seen just behind me in the above photo was having a hard time getting his picture taken. His dad held him and got him in the shot, but we could only get him in a couple of others, mostly with “grab” shots or when we told him we were taking a picture of someone else but included him too. One picture that was very important to everyone was all the grandchildren lined up in age order. We could not get him to be in that one in any way. Unintentionally, the photographer left a small space where Andrew should have stood. Years later I used Photoshop to reinsert him in his proper place.
I turned 12 they day we left. So, birthday and going away party.
My granddad hired a bus for the return trip too and this time my neighborhood friend Donny Watkinson came with us.
On the way back to the US we retraced our route out. When we were between Reykjavík and New York we had to make a side trip to Goose Bay because of the weather and we had to spend the night in a hotel in New York. The rest of the trip was uneventful.
I had got a cricket bat when we were there and when we got to New York I put on my smart ass hat and said to the customs agent, “What would you say if I told you I had diamonds in the handle of this cricket bat?” His reply was, “What if I cut it apart to find out?” Enough said.
This post is part of the StoryWorth project that I am participating in.
At the ButchieBoy main page click the “StoryWorth” category to see the rest of the entries.