Friends from the Wemyss

I remember my first day at school, when I went to school, and boy I didn't like it. I remember I can still see the classroom yet. There were four big pictures in the classroom, showing all the seasons of the year. We also had a clock, which you could learn to tell the time by turning the hands. That's things that stick in my memory of this classroom. That was the first one I was in, but I did not care much for the school. Not at that stage anyway Later on I wasn't too bad.

However the house we were living in, was going to be demolished to build a lot of shops and one thing and another, and so we got told to move out, we had to get another place. They were going to demolish all of the building about four or five houses The other people had cleared out, and we were the only ones left. We hadn't got a place and we were very lucky. The day before they came to demolish the house, my Mother got on to a place in Bridge Street It was only a little better than the one we left, but it was some place to go. However in the morning, and before we got our furniture away, they were taking the bloody tiles off and everything, so we had to move. They were going to make us move. That's one way of evicting you, however we got our stuff. I don't think we needed a cart to move our furniture, a barrow would have been enough, because all we had were two or three rickety chairs, and an old table and an old dresser. That was I think the total complement that we had. You wouldn't give tuppence for the lot.

1910-11

The house we moved to, was on the Aberdour Road, and we were near a place called Moss Morne. At 1902 I think it was there was a Mine disaster. There had been a Mine there at one time, and the old bog, where they had been extracting the coal underneath with peat and everything, and there had been a lot of heavy rain, and the roof had given way. Peat and bog and everything had come in, and suffocated the men that were in it. What they call the Moss Morne disaster. Nine or ten men were killed. There were a lot got out, but nine or ten men lost their lives. They never got their bodies yet, because they were all covered up with moss and peat and everything . I remember at that time the ground was always subsiding, and there had been a baker's van coming from DCI, that was Dick's Cooperative Institution, coming along the road with his horse, and the road gave way, and the van went right down into a hole. They had to get the horse unbuckled from the van, to get the van out, but they had to cover up the horse. They had to shoot it, as the ground was all boggy. It had fallen right down in a hole and there was nothing they could do about it. The road was always cracking and giving way, and one thing and another. There were two or three houses there, at the side of the road, and they sunk right down until the window sills were right down level with the road, but there was nobody living in them at that time. It was just the nature of the ground. It was just all bog.

I can remember seeing Halley's Comet The year was 1909, I'm not quite sure about it, I think it was about that period. Everyone went to see the comet and they tried to tell us, if the tail came down and touched the earth, that would be the end of us. There were a lot of people going off their bloody head about this thing, and it was thousands of miles away, bloody millions of miles away. Another thing that sticks out in my mind, at that time in 1909, Jack Johnson the black boxer beat Tommy Burns, for the Championship of the World at Rushcutters Bay in Sydney, and that sticks out in my mind also, because I got a newspaper and written on the ground was "Johnson knocks out Tommy Burns for the Championship of the World." These thing stick in my memory for later years.

In these days there was very little traffic on the road, and we used to go to the blacksmith and get him to make a gird for us. It was a hoop made with iron, and you put a cleet in it, and we used to go from Cowdenbeath to Aberdour, which was maybe about four miles, and we would run all the way to Aberdour with this gird. There was no traffic to do you any damage. We used to go there, and we were so hungry when we were coming back, we used to eat the orange peel, that was lying at the side of the road, where people had been eating an orange and just threw it down. We were so bloody hungry, we were glad to eat the peel. The year I went to school, my brother John, he was nine years older than me, left and he got a job at the Aitken Pit. It was about two and a half miles away, and they had to walk this every day, backwards and forwards, because there was no transport then. Sometimes they ran trains, but it was very seldom, and of course you couldn't afford a train anyway. One evening they were walking back from work, I think there were four of them altogether, and there was a train or an engine came along. The wind was against it, and they wouldn't hear it coming. It was close on them before they knew it was there, and three jumped clear, but this other fellow he was hit by the engine and got killed.

I don't know what happened but we had to move again. We got another house at what they called the Borough road in the Borough buildings, but it was a case of out of the frying pan into the fire, because this little house that we got, was right next to a place, where they made lathes to put the plaster on them, when they were making ceilings for the roofs and one thing and another. The Gas works was right at the back of us and the place was hotching with rats. They had all the skirting board and everything eaten up. We had to go to the Council and tell them about it, and they put traps down. They put everything down, but when you went to bed at night, you could hear them running across the lino, and hear them squeaking, and one thing and another. It was a terrible place, but we had to stick that, because there was nowhere else to go.

In the house where we lived, Cowdenbeath football ground was just over the back of it, and we used to go there on a Wednesday, that's when they did all their training, and I got to know all the players. We used to get the ball, when they kicked it over the post or bar, and we used to field it for them, and we got to know them. There were two lads there that used to play for Rangers at one time, Bell and McKenzie had been the Rangers full backs for years and years There was another little lad that came from the west of Scotland, he played centre, Willie Carol they called him, and to look at him you wouldn't think he was a footballer at all. He was bandy legged, and everything. Dicks Cooperative in Cowdenbeath had a lot to do with the team, and the one that scored the most goals of a Saturday, used to get a pound of sausages for every goal that they scored. There was one week that Carol scored seven goals, so seven pounds of sausages he would take home with him.

My brother Tom had started to work in the Mine by this time and Jim also. Tom had been in the Mine a few weeks, when they took him out, and brought him back to school, because they passed an Act that you could only leave the school at certain times of the year, and they had to take him out of the Pit, and go back to school for a while, before he could go back to his job, which was bloody ridiculous.