The Coal Yard & other stories
Page 17
Attendance Certificate School play with Alma second from left
Jim Thompson recalled going to the Kaikorai School and having problems with a teacher, Biddy Reed. Shortly after his parents transferred him to the Wakari School.
Local Stores
The grocery shop stayed open later on Saturday nights as they were the agents for the “Star Sports” news paper that contained all the sporting and horserace results for the day and with the outer pages printed on yellow paper. In Gilmore Street where I lived, my father “Jock”, Ian Walsh, and Frank McElroy took turns at collecting their “sports” paper. More often than not it was the children of each family that did the trip in the hope of getting an ice-cream.
Next store up that side was Glossop the butcher and I think prior to that it was Fraser. After the war (2nd World) we still had to have coupons for many items like butter some meats possibly, tea, rice and petrol. Anyway with a shortage of money we lived on a lot of offal type meats that are rarely sold these days. There was ox tongues, tripe, pigs trotters, pigs heads and pressed meat. This latter consisted of all the meat scraps from the shop set into a jelly contained in glass dishes. The dishes were returned to the butcher for the next time. Our mother would press cooked ox tongues into a bowl with a saucer on top and a heavy weight to squash it down. This weight was generally an iron that was used for ironing clothes when heated on the coal range. The meat when set, into the bowl shape was then sliced as required. Next up that side of the road was the shoe repair business run by the Foster brothers, who I recall were very friendly folk.
Across from them was Hyslop’s grocer shop where I got free lollies if I sang my own version of “Oh Susannah” in front off other customers.
On the Church side of Taieri Road there was a big two storey house next up from the church. I recall the Paget family living there and it may have been the Presbyterian Manse in earlier times. Because the road had been built up as mentioned before, houses on each side had another storey below to bring them up to street level. A Chemist shop was built maybe in the 1960’s and was set back from the road and reached by a concrete bridge. Once the road was widened the bridge was removed and the footpath was then flush with the front of the shop. A little way further up was the Methodist Couch that featured earlier.