WEST MARTON 4 (AND WAGONS)

[Stanley]

WEST MARTON 4 (AND WAGONS)

Written 23 February 2001

That’s right, I can’t fight it any longer, I’m going to get transport out of my system this week but first I want to tidy Marton up a bit. One of the nice thing about writing these articles is the way people pop out of the woodwork and remind you of the things you had forgotten. I’ve just been talking to Phyllis Addyman and she reminded me of the time when Harry tied a blue ribbon round a cockerel’s neck and left it on Ruth Ashworth’s doorstep at Bale Farm on polling day. The story is she opened the door, saw the cockerel and knew straight away who was responsible. Then there was the bloke who was told that the pensioners in the almshouses at Thornton in Craven were in trouble because their upstairs windows needed cleaning but they couldn’t get anyone to do them. He shouldered a ladder and walked across there and had a good cursing do when he realised they were single storey!
I had a namesake at the dairy, Mark Graham, no relation. He worked at the capping end of the bottling machines and when he had a day off he used to alter the tension on the little flap that put the foil caps on the bottles. The consequence was that when he wasn’t there they always had problems with the capping machine. This did his reputation no end of good because miraculously, the following day, when he came back, everything ran like clockwork!
I mentioned Jack Brown the plumber last week and how his death left me feeling very ashamed. Jack was another character, he was always the same, I never saw him lose his temper about anything. I remember once when I was in the garage and they had started on the alterations to the dairy for cheese-making, Raymond, the foreman of the builders came up the yard and asked if I could take the grinder down the yard and cut a cast iron pipe for them. Jack Brown was directing operations, they had opened the yard up and there were two pipes, one of them redundant. Jack told me which one to cut and when I got into it water flew out at high pressure, soaking everyone within twenty feet. As I scrambled out of the hole, wringing wet, I could hear Jack shouting, "That’s right, I remember now, it’s t’other un!"
When Len Pitts the boilerman had a day off Jack used to stand in for him as firebeater. It was a little Cornish boiler and was very hard-pressed, we used a lot of steam. Len had it down to a fine art, he could clean the clinker out of the fire without losing any pressure but Jack never quite cracked this operation. I was in the yard one day and he shouted to me out of the room next to the boiler and asked me to open the firebox door and have a look at the fire. There was a foot-pedal to open it and I put my left foot out and pressed it. As soon as the door opened there was a big ‘WHOOSH’ and a flame about twenty feet long shot out of the firebox. Jack had let the fire go out and had thrown a lot of oily rags and bits of wood in but they were only smouldering and as soon as I opened the door and let the air in it fired. I was playing hell with Jack but all he said was "I thought it might do that!" All you could do was laugh.
David Peacock once asked Jack to see him at going-home time. When Jack went down, David asked him to hang on for a minute while he made a phone call. When he came out of the office he wasn’t best pleased because Jack had vanished, he had his wife to pick up at the mill in Barlick. The following morning David Peacock buttonholed Jack and said, "I thought I told you to wait for me last night!" Jack looked him straight in the eyes and said, "Aye you did but I’m more flayed (frightened) o’t wife than I am of thee!" I wasn’t there when he said it but a bloke that was said it was a picture to see David trying to keep a straight face. In the end he let Jack go!
Ted Lawson and I were given a job one day, we had to dig a hole in George Parker’s back garden for a new manhole on the main drain down to the new sewage plant. It was a fair hole and it took us three days to dig it out. On the third day Ted said to me, "Have you noticed that lump of meat in Percy Graham’s pantry window?" I told him I hadn’t and he took me across to look at it. It looked like a big piece of silverside and it was obvious that it had been cooked a few days before because the back end nearest the window was green! We kept out eye on it through the week and it gradually shrank as they cut from the other side of it. I think about that many a time when I hear people on about food hygiene. It all depends on what your system is used to dealing with. Percy and Mrs Graham had been eating food like that all their lives, they had never had a fridge, and they were used to it. I often wonder if we are too clean nowadays.
As the dairy moved into cheese-making, David Peacock sent for me one day and asked me if I’d like to go on to the milk tankers. I jumped at the chance because driving was always my first love. He put me on an old AEC Mercury with a Darham tank on it and I kept that motor for the next five years. It was a good job, we used to load with chilled fresh milk the afternoon before and then set off early in the morning to deliver the milk first thing at any dairy between Sanquhar in Scotland and Ashby de la Zouch in the Midlands. This meant leaving at midnight at times if we were booked for an early tip. It was a clean, straightforward job, all we had to do when we tipped was to wash the tank out ready for loading when we got back to Marton.
Nowadays, tank washing is done mechanically but in those days you got in the tank with a hose and a bucket of detergent and scrubbed the tank by hand with a long brush. They were stainless steel and so this wasn’t a bad job. When we had got it clean we would almost close the lid, push the hose through the cock at the back and turn the high pressure steam on. Twenty minutes of steaming effectively sterilised the tank interior and we left the lid cocked up and the back cock open as we drove back so that air circulated and cooled the tank down. Colin Barritt used to take swabs and do bacteria counts on the tanks and I always had a good result.
The dairies we went to had a good idea who had the cleanest tanks and when I went to Lancashire Dairies behind Strangeways Gaol in Manchester I often got chosen to be blessed by the Rabbi so that the milk could be bottled as kosher milk. After I had opened the lid and stirred the milk up with a big stainless steel plunger, the rabbi used to climb the ladder, put his prayer shawl on and speak to the milk. I asked him one day what difference it made and he said, "A good question young man, but I have no answer. It is a matter between God and the milk!" I have an idea he’d been asked the question many times, but I never forgot the answer!
In summer, the tank job was a joy. Early dawn, fine weather and empty roads were a wagon driver’s heaven. In winter it was a different matter, we were always on the road before the grit-wagons and it could get quite interesting at times. I was once coming back empty from a dairy in Cheshire on a Sunday morning in the middle of a very cold spell. Even the motorway was iced up because there was an economy drive on at the time so I decided to come back up the old A34 as it would be safer. All went well until I came to the White City roundabout in Salford and as I drove round I saw a bloke waving at me, I soon found out why! The gritter must have run out of salt half way round and I found myself sliding towards the brand new railings and the dock, about forty feet of muddy water!
Never mind what anyone tells you, at times like this instinct takes over. All I know is that I managed to pull up eventually about ten yards from the dock gates having demolished about 25 yards of Kee-Klamp railing on the way. A bobby was stood there looking at the mayhem and as I opened the cab door he said, "They won’t be pleased, they only finished that lot yesterday." My heart sank into my boots, headlines again! I said, "What do we do about it?" he said. "I don’t know what you’re going to do lad but I’m going for me breakfast!" and as he said this he tapped his helmet badge. At this point I realised he was Dock Police! I leapt back into the cab, shouted my thanks and got away as fast as I could! We never heard anything about it and the wagon wasn’t damaged so that was alright.
Summer could have its problems as well, we used to dread going to Lincoln in fine weather because you almost always got fog once you got out of Bawtry into the Vale of York. You generally came out of it when you came through Gringley on the Hill but plunged back in on the other side. One morning I had been driving for about an hour and a half in this and my eyes were like chapel hat pegs. I doubt if I was doing eight miles an hour, I could just see the kerb if I half stood up off my seat. A wagon was following me and in the end I pulled up to have a rest.
I got out and lit my pipe and the other driver came to have a word. We exchanged views about fog for a while and then he asked if I knew where we were. I said I thought we were near the big rhine or drain that was near the Sheffield road end. He said we’ll soon find out and picked up a three inch stone and threw it into the fog. We waited for the splash but all we heard was glass breaking! It seemed to go on for ever! I took one look at him, jumped in the cab and got away as fast as I could. On the way back about three hours later I passed a bungalow with a picture window boarded up with plywood. I’ve often wondered what it was put down to but I hadn’t thrown the stone!
Years later I was in the Coatgate Café on Beattock and I noticed a bloke staring at me. In the end he came over and I realised it was the bloke who had thrown the stone. He hadn’t gone back that way so I was able to tell him what he’d done. He said he’d told the tale many a time and now he had the ending. I have to admit it’s one of my favourites too!

23 February 2001