Not bad recall from finding 3 shopkeepers’ in the 1939 Register all situated at the ‘top of our road’
I completely forgot about the two shops on the opposite side at the top of the road mainly because I could not find either under the 4-letter code for our road. However, as I twigged they may well have been given the code of the main road, I reduced the last alpha character and after much searching found what I was looking for. To the locals the shops belonged to ‘our’ road so worthy of mention even if only for their memory jogs.
The one I recall best is ‘HAYS hardware store’ but that was not the owners name in the Register, but as I am really recalling the post 1946 owners it is the name by which it was best known at the time we lived there. It was more or less a timber yard with its own (what we would later call a) DIY shop. Rarely a week would go by when I was not sent on an errand, this time for Dad to get him a handful of screws or nails and watch them being counted out by Mr. Hay or his wife from boxes -usually with a couple more for luck. They would put them in a square of newspaper and fold it into a little bag. They sold all types of ironmongery, sandpaper, tools, hardboard and plywood (sold by the ply not the thickness) and course timber. I never minded being sent there because it was quite an Aladdin’s cave for a young boy. Dad even bought his shed from ‘Hays’ and the owner himself came and erected it in our back yard.
(The visits must have had some impact on me because I made a career in the Timber trade and years later was Manager of a Timber Yard and Mill in Kent, complete with its own DIY store).
Next door to Hays was a small Greengrocers (the Register records the name Gee and General Grocer but that brings back no memories and to us it was just a small Greengrocers). When I say small, the word minute might best suit and was likely someone’s front room converted into a shop. It relied on an outside display to attract custom which was as well because there was little room on the inside and room for no more than two customers. It was run by an old lady (old to us kids at any rate) and she had eyes in the back of her head and didn’t like kids. To be fair she had just cause because as she relied on an outside display and had no other helper, a few quick fingered kids would often ‘pinch’ apples and run off. I did not like her and told my Mom how she treated kids. One day she took me and told the lady …’Bobby does not steal things, and woe betides him if he ever did once his Dad got to hear about it’ (very true). ‘So I would appreciate it if you didn’t say things like ‘keep your hands to yourself young nipper… (a common Brummie term for a youngster) …when I send him on errands’.
Can’t say it made a lot of difference, and anyway as I often had my mate Pete in tow -sometimes he was on the errand with me in tow – she still viewed us with suspicion. As a result, I would often try to suggest I go to the other bigger shops about 10 minutes away, but Mom would insist we use the local shop. Later the penny dropped as I began to understand the way of the world. The lady offered things ‘on tick’ so my Mom often hard-up mid-week could send me there in the week and call in and pay on Saturday when Dad gave her the ‘housekeeping’ on Friday.
This is brought home in the Register where men (not exclusively but very much in the main) are shown as wage earners whilst the women do ‘unpaid domestic duties’. Not sure what Mom would have thought of that but given she would often tell all of us -Dad included – she was no one’s servant – I would have liked to get her opinion on the matter.
