ALAN WHALLEY'S WORLD

MANY of us wartime kids have rather cosy memories of that particular time of world strife, when viewing the past through rose-tinted glasses.

Those candle-lit sing-songs shared with crowds of neighbours down the dug out air-raid shelter; the thrill of roaming blacked-out streets, without a thought of danger in those 'pre-pervert' times; the pursuit of Burtonwood-based Yanks, pestering those girl-seeking doughboys with that oft-repeated wheedling cry of 'Got any gum, chum?'

But there was a darker side to that 1939-45 era.

And Ken Melling of Chancery Lane, Parr, a regular and welcome contributor to this page, dwells on the tragedy that touched so many local lives.

Among his earliest recollections is of watching a soldier in full kit, briskly marching down the opening by the clogger's shop in Surrey Street, Parr, then pausing to give a last cheery farewell wave to his nearest and dearest.

"He was never seen alive again," Ken recalls. "It was the time of Dunkirk."

Then there was the harrowing occasion when Ken, then a small boy, witnessed a distraught woman running from her house into the street. She'd received the dreaded telegram informing her that her husband had been killed in action.

The sound of the bombing raid which blew apart a house in Somerset Street also rings in Ken's memory.

"It was the home of one of our gang" he adds, "but by some miracle the family, who had been crouched at the back of the house during the air raid, managed to survive.

"My family lived a few doors away and were running hell for leather up the street to my grandma's in Surrey Street where we sheltered under the staircase."

But nothing, it seemed, could break the old bulldog spirit.

Says Ken: "An uncle, who'd supped a few, was standing in the garden at the time, waving his fists to the sky and shouting all sorts of obscenities . . . as though Jerry could hear him!"

With the all-clear and dawning of a new day, Ken and his urchin pals spent the morning exploring the bombed-out homes in neighbouring streets, swinging from the stuck-out, shrapnel-blasted floorboards.

Not everyone was as lucky as Ken and his family. Some neighbours were killed in the bombing.

But at last, after all the agony, came the great celebrations. War was over and there were parties and dancing in the streets to mark VE and VJ Days.

The air-raid shelters were raided for their benches and wooden bunks which were piled up for a spectacular bonfire, right in the centre of the street.

Later, the bunting was dusted off and banners unfurled along the streets once more for that most poignant of occasions - the homecoming of local lads who had suffered as prisoners at the hands of the Japanese. "As time passed, the local air-raid shelter was to become our gang hut," Ken recalls, "complete with battered stove and chimney, and furnished with old car and bus seats - all nicked from a scrapyard at Fingerpost.

The side-street settlement where Ken's family lived was then occupied by folk (many of them Irish immigrants) who had moved in during the 1930s from the Greenbank area, in the centre of St Helens, and from the terraced streets threaded around Beechams clock.

"I was born within yards of that clock, in Brook Street," explains Ken, "and most, if not all of the gang had been moved as the result of slum clearance. We'd been changed from townies to Parrers overnight."

But those who moved and those who stayed continued to meet up to exchange yarns and share in the fun at the various local fleapit cinemas which then abounded.

And if they had a copper or two in their pockets the new young Parrers would give the water-filled clayholes a miss and walk to Boundary Road Baths to renew old acquaintances.

The route took in 'the old country', through the dirt entries and past the cast-iron bollards which stopped venicles from entering the old Brook area. "I think the brook ran underground at this point."

After an energetic swim at the baths, the gang surfaced back onto Boundary Road, feeling absolutely famished. They'd race across to a corner shop which sold 'tram-stopper' slices, made from cold bread pudding, bits of mixed fruit and left-over cake.

They cost only a copper or two . . . "and looked the size of a half-brick."

It would have been fatal to dine before taking the plunge, says Ken. "They were so heavy that you would have sunk like a stone with one inside you.

"But my, they were good though!"

After the 1939-45 war, all sorts of army surplus surfaced. "We kids were all flying around on khaki-coloured army bikes, pinched from the timber yard off Boardmans Lane. They seemed as high as penny-farthing cycles and if you fell off you needed a parachute."

The crack team was the Morgan Street gang who were experts at nicking scrapped aircraft jettison tanks, which were cigar-shaped and had originally been used to carry plane fuel.

These tanks, measuring several feet, were either cut in two and lashed together catamaran-style or had a hole chiselled out from the middle to form something like an eskimo canoe. On completion, these highly-dangerous craft were launched on local ponds and water-filled flashes. "The Mile Pit was full of them, like a crowded boating lake," Ken recollects.

And he also recalls a near brush with death. "The Morgan Street gang was cutting up one of these petrol tanks when there was a loud explosion. The lads were blown over various garden hedges, but luckily no-one was seriously injured."

A spark from the chisel was at first suspected as the cause, until it was discovered that one of the onlooking lads, while having a crafty smoke, had flicked his lit dog-end into the tank. This had ignited the fumes within.

The hectic challenge matches of boyhood still stand out in Ken's mind. On one unforgettable date, a team from Parr Central turned up in standard school kit, but their rivals from St Joseph's proved a real motley crew.

Some had clogs or ordinary hobnailed boots, a few were in football shorts while others wore short pants. Tops consisted of a mixture of woolly jerseys and the odd soccer shirt.

"But I'll tell you this," Ken adds, "they were damned good footballers!"

At 15, Ken started work at the pit, like so many other school-leavers in those days.

On his first day at Ravenhead Colliery he took the old familiar short-cut across the Stinking Brook, tight-roping along the 'hop-along' metal pipe which spanned its then murky, foul-smelling depths.

"I climbed the Chimics chemical waste tip, via the 'hundred steps', and gazed across Parr from its summit.

"I sighed and carried on my journey . . . school days were well and truly over."

ANYONE wishing to e-mail Alan can reach him via the Newsquest St Helens address

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.