The Last Chapter

by Robert Lawson

repair van near where we lived, he came in every time it went off, and it was starting to cost me. It was close to Christmas and it started again, when I called him in he said it was the tube. With kids you needed to have a good picture for the Christmas show, somehow we scraped the money together and we got over Christmas. I ended up selling it to a friend of ours who was a handyman when it came to T.V’s, he got it going properly and had it for a couple of years after that.

  Our Anne was born on 15/11/56, we had waited quite a while for a girl, now we’d made it at last, and we couldn’t take our eyes off her. Tommy got up and nearly fell down the stairs to see the baby, then went outside to tell everyone he could.

  John Duggan had progressed in the Scaffolding after working in some of the big firms. He was always full of ideas but most of them went down the pan, but he came in and said he was starting a Scaffolding Company with 2 partners. I had a few drinks with them and they built castles in the air, one of them dropped out soon after, then emigrated. John asked me, would I consider going in with them, but I, at the time didn’t want to take a chance, probably the wrong decision, but that’s how it is, you take the chance or not.

  We were both laid off at the time and Jerry got us both a job building caravans in Kirkby. The firm was Knowsley Caravans and had started in Crosby but got so busy they needed more floor space, we started on the Monday morning in Kirkby.

  After 5yrs in Ford, a girl who lived near to us said her mother was looking for someone to take her house over so she could move up to be near her daughter. So an exchange was sorted out and we were back to Clare Road, what a relief that was, we were near to our families, nearer the shops and Marie was delighted. I was near to Goodison as we so I was delighted too. It was good to get away from the canal and the traffic on the main road. We’d made a few friends up there, apart from Iris, two friends lived at the back of us called Jim & Lily Savage. We talked for hours over the back garden fence until it went dark sometimes, Lily died not long after we left Gorsey Lane.

  It was about 1958 when we got to Clare Road. We had some very good neighbours, like the two old ladies next door, Mrs Barlow and Auntie Gert, they were excellent people. Mr & Mrs Thompson across the road, she was a good friend as well. Over all we were happy in Clare Road, the kids were growing up and they were happy too. 75 Clare Road had a gable end because the two houses next door had been bombed during the blitz, this caused us to have a lot of dampness.

  Our Bobby had an accident about this time, he was playing with a ball at the top of Clare Road when a van came around the corner and knocked him down. The driver didn’t have a license, no insurance and god knows what else. When he came to the house the following day with his 2 bodyguards , he didn’t believe us about Bobby going to hospital. I offered to take him down to the hospital to see Bobby who had a hair line fracture of his skull. The Police came to see us about the accident and believe it or not, the detective asked me did I know what I had put the driver through. I told him I wasn’t interested in the driver, maybe it’s because I had a child in hospital with a fractured skull. He was definitely was trying to make me feel guilty for some reason. We sat for hours at his bedside, thankfully he was ok after week or so.

  Another story was concerning our Anne. I was with John Duggan going along Southport Road, Bootle towards town and I happened to glance over to the top of Clare Road. I could see Anne and her mate running across the main road with traffic everywhere. I got the fright of my life and asked John to stop the car, I went over and grabbed her belted her behind all the way down the entry. She never did it again, and she’s never forgotten it. Earlier on when she was very young our Anne got hold of a bottle of Antusin cough medicine and swallowed half the bottle, I ended up in Stanley Hospital getting her stomach pumped.

  For holidays for a few years we went to Gronant near to Prestatyn and Rhyl. A Mr Washington used to let his bungalow out to us for the week. It was only a wooden hut but we liked it, and the kids loved it. More often than not we had good weather and we lived on my wages from the week before. We had no car them days and went by coach. It was a pantomime going down the narrow road to the camp. I was laden with all the cases and was trying to keep the kids off the road with my feet, it must have looked funny to passers-by. My mother-in-law and her two boys were always included in these holidays, Bernie was the oldest and as soon as we reached the camp I’d tell him to go an buy a ball, we’d have a good kick around and the kids would join in. One year we did just that and I kicked the ball through the glass panel in the front door. I was called some names and I finished up putting in new glass with a screwdriver and a knife, but they were good, cheap holidays.

  I started to take Tommy to Goodison when he was around 10 or 11yrs, it was standing on the terraces them days, and only being short he had trouble seeing. With going every week to the same place everyone knew each other which created a nice atmosphere. To get over Tommy’s problem, I made a small box about 6” high and the crowd would let him get down by the wall and he could just about see the match. Both me and my dad were quite short and many a time we’d think “This is great, we could see both goals and everything was fine. Then about 2 minutes to 3 we’d get a fella about 6’3” in front of us, my dad never stopped muttering about it for the whole match. Tommy got football into his blood early on and played for the school team at Westminster Road. When Stanley Matthews started a scheme to let young players progress I got him to Tommy to write to Mathews . He got a letter back telling him to be in town with a guardian and to make our way to Stoke, when we got there, Stanley split the boys into 2 teams and organised a match. Tommy had a good game on the right wing in a 9-4 win, I enjoyed the match and was made when Mathews coached him from the touch line. After the match I got Tommy to ask Mathews for his autograph, and he did, Mathews ruffled his hair and told him he’d had a good game. Jackie Mudie was a Scottish centre forward who played for Blackpool, he was assistant to Mathews on this scheme. I approached him and asked him what happens now, he said it was a process of elimination and Tommy was going on, however it fell through, some technicality caused it to collapse. Tommy went on to play for various clubs including Southport. He was learning to drive at the time and I let him drive to the ground for training and match days. He has managed a number of clubs, and at time of writing he is with Prescot Cables in the Unibond league after bringing them up from N.W.C.

  Our John was born on 3/12/63 in 75 Clare Road, it seemed forever before he came on the scene, there had been complications before he was born but everything went ok in the end. Marie had previously had a miscarriage so she had to careful. He was a big baby his weight went off the scales and he looked about 3 months old people were amazed at the size of him. Barbara Thompson our neighbour from over the road came to see him and I remember Ethel & Frank coming over as well. John grew up in Clare Road, and was a live wire as he got older. The older lads played football on the waste ground next to our house, if the ball went over the backyard wall, they’d sent John over to get it, he was like a monkey, the way he leapt around the wall. Another time he fell off the wall and a nail in a piece of wood caught his leg and ripped, he needed stitched in it, so we took him to Walton Hospital and they did what had to done. He got a Chitty Chitty Bang Bang motor when he came out.

  In 1966 Everton got to Wembley and everyone was excited over it, I would have loved to have been there but I simply couldn’t afford it, especially as I didn’t have a ticket. Knowing my luck I knew I wouldn’t get in anyway, the expense was too much to take a chance on. I was delighted they had won after being 2-0 down and then to go on to win 3-2. Black players were very rare in the 60s but the blues had one, a lad called Treblecock and he scored 2 goals that day before Derek Temple scored the winner. I believe my dad went to that match. They got to Wembley again two years later and this time I took a chance, we went by coach from The Mons pub in Bootle. Frank Dorman asked could he bring his daughter, Beverley, we warn
ed him that the bus was full of men and bad language inevitable but he insisted. My dad didn’t want her to go but he couldn’t do much about it. Our Tommy, Bernie, my dad, Bernie’s brother-in-law, Philip Fletcher and myself were among the people on the bus. The whole atmosphere was wonderful from the time we left Bootle, right up to when Jeff Astle scored the only goal of the game. After that not so good, Bernie and I had tickets for the stands, my dad was in the ground. I often think about that, I should have given my dad my ticket and I should have been in the ground, because I don’t think he was too well at the time.

  Another story regarding our Bobby, he’d been in Walton Hospital for an appendix operation and had come through it fine. But on the day were leaving for Wembley he went missing, we went round all his mates and they hadn’t seen him, we were getting worried now, then I suddenly had an idea. I went down to Walton Hospital and there he was sitting talking to a man who had been on the ward with him. I got him home as quick as I could, we were all relieved, and I was able to get the coach for