The main road running through Westerton, a village near Bearsden initially created from 1913 onwards as a Garden Suburb modelled on Letchworth in Hertfordshire. My family lived at number 13 from around 1953 until just before my 10th birthday in May 1962.
Number 13 was one of the newer houses at the top end of Maxwell Avenue, close to where it joined Canniesburn Road, built by the construction firm Lawrence just before World War II. It was a three-bedroomed house – I had the small bedroom over the front door, looking out on the roofs of houses on the lower land which dropped away on the other side of Maxwell Avenue.
The house had what seemed to be to be an enormous cellar, with a pungent smell of dampness and coal dust. We’d have 20 bags of coal delivered at a time. My mother would stand in the kitchen creating five-bar gates on a sheet of paper as each bag was carried in from the coal lorry to be emptied in the brick-walled bunker beneath our back room.
Going down the street from our house (I remember my first trip down the hill on my red-and-white tricycle accompanied by my father who was presumably there to ensure I could work the brakes) we’d pass the Robinson’s house adjoining ours. Further down was the front door behind which my school friend Isobel Rae lived, in whose living room I caught my first (and only) glimpse of The Black and White Minstrel Show on the Rae’s television.
Number 13 was one of the newer houses at the top end of Maxwell Avenue, close to where it joined Canniesburn Road, built by the construction firm Lawrence just before World War II. It was a three-bedroomed house – I had the small bedroom over the front door, looking out on the roofs of houses on the lower land which dropped away on the other side of Maxwell Avenue.
The house had what seemed to be to be an enormous cellar, with a pungent smell of dampness and coal dust. We’d have 20 bags of coal delivered at a time. My mother would stand in the kitchen creating five-bar gates on a sheet of paper as each bag was carried in from the coal lorry to be emptied in the brick-walled bunker beneath our back room.
Going down the street from our house (I remember my first trip down the hill on my red-and-white tricycle accompanied by my father who was presumably there to ensure I could work the brakes) we’d pass the Robinson’s house adjoining ours. Further down was the front door behind which my school friend Isobel Rae lived, in whose living room I caught my first (and only) glimpse of The Black and White Minstrel Show on the Rae’s television.
At the corner of Monreith Avenue at the bottom of the hill stood Jamiesons, the local grocers. I suppose I must have been in that shop almost every day with my mother – I particularly recall the day I was given a large cardboard model of an ocean-going liner which had been supplied for promotional purposes by Robertsons, the jam company, and which the shop no longer required. It had three recesses in the top deck, into which jars of jam or marmalade could be slotted to represent the ship’s funnels. I carried this offering home with much pride as my mother rolled her eyes. More junk!
I remember being with a group of other boys powering my may round the shop on the tricycle. I’d rush down the ramp from the tarred concourse, pedals rhythmically clattering on the chain-guard, throw the trike across the waste-ground at the back and side of the shop and return to the pavement at the foot of Maxwell Avenue.
I also remember standing outside Jamieson’s being taunted by a group of kids who were flinging stones at me. Defiantly, I tossed a stone or two back. Allegedly, although I wasn’t aware of this at the time, I broke one of the shop’s plate-glass windows. Someone saw and reported this felony, and my father was sent the bill. He paid it meekly, as far as I am aware, without questioning its legitimacy. Perhaps he simply wanted to spare me grief, but I still think he should have contested it. It wasn’t my fault. But nor did he reprimand me over the incident, and it never seemed a particularly big deal.
Continuing past Jamiesons, you came to the part of Maxwell Avenue lined on either side by the traditional, cottage-style houses which had been erected as part of the original ‘garden suburb’ scheme – 85 houses had been built.
Across the street was the house I always passed with quick, apprehensive footsteps – rumour had it that a boy had died there. It didn’t occur to me that other kids might be similarly apprehensive about passing our house in which, in 1955, my baby brother William had passed away.
I remember walking along this part of the Avenue carrying newspapers which I’d been asked to collect from the newsagents. I recall the day the Daily Express carried a deeply-edited version of a letter my mother had written upholding a Christian perspective on some issue. They’d send her a telegram the day before asking if she consented to it appearing – she tried to argue that if it were to appear, it should appear in full. I also remember my shock on the day when the paper I was carrying was full of the news of the serious injury of racing driver Stirling Moss – this would have been his accident at Goodwood on Easter Monday, 23rd April, 1962.
Another memory of this part of the street: I am having a conversation on our way home from school, shouting across to my friend Douglas Anderson who is on the opposite pavement. ‘Don’t forget to do the blueprint,’ I say, pleased at knowing, and using that word. We were planning to adapt one of a set of plastic blue skittles, fitting to it a makeshift conning tower to transform it into a submarine. This scheme was grander in anticipation than in realisation.
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