The Shop in Billinge Road
The Outside Round
We carried on building the business up until around 1969, when it seemed to have reached its peak. We had been taking orders out to customers for most of the time. I had Auntie Lizzie and Enid's orders, but not much from the Foster side of the family. I used to ring Enid and her mother from the telephone by Trevor Jones garage, before we had our phone installed. When we had ours installed, we had an extension put through to the house at 67 Billinge Rd, so that we could contact home if needed. This proved invaluable at one time, when both Edna and I went down with 'flu.
We got up one morning feeling really ill, and there was no way that we could have gone to the shop. It's a good job that we had helpful parents, because Ma and Edna's Mum carried on for us, ringing us when they weren't sure of something. That phone was a godsend at the time. The extension also worked when we went home, as we could put it through to our house and use it like a normal phone.
In 1969, Asda opened its doors in Newtown, and that put a bit of a dampener on sales, I reckoned at the time that it had taken some £30/week from our takings, which by that time were in the region of £220/week. A lady, who lived in Merton Rd and asked if I would like to call on them and deliver groceries, because, as she said at the time, there were no shops around and no one calling on them, had approached me.
I started by taking the car up and getting orders, making them up, and then delivering them. Gradually I built up a decent clientele on the Merton Rd estate, so next off, I bought a van. It was a Standard Atlas and the engine was amidships with the gearbox behind the driver, so that the gear stick was protruding forward from behind. It was a funny setup. The van, which I bought it from Trevor Jones, had originally belonged to a magician who did turns at various clubs. I forget how much it was but it wasn't a lot.
I used to go out on a Thursday afternoon with the van, only getting home after 9.00pm but it gave us the extra takings that we had lost to Asda. One day, after I had finished my round on the Merton Rd estate, I decided to try a bit of canvassing over on the Clevedon Drive area. I was amazed at the response; I must have picked up more than 15 extra calls. I had virtually no opposition, and it made a big difference to the takings. We gradually built up the round so that we were both busy weighing up potatoes, and bacon, black pudding, cooked meat on the Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning. I also had a box full of chocolate and sweets. We had to get everything prepared and loaded ready for the afternoon.
The biggest problem that I had was avoiding getting wet when it rained, as there was no cover over the back door of the van, and when it was wet, I lost sales because the customers would give me a list of what they wanted and I lost out on impulse sales.
We decide that we would be better off with a walk thru van, so I sold the Atlas to Palatine Commercials, and we got a Walk thru Commer van. It was getting on a bit in years, but the bodywork was good and the engine was a belter. I fitted it out with racks made from Dexion angle and we "borrowed" a load of trays from McVities, which just fitted into the racks. Thus I could get everything prepared in the back of the shop (Ma and Dad had moved out by this time and were living next door but one, at 98).
The big van worked fine, and I used it for quite a while. In the meantime, I had swapped cars a couple of times. The Vauxhall Victor was giving problems with the hydraulic clutch, and I changed it for a Ford Zephyr Mk 2. I managed to use this quite satisfactorily for going to the C&C and to the fruit market, but it started to break up body wise and I sold it on, buying my dream machine a Jaguar Mk 1. I must have been stark raving bonkers!!!
The Jaguar was one that had previously belonged to Dr Colin Haigh, and it had an automatic transmission, with a kick down handle for holding the car in a certain gear. It could catch pigeons!! 3.4 litres, and painted in British Racing Green, when the bonnet was up, there was nothing to be seen except engine. Trevor Jones took me for a test drive in it and we went on the factory estate off Enfield St.
He approached the first bend at 50mph and the car just sailed round it, picking up speed. We were doing a "ton" at Triangle Valve, after which he shut down and stopped at the bottom of the road. As the car accelerated, you could feel the "G" force pushing you back in the leather seats. It was a fantastic machine, but could it drink? 12mpg was all that it gave me.
We took Edna's Mum and Dad out for a spin in it along the M6. We were doing just short of the "ton", but the car was a steady as a rock. Ma could only see the rev counter, so she thought we were doing around 60mph. I soon realized that it was too rich for me, the spares were too expensive and I just couldn't afford it.
When I tried to sell it on, I had no success at all. Every garage that I went to said "Come back when you've sold it." Finally, Bob Vincent, who owned Cranberry Lodge agreed to take it from me, I got a lot less than I paid, but I was finally rid of it. I bought a Vauxhall Victor 101 Estate from Bob, with the registration No GUG 101 D, and I stayed with this for a long time.
Irene had taken and passed her test in the big Ford Zephyr, and was quite a good driver, but she had problems at first with the 101. The Ford had a column change and the Jag was automatic, but the 101 had a floor change and the box was quite close ratio. I'd given her a try out in the 101, and she seemed OK but one night, when I got in from the round with the Commer, Edna met me with the story that Irene had had to leave the 101 in Wigan, in the station car park.
Edna and Irene had been down to Wigan to pick up Jeff, who had been away on a trip with the school, and while they were there, the clutch had started to smoke, so they abandoned the car and came home on the bus. I got our Bill to come down with me to the car park and we got the 101 going and Bill drove it home. Apparently Irene had tried to get the car to drive away in 3rd gear which she had mistaken for 1st and that had caused it to smoke!! She eventually managed to conquer it and drove it quite well.
About this time, the law was changed on commercial vehicles, and they had to be "plated". Well, the Commer, although it had a good engine and tyres, had a lot wrong with the bodywork and obviously wanted money spending on it, something that I hadn't got. I decided that it would have to go, and I saw a trailer for sale in North Ashton, advertised in the local paper. We went along to look at it and decided to have it. It was custom built for selling from, and had a canopy made from corrugated plastic sheet, a flap that could be closed when the trailer was moving along the road, and a hatch on the blind side to load the trailer through.
The Commer was parked up by the side of the shop for quite a while and used for a potato store, before finally being unloaded onto a lad from Trevor Jones, who raced motorbikes, and he wanted it for a mobile workshop, something that didn't need plating. The trailer proved to be a good buy and I would go out on a Thursday with it loaded up and the car loaded as well. We sold a lot of potatoes on the estates, mostly in 14lb bags, which we got ready during the week. The hitch to the car was made with a clevis pin and not a ball and socket, and there was an overrun brake fitted to it as well. When the trailer was dismounted, there was a bar, which could be lowered as a 3rd wheel for it to stand on.
I used to keep the trailer in the old garage that Bill had for his car, before going to live at 136, and it was a work of art putting the thing away at the end of the day, as it had to be mannered like an artic, I burned out two or three clutches during the time that I had it. You could smell the ferodo as it was reversing back!
One day, I had brought the trailer out to the side of the shop to get it loaded up ready for off. It was early June and the strawberries were coming on to the market, I had bought a couple of dozen baskets of these and had put them in the trailer ready to sell. I had been back into the shop for a while, probably serving, I don't remember, when I had to go back to the trailer with some more stuff.
As I opened the side hatch, I sensed a movement inside it, and when I looked in, there was a boy of about nine, walking all over the strawberries to get to the trayful of sweets that I had put in. I was furious; there he was trampling on expensive strawberries just to get to the penny box!! I ordered him out and he made a dash for it and got as far as the park before I grabbed him. "Let me go, let me go!" he was sobbing. Of course I let him go and told him not to come again, but as he ran off through the park, he turned and gave me a right load of abuse!
There was another incident like this one, when we had the fruit stall outside on the forecourt. We had this stall that I had made, and it would collapse down so that at night, we could bring it into the shop. It was a good sales point and sold quite a lot of fruit, and I used to dress it up with banners and prices. One day, however, as we were serving in the shop, Edna said to me "That boy has just pinched an apple from the stall".
When I got to the door, he was legging it down towards the park. Well, I set off in pursuit, and those days I could run quite well, and I carried on, jogging along, the boy kept turning round, thinking that I would give up, but there was no way that I would have done. Finally, he stopped and burst into tears, "I only took it because I was hungry," he said. " If you had asked for an apple, I would have given you one" I replied, "Don't go round stealing things or you will be in serious trouble, you may as well eat the apple now, and don't do it again".
There was one incident that happened concerning the trailer that is worth recording; it was one day as I was coming in at teatime from the round. I came in about 5.00pm to reload, and to have a bite to eat, before going off again until around 10.00pm. I had stopped the car on the crown of the road, waiting for traffic to allow me to turn into the opening by the side of the shop, and there was a car parked on the road by the shop, therefore the gap between that car and the trailer wasn't very big.
Coming up the road was a Barr's pop wagon, and he tried to make it through the gap, but failed. He missed me but took the car door on the driver's side off as clean as a whistle! There was a girl sat in the driver's seat and she was petrified, she got out and we helped her into the shop and sat her on a chair. She was shaking, and all she could say was "My husband will kill me, we've only just got it back from being repaired after another accident!!" I never found out how she went on with her husband!!
We had a good round on the estates and at the time it was pulling in about £60/week takings, there were some good customers, I can recall most of them, Beryl Fellowes was the first one, and it was her that asked me originally to go on the estate. She lived in the first house in Merton Rd, following on from her was Joan, then Nita, who had a field full of kids, 4 in fact, one of them got the jam jar and ate from it with his fingers, wiping jam into his hair and all over his clothes!
Next came Maureen Miller and Gordon, Gordon was the son of Sydney Miller, one of the Church of Christ members from Platt Bridge. They moved later on to a cul-de-sac further into the estate. It was Gordon who put a pie in the oven without removing the lid from the tin. When I called on them, there was a brown stain down the side of the doorframe, and Gordon told me of what had happened. When he opened the oven door, the tin had become round like a ball, and he decided to release the pressure by stabbing it with a fork!! The gravy then sprayed out like a fountain.
Next to them lived John Pimblett and his wife, Kathleen, and their son Michael, Kathleen was the adopted daughter of Mrs Higham, who used to live near us in the old houses in Billinge Rd. Kathleen left John and her son, later on, to live with a man from Heinz, where she worked.
Another customer was Anne Deegan, who lived in a detached house on the corner of Merton Rd, and across from her were Alan King and his wife. Alan was a fire officer in the Wigan Brigade, and later left when he was promoted. They went to live in Clitheroe.Their next door neighbour was Audrey Brindle and her family, she had a boy whom I think was autistic, called David. Audrey died from cancer when she was only in her 40s.
Higher up on the left hand side, lived Ronnie and Joyce Golbourne, They emigrated later on to Australia. Ronnie was a rep for a sweets company, and Joyce had a real craving for sour apples. She would buy Bramley apples from me and would start to eat one before she had got the rest of her stuff.
At 136 and 138 lived the two Dots, Dot Ravey and Dot Rusk. Dot Ravey was married to Alan, who was a rep for Mars. He got promotion and they left to live on The Wirral somewhere. Dot Rusk and her husband Mel had two children, Samantha and Martin. Dot would say to me sometimes about Samantha, "She's an ugly child".
Dot Rusk's husband was killed in a road accident in 1997, he was only about 53. Their son Martin was married to one of Jean and Harry Bessey's girls.
Dot Rusk and Alan King's wife used to dress very smart with the latest fashions, and Irene told me once that when they brought their children to Sunday school, the teachers would call them " The Modern Mums".
My next customer along Merton Rd was Doris (Dot) Jones and her huband, Syd, they had 4 boys. When I first started to call on them, Syd was off work with two broken legs, resulting from a fall at work from a telephone pole. Most of these families had moved into the area from Liverpool, attracted by the price of houses and the commuter line to Liverpool from Pemberton Station. At the time, houses in Merton Rd were selling for £3000.
I remember having to get into their way of thinking, for instance, a bottle of pop was "lemonade" whatever flavour it was, so when asked for lemonade, the next question was "What colour?" It was the same around Halloween, I went out on the estate selling apples and was asked "Have you any duck apples" I hadn't a clue until I was told that at Halloween, the children tie apples to a string and duck into a bucket of water for them. I had a box of Russets and these had no stalks, so consequently I didn't sell many, but I had them with stalks the following year!!
We had some more customers in Westcott Drive the side road that went off towards the school playing field. Mrs Winstanley had moved up here with Bob, her husband, and Jim, her son, who never married. It was Mrs Winstanley who came out with the immortal line "We've just been down the two way stretch", Instead of the "two mile stretch" as the road from Windy Arbour to Orrell was known. Also in this road lived Jack Silcock and his wife, Alice. Jack was a teacher at the Grammar School. I recall another family living there next door to Winstanleys, their name being Murrell. The thing that stands out in my mind about them is that they had a car in the garage that had been in a shunt, and they couldn't afford to have it repaired. I think that it must have been on 3rd party insurance when the accident occurred.
I had some more customers down on Mucklows estate as well. There was Kinlet road and the two cul-de-sacs off it, The Ospreys and another, Chervil Walk. In Chervil lived Mr. and Mrs Brown who owned Breck Casings, a sausage skin firm on the summer sales old colliery site. There was always a funny smell in their house; I think it was probably something to do with the sausage skins.
Mr. Brown had one of the first colour televisions in the area, I remember seeing it when I went in their house once. Mrs Brown had suffered with a cancer in her throat, and when I first started to serve them, she had a job to talk and could only manage a whisper. She got over it ok after a while. Next door to Mrs Brown lived a girl called Pat, who had a chi-huahua dog. Nearby lived another girl called Christine and she had a Labrador pup. One day, as I was in the close, I heard this whimpering and when I looked, there was the Labrador pup with the Chihuahua hanging on to its tail, it looked so funny at the time. Christine and her family moved away to Portsmouth later on, to keep a pub. Also in this close lived Derek Cross and his wife Gloria. She would come out to the trailer, get all her goods and then would say, "Can I give you a cheque?" I couldn't really say "No" so she would write one out. "If I make it out for £5.00 can you give me some change?" She would do this and then say, "I've put next Saturday's date on it because that's when Derek gets paid" Talk about cheek!!
On Kinlet Road, there lived a family, Jean and her husband and two children. They emigrated to Australia, but while they were living there, Terry Macintyre who had a bread round used to call on them, and the fellow who helped Terry would call on his customers on a Thursday night for the money owing for the week's bread. He had a habit of calling everybody "lad". There was no harm in him, but when Jean's husband came to the door, he said to him, " Don't call me lad, I'm a grown man with a family!" There are some pompous folk about!!
In The Ospreys I served Jessie Symes, also Judy Brown, who was married to Alan, of the sausage skin factory family. Jessie was a riot, she was a nurse at the Infirmary, and when she was on nights, she couldn't sleep. She would take sleeping pills and would sometimes come out to the van in a dream. She would sit down on the driver's seat (that is when we had the walk thru Commer) and would try to write down what she wanted. The writing would trail off as she started to drop off to sleep sat there!! Her son Peter was in our Dave's class at the Grammar School.
Fire Damage
About September 1968 there was a big fire in the Wigan factory of GUS, the mail order company. They were situated in Gidlow Mills, which is now part of the new College of Technology. The part on fire was the packing and dispatch department, and when it was ablaze, I took the lads down to watch it. Little did I know that some of the stuff in the fire would be coming my way?
One of my customers on the Mucklow Estate was Len Mee and his wife, Eileen. They lived in the same cul-de-sac as Mrs. Brown of the sausage skin fame. Len worked in partnership with his brothers in the firm of Mee&Cocker, scrap merchants from Leigh, and they had the contract to clear the site of the fire. He asked me if I could sell any of the fire-damaged goods, which their firm had on offer. I had a quick word with Edna and we decided to give it a try. We scratched together about £50 and Len turned up with a load of gear, dripping wet and smelling horribly of fire. There were Cheerful/Tearful dolls, Etch-a-sketch, Spirographs, electrical driven jeeps, dinkies, just to mention a few. We got them cleaned up and washed, and then put a notice in the shop window to say that the fire damage sale started at 9.00am Monday.
When Monday morning dawned and I got to the shop, there was a queue forming, and I just had time to get my coat off before I was besieged. In no time at all we had cleared all the stuff at 100% profit at least. I had to ring Len for more goods a.s.a.p. He obliged and the same thing happened, we were shifting the stuff as fast as it came into the shop. Edna had all the Cheerful/Tearful dolls in the tin bath at home and their clothes on the maiden in front of the fire. We must have sold dozens of these at 19/6 each (98p) and they were retailing in Lowes shop in Wigan for nearly £3. We were buying them for 50p.
The warehouse at GUS couldn't have burned down at a better time, coming up to Christmas as it was. There were a lot of happy kids around that year I can tell you!! It made it a good Christmas for us as well with about £400 in tax-free profit. The only one who missed out was Len, who got himself fired off from the family business. He had been putting the money from the sale into his back pocket and his brothers found out!!
Continued...