Early Life Part 2

Again this was how My Dad wrote it

As I have said times were very hard and food was rationed and to supplement this most people grew a lot of there own food in their garden's, in reply to the Government posters of the day Dig For Victory, and we were no exception.
My father grew many things but the bulk of his crop was potatoes because our family was made up of Mam, Dad, three sisters, myself, and two brothers of which one was in the Forces fighting the war, the other was only a baby he was born in 1944 .
My father was unfit to go into the forces due to a club foot so he at the time worked at the bomb factory at Rhydymwyn just outside Mold .
His father, my grandfather, lived about five hundred yards from us in Alexander Road.  He used  to be the blacksmith at the Gasworks in Gas lane Mold, this again was about five hundred Yards  from us in the opposite direction, At the back of grandfather's house grandfather had a large pigeon loft housing dozens of pigeons and I  remember on the odd occasion having roast pigeon as meat in our meal.
Another item of course was wild rabbit ,which someone in the locality would capture with a snare or with a ferret and nets and would charge as little as six pence old money (two and a half pence in today's value 2001 ) and this would make a huge pan of stew, enough to feed the whole family.
Another type of stew my Mother made she called JOT, this was made with bacon scraps, potatoes cut like today's crisps only thicker and an onion, not much in the way of taste but very filling and welcome in the winter. One other favorite which I greatly enjoyed for supper was a basin of Bread and Milk. Which again was very filling .
A further item Mother used to make was called Wartime cake, was made without any fat or butter this of course tasted great, and  I must also mention the Bread pudding made in a large roasting tin even a small piece of this made you feel very full and bloated, wonderful,
We also had what today would be regarded a strange way of making food ( strange by the standards of today that is ) and it is impossible to think of housewives of today preparing an ox tongue. Mam, when we were lucky would purchase a large ox tongue this was boiled in a large saucepan for hours on end mostly on a side iron on a coal fire until it was very tender it was then placed in a large pot dish, the boiling juice with a small amount of gelatin added was poured in just to barely cover the tongue and a plate was then rested on the top to press the tongue, On this plate was placed some weight, in our house this was always two house bricks which were scrubbed for this purpose and behold a day or so later Mam would turn out this tongue onto a plate for slicing ready for a meal in fact a couple of meal's ( Wonderful stuff ) today tongue is only seen in a plastic wrapper in a supermarket .. A similar thing was done with a Pigs head this again was boiled for hours and when tender the flesh was stripped, finely chopped and again pressed as a tongue but this was then your home made brawn. Again only made today for some butcher's and supermarkets. But to me one of the strangest things and even now I have difficulty getting my head around it with all the disease in the world was another way of obtaining a good meal... In those days the late 1940's  it was quite common for a sheep's head to be purchased from the butcher this again was placed whole ( including the brain's ) in a large pan and boiled until tender, the skull removed leaving the small amount of flesh and brains in the pan to which potatoes and vegetables were added to make Sheep's head broth again in those days a wonderful meal I might add that I can't recall seeing the sheep's eyes... I think the butcher removed them. All in all we were well fed but because of rationing you could not go and help yourself to food in the pantry in fact the pantry was almost out of bounds.   Each person of the family had a ration of a few ounces of butter, a few ounces of cheese, a few ounces of sugar e.t.c.for each week So you could not go and say get a ""cheese butty" or an extra spoon of sugar in your tea because you would be taking your sister's or brother's ration. This meant that in our house that mam had to dole out all food at the table and I would say that she was very good at putting the butter on the bread but even better at wiping it off again but in our house this meant that we all had our fair share.

I will leave that there now


I used to love hearing stories from Both Grandma's and My Parents and often thought what it would be like  I'm vegetarian and one thing I am glad about was not being around and having to eat some of the things they had to eat