MILE OAK

REVISITED

YET MORE REMINISCENCES

OF

MILE OAK

I remember.........................

There was a Youth Club for the teenagers in the hall of the ‘Tin Hut’ on Sunday evenings.  There we would go and have fun, playing table tennis and other games.  We even put on a pantomime for our parents and grandparents - “Snow White and the Severn Dwarfs”

I remember that a small white ice-cream van would come round Mile Oak on a Sunday afternoon.  The driver would call out “Choc-aye-dee” to attract attention.......

Life goes on by.... But the memories of extended summer evenings, playing in the streets, rarely a car on the road and parents chatting over fences, that was life in the slow lane........but it is bringing back all these memories.

The VE and VJ day street parties with long trestle tables in the street.  The Woolley family from Sefton Road dragging their piano out into the street. We had singing dancing and of course foooood............

What about Lizzy Weller with all her pigs.  Her pig farm overlooked Mile Oak Road, the footpath that ran up beside her pig farm still exists, and most will remember the delightful smell that sometimes wafted across Mile Oak when the wind was in the right direction.

Remember the baker on his rounds - he had a horse and covered wagon, he used to sit outside our house doing his paperwork prior to setting off back to the bakery. More often than not when he left his horse would have deposited a package which was immediately retrieved by our neighbour opposite for enhancing the growth of her plants.  Once finished with his deliveries he would just say ‘home’ to the horse and it would trot merrily along Mile Oak Road.

Walking to school during the times that the buses could not run because of the deep snow drifts on the side of the hill out of Mile oak and the slippery hill out of the Old Village.  At that time Valley Road was still a dream away.

Remember the ‘Hole in the Wall’ bus stop which actually was a hole in the old flintstone wall.  This wall would have been between Mile Oak Road and the Paddocks