lovetowrite

We lived right in the center of Maidstone, the county town of Kent, in England.

 Opposite was the emergency room hospital, next to us was a garage, and then the school.  I went to East Borough Infant and Junior School, which was on the ground floor, or first floor as I have since learned.  Then at age 11 I went to the Senior school, which was called Vinters Girl’s School, which was the level above.

 This was great because I could get up just minutes before school started each day and know that I wouldn’t be late.  When we had P.E. in the field, up the road, I would run home with my friends and grab a quick drink, and still be back with the rest of the class.

The only downfall to this was I couldn’t pretend to be sick and then go out into the garden.  From the school you could see straight into our backyard.

When I was 9 years old my mother had a nervous breakdown.  She went to bed for 2 years.  The only times she got up was to go to the toilet as we didn’t have a bathroom.

I had to take care of my Dad, my brother who was 7 years older than me, and go to school.  I basically had no life during this period.  I would go shopping for food, cook, do the washing by hand, and then peg it out to dry.  Yes, I was good at ironing too.

Life was very tough and this made it much harder for me.  I have no idea what brought my mother out of this stage of her live, but she continued to be anxious until she passed away at age 80.

I look back on these 2 years and wonder what my life could have been like, but that is in the past, so I have to move on.

At age 5 I went to Infant school.  In England you start as an infant, then go to junior school, followed by senior.

 We were so poor that my parents couldn’t afford a uniform for me and that was compulsory.  Lucky for me, we had a neighbor that lived opposite us, whose daughter was a couple of years older.   I had 10 years of her hand me down clothes.  The only items I got new were my long knickers (drawers or pants) or whatever you want to call them.  They had to be large and bottle green because we did our P.E. in them.  These my mother purchased from a shop that you could pay on a weekly basis.  We called it “On the Knock”.

Boy, the kids today have no idea of what we went through.

This part of my life is very sketchy, as it was so long ago, but the first thing I remember is my Grandfather dying and the funeral, when I was 5 years old.

My grandmother owned a pub and her 4 sons, including my Dad, loved to drink.  So the day of the funeral we had several taxi cabs come to the pub.  We all piled into them and had a pub crawl.  Yes, we went from pub to pub, eating, drinking, and being merry.

I can also remember stopping for ice cream and we had a great celebration.  I don’t think any member of the family, apart from us children, getting home sober.

This is the only memory I have of my grandfather.  My mother’s parents died young and I never knew either of them.

I was born in 1948, in England, to a family struggling after the war.  You may think that the war finished in 1945 and everything went back to normal.  That was not the case. 

 There was a shortage of everything.  When my mother conceived me there was still powdered milk, powdered eggs and ration books.  So why as I telling you this?  Over the next weeks, months, and so forth, I hope you will enjoy reading about my life in England, how I got to move to America, immigration, owning a restaurant, and so much more. 

Then I have to tell you about my husband’s 22 years in the Royal Air Force and all the amazing things he has done.