In 1940 Mickey Trenholme's dad built an air raid shelter in his front garden. Not one of those Anderson shelters made out of corrugated iron with a couple of feet of earth dumped on top but a real shelter. Two feet of poured concrete including the roof. Fourteen feet down in the earth with a steel door at the top of the stairs and a concrete slab covering an escape hatch at the other end.
Old man Trenholme was a grey stick of a man. A teacher for many years. A teacher of the old school. Heavy of hand, heavy on repetition and deadly accurate with the old board duster. Having said that he had a heart as big as his shelter.
I met his son Mickey in 1948 when my parents bought the house directly opposite. We moved from a flat my mother and I had occupied during the war years. Now the war was over. My dad had somehow survived six years of very active service and my brother was on the way. Dad had not yet retired but we were not going to be moved by the "army" any more, due to his service, so the timing was good for a more permanent home.
We moved! The three of us dad being on leave. Mum well pregnant with Tony my brother, who was to be killed exactly fifty years later, plus the cat Monty!
The "boys" in my new street were all a couple of years older than I. Of course when you're in your sixties this is meaningless. When you're eight.....well that's a different kettle of fish altogether.
There was Mickey of course. He ended up going to Manchester University and became a quite prominent physicist. Trevor Newnham who took an accounting course, was articled, but preferred fixing cars so he bought a garage but only after losing an eye and and three of the fingers off his left hand after finding a hand grenade up on the moors. Last but never least Dave Jenkins. Dave whose dad was a retired sergeant major and acted the part all the time......scary to an eight year old. Dave who joined the paratroopers, had a shute only partially open and fell into a ploughed field breaking an arm and a leg. Survived though. Dave who loved old MG's and always had one .......of one marque or another......and of course me. New in the street. Younger. Vulnerable....not overly shy though.
Monty the cat, he was named after one of my dad's heroes...Fieldmarshal Montgomery, didn't last long. He was black and big with a mean disposition. I think he preferred the old place because he took off there. He was periodically seen by some of our old neighbours but eventually disappeared going to wherever it is that big, black, mean cats go.
From a cat we went to rabbits! Of course I had no say in these matters at the time and I never really knew whose idea this actually was.....mum or dad. Probably dad. He always was a bit of a nutter! I remember that it was my lot to keep them clean but what the hell do you do with rabbits. You can't really take them for a walk or play with them in the yard. Never really understood it! Ever see a rabbit "fetch?" Daft idea. They disappeared eventually. The novelty wore off.
Budgies. Guinea Pigs. A tortoise. The budgies escaped. My brother was allergic to the guinea pigs and the tortoise dug a tunnel under the fence and disappeared into tortoise land.
Dad finally bought a dog!! What took him so long?
That first dog was a little Cairn Terrier. Kim. We had him for years.
Cairns are an old Scottish working dog. Love to dig and are wilful if not carefully trained as pups. They are excellent ratters and will do the job of a cat as in "doing a number on mice and their ilk."
Dad loved to hunt and often went out with his trusty 12 gauge.....plus me....plus Kim. Five in the morning is a stupid time if you're only ten years old! Often is the time we've spent hours digging that darned dog out of a rabbit warren. Dad never learned. Neither did Kim.
The "boys" in the street. One of the first things they did, after stringing me up by my thumbs to an old fashioned gas lamp post, was to introduce me to the one thing that was totally off limits. Old man Trenholme's air raid shelter! Boy do I mean off limits!!
It was dark and wet down there. Sufficiently wet to have a hand pumping system built in in order to pump out the water as it seeped in. It echoed! There were still some iron framed bunks installed but no lighting. They used the old Tilley gas lamps when Jerry came calling. A little light seeped in around the escape hatch making it look framed in white trim.
What a place for kids! Our imaginations ran riot. The old man kept changing the padlocks. The old man kept punishing Mickey. The old man kept talking to the other parents. The "boys" always figured a way around everything and it was well worth the periodic punishment.
We never played there in the winter! In the spring the seepage was so bad that the water reached grade level and was dangerous. You could see the water level from the top of the stairs. Still, dark and sort of greasy looking. No more echoes the water being at least eight feet deep.
Once a year, in the spring, the parents got together and emptied the old shelter. A combination of bucket brigade and hand pump. An event that took several days. Slowly the water level would go down. The further it went down the further our imaginations went up developing scenarios for the coming summer.
Of course, over time, the boys got older. Interests moved to girls and rugby not necessarily in that order. Still every year the old shelter got pumped out to remove the danger.
Dad and I continued to hunt with Kim. By now I had my own 16 gauge shotgun. Hunt? More like dig!! Kim ,constantly, would worry himself down a rabbit burrow and not be able to get himself out so we would dig. We carried with us two old trenching tools solely for this purpose. Dad never tired of it. Struck me as being rather pointless. Much preferred going after pheasant. They don't dig!!
One winter Kim disappeared. He had the run of the garden which was well fenced. He was about eight at the time. The whole neighbourhood looked for him for days. Dad put ads in the local papers and notices in many of the local stores. All to no avail. I was devastated. By now I was a teenager but had spent half my life with this little dog. He slept on my bed and followed me around. No more digging. No more blisters. No more Kim. Tears!
I distinctly remember a family discussion regarding getting another dog.
Sixty years later I'm, hopefully, a little wiser. After losing a dog that has become a family member you either get another one straight away or you wait a while. By waiting the memories of the dog that has passed wane a little and you do not have expectations of your new acquisition that are based on the character of the previous. We chose to wait !
The following Spring the neighbours gathered for the annual event of pumping out old man Trenholme's air raid shelter. It, most certainly, had developed into an event. Beer and sandwiches. Sitting around on the front lawn and taking it in shifts to man the pumps......or the buckets!
Usually a fun day with a specific end in mind.
Kim was in the shelter! He'd obviously been dead for a long time. He'd probably chased a rat or a mouse through the little gap around the escape hatch facing the street and then couldn't get out. Perhaps he'd barked for a while but nobody would have heard him through the earth and the concrete. He drowned and he was on his own.
The following summer four local neighbours pooled resources and had a contractor fill in the old shelter. That place where the "boys" had had so much illicit fun for so many years. That place where my first dog died. My first experience of death.......of loss.
