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A Little Folklore-ish Tale. - BIAD - 06-30-2024
A Little Folklore-ish Tale.
A long-long time ago, my cousin and I built our own conveyance... sort of. As many of us are aware, the lives we lead
invariably demands that a trail is left, a wake that is often strewn with consumables that litter our passing and discarded
through loss of interest or the natural development within a society. In our case, it was because my sisters had grown up.
In 20th century Britain, we called it a 'perambulator' or pram and I believe the US, it was known as a stroller.
But back in the monochrome years of my youth, a pram was far more than just a wheeled-chair to transport small children
in, it was a huge thing that could reach the chest of an adult when its hood was unfurled. To enhance one's standing in a
community, such a baby carriage had to be a 'Silver Cross'... the vertex of post natal portage.
A Silver Cross Perambulator.
Anyway, a long time ago, my cousin noticed such a vehicle parked in my parents' backyard between a never-used dog
kennel and the two squat structures of convenience. One was a 'coal-house', a single-brick building where coal was
dumped in via a small door in its rear and the other was what many houses of those years accepted as normal, an
outside toilet.
There's creepy tale to tell about my younger years sitting on such a darkened and chilly alfresco lavatory, but that one
we'll keep for another time.
This pram had seen better years. Rust was dominant around its chassis and rainwater had corrupted the cot where a baby
would be placed. Bird defecation had worked hard to change the hue of the charcoal-toned collapsible hood into a dappled
off-white rendering that only a neighbour's pigeons could appreciate. But regardless, the crazy kinsman from my father's
side of the family, suggested we remove the cradle part and utilise the frame and the wheels as a mode of travel.
So with eager hands and a wide tied-down wooden board for a place to sit, we destroyed and created at the same time.
It wasn't long before my cousin was loudly suggesting destinations we could travel to and yours-truly was pushing the
rope-bound contraption with musings of how some can avail the dynamics of a social-order better than others.
That half-pram went everywhere. One snowy winter, we tied my dog to the damned-thing and we emulated Jack London's
yarn of the foray into the Yukon. It was only due to the grace of God that we didn't plough into a wall when my eternally
-randy mutt spied a fellow canine and chose not to partake in our daring odyssey down the slush-rutted main road of our
little place in the world and instead, opted to frolic with a striking female rough Collie.
Thankfully, Mister Ferguson never did find out who left that dent in his car's front wing.
With a summer sun drawing sweat from my young limbs, we fled from the German Afrika Korps and headed for a town
called Alex. All the time, watching imaginary sand dunes for coal-scuttle helmets barking words like achtung. The days
were longer back then and for my cousin and I, we knew that mortality had taken a holiday and today would be perpetual.
However, on one of these jaunts, we decided to forego the fame of literature and cinema and visit a location that we'd
heard about from those held higher in regard than renowned authors and movie stars, folk we always believed when told
with serious expressions.
A commonality called older kids.
......................................
It had been after my safari to capture newts, an account I mentioned in another thread and had involved a tale of a
subterranean monster that lurked in a forgotten pool beside a huge now-defunct factory that had once built Nissen huts,
armour-piercing shells, tanks and Bailey bridges during the Second World War. It later became part of British Steel and
enjoyed a busy time in the years after that conflict.
The beast was a Pike, a fiendish fish of enormous size that -so it had been said by youths of loftier years than mine,
would snatch wayward children from the banks of its watery den and crush their thrashing bodies with terrible teeth that
would equal the metal-guillotines in the steel-rolling business beside its lair. Forlorn head-scarfed mothers would call out
across the lonely location and wonder what lay beneath that dark wind-rippled surface of the brute some fishermen called
'Caesar'.
When such scary stories are told, it is always prudent for belief-purposes to add a dollop of reality to the recipe.
Too much prolix of visionary elucidation can make the reader grow bored with the waltz-of-words that one invites them
to and with this tale, we must adhere to the rules of the canny... the ordinance of the older kids.
Due to development of a growing town, the powers-that-be concluded that the field where a dirty pond and its alleged
occupant resided was to be eradicated for housing purposes. The children of Sixties were becoming adults and they
would need homes to live in. Some folk might suggest children-eating fish also require a settled residence and as the
yarn goes, there was a covert group who took it upon themselves to find such a haunt for the Pike known as Caesar.
And like all good narratives, this took place at night.
They came in the dark without their uniforms and carrying a net -it was said. Policemen who'd quietly purchased a
secluded fish-stocked lake near a swampy abandoned truckers park and with rescue of a killer on their minds. Some
reckoned this act was a repeat of earlier times, when a group of men had acquired an exclusive pool to enjoy their
hobby, a site beside a steel factory where unknown giggling actors had deposited a predatory Pike to upset such a
pastime and claim the souls of those who dawdle near its edge.
Whatever the background, these unnamed Policemen had sought and succeeded to bring Caesar to their domain
for reasons not delineated to any eager audience and now pushing the squeaking remains of a once-fancy pram
over a steep railway bridge, two knee-scuffed boys were unknowingly ambling towards this menacing maw of water.
......................................
Well, it wasn't a lake. The large pool of oily water sat amongs the remains of broken wodden pallets, tipped-over
paint-peeling oil drums and the skeletons of machinery consigned to oblivion. Near to where a gate once enjoyed
the views of passing motorists and now took delight in being a manner to traverse the muddy entrance, my cousin
and I observed an old leather couch slumped not too-far from the pond and sitting in it was a seemingly tall stranger.
Following the code that all kids should adhere to when approaching adults, we slipped and slid our homemade vehicle
closer to the wadding-weeping piece of furniture, our eyes never leaving the figure peering out at the black water with
a fishing-rod clutched in his hands. We believed all grown-ups don't like the young, they pretend to, but they're merely
envious of the magic that adolescence still holds.
Raiding an orchard is wrong, making mazes in a farmer's cornfield is wrong and inserting lit fireworks into still-soft
cow-pats is seen as immature to those who grow hair in places besides their heads. Adults are from Mars and can
only watch with covetous eyes at the wonderland where the young cavort and caper without regard. But don't be
fooled by the usual rhetoric of small poets, just like the small fish that swim near Caesar's dark den of rest in the
pond before us, kids and Death will always abide without acknowledgement of each others closeness.
Parking our mud-splattered mode of mobility next to a clump of dying hawthorn bushes and a crumpled container
stinking of diesel, we warily awaited the questions that would undoubtedly be asked by the adult. It always came,
rationality of the situation had to be established and hierarchical control must be stated, it was and will always be
the way of the adult.
But with only a light glimpse over to the black-haired lad sitting on the bottom-half of a pram and the panting boy
standing behind him, the stoic-faced man went back to concentrating on catching something in the liquid I seriously
doubted could retain anything living in it. But in that moment, I recognised him. He was a strange character of our
small community on the edge of town, a tall man who would occasionally tarry on his way to wherever adults go
and be frowned upon by his peers for wasting his time with talking to children.
In these times of cynicism, I can appreciate if the reader feels the urge to believe that this lanky male may've held
schemes of the perverted variety, but I can state throughout my years of maturing in that community, never such
evidence was ever presented. In my teenage years, I walked miles with him and talked of many things. There were
never sunken secrets brought to the surface and he acquired an okay in my ledger.
I heard he'd died a couple of years ago in a nearby seaside town, he'd fallen far from his time working at the steel
mill and it was suggested that drink had been his final companion. His name was Richard to the young, something
he insisted on, but out of earshot this towering piscator was branded 'Big Dick'.
Without proclaiming he'd recognised my cousin or myself, Dick growled from the side of his mouth as he inspected
the empty hook on his line, "Yer' see over there...?" Adjusting a grease-stained flat-cap on his head and plucking a
wriggling worm from a margarine container near his boot, he added "...yer'll be a pair of smart buggers te' keep
away from there".
Two sets of eyes followed the direction of the long finger pointing out behind the pond and past the carcase of a
dinosaur that a long-dead farmer may've once called a tractor. A nicotine-stained digit specifying Dick's direction
and away from this malodorous plot of hopeful angling and beyond the line of giant elm trees that edged the
purported home of Caesar and a repository of pollution.
But it was just a field, a poorly drained meadow covered in what I discovered later is called 'soft rush'. Just some
knee-high green reeds (unless you're as tall as Big Dick) that congregates where flooding is a regular problem,
hardly a place of note. "Aye..." the brobdingnagian casting his lure back out into the gloom of the lagoon continued,
"...be smart and divna' drive yer' weird cart into Myers Flat."
However, there was another line cast that day, a beguiling tale that only someone with the talent to bridge the gap
between the young and the old could relate. Not merely a story apprised by an pontifical adult who sees no slurping
ogres in the dark or fails to glimpse scaly hand at the bottom of one's bed, but someone who knows the waters kids
swim in daily and can detect the hidden spurs that lie beneath. Something that only the Peter Pan known as Richard
could tell.
......................................
The Tale:
'It's been said that George Stephenson is famous fur' two things, creating a safety-lamp fur' coal miners up here in
the north and buildin' the first steam locomotive to carry passengers on a public rail line. They always speak of the
latter as the Stockton and Darlington Railway, though not many folk know, that stretch of track came reet' past here.
The two towns always get a mention, but the railway line was originally fur' haulin' coal in waggons from the pits
further north and just over there in Myers Flat, Mister Stephenson came across a problem. Ah' tell yer', it was a real
quagmire over there back in 1822 and Georgie-boy found an old fella' that was watchin' the goings-on with carts of
soil and lengths of wooden sleepers brought to the remote sodden meadow.
Bidding him a good day, it wuz' said that the grizzled gadgie watched as the the bog was filled with soil and then
offered some advice fur' George te' chew on. "Thee knows Sir, there be Fairies in this mire..." the old man had said,
"...and Ah' would say that the Wee-Folk divna' take kindly te' havin' their homes buggered with".
Being a champion of industry, yer' can figure that George would've smiled politely at the unschooled yokel and then
went on his merry way. But when the night came down on Myers Flat, that warning gained flesh and bones.
Local history speaks of Will o’Wisp and Jenny o’t’Lantern bein' residents of old Myers Flat, but somethin' wus'
movin' about out there in the dark and the fella who wuz' left te' keep an eye out on the gear reckoned he heard
whisperin' and saw strange glowins' out there.
The next day, Mister Stephenson stood with hands on hips as he viewed all of his railway equipment dumped in
a pile in a neighbouring field and the heaps of earth had gone. Ah' saw it said in the papers a few years ago that
George had persevered with the interuption and Myers Flat eventually became part of the railway line.'
After listening to the yarn and feeling relief from be not so close to Caesar's aqueous haunt, my cousin and I set
off for home. The spindly pram wheels held up well as we negotiated the muddy ruts and humped tussocks of grass
on our way out, I recall the knees of my jeans didn't fare so well.
But crossing back over the railway bridge, I noticed the track below bent to the right... right of Myers Flat.
Struggling to keep the pace down due the overpass' downward gradient, I relinquished my position as an engine
and leapt upon our trundling carriage racing towards home. But at the same time, I realised George must have
changed his route after all and somewhere out there above the breeze-blown reed beds tonight, things unseen
will be dancing.
RE: A Little Folklore-ish Tale. - Bally002 - 07-01-2024
Touching stories. Made me harken back to growing up in the 60's. Secret cubbies. Mysterious persons. Getting up mischief while exploring the burb's and the bay area where I lived.
A few legends there which we thrived upon and made up ourselves at times.
Thanks again.
Bally)
RE: A Little Folklore-ish Tale. - EndtheMadnessNow - 07-01-2024
Strollers! Gave me a flashback. Since we spent half our lives on the beach at that time we had beach strollers.
![[Image: xas7fWh.jpg]](https://i.imgur.com/xas7fWh.jpg)
When number #2 came along we upgraded to bigger wheels. These were great because we could hide a small cooler of beer as not all beaches in Hawaii permitted alcohol. No legendary stories other than my battles folding the strollers up and having to wrestle them to fit in our hatchback.
RE: A Little Folklore-ish Tale. - BIAD - 07-01-2024
Just a visual to explain better. The pond has long gone and the private truck park was upgraded.
RE: A Little Folklore-ish Tale. - Ninurta - 07-01-2024
Quote:BIAD...
In 20th century Britain, we called it a 'perambulator' or pram and I believe the US, it was known as a stroller.
But back in the monochrome years of my youth, a pram was far more than just a wheeled-chair to transport small children
in, it was a huge thing that could reach the chest of an adult when its hood was unfurled. To enhance one's standing in a
community, such a baby carriage had to be a 'Silver Cross'... the vertex of post natal portage.
A Silver Cross Perambulator.
I remember those things. Some folks called them "strollers" or "baby carriages", but we simply called them "baby buggies". I can remember mine, specifically. A contraption constructed of what appeared to be blue canvas and chromed steel tubing, with a solid plate of canvas to cover the bed up to the hood, and a clear plastic sheet sealing the hood but allowing for vision both in and out, for inclement weather. From the inside, the thing was claustrophobic, sort of like a canvas-covered torture chamber when it was all sealed up.
Everywhere I lived as a child had a "coal house", or a reasonable facsimile of one. In Ohio, it was a large room in the basement next to the furnace that would hold a ton or two of coal at a time, and was filled via a chute in the house foundation. When we moved to Virginia, it was a log structure next to the dirt road, a short walk from the house. Here where I live now, it's a log-framed slab-built structure just outside the yard gate. Snarl parked next to it when he made his trip here to visit. It no longer contains coal - the coal furnace was decades ago, and has since been replace with an oil heater, and later gas heat. The coal house currently contains some few garden and yard work implements, but has largely been abandoned to the snakes and bumble-bees.
And outdoor toilets! We called that the "out-house", and I recall them well. Ours was fancy - it had a regular toilet seat bolted to the hole in the wooden seat. That was both a blessing and a curse. You didn't have to worry about splinters, but you might freeze to it in the winter time if you neglected to brush the snow off of it... and in the summer time, I never failed to procure a stick or a weed stem to run around the perimeter of it before I sat down, to make sure the spider webs were cleared from it. I've never fancied having a spider crawl up my ass!
...
Is Myers Flat still swampy, or has it been drained/filled in the interim?
I try to never piss off the Wee Folk. They have inventive ways of getting even, plus 10%. Some times, on dark nights here, I can see 'em dancing as tiny glowing lights in the woods and over the fields... and I don't go out to disturb them. I've no desire to be a permanent guest in Tir na Nog... or worse...
.
RE: A Little Folklore-ish Tale. - BIAD - 07-01-2024
(07-01-2024, 01:55 PM)Ninurta Wrote: I remember those things. Some folks called them "strollers" or "baby carriages",
but we simply called them "baby buggies"...
Did yours have leather straps that connected the 'baby bed'-part to the curled arms
of the chassis or were they metal springs?
Quote:And outdoor toilets! We called that the "out-house...
Here's an image of the sort I had to use as a child. A building of a similar size was connected
to it for deliveries of coal. Lawks, it was cold sitting in that loo, we had a small storm lantern
set next to the water-pipe to stop it freezing in the winter!
Many neighbours used square-torn newspaper on a hook as loo roll!!
Directly behind the wall where the flush-box is set was an unlit alleyway and all the yards where
these toilets and coal-housed were situated were connected with that wall. It's this wall where
I had my very young scare!!
![[Image: SCTHklTqNOFqD7hNwM6TSesa_LBqo2_gpKLK9dXs...JTGPXUO-Ty]](https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/proxy/SCTHklTqNOFqD7hNwM6TSesa_LBqo2_gpKLK9dXs-N7gIFzQ8JSBcJisGAQzyAiJxTjJehkDaVQE5YmLblKxFgjncpBCFXl-4o4323EWpA2qigOTmlJTGPXUO-Ty)
Quote:Is Myers Flat still swampy, or has it been drained/filled in the interim?
I believe sheep may occasionally be allowed on there in drier months, but the soft-rush reeds
still indicates it can be boggy.