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Don McDouall was evacuated from London during World War II when he was five years old. He was sent to the small country village of East Hanney to live with Grans and Grampy at a house called Tamarisk. When the war ended nobody came to take him home and he was sent to a children's home. When the children's home closed he was given the choice of returning to Tamarisk or to live in another home, he chose Tamarisk. He now lives in Australia.
I worked on the same farm as Grampy during the school holidays. At first this was Haywards Farm, then Walter Smith bought the farm and promptly got rid of all the horses. My friend Dippy also worked holidays on the same farm.
Sometimes Dippy steered the tractor and I worked the clutch and sometimes it was the other way around. Neither of us could drive the tractor on our own. It took a big effort from both of us to turn the tractor around corners. The steel wheels would sink into the ground making it very difficult to pull the steering wheel around.
To change gears I would put both feet on the clutch pedal then hang onto the air cleaner stack and push the pedal down to disengage the clutch while Dippy put the gear lever in place. Then as slowly as possible I would let the pedal come back up but the tractor would still lurch forward and there would be cursing and shouting from the adults on the wagon at the back.
Sometimes the pedal came up so fast that the engine would stall. The men would threaten to punch my head in, as very often the engine would refuse to start again!
When ripe, the wheat, barley and oats were cut with a binder. This machine made sheaves of the cut material and these sheaves had to be stood up in 'stooks' to dry out. This task was referred to as 'stooking' and was done by intensive hired labour. When dry the sheaves were loaded upon wagons that were pulled by horses or tractor and taken to the rick yard, where the sheaves were built into ricks. Later these ricks were fed into the threshing machine where the grain was separated from the chaff and put into sacks.
My work varied quite a lot. Sometimes I would lead horses and sometimes I would pitch the sheaves into the elevator in the rick yard. The elevator was driven by a horse, which went around and around in circles fastened to a pole. I always felt sorry for the horse. Other times I would be 'stooking' or stacking the sheaves on a wagon. The work was hard but getting paid at dinnertime on a Saturday was good.
It was about this period of my life that I met Clive Spinage. He went to school in Wantage and I must have met him at work during school holidays. We were both doing some gardening for an old lady who lived in the big house.
Clive was mad on fishing. I bought a fishing rod off him that he had made himself. It was just a one-piece bamboo rod and he taught me how to cast a fly. We often fished in a little stream he knew of out the other side of West Hanney, I didn't even know it existed until he took me there. I spent many pleasant hours fishing there, not that I can remember ever catching a trout!
I would spend whole days just fishing. It was a great time for me and I still have very fond memories of those fishing moments...so far back in time.
Don McDouall, Australia, 2001
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