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I was born in the year 1933 in a stone house in the Dales of County Durham near the Burnhope reservoir, wrote Jim Dowson. The family moved to Crook in County Durham a few years later and that was where I did my growing up.
The winter time for the most part was a fun time for us kids, for it just so happened that right outside of my front door was one of the best sledging runs in the area. The bottom half of the run was Alexandra Terrace, which led up to the cemetery gates.
The top half was Jobes Hill, a narrow, steep dirt road with the cemetery wall on one side and hawthorn bushes on the other, real sharp thorns too as many a lad who lost control coming down the hill can tell you.
When the snow fell I couldn't wait to get home from school and be the first to come down the hill. It wouldn't be long before there were so many kids on that street that they looked like ants slipping and sliding, trying to avoid the sledges coming down while they hurried to the top, dragging there homemade sledges behind them.
My brothers helped me to make my own sledge and then I took it to the blacksmith's shop and for a couple of pennies he would make some iron runners for it. Because I lived near the run I would be out there until it got too dark to see and also because of the cemetery being so close you didn't want to be the only one left on the hill.
I remember how sore the front of my legs would get from doing belly floppers on my sledge all night long in the frosty air. Each night when it was time to go in for my lick and a promise, my mother would rub a salve called Snowfire onto my legs. (We only bathed on Friday nights because of the lack of hot water and then I had to share the bath water with my sister.)
It was supposed to be good for frostbite. Every night when she rubbed it on it would hurt so much that I would cry and I would swear that I wasn't going to go out again and get frostbit but come the next night I was out there again.
Not having the proper clothing in those days to protect from the cold I would wear anything I could get my hands on. I'd wear rubber Wellys on my feet with newspaper insoles, and a pair of my older brother's long pants to go over my own short ones.
My mother would stuff newspaper down the back of my trousers to keep me warm and soak up the wet snow. I would wear a couple of jerseys and a windbreaker, and on my hands I'd have a couple of pairs of stockings. Over the Wellys I would pull on some old stockings to stop me from slipping on the ice and on my head was the ever present balaclava wool helmet that I think every kid in England must have had.
The kids all knew we were on borrowed time with our sledging run, as usually by the end of the week the Council men would come around and spread ashes on the street to stop us from sledging and so the funeral cars could get up the hill to the cemetery.
Just as soon as they would leave, all of us kids would come out and turn our sledges upside down, tie them together and start dragging them down the street to rake off the ashes. This would work for a while until the Bobbies paid us a visit.
I remember one night in particular that a Bobbie walked around the corner at the bottom of the street and you should have seen the kids scatter. It would have been funny had I not been riding on the family sledge at that time which was large enough to seat about 4 kids and I was halfway down the hill.
The only way to stop was to roll off the sledge and then run as hard as I could, dragging that big heavy sledge behind me. What made matters worse was the fact that the string had broken from one side of the sledge causing the sledge to swing crazily from side to side as I ran.
I managed to get to the top of the street and around to the back door of my house into the yard before the policeman reached the top and was able to see where I went. I was sure he could hear my heart pounding as I hunkered down behind the wall. It scared all of the kids for a while but it wasn't long before they were all out enjoying the snow again.
My mother showed me how to take out the wet newspaper from my Wellys and put in more dry newspaper to soak up the dampness so the Wellys would be dried out by morning. Years later I still used this method with my own kids' rubber boots and showed them how to do it after they had been out playing in the snow here in California.
In the winter months, because of the scarcity of coals, my dad had rigged up a big black curtain out of the material that was left from the blackout curtains. He hung this curtain across the family room, cutting the size of the room in half. This kept the room warmer at night when we all were sitting around the fire.
Whenever it was time for me to go to bed my mother would open the oven door and get out a brick. She would wrap up the brick in brown paper like a parcel and tie it with string. The brick would be nice and warm and I would put into the bed to keep my feet warm. I always looked forward to getting my brick at night.
I had 3 brothers and 3 sisters, 2 of my brothers worked in the coalmines but the eldest joined up in the army to fight in the 2nd world war. I remember all of us gathering in the sitting room shortly before he was about to leave, I was too young to really understand what was happening but I knew it was serious because my sisters and my mother were crying.
Before he left for the war my brother knew he wouldn't be able to tell us where he was so he had worked out a code for us. He gave my mother a sheet of paper and put down different countries and beside each country he put the name of a domestic animal like a cat, cow or parrot.
It was like a game to me when his letters came, he would always ask how the parrot or the donkey etc. was doing and I'd dash to the cupboard where the paper had been stuck to look for the name of the animal to see which country he was in.
Jim Dowson, California USA, 2001
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