granny mac

this was forwarded from uncle ian by way of gloria......

it's intersting how grampa leaves the space after the mac..in our last name.



The Most Remarkable Person
I Have Ever Met

By J. Mac Dowall.

Just before the last war, when I was Publicity Manager for a big canning factory, we entertained a very distinguished party of ladies who wanted to visit this new factory. These ladies were members of an exclusive Society and there were Countesses and Duchesses and other titled ladies in the party. Usually visiting parties came to the Cannery in charabancs, but these people came in Rolls Royce and Daimler cars and they made a very impressive entry. I was at the door to receive this party and I conducted them into the dining hall and gave them a quarter of an hour's talk before taking them over the factory. After the tour, we returned to the dining room for tea. After tea, I thanked the ladies for doing us the honour of visiting our factory and expressed the hope that they had found the visit interesting. I expressed the sincere regrets of the directors that they were quite unable to be present to receive such distinguished guests in person, etc.,etc. The visitors' Lady Chairman thanked me for my remarks and for the hospitality extended but said they had no intention of departing from the factory without seeing and talking to our Managing Director who happened to be a woman. My smooth excuses were determinedly whisked away, so I had forsooth to go to the managing director's office upstairs to tell her that my excuses for her non-appearance would not be accepted. "But I'm terrified" she said, "they are all such distinguished ladies compared to me, I simply could not face them. What I cannot understand is why you should take this visit just as a matter of course". In reply I told my managing director that none of the Ladies below had impressed me nearly as much as my own Mother had done and for that reason, I felt quite at home with them. This reply struck my employer quite dumb and she followed me into the dining room without a word.

My Mother brought up a family of eight children in a five-bedroomed house. There were three years between all the children; four boys and four girls. My earliest recollections are of going to school and playing games. I cannot possibly conceive of anyone having a happier childhood than I had. Now that I am a man of fifty years of age, with a family of my own and a wide experience of the world, I have come to realise what a remarkable person my Mother was; how wise, how capable, how knowledgeable, how efficient she was. My Mother was a Scotswoman five feet in height. She was born in Glasgow of shopkeeper folk, but she was very proud of their ancestry. My Father was a zinc- roofing contractor who came from Dumfries. When my parents were first married they had a flat in Springburn Park and a maid to keep the flat tidy. After my two older brothers were born my parents left Glasgow and went to live in Liverpool, where I was born.

Never in all my life did I ever see my Mother flustered, weeping or at a loss. I never saw her do any manual work more arduous than baking scones or bread. She was the most marvellous organiser of labour I have ever seen. None of us children ever went into the house without a job being found for us almost instantly. As we did not employ a maid, the work of the house had to be shared by all its members. As a boy of ten or eleven my jobs were to run all minor messages, to clean the cutlery, keep a constant supply of wood and coal for the fire; to empty the ashes into the waste bin and woe betide me if a single black cinder was found in the waste bin when I had finished. I also had to turn the joint on its spit and key on Sundays when I came back from Sunday morning church.


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Later on when I was about thirteen or fourteen other jobs would be given to me with clockwork precision, notably, I was entrusted with washing and drying dishes, calling for groceries, meat and fish. If I was a single halfpenny out in my change, I received a sound spanking from my Father after he had finished his evening meal. My Father never asked what I had done, he just laid on and, as he was a very powerful man, my misdemeanours at home were few and far between.

The economies which were practiced in our household would have put a Jewish family to shame. No soap was used until it had been thoroughly dried and hardened by the kitchen fire for at least three months. Any member of the family who left soap in the water, or who left it where the water could not drain off, was soundly thrashed. All boots and shoes were repaired at home and they were all cleaned before going to bed. Nothing was ever done in the morning that could be done the night before. When shoes could not be worn any longer, strips were cut from them for making box-hinges and so forth and they were then filled with cinders and rubbish and slack and used to keep the fire going. I always remembered this. It made the fire burn with a bluish tinge.

We had ten three-pronged clothes hooks in the hall, with my Father's and Mother's Numbers one and two. Your hat went on the top, your jacket in the middle and your overcoat on the bottom. As a matter of fact I didn't possess an overcoat until I went into the army at the age of eighteen. Until I was fifteen, all my clothes were made for me at home by my Mother or by my sisters. If by chance you left your hat or coat hanging about, my Mother would throw it into the coal cellar without a moment's hesitation. Ours was the most orderly house it was possible to imagine.

When my Mother bought tea she emptied the packet into the tea caddy; she then tore the packet open and emptied the half-teaspoonful which lurks in the cracks of the packet into a biscuit box. A similar procedure was adopted with sugar, and flour etc. It was in this way that my Mother built up her reserve stores. If bacon was bought, it was always bought in quarter pounds so that we got the "turn of the scales".

Until we were quite grown-up we all went to bed in the dark and got up in the dark. The idea of using a light in the bedroom never occurred to us, although we had gas in every room. At holiday times, my Mother and Father would take my younger brother and myself to the seaside just across the River Mersey to New Brighton. It was five miles walk to the Liverpool Landing Stage. My Mother and Father travelled to the Landing Stage by tramcar but my younger brother and I would leave home an hour or so earlier so that we could walk to the stage. On our return at the end of the day, my Mother and Father would return on the tramcar and we boys walked back again. If by any chance we got home before our parents, we received a penny apiece. As my brother and I were both good runners and walkers, we often earned a penny this way.

We lighted our houses with gas in those days and bills would come in from the Gas Company every quarter. As a boy of about eleven years of age I remember feeling a thrill of importance when my Mother said to me, " Joe, here's 12/11,(12 shillings and 11 pence), you can go and pay this gas bill. The Gas bill had to be paid at the Gas Company's office at the end of the town about five miles away.

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An elder brother drew me a rough map of the route. I found my own way there and back. I came home with the receipt feeling very important. It was quite a day in my life.

Once every month all jam-jars, bottles etc. were collected and taken to the shops to be redeemed for cash. Woe betide you if you broke one! So naturally we soon became deft handed and quick footed. On washing days we all took turns at folding and mangling the sheets and blankets. And in the winter months our youthful patience and powers of concentration were sorely tested when we rolled wool into balls and unravelled the skeins. No parcel was ever untied carelessly in our house. The string had to be un-knotted no matter how long it took. All wrapping paper was carefully folded and put away. If the package was only fit for burning, it would be damped, and filled with ashes to keep the fire burning. The tissue and wrappers which covered apples, oranges and bread were most carefully folded for the toilet.

Our coal was bought loose in two-ton lots and one of my jobs as a boy was to see that the whole cartload of coal went into our coal cellar and that every particle of coal dust was swept away from the doorstep: coal and milk with the only articles which my Mother would permit to be delivered to the house. Nothing was ever bought at the door. No weekly insurance or hire purchases were ever entertained. The only people who called at our house were friends. Casual acquaintances were not encouraged and to be invited to our house was a very high mark of favour. We never knew our neighbours. My Mother said that once you started being friendly with neighbours, you had to continue for courtesy's sake and this could be very trying. Only friends of most ancient standing ever got past front parlour.

As a small boy I was very puzzled by many of my Mother's remarks. One of these was "there is one law for the rich and another for the poor." "a liar and lawyer are the same thing ".
"If you go to law, only the lawyer wins". As a studious and well-informed youth, I told my Mother that she was wrong; that there was only one law in this country of ours. "You think so "she said; "you wait till you grow older, and don't forget what I've told you ". I have lived to see the day when I learnt from bitter experience and with great expense that my Mother was right. She was never wrong.

Shortly after this discussion, there was an outbreak against the Jews in London and my Mother was very upset. Nobody in the family could understand my Mother sympathising with the Jews. We had never known any Jews. We asked her why. My Mother said the reason why the Jews were disliked by ignorant people was because they were jealous of their success in life and abilities in general. My Mother went on to say that Jews were a highly gifted race who led a most upright and moral life and whose methods we would be well-advised to copy. They maintained their own poor and asked charity from no one. Where people were poor but capable they lent them money without security. She enjoined us all to help them whenever we could; never to oppose them and to especially copy their example in business and money matters. She further said that we were children in wisdom compared with the Jews. This advice surprised us all very much and we never forgot this episode because we had all been brought up to believe that there were no people like the Scottish people; they were the salt of the earth.


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I reaIly think that one on my Mother's greatest feats was the unfailing regularity with which we attended school and Sunday school. Not one of our family of eight children was ever late for school or Sunday-school. I went to school from the age of three to the age of fifteen. We have only three children in our family but I would be quite safe in saying that our children were late for school on dozens of occasions.

Having studied dietetics, I know now that my Mother knew everything there was to be known about food. We had home-baked bread, home made jam and home-made scones. Bought pastries we never thought of until we were well grown-up. We had oatmeal porridge made from pinhead oatmeal: nourishing barley soups and broths and plenty of milk and buttermilk. Fresh herring and fruits were on our table three or four times a week. Condiments were never seen on our table and no one in the family ever had indigestion. I caught my first cold after I'd be in the army about six months. If any of the older members of the family had a cold, all their dishes were kept perfectly separate and washed separately. And nearly all our medical remedies were homemade. The value of the good feeding which I had in my early formative years was brought home to me when I took part in a forced march from Arras to the Somme in 1916. After resting, feeding and washing my feet, I still had sufficient energy left to play cricket or football until it was dark.
My Mother brought up her children to be tough - for their own good - she did not believe in mollycoddling children. I know now that in spite of her rigid economies that she was most generous. I know now that in spite of her rigid discipline, what she did was for our ultimate good. Her motto was " if you spoil children, no matter how much you love them, you will live to regret it ". She earnestly advised all of her children not to spoil their children and to bring them up tough.

My Mother treated every member of the family alike. To stimulate the spirit of competition amongst us she would ingenuously praise some member of the family who happened to be missing from the company at the moment, but she would seldom praise any of us to our faces. She would point out your faults by saying what a dreadful thing it was to see in such-and-such a person. With her grandchildren, my Mother was diplomacy itself and they all thought the world of their Granny Mac.

When my Mother reached the age of ninety, her mind and brain were as good as they had ever been. Just before her ninetieth birthday she fell from top to bottom of the stairs. The doctor was called in and took her to hospital at once in his car. After two days in hospital, my Mother was bored so she dressed herself, walked out of the hospital without saying a word to anybody and came home, greatly to my sister's alarm. The fall had not harmed her in any way, a most remarkable escape. The doctor came in again; he said my Mother's heart, limbs and lungs were perfect and that she would live to be a hundred easily, but my Mother had other ideas. She had always been of a lively and active disposition and she loved discussion. As time had gone on all her old friends had died off and she had no one to talk to. She told us that she was going and made all the arrangements for her funeral, even down to ordering a bottle of whisky. She insisted that we must not waste our hard-earned money on flowers; We had given her plenty when she was alive and the flowers would be no good for her when she was dead, and so she went. Her contribution to life was a great one and her teachings will live forever.

********************************************** J Mac Dowall 1948

happy remembrance day...think of those who have sacrificed so we can have the life we have...it's important.

:)