The Last Chapter

something had to happen. One big mistake we were making was starting and finishing jobs and then had to wait for payment, interim payments was the way to do it, what’s done is done. To cut a long story short we had to fold up, we still owed the bank. John Duggan sorted it out and we had to pay him back over a period of time. It took a long time but we eventually paid our half of it.

  So it was back to scaffolding, in hindsight I suppose I should have gone back to my tools, but John said “Start in the yard, on Monday”, it was a job and John had been good to us. I worked on various jobs mostly on sites. John asked me did I fancy driving a tractor with a trailer, I said I’d try it. The idea was to deliver loads to various parts of ICI in Runcorn. We went up the East Lancs Road to get a new tractor and John left me in a field to practice, it was alright going forward but backing the trailer up was a nightmare. It must have been about 2 weeks before I mastered it, I even asked an experienced R/Tic driver for a clue but he couldn’t manage it, after I had worked it out I got quite good at it.

  It was in the 70s when John Duggan asked me did I fancy going on a site in Ellesmere Port called “Chemico” and I agreed. He arranged for me to join the union and he took me over to the site. When we arrived John said “you’d better go and get to know everyone over in the hut”. It was walking into a lion’s den, as I opened the door all eyes turned to me and they didn’t look very friendly. I found a seat and parked myself and before long two men approached me and asked me who I was and wanted to see my union card. When I showed my card, one of them a right smart alec said “You haven’t been in long enough” and it looked as if I wasn’t going to start. I went to see the foreman a lad called Ronnie Tysteel and told him about it. Anyway, it was sorted out and I went to work, those days the unions were quite strong so it was run by union officials. It took me a few weeks to get the rest of them to accept me, when they did, it wasn’t so bad.

  The firm got a new truck especially for the moving of scaffolding around the site and they asked me would I drive it. I used it on site and also tool Ronnie Tysteel home at the end of the day, Ronnie wasn’t cut out to run sites, so at the end of the day he was absolutely exhausted. Some of the men would try me on at dinner time and ask me to run them to the pub, but they weren’t on. They would pile on the back and I would run them to the site gate and that was all.

  A story regarding unions again, two men were found by one of the site inspectors asleep off the site, in a field and were sacked on the spot. The union stepped in and consequently we were out on strike for three days and they were re-instated. We lost three days’ pay for a pair of lazy layabouts who were without doubt “Guilty”.

  One character on the site who’s name escapes me, was an ex amateur boxer, who when he had drink in him was a complete menace. One day he walked into the hut they used as an office and had the time keeper by the throat, ready to throttle him and then ended up butting the clock, we clocked in on. Another day he came back from a session at the pub and stood in the square outside the huts, he challenged any man to fight him. Now he was no more than 10 and half stone and about5’8” tall and I said to one of the lads “What makes him so special, there’s nothing of him”, he replied “Have you seen him go”, I said “I hadn’t, the answer was “If you had, you wouldn’t have to ask the question.” Anyway he had to go, but who was going to sack him, John, Stan and Gerry Connelly came over to do it, but Stan and Gerry backed out, leaving John to do it. All of us could see the office from our hut and because the weather was bad we were all in, one of them said “Duggan’s got him outside and they are talking”. John had to give him promises that he would get all that was owed to him, plus a bit more if the truth was known. The story goes, when he left the site he got drunk and kicked his own front door down.

  There were a family of brother (3) on site called Bagga from Kirkby, a right gang of no marks, one of them was Tony who was the steward who nearly stopped me from starting. The youngest of them was learning to drive and one day asked if he could drive the truck, I thought well we are not on the main roads so I said ok. I think it was the second day, he was driving along a track and a wagon was coming towards him, I told him to slow down but he didn’t. Ronnie Smith was driving the wagon, anyway he hit the wagon and badly damaged the offside wing. I went mad and called him a few names, I then had to hide the truck so the office couldn’t see it. The next morning I had to tell someone so I got hold of John and told him. He said “If it was only our wagon involved it was ok, but I said “I think you’d better look at it first”. It was worse than he thought so he said “See if you can get someone to knock it out for you and don’t let Stan see it. A panel beater did his best to make it better, we got away with it for a while until Stan seen it and shouted a bit. Another time, Tony Bagga asked me for the keys, not long before we were due to go home. I asked him “what for” he said he wanted to move furniture at home, I refused. I told him to get in touch with Stan Fruin and if he says “Yes” you can have it. He wouldn’t do that, instead he went to the Assistant Foreman who was terrified of them anyway he asked me to give them the keys. I refused, in the end he threw things at me like it was him who’d got me my Scaffolders card and I wouldn’t be on the site only for him. Then I hit him with the fact that I’d saved his brothers job by taking the blame for the truck accident, he didn’t get the truck. Tysteel couldn’t handle some of these men and he was very near to a breakdown, something he was near to tears on our way home at night. They had the union behind them and knew they could get what they wanted. Another example was one afternoon an inspector asked me to put a little platform up for welders to work on a pipe run. I started to assemble the gear, when the charge hand came up and asked me what I was doing, when I told him, he said “We’ve done our quota for today leave that until tomorrow. The inspector asked us why we hadn’t started and the charge hand said “One job in the morning and one job in the afternoon, and this one’s for tomorrow”. The job involved six small tubes and four 8ft boards and would have taken us half an hour. Altitude must have made a lot of money out of that site, but not without some drawbacks and worry. One day I was sitting in the hut with a chap called Billy Swan and out of the blue he said “Are you related to Duggan”. I thought, here we go, I said I was his brother-in-law and he said, “a spy in the camp eh”, I told him what I’d already told a few people over the years “I’m only here to earn a living and not here to spy on anyone”. He obviously told the hut, because I got a few dirty looks, but they eventually got used to the idea. The weather was terrible, we got a lot of snow which iced up the boards so we couldn’t work, so it was in the hut, sometimes up to a week at a time. I think this is why I don’t like playing cards, because we played card games all day and every day.

  Our John was courting Vivien who was living in the Walnut Pub in Bootle, her dad was the manager. John asked me if I fancied a pint in the pub one night, anyway, we went down and stood at the bar and after a few minutes John said “Let’s go in the other room it’s quieter there”. When we opened the door, I nearly fell over, everyone in the family was there, it was a nice surprise and I appreciated it, it was my 60th Birthday and it was great. John and Viv moved into Smollett St. off Knowsley Road, Bootle and after they were settled they invited us for a meal, along with Viv’s Mum and Dad. We hadn’t met properly and they said it was a good opportunity for everyone, I’m sure we all enjoyed it and it was nice to get together. Unfortunately Viv’s dad died of a heart attack a couple of months later, he was only 61yrs old.

  John and Viv got married at St Philips in Church Road, Litherland and were still living in Smollett St. They moved to Fazakerley (Winifred Road) after a while and Viv was having a baby, later on Lee was born, a lovely boy, Jemma was born 3 yrs. later she was a beauty.

  Our Anne had a few boyfriends while she was a teenager, she got quite serious with Billy Mullane they even got engaged and were looking at houses. But he was a bit of a loser and with one thing and a
nother they finished up. She introduced us to Richie Nuttall soon after that. They were married in 1976 at Robert Bellamines Church in Bootle, Anne looked lovely and I was quite proud to walk down the aisle with her. Ryan was born first, he was premature and very fragile, Warren was next he was born in 1978. They had a few places they had lived in, first was with Richie’s mother and his brothers, then they moved to a flat in Walton Vale. They moved to Seaforth, a street called Rossini close to Lily, Marie’s sister. Warren was just one around the time they moved up to the Field Lane Estate and bought a house in Denise Road. Estella was born in 1981, not long before Nan Duggan died in Feb 1982. Richard was born in 1983 and they have lived in Fazakerley for 25 yrs.

  We’d lived in Bailey Drive for 9 years and it was time to move on. We moved to Jubilee Drive off Park Lane in Bootle, It was a cul-de-sac and it was a lovely house, the neighbours were very good as well. Aunty Doll was our next door neighbour, a widow who had lived in the house all her married life and after her husband