Around the Rowan Tree, Day 24

As a teenager, young Ronnie was in some ways one of the more rebellious... he preferred the excitement of the company of his friends in the village

And so he went to business college in Dundee, which was to stand him in very good stead later in life. Afterwards a job came up in a factory in Dundee that made nuts and bolts. A year there and Michael had had enough. “The money’s not bad. I’ve made enough to go on a trip to Norway, which I’ve always wanted to see. But I can’t stand being inside day-in day-out for a moment longer.”

When he returned from Norway he got a job in the forestry planting trees up in the highlands of Perthshire. He got lodgings with one of the McDonald clan, who still didn’t speak to the Campbells over the road.

“The massacre of Glencoe,” his landlady said to him. “It was a terrible thing to do, you know,” just as if it had happened the day before yesterday.

Memories are long in the Highlands. It was a lovely part of the world to be in and he enjoyed going out to plant trees every day. He joined the young farmers club.

There was a lot of fun going on. He bought an old jalopy, couldn’t really do without one. Occasionally there was an SOS to get him out of a fix. Once, one dark night, he ran into a deer crossing the road, a common occurrence up there.

His jalopy was a write-off. He had to get himself another.

Happy valley After a year or two working for the forestry he began to see the job wasn’t getting him anywhere. To get on in the forestry, have a regular job with decent pay, it was necessary to go to forestry college. “Well, why don’t you?” “Don’t have enough qualifications for one thing but it’s very difficult to get into. They’ve a huge waiting list.” “What do you want to do, then?” “Don’t know, something outside, though. I think I’d like something with a bit harder work, something more challenging.” “What do you mean, harder work.” “This planting trees, once you get used to it, is a bit monotonous and it’s happy valley a bit.”

“Happy valley?”

“Well, being a government thing, there’s a lot of going by union rules. It rains a bit and your off sitting in the van until it stops. I’d prefer to work on but you can’t. You’d fall out with your buddies if you do that. Once or twice they’ve shouted at me to stop when I was up a hill. Being a bit deaf, I didn’t always hear them and they were not very pleased to have to come and get me.”

I had an idea. “What about your uncle John?” My sister-in-law Pat had lost her first husband in a car crash. Several years later she married John. John was a tattie merchant. He was a nice man. Working at tatties all the time, Michael wouldn’t have the hay fever problem.

Michael did go to work for his uncle and had no complaints about not working hard enough.

“I’ll always be grateful to uncle John,” he said at a later date. “He taught me how to work.”

Ronnie As a teenager, young Ronnie was in some ways one of the more rebellious. Rather than spend much time studying, he preferred the excitement of the company of his friends in the village and liked nothing better than to get on his bike and be off to join his peers.

Not that they did much, or so it seemed to me, a lot of standing around at street corners watching those who were lucky enough to have motorbikes roar up and round the Village Cross in flurries of exhaust fumes.

Even on cold winter evenings you would see them in bunches standing against the cold Co-op wall opposite the pub, a territory they couldn’t wait to be eligible to enter.

Not far from the pub stood the ‘Chippy’. The boys, those with some pocket money left, would make quick breenges across the road for a can of Coke and a greasy poke of sizzling hot chips dispensed by Chippie Jean, who would stand no nonsense from the boys. If there was any, she had no hesitation in telling them what was what.

Always there were one or two boys who were more trouble than others and had influence over the less adventurous. There could be sporadic trouble from these lads for several years until they settled down. But always there were others growing up to take their place. Rarely did anyone get into lasting trouble, the village saw to that.

Gossip in a small community can be of value. News would seep through of whose laddie was doing what.

From time to time, down on the farm, we would hear rumours of what was going on. For a while teenagers were being accused of swearing at the back of the bus on their way back from the pictures in Dundee. Of course, all mothers would say, “It’s no’ my laddie. He widnae dae that!”

Actually, our boys weren’t particularly given to swearing, at least not in front of their elders. “You can swear in the barnyard if you like,” their dad had always said to them. “But not in the house and not in front of strangers.”

Oddly, his advice about smoking was the opposite. “For goodness sake, if you’re going to smoke, smoke in the house where I can see you. I don’t want you burning the barn down.” Consequently, very little smoking went on.

What was the pleasure, if it was not secret and forbidden?

A stone’s throw... The next thing the boys in the village were accused of was the throwing of stones. What laddie hasn’t thrown stones at one time or another?

It began with the gospel hall that one summer was set up in the Errol Park. It was a wooden structure with windows. The hot gospelers invited the teenagers into the hall. This was something new. The lure was free Coke and crisps and perhaps some games.

Everything went fine until the hot gospelers one evening overdid the hell fire and damnation bit. Perhaps the teenagers got frightened. They all trooped out after the service and one or two threw stones at the hall. One boy broke a window.

The hot gospelers were extraordinarily angry about this. A neighbouring farmer said: “What a fuss to make. Did St Paul no stone Stephen shortly before he saw the light and became a Christian? I thocht that’s what Christianity was a’ aboot.” More on Monday.