My Parents
John and Lilian Rowley were rather special people for a number of reasons, poor, hard working and honest. The salt of the earth. My father was seriously ill in his childhood, for rheumatic fever had damaged his heart. He worked, when work was to be had, and when he was able to work, to provide for the family.
I had the responsible job, as a young lad, of walking up the road to Penny Hill to the Union, which met in the Temperance Hall near Anchor Street with his precious Union money. My dad was keen to pay his dues
though times were hard and difficult; the hope for the future lay with the Unions. That hope, in a sense was rather misplaced in reality. I recall he worked at Deightons Engineering near the railway bridge over Pepper Road, for some time, as a watchman; again I had the task of walking up the hill with a few sandwiches and a flask of tea, when his shifts demanded it. It was good when the steam trains passed under the bridge and one was hidden from sight in the grey swirling slightly wet mists from the powerful trains of the London Midland and Scottish
Railways singing their way along the parallel steel railway lines. Metal on
metal: those were the days of 'real heavy metal music' before the later rather lightweight versions gyrating on platforms. The steam locomotives had the edge on the consistent unrelenting beat.
Later my father worked at the famous Yorkshire Copper Works in Stourton, Leeds. That job gave him many friends, and a great feeling of camaraderie. He worked in the cutting department as a saw machinist, keeping all the saw blades sharp as well as cutting literally thousands of miles of gleaming copper
pipe. Copper that in fact circled the world. John Rowley was proud of the small part he played in the whole production process.
John died of heart failure aged sixty-three, after years of illness. Poor in this world's goods, but extremely rich in experience, in real genuine wisdom,
and I believe he invented common sense. Having done all that he could physically do, the qualities and life
values he handed down to me are beyond price. There was a man who went to God whose name was John, a quality 'copper-bottomed'
saint, but Heaven is enriched.
Lilian was a beautiful girl, and a bonny looking young woman, with thick dark wavy hair. She looked marvellous on the old cracked sepia coloured photographs, which she delighted in showing me and
to talk about. Farmed out to relatives as a child and mistreated and used by her 'aunties' like a little
skivvy. My mother could and did relate stories which made the milk go sour. Bright shining eyes, twinkling with touch of mischief, and a delicious sense of humour.
It was a joy when she sang, for she had a good singing voice, and easily made up the words as the song went along
which intensified in passion and power.
Lilian lived a day at a time and made the most of each day, quite a sound philosophy when one thinks
about it. Never a candidate for the Exchequer's job, the Rowley's would live like
Rockerfellows each Friday and Saturday, with food from Allot's Confectioners, Radding's Greengrocers and Greenwood's
Butchers each trading as corner shops in Pepper Road. Radding's and Foster's Fish shop at the bottom of our street, whilst Allot's and Greenwood's were at the end of Ashton Terrace the next street. However when the money
soon ran out and her large black leather purse was penniless as was its custom,
so we easily survived on soups and stews, bread and jam, occasionally fish and chips from Foster's at the end of the street. Foster's shop had a secret, which puzzled me, more of that later…