Short's Stories: Name Dropping, Mill Hill, London, NW7, 1950-63

By Ronan Short and TBD

Short’s Stories, Name Dropping, is the second in a series recounting, with more humor and wit, the author’s life and travels. Ronan Short was born in London, England in 1940 and brought up at the British National Institute for Medical Research, where his father was in charge of the animal division.

 

His ear

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ronan Short
• Release date: Jan 21, 2022
• ISBN: 9780578348834

Ronan Short

Ronan Short was born in London, England soon after the start of World War II. After twenty-three years of an event-filled youth, he emigrated by boat from Liverpool to New York, where he worked in medical research as he had in England. He made his way via California to Fairbanks, Alaska by 1966. He has worked, taught, married, and raised a family in the Golden Heart City. He and his wife of 40+ years, Barbara Rinker, have two grown daughters and four grandchildren. Ronan has traveled extensively and is now shocked that he has lived in Alaska for over 50 years. (He's found the road to the airport, but getting a ride at 4:00 a.m. and 40 below zero is another matter!)

Book preview

NEW WORLDS, NEW WORDS

The first place in Mill Hill that we children strayed to was Griffin’s store, a little shop and post office along the Ridgeway, the road that runs past the Institute, up to the store, and next to the village pond. We spent our pennies there and also sometimes peed into the pond. On one side of the pond were half a dozen tiny eighteenth-century almshouses built for the poor and destitute. On another was a small Methodist church with a welcoming youth club. A narrow street away was E and G Stores, a rather scruffy café and sweet shop. In the other direction from the Institute was Burtonhole Lane. Mum always called it Buttonhole . Nicer , she said.

My two sisters and I met Johnny Pratt at our new school, Frith Manor Primary. Johnny lived in an old terraced house down Burtonhole Lane with his mother and older brother, Bluey. They had a very obedient black lab named Nigger. Nowadays, that is an unutterable racial slur. However, the dog went everywhere we went, on foot or on our bikes, and we called his name out loud with no cause for concern for its later racist insult. In the early 1950s in Britain and elsewhere, the N-word, as we later euphemistically referred to it, was commonly used in conversation and advertising any product with dark brown color: suede shoes, leather jackets, and paint colors. Do you have it in nigger brown?, was a common enquiry.

Our bikes were at the time homemade BMX rigs, but all tuned up—thanks to Bluey Pratt, who was a head mechanic at the nearby army engineering barracks. Bluey had long ago graduated to motorcycles and had a complete shop in his backyard. Adjacent to their house were large unused fields and an abandoned ammunition dump where Bluey and his friends honed their considerable riding skills. He and his friends specialized in Motocross (dirt bikes) and Speedway (flat track) racing. His sister had married a well-known speedway rider, Wally Green. Wally was runner-up in the World Speedway Championship in London that year, 1950.

We began referring to the dog with a different name when a black speedway rider was referred by Wally Green to Bluey for bike repairs. He was from the West Indies and, after hearing the dog being called a couple of times, delivered a short, but to the point lecture to all in attendance on the growing inappropriateness of this word. It was a shock to all, and was heeded immediately. I have no idea how they got that black lab’s attention after that.

The pond at the top of Mill Hill, fed by an artesian well, and next to Griffin’s Store.

Another major event in the area of racial sensitivity in the Short household was Dad’s announcement one day that he had a new person on his staff and would be inviting him to dinner that evening. Mum was elated. It must be someone important, a Nobel Prize winner or such, she thought. Later that evening when Dad came home a small, dark-skinned man followed him into the flat. The man wore what turned out to be, in part, his traditional Kenyan tribal costume. He had on an off-white shirt, from which hung several beaded necklaces, a grey cloth skirt, and brown leather sandals. He was a paramount Kikuyu chief, and had been extricated by UK special forces after assisting Britain in quelling the Mau Mau insurrection. The terrorist leader, Jomo Kenyatta, was tried and imprisoned by the British for fomenting warfare against other tribes and English settlers. After his release, he ran for office, became Prime Minister of Kenya, and was considered a national hero.

Mum was in disbelief at this incursion into her home and stared in shock until the chief spoke and produced from behind his back an elegant bouquet of flowers.

My name is Robert, he began, in a perfect English accent, Thank you, Mrs. Short, for allowing me the pleasure of entering your charming house.

He bowed low to the floor, and well, Mum nearly fell over. He was completely elegant and well educated, and over the course of the evening regaled us with tales of survival and success in Kenya and East Africa, but not much about the Mau Mau terrorist rebellion. Too serious and too recent, I think.

The Chief, as we came to know him, trained and worked for several years as an animal technician, then returned to Kenya when the hostilities were over. My mum grew to become increasingly more tolerant of all people that were different from us, although there was one egregious incident many years later.

Rose, now 75, had come to visit my wife Barbara and me in Alaska. We took a drive from Fairbanks to the Port of Valdez and we stayed overnight there. We then boarded a ferry via the Columbia glacier to the Port of Whittier. Our car was mounted on a railroad flat car and a locomotive pulled us and others through a tunnel. On the drive to Anchorage, one of the rear shock absorbers broke and would bang at every bump, so I pulled into Sears on Northern Lights Boulevard and arranged a replacement at the automobile service desk. Easy, about an hour, they said.

Barbara and I left Rose in the waiting area and went to check out what we could buy that we didn’t need.

Moments later, we were a distance away when I heard my name being yelled loudly. Ronan! Ronan!

I started to run back, thinking sickness or assault.

Ronan, help! Her voice was raised further in an agitated manner. Ronan, there’s a buck nigger working on your car!

I was now at full sprint, my hand ready to slam over my mother’s mouth.

Be quiet mother, you can’t say things like that!

Unperturbed, she continued at full volume, But there is, I’ve seen him. He was in the trunk doing something. Oh, our luggage…?

Mother, will you shut up!

I was now yelling near the top of my voice and a nice-looking young couple contemplating a refrigerator purchase was now more interested in the verbal freeze in the waiting room.

He’s a trained, qualified technician, Mother, and an employee here at Sears Roebuck, I blurted out, trying to fill the blue-tinted air.

Well that’s as may be but he’s still a n-----, continued Rose.

Mother, stop it, I shouted. You are a disgrace!

Men in white shirts and ties now appeared from various departments as we quieted her down and located a cup of tea in the waiting room. As wonderful and as kind as my mother was, she never did truly understand why everyone was upset.

JOHNNY PRATT AND THE FIRE

There were very few occasions when all three of the Short kids would be found down Buttonhole Lane. Gill had been sent to get us this time because Sally and I were late—and she had just finished a first aid course at the Girl Guides and wanted a break.

Gill had walked down, wrapping her new hand-me-down camel coat around her in the cold air. We usually had our bikes as there was a homemade BMX track nearby, which when it became rutted, was smoothed out occasionally by the larger motorcycle tires. Sally, Johnny Pratt, and I would spend hours going round this course with the bomb-hole, a large hole in the ground about twenty feet wide and eight or ten feet deep at the center. The origins of the hole were unclear, but there was the large former ammo dump right next door, so one could imagine! There were also clumps of small trees and several old oil drums to navigate around.

Johnny was one of my poorer playmates who lived with his widowed mother in the last council house with no electricity or phone service. On this particular grey, chilly day, Johnny stopped cycling to feed more wood into a barrel with a small fire in it. The fire was weak, and Johnny grabbed a fuel can that was nearby. That worked a treat; the flames grew quickly and we were soon warm.

After a while, that died down so he picked up another can and poured the liquid quickly into the drum.

Boom!

Wow!

Oh Shit!

Boom!

Flames ten feet high flew out at the speed of exploding gasoline and enveloped Johnny before any of us could move. Gill, not having a bike that day, had wandered off; Sally and I, startled, ran a short distance away and glanced back. Johnny was on the ground screaming as Gill rushed back, pulled off her camel coat, and smothered his body and the flames.

Run to his house—get help—call 999! screamed Gill. Sally and I took off, easily exceeding the speed