Welcome to
Cambusbarron Village
Website

John Henderson's Memories (cont..)

.... As winter and spring rolled into the school summer holidays that year, I graduated to another job - bringing in the cows for milking from a small roadside field up at Gartur, (just opposite the entrance gate to McEwans' Hillhead Farm) down the Touch Road, up Murray Place and into the dairy - then later, amidst cascading sh--, driving the beasts back up the road for the night.

Dodging cow pads ( or as the locals joked, 'Mind yi' dinnae lose yir bunnet on a dark windy nicht up the Touch Road or ye're likely to find a few ithers before gettin' yir ane back!' ) on my bike whilst on other play-sorties up Touch Road lingers happily in my memory. But the need to clean malodorous spokes and chain thereafter before being allowed to put my bike away for the night in our garden hut was anything but a welcome job. The Brae was another bike route which gave us hours of 'chicken' type enjoyment (often short-lived if the 'boabby' appeared!). You either hurtled down, round the slight corner halfway, eyes skinned for emerging vehicles from Mill Road, or for the 'wee' bus stationary outside Dowell's house, before either freewheeling as far as possible into the North End, or doing 'speedway like' sliding round into Mill Road itself on the drying mud and stones that gathered from the ever over-flowing burn nearby.

Davy Hughes, who was a roadman as I recall, quickly noticed, (and heard!) that the wee lad who lived across the road from his house was 'fitba' daft'. There was no escape for him in this because of the hours I spent thumping balls of all shapes and sizes against the huge gable-end wall adjoining the schoolhouse lawn. More importantly he noticed that I wore an Stirling Albion strip in the traditional colours and design made famous by the mighty Arsenal of London. Of course I quickly discovered that he was an Albion supporter too and soon we were chatting and thus replaying past matches over the garden fence, not to mention similar conversations over his wife's delicious cakes and cups of tea in his house ... and then accompanying him to Albion 'away' games every other Saturday in the bus that the Cambusbarron Albion Supporters' Club hired. Indeed Davy - a lovely man - almost became the Grandad I had never known (my Grandpa Telfer died eight years before I was born and my Grandad Henderson when I was barely five).

 As the Albion chased promotion out of Division 'B' in to 'A' that season, we travelled far and wide together - to Arbroath in the east - to Dumbarton in the west, and at the end of it all we were able to wave our red and white scarves in glee at the prospect of entertaining the likes of the Rangers, the Celtic, the Hearts and the Hibs et al in Stirling in the coming season. But not only that, almost unbelievably, Davy arranged for me to be added to the 'ball-boy' staff at Annfield for the next season in 'A' Division! That became an unforgettable years experience for me as a tender twelve year old, not just for the fetching and carrying for all the illustrious names of the then current Scottish football scene, but being in the dressing room, baths and showers, with my local heroes, Geordie Dick, Tommy Martin, Geordie Henderson, Alec 'Smudge' Anderson, Bobby Wilson, Ian Bain, Jock Whiteford to mention just a few ....

The next photograph of me (see right) around this time is in the side garden of the schoolhouse and it gives a clue to my other sporting passion - cricket!  
My Uncle John Telfer and Uncle Jimmy Mitchell of Falkirk had played for Castings C.C. and my father JNK Henderson had played for Bridge of Allan C.C. - and since I was about eight years old I had listened to endless hours of Test Matches carried by the BBC Light Programme on our crystal set wireless, marvelling in my imagination of the prowess of the likes of Don Bradman, Len Hutton, Denis Compton et al. .... I found two similarly endoctrinated fellow budding cricketers of my age-group in Cambusbarron - Jock Templeton and 'Bimbo' Kemp - and the flat strip down the east side fenced-hedge at the foot of the local public park became our 'Lords', or 'Oval' or 'Trent Bridge' and many a mini-test was played there by we three! I was luckier than them however, because my dad arranged for me to be coached by Willie Clark and Bill Dennis of Stirling County C.C. at the Williamfield ground in Torbrex just along the road from the village. This was the start of a 'love-affair' with the 'County' which has lasted all my life.

Primary schooling in P6 and P7 for me was dominated by a lovably eccentric teacher, Miss Anderson (Left). I indeed give her the doubtful honour of helping me to become a reasonable mathematician in my university days but perhaps more generally for her aiding and abetting my later addiction to problem-solving. Her secret 'empire' at the end of a dark corridor in the school - any view from outside her classroom door totally blocked by an enormous double wheeled blackboard - was hell on earth for the less able. But for her favourites who possessed some semblance of academic brain, Miss Anderson provided paradise! There must be many who remember her classroom cupboard full of walking shoes to transport her and her 'Pied Piper' followers four times a day via the Burnside and the North End to and from her Dowan Place home .... and the high heeled ones she religiously changed into for classroom 'manoeuvres'. Then of course, there was seldom a minute of any school day when some erring child would not be in 'exile' behind the blackboard - 'Out of my sight you abomination', she would rage!

Some of the classmates in this picture bring a few stories back to mind ...