horses belonging to Andrew Burns or
Will Knox.
Coming to where Burns Shelter is now,
there used to be some houses which, as far as I can make out,
were mostly tenanted by members of the Cunningham family and so
on to old Frank Antonelli's chip shop. Then there was a wee watchmaker's,
Bert Gibbons by name, who even engraved the watch I was presented
with from the school fifty years ago from now. Cree's dairy came
next and the wee brae down to Rock Cottage and now the shops,
Borland's the Drapers, the Commercial Bank of Scotland, David
Smith's the newsagent, James Cunningham's the grocer, McLean's
the ironmonger, where you got anything from a pound of carbide
for a pit lamp to a pound of tackets for the pit boots, next a
name I never seemed to get right, Roy Diles as I knew it, then
there was Quinn and Hughes, the Ladbrokes of his day, and then,
where the butcher's is, was Mr Murray and his Danish dairy. Before
coming to Ayres Wynd you passed another building where you had
old Veitch and his famous home made pies, then Pow's later to
become Baxter's the butchers.
Around the war memorial square was
a big wall with an old fashioned well and an iron cup for drinking
out of. At the other side was our answer to the Keystone Kops
— Andrew Mack's barrow for a fire engine.
Past Innes the bakers and down a stair
you came to old Gordon's — he I believe was the oldest man in
the Pans at my time; then Dod McKenzie the barber's and the saltworks,
where the old Hamer House took up part of the street before you
came to Don's the chemist and Chris Whitelaw's two shops, then
our main means of entertainment in those days
— the Scratcher — one could write
a book on that itself.
We then had Will Munro the plumber
before the store — but in those days the butcher}' was next to
the opening down to the bake house
— Miss Bathgate's sweetie shop and
Mr Laidlaw newsagent who, along with the old doctor, ran the Lads'
Meeting with its famous trips in the coal lorries to the Lyers
Brae.
The next group consisted of the Beehive
Drapery Store and some half dozen houses, one of which had an
old sundial on the wall, and Mary Rodger's sweetie shop where
they used to say if you kicked the wee pipe neath her window the
dishes fell off her dresser.
The Black Bull was next with its two
well known publicans, Charlie Thomson, footballer international
and wee Jockie Russell — what a man. On to the Doctors Wynd and
Walford where the McEwan family had their surgery, then there
was Beenie Alien's sweet shop and one time chip shop. Next, in
what was originally part of the ropery and is now die Masonic
Hall, was Malcolm Clark's billiard room.
There was a block of high houses and
up one of the closes was Jock
|
1745 
