Memories of pea picking in Dalton

I got in touch with another cousin of ours, Flo, who at the time was living in Saville Street with our Grandma Ogden. She said it would have been about 1950/51 that Cal, Jud’s mother, Allice, my mother and Edith our aunt turned up to get on the lorry but was turned away as the lorry was full and over laden. Flo said that she sometimes went on the lorry during the school holidays but had decided not to go on this day.

All three sisters went back to grandma’s, Edith also lived there and Flo said that after about half an hour word had got back there had been an accident.

The lorry had set off from Saville Street onto Doncaster Road turning right across from Silverwood Miners Club onto Magna Lane where it turned over on a bend. There would have been a “Ganger” with the lorry who would have travelled in the cab with the driver.

Flo mentioned a Mrs Mountain who was on the lorry and was thrown, thought she might have been the Ganger but not sure.

At one time my mother Alice was the Ganger and I used to travel in the cab with her. I also remember when we used to travel in the back of the lorry and if you were in the middle you’d probably sit on a bucket which most people took with them to put the peas in. When they were full we’d pour them into sacks. If you were on the outer edge, you’d hold on to the boards.

When we travelled in the back, Mrs Simcox, the Ganger used to take her son Dougie and we’d hang around together then after dinner break we'd have a nap on a pile of coats and sacks.

I remember a couple of incidents. The first was when I met up with some other youngsters and we went through a hedge into a cornfield. We had only gone a few yards when we realised the stalks were covered in snails. We shot out a lot quicker than when we first went in.

Another time was when we followed the farmhands who were riding around on the tractor and trailer, they were trying to catch rabbits by throwing their pitch forks at them as they ran out from the peas. I can’t remember seeing them catch one.

When we were a bit older, we would pick a sack of peas for ourselves and earn a bit of spending money. When your sack was full you would take the sack to be weighed and if it passed you were given a ticket that you'd hand in when everyone stopped picking then got your money. It wasn’t unusual for some to put a clump of soil in the sack to make it heavier.

When I was on the lorry, we never went along the Magna Lane route we'd go up Doncaster Road, Whinney Hill past Thrybergh Golf Club, through Conisbrough and then just before Doncaster we’d stop at a corner shop and bought cigs, pop and sweets. After about ten minutes we would turn off the main road to the fields and after that I don’t know where we ended up. Sometimes instead of the open backed lorry, a large removal van would turn up. This was not comfortable especially on a hot day with the back doors closed.

My mother stopped pea picking and started work at Plessey’s Electrical Engineers on Fitzwilliam Road. Aunty Cal also worked there. I went a few times with a lad I was mates with who lived in the first house on Doncaster Road-on the right as you went into Dalton. There was a row of terraced houses that overlooked what is now Asda, his name was Ray Kelly. The lorry used to pick us up outside their back yards, there seemed to be more lads and lasses than before. There was one lass I remember because of her name, I think it was Jewel.

The last time I went pea picking was when I was 14 that was back in 1960. During this time I was living at Oak Terrace in Eastwood, I only had to walk up School Street and catch the lorry on Doncaster Road.

My best mates at the time were Mick Williams and Terry Law, Terry was a top snooker player in Rotherham and Sheffield, then Kenny Bennett whose dad had the barbers on Fitzwilliam Road, also Mick Clarkson and a few others. I can’t remember any lasses but there might have been.

I enjoyed my days pea picking, but can you imagine the kids of today getting up at 6am and travelling in open backed lorries to the fields? There were no toilets out there and no toilet paper, it was behind the nearest hedge and a couple of pages from someone’s newspaper. Those were the days.

Ray Hill, Greenfield Road, East Herringthorpe