Published: 05/03/2009 00:00 -
Updated: 30/12/2009 02:48
PASSENGERS regularly climbing aboard the bus leaving Stafford for Great Haywood during the early years of the Second World War got used to the idea that their conductor was a mere schoolboy.
NostalgiaIn fact, King Edward VI Grammar School pupil Eric Gibson was just 13 when he was first asked by his uncle Hubert Nickolls to work on the 26-seater 1938 Bedford Duple he operated from his base at Milford.
Nickolls operated the bus mainly for school contract work, taking pupils from Lea Heath, Newton and Admaston to Colton School, but on Tuesdays and Saturdays, it served for fare-paying passengers.
The bus made three or four trips a day from the Haywoods to the county town, charging a shilling (5p) return and it proved so popular that Eric was often forced to squeeze passengers in - in the fashion of the Tokyo tube trains.
Saturdays, especially, were busy, with Eric often working a 12-hour shift, including the busy evenings with people heading for Stafford's dance halls and cinemas.
The operator also ran this service to Brocton and Stafford via Walton and Milford and in ordinary circumstances, adults would have served as bus conductors, but war meant that many were engaged on other work, so a blind eye was turned to their youthful conductor.
Eric - now 80 - admits that the Saturday work was hard, but it paid well, with his uncle handing him the not inconsiderable ten shilling for a full day's work, along with free meals.
Bowling along country lanes in the Nickolls bus often meant coming across 'road kill' - pheasant, grouse or hares - and these would see the driver stopping to allow Eric to pick them up. "Nothing was wasted:", he says.
Eric kept a diary of his early years as a conductor, noting down the cash he earned from his uncle, but also for clearing out a fowl house for a local farmer and getting paid just half a crown (12p).
His life on the buses, which came to an end when he left school at Christmas in 1944, gave him an insight into the world of transport in which gave him a living for all his working life.
Imagine, for instance, one of today's teenagers keeping a diary and noting that he had "taken front wheels off uncle's bus and got very dirty" and later the same week writing: "decarbonised lorry in the morning".
Other jobs were more mundane, such as "knocking dust out of bus seats at Milford". Ah well, someone had to do it in days when vacuum cleaners were not standard equipment for bus firms as small as Nickolls,
His uncle also operated a haulage service and had to ensure that lorry drivers were accompanied by a mate - Eric stood in for many interesting journeys, including the hauling of 'war work' from WG Bagnalls of Stafford to Manchester
Yet for Eric, life was not all work and no play and his diary reveals his fondness for model trains, Bassett-Loake and Hornby makes, and Meccano, which he recalls as being only available from WH Smith in his boyhood days.
Like all lads of his age, he liked going to the pictures, listing films shown in Stafford in the early part of 1941 such as The Great Dictator with Charlie Chaplin, Old Mother Riley, Oh Mr Porter with Will Hay, Keep Fit with George Formby and Gasbags with the Crazy Gang.
There was also the fun of going to the Whit Monday fair on Milford Common and, especially throughout most of January in 1941, sledging in the snow, but noting that he often returned home suffering bruised limbs.
Eric's diary - a Charles Letts' Schoolboys' Diary records his life of work and leisure against a background of the terrifying threat of air raids which dominated most people's thoughts in early years of war.
He notes that between January and June of 1941, many enemy planes passed over the county town, leading to the familiar air raid warnings and the "all clear" signals.
In his schoolboy hand, he wrote: "We only had 20 bombs that were near enough to shake us as we are three miles out of Stafford and there were none dropped."
He recalls that one raid by enemy aircraft saw the destruction of two cottages on the Weston Road/Blackheath Lane junction on the A518 and that in later years, when the English Electric complex took a hit.
Next week, we recall some of Eric's memories of life at the King Edward VI Grammar School and his link with the son of the A J Riches, the English Electric employee inventor of a slide rule featured on this page two week ago.
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Nickolls operated the bus mainly for school contract work, taking pupils from Lea Heath, Newton and Admaston to Colton School, but on Tuesdays and Saturdays, it served for fare-paying passengers.
The bus made three or four trips a day from the Haywoods to the county town, charging a shilling (5p) return and it proved so popular that Eric was often forced to squeeze passengers in - in the fashion of the Tokyo tube trains.
Saturdays, especially, were busy, with Eric often working a 12-hour shift, including the busy evenings with people heading for Stafford's dance halls and cinemas.
The operator also ran this service to Brocton and Stafford via Walton and Milford and in ordinary circumstances, adults would have served as bus conductors, but war meant that many were engaged on other work, so a blind eye was turned to their youthful conductor.
Eric - now 80 - admits that the Saturday work was hard, but it paid well, with his uncle handing him the not inconsiderable ten shilling for a full day's work, along with free meals.
Bowling along country lanes in the Nickolls bus often meant coming across 'road kill' - pheasant, grouse or hares - and these would see the driver stopping to allow Eric to pick them up. "Nothing was wasted:", he says.
Eric kept a diary of his early years as a conductor, noting down the cash he earned from his uncle, but also for clearing out a fowl house for a local farmer and getting paid just half a crown (12p).
His life on the buses, which came to an end when he left school at Christmas in 1944, gave him an insight into the world of transport in which gave him a living for all his working life.
Imagine, for instance, one of today's teenagers keeping a diary and noting that he had "taken front wheels off uncle's bus and got very dirty" and later the same week writing: "decarbonised lorry in the morning".
Other jobs were more mundane, such as "knocking dust out of bus seats at Milford". Ah well, someone had to do it in days when vacuum cleaners were not standard equipment for bus firms as small as Nickolls,
His uncle also operated a haulage service and had to ensure that lorry drivers were accompanied by a mate - Eric stood in for many interesting journeys, including the hauling of 'war work' from WG Bagnalls of Stafford to Manchester
Yet for Eric, life was not all work and no play and his diary reveals his fondness for model trains, Bassett-Loake and Hornby makes, and Meccano, which he recalls as being only available from WH Smith in his boyhood days.
Like all lads of his age, he liked going to the pictures, listing films shown in Stafford in the early part of 1941 such as The Great Dictator with Charlie Chaplin, Old Mother Riley, Oh Mr Porter with Will Hay, Keep Fit with George Formby and Gasbags with the Crazy Gang.
There was also the fun of going to the Whit Monday fair on Milford Common and, especially throughout most of January in 1941, sledging in the snow, but noting that he often returned home suffering bruised limbs.
Eric's diary - a Charles Letts' Schoolboys' Diary records his life of work and leisure against a background of the terrifying threat of air raids which dominated most people's thoughts in early years of war.
He notes that between January and June of 1941, many enemy planes passed over the county town, leading to the familiar air raid warnings and the "all clear" signals.
In his schoolboy hand, he wrote: "We only had 20 bombs that were near enough to shake us as we are three miles out of Stafford and there were none dropped."
He recalls that one raid by enemy aircraft saw the destruction of two cottages on the Weston Road/Blackheath Lane junction on the A518 and that in later years, when the English Electric complex took a hit.
Next week, we recall some of Eric's memories of life at the King Edward VI Grammar School and his link with the son of the A J Riches, the English Electric employee inventor of a slide rule featured on this page two week ago.
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