Memories of Jimmy McColm PDF Print E-mail
Written by Hilda McAdam   
Saturday, 09 January 2010 17:57
Memories of Jimmy McColm

On the 22nd of December 1917 a child was born at Grennan Dairy – James McColm, Jimmy.  I was there until my father retired after thirty years.  At 5 years old I went to Dalry School.  It was a longer walk in those days – they have straightened the road since then.  In the winter it was dark when we got home.  We had one of the best headmasters that would ever be in the school, Me Alex Singleton.

Our games at playtime were seasonal – like marbles, hide and seek, run and kick the can, and cigarette cards.  There was a card in every packet and we all had bundles of them.  I still have two albums to this day.

Walking to school we met two horses and carts going to new Galloway Station for coal.  Coming whistling 100 yards behind them was Jock Peacock.  Odd mornings we would meet Sandy McAdam with old  ‘Culls’ horse and cart.

The only bus in the earlier days ran from Dalry to new Galloway Station and was driven by Jock McMath.  There was also a carrier’s lorry pulled by two horses.  This brought parcels two days a week and was driven by Jimmy Wilson.  One day the Commercial, now the Clachan Inn, had the empty whisky barrels sitting waiting for the carrier, when old Jimmy Caird came down and drew his finger along the top of one.  Jack Glendinning saw him and shouted across the road, “White Horse Jimmy?”  To this Jimmy replied, “No, Airedale, I think!”

Well, I’ll start with our nightlife now.  We had to make our own entertainment.  I remember sitting on my father’s knee – him playing the mouth organ.  I am proud to say, I mastered it at 5 years old.  I can remember before the coronation in 1937 we got up a mouth organ band.  We practiced in the studio.  There were 24 of us in the parade.

It was paraffin lamps foe the house and byre until 1938.  Our first wireless was a wee wooden box with wet battery.  It had to be charged every two or three weeks.

I was not allowed to go to a dance until I was eighteen, but I may say that I made up for it after that.  There was never a week that there weren’t two or three dances.  I biked to them all and I might add that I still enjoy them – never miss a dance.  I can still see Rab Ferguson sawing away on the fiddle and Jock Wood and Jock Ferguson playing away behind him.  I must add that Dalry had one of the best dance bands in the south-west in the Starry Nights Band.

Dalry, in those days had a football team that could take on the best of them.  The final of the Hayward Cup was always played on the Show night – the first Friday in July.  More often than not, the final was between Dalry and Moniaive.  There were no red cards in those days.  If there had been, the old wives on the touchline would have got them!  I could name a few, but I’d better not.

We had a Circus every year for years in the Kirkland stackyard.  Talking about Kirkland – one of the biggest disasters I can remember was a terrible flood.  Willie Milligan lost all his flock of ewes.  They were down in the bottom Holm.  They were strewn on the roadside right down to the Grennan Holm.  The local farmers rallied round and between money and sheep restocked for him.