A Boys Adventure; It's a good job we got a navy!

Years ago – many years ago when I was a young pup I joined the Army Cadets; when the neighbours saw me in my army uniform they said “It's a good job we got a navy!”

Then I went into the house and what did my dad say? “It's a good job we got a navy!”

But I was 14 years old and when I left school at 15 I know I was 4'9” so you can imagine; I did shoot up to average height but I was never tall and the first thing I thought when I looked in the mirror that day was “It's a good job we got a navy!”

After a couple of years, when he was 14, my brother Pat joined the cadets too and we walked into the barracks at Thorpe Street, Birmingham a few nights a week and at weekends. This is where I learned to fire a rifle and got my marksman's badge and passed the certificate A parts one and two faster than any other cadet in our troop.

I was working at the post office at the time, before going on to the motor bike job, and told my mates at work that I'd passed my Cert A and they were so impressed they forgot about it immediately.

So when my brother joined I would be about 16 or so and we made many friends at the cadets; I eventually became a sergeant and I was the solo drummer in the band and Pat was the tenor drummer. On the big bass drum there was a big kid called Pete Rivers and my big competition on the side drum was my pal Lenny Ferris.

The biggest of us was Pete and he was also 17 years of age and had passed his driving test; in those days – the late 50s – you could buy small cars from the 1930s for a few dollars so Pete bought an old banger for very little money; ten of fifteen dollars and one Sunday we went for a ride.

He called around to our house and my pal Lenny was already there and off we went.

The weather was beautiful as we set off from the inner city conurbation where we lived to explore some of the greener parts of Birmingham.

We headed for the South West part of the city and went out to the suburbs to places like Northfield, The Lickey Hills and Harborne.

Green places for four green pals to explore.

After about an hour of driving and some ice cream at the Lickey Hills we had some kind of blow out in one of the tyres. We were strangers to cars as none of our parents had a vehicle at the time and the bang frightened the life out of us. There we were about 15 miles from home and we broke down – what to do?

Well Pete was a big lad so he set about changing the tyre as he had a spare wheel in the back – but no jack.

For some reason, there seemed to be loads of bricks lying about so the plan was to collect some bricks and put them under the car for Pete to change the wheel; so that's what we did; we looked around for bricks. Pat went one way, I went another and Lenny went another – the mission to bring back as many bricks as we could!

Pete stayed with the car and started to loosen the wheel nuts.

Eventually we came back with bricks – the next thing was to pile the bricks underneath the car till it almost reached high enough so if the car fell it would land on the bricks and that was easy; the trouble was the next move would probably take all of us to lift the car – but Pete was a big lad.

Anyway we all got around the bit where the bricks were piled up and there was a brick put there ready to move into place as soon as we got the car high enough; heave ho and away we go we all shouted but Lenny was messing about and pretended he had his foot under the bricks – then he ran off just as we were about to lift the car up.

When he eventually came back we all lifted and would you believe up it came – but not high enough so I couldn't quite get the brick on to the top of the pile before the car came back down again.

We tried again with more shouts this time and just when we got it to its full height I managed to slip the sucker on to the top of the pile. So the car was there securely on bricks.

Pete did the rest of the unscrewing of the wheel nuts, got the spare wheel ready but we couldn't get it on; the other wheel was flat and the new wheel had air in it which meant we had to lift it again.

We were worn out after lifting the first time and we lay down wondering how we would do it then we realised we had no choice – we had to lift it or walk 15 miles home.

So that's what we did! Pete changed the wheel and we were on our way again.

This time we went to a couple of the parks looking for girls - we had a car why wouldn't they fall for us?

There was a very modern hospital called The Queen Elizabeth Hospital not far which was a long way from anywhere and had its own drive called Queen Elizabeth Drive.

We drove along Queen Elizabeth Drive's leafy highway and then it happened again – Bang!!

Another puncture but this time when Pete looked the tyre was ripped to shreds – now how were we going to get home?

We scratched our heads and had a smoke; we used to love to smoke and maybe that was the reason we joined the Army Cadets in the first place. Our parents didn't know we smoked so we lay in the grass smoking whilst Pete worried about his car.

Then one of us came out with a stupid idea; why don't we fill the tyres with grass?

We laughed and sat back and smoked; then someone said 'well what else can we do?'

And that's what we did; we had the bricks with us and hoisted the car up on them again but with more confidence this time and took the burst tyre off. Then we got the other tyre, the one with the mere puncture and gave as much grass to Pete as we could; Lenny said he wouldn't take part as it would be dangerous so he lit up another cigarette whilst me and Pat collected the grass.

As we collected the grass we noticed we had stopped near some apple trees so we picked an apple – it tasted terrible! It was a green granny Smith cooking apple so we picked loads of apples to take them home to our mums to make cook apple pie.

Eventually Pete had a pile of grass and we stuffed the grass between the wheel and the edge of the tyre – although I can't think how – and when we thought we had enough Pete put the wheel back on.

These were old tyres with inner tubes and that's where we had stuffed the grass.

There the car stood in all its glory and you wouldn't be able to tell which wheel had the grass filled tyre on if you didn't know – well maybe the bits of green grass on the wheel might have given you a clue.

We got in we took off and I sat in the back and to this day I can still see the car going up and down as we travelled with all the apples in the back seat flying all over the place - like apples in a barrel - as we travelled the streets of Birmingham and eventually home.