Cornwall Art and Culture from genius loci

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YESTERDAYS HEROES by Clies Stevens

Just recently I visited one of my old playgrounds near to where I live today, and it was near to my childhood home as well. It is an old industrial site that took china clay from a huge pit and prepared it for the ceramics industry, the old drying sheds and the furnace pit was and is still there almost just like it was when we played there as 10 year olds 50 years ago. Then we were the heroes of our day depending who played at the Saturday morning matinee at the art deco cinema down in the town.

Roy Rogers, Hopalong Cassidy or Tarzan or the Lone Ranger would all inspire us to come boiling out of that cinema whooping like Tarzan or trying to imitate Tonto the Lone Rangers faithful sidekick, and speaking in some very mysterious tones and voices. From there we would gravitate to the fields and hedges outside the town and the old clay works with it’s myriad hiding places to ambush the others offered huge scope to us.
There in the summer among the Gorse in flower and seed, the smell of coconut drifting on the faint breeze and the sound of seed pods exploding would be a background noise to the efforts of Tarzan to foil the evil smugglers or slavers, or perhaps Hopalong Cassidy would rescue the day, and Roy Rogers and his horse Trigger and faithful dog Bullet would defeat the bank robbers and outlaws where ever he found them. Of course we had no horses except for the proud pretend steeds we would have, but as for Bullet, well the arguments as to whose hound was Bullet could go on all day and often erupted through the day! Then when hunger struck with sudden deadly accuracy out would come the slabs of ‘Heavy cake’ that pilchard drivers staple when working on the fish in the last century and still made by our mothers in every home then, the sugary flat slabs moist and full of currants and sultanas, dried peel, cinnamon and so on was eagerly anticipated.

We would swap pieces with each other and serious discussion would take place as to the flavour of the offerings from the different mothers, as each housewife had her own secret recipe for the fabulous cake, jealously guarded and handed down through the generations. This cake was made originally for the men who where Pilchard driving and catching the huge shoals of fish out in the bay, would be struggling to brail the fish from the seine net into the boats and taken ashore before the catch suffocated and sank, thereby endangering the whole operation. Hunger struck and the sugary cake, loaded with fats and fruit and at least an inch thick was the very thing to chew on along with the fish scales blood and guts, all pushed into hungry mouths and washed down with water.

Young girls then where taught the families recipe for all the favourites, Pasties and Maleo Pilchards, that exciting highly spiced fish stew that melted in the mouth leaving an after taste of the exotic eastern worlds behind. Saffron cake was another highly regarded fair, and family recipes where tightly guarded secrets among the women.
But I digress, I was telling you all about the Heroes of yesterday playing out the days on the old clay works. Just over the hill from the clay works itself was the pool left behind the clay extraction process, and we swam in this on hot days, hunted grass snakes and slow worms around it’s banks our dogs whining with excitement as we dashed into and out of the water thoroughly approving of this game, although to get them into a bath when they got too smelly was purgatory!
The wild life got used to us and the sparrows would hop around for crumbs when we ate, the finches twittering in the gorse bushes as they fed on the scattered seeds. Rabbits would hide deep in the thorny shelter and yawn (yes Rabbits do yawn)

In tremulous fear as our dogs threatened to enter the shelter of the bushes after them. Memory plays tricks but I remember hundreds of rabbit holes and the droppings scattered everywhere, some dried like currants others fresh.

Out heroes never died though, we just grew up and became young men with other priorities in life, but they where days of incredible joy and innocence and today it is a distinct pleasure to visit the place again and see in my mind that young lad stark naked because he was Tonto running free as the wind his dog at his heels, pretend shooting at rustlers or bank robbers. The ghosts of the laughter still haunt the place for me but those heroes will never die as long as we who became men can still play.
CLIES STEVENS KENSA KERNOW back to the arts directory