Growing up in Saltcoats was probably best described as easy for a small boy, the town centre was just around the corner, the harbour was up the road and there were lots of families in Quay Street and the adjacent area who new each other and their children all played together on the braes, at the harbour, the swimming pool and the rocks down the back of the harbour. When the tide was out we would go down to the harbour where we could turn over rocks and look for small crabs, the big boys who went fishing would dig for rag worms in the sand to use as bait.

There was a fairground, which took over a large part of the braes during the summer months, it would open on the last Thursday in May and be completely gone before the end of August. Glasgow fair fortnight was sometime in July and the place was buzzing with people. Sometimes there would be as many as fifty or more buses parked on the braes with day-trippers who came "Doon the Waater" for the day, plus the many more who came in by train and S.M.T bus. Every three or four years just as the fair was about to leave a circus would arrive on the braes, usually up the far end on the grass behind Robertson’s the Ham curers. Along with every other boy in the town we would try and sneak in under the canvas to watch the show for free. I actually managed it once and it was brilliant to watch.

In my third class at Kyleshill Miss McGarvie announced that wee Margaret Morrison would be leaving us to go to Hong Kong with her family. There was a big map of the world on the wall and we were shown where Hong Kong was. That moment never left me as I realised how big the world was and I wanted to see it. A couple of years later Christine McIntyre who was also in my class and lived on the High Road, departed for Canada. At that time all the Wee Side was gathered in the assembly hall on the Big Side where Mr. Weir introduced us to a Mr. Potto and another man who were schoolteachers from some island in the Pacific. That was the first time in real life I had seen another human being that was not white. Mr. Potto went on to explain how the children on his island would finish school at twelve O’clock and run down the beach and jump into the warm water, or go climbing on the coconut trees, this was also all the year round as they had no winter. The die was cast; I knew I would leave Saltcoats when I grew up.

November 1951, mum told us we would be moving out of Quay Street in a few weeks time, we were going to a new house, which was still being built. A few weeks later mum took us for a walk up Raise Street, right into Gladstone Road then left up over the Caley Railway and up Kinnear Road, a right turn at the bottom of Old Raise Road put us into Auchenharvie Road. Away along at the far end on the left was a solitary building, which had just been completed, there was a workmen’s hut just outside our front door. Mum proceeded to clean the place from top to bottom, as we would be moving in next week. On the 13^th December we left Quay Street for the last time to go to school and headed for 66 Auchenharvie Road on the way home. There was no short cut down Craigs Place onto Miller Road at that time, as Craigs Place hadn’t been built then.

Harry Kirk and his sister Margaret lived next door to us at No.64, the Quinns, John, Bernard and Liam were at No. 68. As the houses were built, there were 82 in all in Auchenharvie Road. There were scores of kids who all got to know each other, not only from Auchenharvie Road, but Mayfield Road, Mayfield Place, Nelson road, the High Road and Craigs Place. We chopped and changed our friends like the seasons of the year. The Auchenharvie Academy now stands on what was the Auchenharvie Estate, there were lots of trees and it was known as the forest. It was bounded on one side by the Caley Railway and Cunningham Road, the road to Stevenston on another which had a wall all the way along and it carried on right along into Stevenston. This was where we all played as kids. On the other side of the Stevenston Road was a swamp, I believe this has been drained and is now a golf course. Not too many kids ventured into the forest in the dark as you never knew what lurked in there. There was many a time we had to run and hide in there at night from an irate parent who’s tumshies we were pinching or had upset in some other way.

The classic I remember most was a Mr. Rennie who lived at No. 76 between the Montgomery’s and the Shedden’s. He was an Englishman and he had two sons and he hated every other kid in the street except his own. His front door knocker was always being given laldy by some one or other, he always came out and started the shouting and swearing. One day he gave John McDonald a cuff on the ear for something he didn’t do. It was time to get even. My father had a hut up the back of the garden where he kept his motorbike and he had a paraffin heater in there with some paraffin kept in a can. I got some in the bottom of a milk bottle and we hid it at John’s house till it got dark. Later on we tied a black thread onto old Rennie’s doorknocker and hid in Alan Dunn’s close across the street then gave his knocker a bang. Sure enough he came out so we knew he was home, he looked around for a bit did his usual muttering and went back inside. We gave it a few minutes and then I put a newspaper soaked in paraffin on his doorstep dropped a match on it and ran back across the road as John gave the knocker a severe banging. Sure enough out dashed Rennie this time and found the flames on his doorstep, he got angry and started stamping on the paper with his slippers, only after he had got the flames out did he realise that there was something in the newspaper, a big fresh dog shite that we had collected in the forest earlier. He went nuts, pulled the slipper off and threw it on his lawn and started the swearing, at that point we couldn’t contain ourselves and burst out laughing, he heard us and made a beeline for Alan Dunn’s close. That was it; we went down Alan’s back yard over the fence and into the forest with Rennie in hot pursuit, fortunately we knew which way to run and he finished up falling over and swearing even more. We decided to shout at him and call him a silly old buggar, "I’ll get you bastards" was his reply, and we went through the trees and over the hills and finished up at the end of Kerr Avenue, walked along to Kinnear Road where we made our way back up to Auchenharvie. When we got back along Rennie was waiting and he had grabbed every kid in the street that night, we were no exception. He threatened us about what had happened, we played innocent and said we were at our mate Davy Murphy’s at Old Raise Road all night. We never told any of the other kids about it in case one of them shopped us and we would have been in big trouble. More