I strayed, sorry. The town had a small population, and if you needed to know anything you could ask the local gossip, or in our towns case, gossips. It was a quiet town, and those people didn't have much else to do, while the men were working. Most were fishermen who would be gone away for a few weeks at a time. Their return from sea was both a celebration, and a time of worry. The celebration was just the fact they returned safe, the worry came when, or if one of the ladies came up pregnant, and the dates didn't match........ There were a lot of "premature" births in our town, and an odd coincidence, many of the children didn't quite match their family roots in the looks department.
Life in our little town wasn't so bad, but as we grew older, we also ran out of things to do. It was this problem that led many of us into things we shouldn't have been in, drinking, drugs and the occasional road race. Every young man in town was out to best the others with a muscle car. I had two, but my favorite was my 1968 Plymouth Road Runner.Great car, but after putting 3 clutches in it, I got rid of it.
May of us eventually grew up, realising the error in our ways, got married, got a decent job, and many of us moved away from our little town. There are still fishermen there, but it isn't the same, once the men were iron, the ships wooden, now it's often a combination of the wood and more wood.......
Many of the grand old houses that once were, housing families of these men of the sea, have turned into bed and breakfast establishments, the wooden ships have been scuttled, or turned into pieces of a museum, the railway tracks where many of would go to sit and drink on a Friday night have been torn out. Many of the people from old have been replaced by foreigners who came for the peace and quiet.
No matter how much that little town has changed, how many of the faces have grown old, and how many friggin tourists come, that little town, to me, and those that grew up with me, will always be called ...........home! BB84CBJNBGNM
