Reading in Rattling On's blog this morning about a scrap iron man visiting her street , made me think about the Rag and Bone man , now definitely vanished , and the paper windmill or balloon he gave you if you ran down with something for him when he called .
But there were plenty of callers in the '50s . Once a year there was the French Onion man with his bike and strings of onions . The cart that sold coal briquettes . The coal cart and the coalmen ,their heads and necks protected by split sacks , humping hundredweights of the stuff up and down stairs and down alleyways . The dogs that ran under their horsedrawn carts .
And before the war , so still in living memory ( no , not mine ! ) , there was always a man in Dutch towns who would have had a couple of pigs in his backyard or allotment and fed them with the potato peelings he collected door to door . My informant says that the herring seller pictured with him was even then a rare sight .
Which made me think . Familiar sights disappear relatively fast .
What do you remember from childhood that your children have never seen ?
And before I start greeting visitors with a bellowed "I'm 62 , you know ! " , I think it's time I started Living A Little ..... line dancing in the Community Center? Or cocktails and a Salsa class or two ?
