Anyone remember

[captain beefheart]

we used to call it Marrs corner if you were meeting someone, it was a favourite meeting place especially if you tapped a lass on a friday night and made a date for saturday or sunday night, we used to agree to meet at the corner but he trick was to go upstairs in the Criterion beforehand and check out the lass as you could see clearly from the windows, it sounds awful but you were usually drunk when making the date. I bet the lasses had there own way of checking the fellas beforhand aso.

[Podgy Pete]

I'mnot sure you clocked her and went for her if she was good looking.

I'm sure motto of lads in South Shields is Sh ag it if its got a pulse.

In the dark we all look the same.

PP

[fadeout1930]

I can remember my mam taking me in Blundells when I was a kid, I remember it was behind King Street and then turned into Parker Franks I believe

[danecook]

I seem to rememeber Allans of Laygate having there own curency? Am I right?

[offthewall]

You're dead right, mate.
They had some sort of 'token' system. I think it was a type of credit where you would be allocated a certain ammount of tokens to spend in the store and you would pay back on a weekly basis. A bit like 'Provy tickets'.
My first ever job, while still at school, was a Saturday job in Allens. I remember seeing the folks queued up at the little office at the top of the stairs to pay their 'token' money!

[curly]

One couldn't build a record collection without the Handy Shop, or the little adaptor piece that you needed to fit over the spindle of your "stereogram". Amaxing how many 45's I bought in there with the huge hole in the middle!

[brian c]

I've still got a lot of those ex jukebox 45's.

[youngjim]

You have certainly stirred the memory with those tokens that Allans had, I had forgotten all about them.
Was there also a mens outfitters called Arthur Orange in Laygate ?

[brian c]

I think the CO-OP had a token system as well as I seem to remember going with my Gran to the CO-OP in the 50's and tokens changing hands but that might have been just for milk because the CO-OP had its divi system.

[baldy.smith]

I worked at the Co-op Emporium in Westoe Road from 1953-55 and we did not use tokens, they did use them for milk though as far as I know. The place I worked in dealt with furniture, carpets, drapery, menswear and hardware. Great place to start my working life in, females to male ratio was about 15 to 1. The place is now used as council offices; or at least that was the case when I was last down that way.

[brian c]

"Emporium"---what a lovely word, it really brings back times long gone.

[baldy.smith]

A funny thing happened to me on the way to the Emporium Yes it makes you wonder what they were thinking of when they called it that. It was the largest shop the Jarrow and Hebburn Co-op had at the time. There was a grocery shop and a butchers shop on the oposite side of the road both belonging to the same Co-op. The Co-op undertakers was just around the corner behind the grocery shop.

[memor]

Was it the Co-Op or was it Binns that had those pneumatic tubes.

They put your money in these funny cans loaded it into a tube and you could hear it zooming off to the accounts dept.

A couple of minutes later you heard "tonk" noise and they opened it up took out another can and hey presto there was your receipt and change.

I could never understad whether they were to mean to buy tills or they couldn't trust the shop assistants.

[baldy.smith]

The Co-op certainly had them, you put the cash and a little receipt in the cylinder lift a flap and pop it in, it then shot off to the cash office on the top floor and returned with a receipt and change a couple of minutes later. One of my jobs was to start the machine up to operate the system and it was a beast to get up and running. Possibly Binns also had the same system, Some smaller shops had a system which was like a catapult and would propel the cylinders along a series of wires until they reashed where they were going.

[brian c]

They were called Lamson tubes----another useless fact of information to bore your friends at partys with.

[Jerry]

I come late to this but can add a bit. Hintons the grocers at the bottom of Fowler Street had the pneumatic money system. I thought it was wonderful. Opposite was Ripons where I bought a tennis racket - Dunlop Red Devil I believe, though the Slazenger Demon was the racket of choice for most.

Olivers was next to Phillips. I don't recall the daughter but I remember the Dad, a little bald-headed, bespectacled humorous chap. I worked for him as a newspaper boy.

Wiggs was opposite the library in Ocean Road. I bought a Rachmaninov concerto there, played by Cyril Smith, the Middlesbrough pianist. It took six heavy 78s, and they were meant to drop one after the other onto the turntable (with a crash) and the lot be turned over half way through. Cutting edge, as they say.

Does anyone remember Mr Hart, the bronzed muscle-man in charge at Derby Street Baths?

Jerry

[Cisco]

The cash and carry store in King Street also had one of those tube things they put the money in.
They used to sell jeans and work clothes, they sold the best powder blue jeans in the town, what we used to wear in the early sixties, 61-62

Cisco

[jimmywizz]

"Does anyone remember Mr Hart, the bronzed muscle-man in charge at Derby Street Baths?" not sure of that name but was there a guy who used to work there with a name like mordue ? and he used to wack you with a rubber hose pipe if you worked your ticket, he would prob get sued these days

[brian c]

If he was hitting people with rubber hosepipes he proberbly became a police interigator

[baldy.smith]

Mr Mordue worked at the Derby Street baths for many years and was the swimming teacher for all of the schools which attended the baths. He died quite a few years ago. He was a very good teacher and taught up the the highest level of swimming. I also remember two of the water polo team players from the fifties, one was Bob Windle who I used to work with and the other was called Carruthers who won just about everything going. I never saw George Mordue use any method of physical punishment while I knew him which was for quite a few years; long after I left school, I thought very highly of him as a teacher.