THE BLACKSMITH'S GRANDDAUGHTER

Isla Moore will never forget her grandfather. He had a blacksmith's shop in Main South 
Road, Caversham, opposite College Street. Her older sister would take her up to see her 
grandfather shoeing the huge draught horses that pulled the trams.

It was a fascinating experience: "He would put the hoof up on his knee and we could see him 
take up the anvil and get the shoe out of the fire, hammer away and fit it on the horse. It was 
wonderful and the horses were so placid. They'd just stand still and let him shoe them," she 
says.

However, there was one occasion when one of the horses didn't behave in an impeccable 
manner: "The horse gave him a bit of a kick and he landed right out the door."

Isla's grandmother had a shop at Forbury Corner. She sold sweets and some of her regular 
customers were the young women who worked at the match factory nearby. Later the factory 
burned down. It was replaced but closed down not long afterwards.

There were high steps leading to the shop and once again Mrs Moore enlisted the help of her 
older sister. "I must have been very small because I had to stretch to get up the steps, then 
we'd go inside and my grandmother would say 'Hello girlies, would you like some sweeties?' 
Of course, who could say no? So my grandmother would make a little poke out of paper and 
fill it with sweets. Then we'd say we had to go home.

"My sister would say that we'd have to eat the sweets up before we got home or mum would 
know we'd been around to grandma's. We were told we weren't allowed to go there because 
she was too busy."

However, her mother became suspicious. One day, she asked Isla if she'd been around to her 
grandmother's. The little girl remembered her sister's threat: "She said to me 'If you tell me 
I'll give you a hiding and if you cry I'll give you another one!'."

Her mother vowed to get the truth out of her younger daughter. She used a little strap on the 
child's legs. The child looked at her older sister who looked back at her. There was silence. In 
the end the younger girl could not hold back the tears.

Sweets and Mrs Moore's older sister got her into trouble one other time. Her sister told her 
that if she stood up on the end of the bed she would be able to reach a bag of sweets on the 
top of a wardrobe.

"I brought it down and didn't we have a feast of those follies. Of course, I was once again 
warned not to tell. Then dad must have realised that someone had been at the follies and he 
said: 'Isla, did you take those lollies?' 'No' I said - I was only doing as I was told. Then he 
asked Nancy if she had taken them. She said 'Yes'. So he said 'Well, you'll get some and Isla 
won't get any because you've told the truth."'

Mr Nelson who lived on the corner of Fitzroy and Marion Streets provided Mrs Moore with 
her first glimpse of a penny farthing bike. She was hanging over the gate at her home in 
Fitzroy Street one day when she spotted him getting on his penny farthing, holding on to all 
the trees.

"I was amazed because he was riding his bike, then he went down the street. Then he came 
back again so of course, I ran in to tell my mum that I'd seen this bike and she told me all 
about it."

When she reached school age, Isla would go down Fitzroy Street into Surrey Street or past a 
Chinese market garden in Muddy Lane on her way to school. The market gardener would 
often have tin cans on a yoke around his shoulders to carry water to his vegetables.

Further along the road, she would see Chinese gardeners using a pedal pump to irrigate their 
vegetables. They used to be the target of cheeky schoolboys, but the market gardeners had 
the last laugh.

"They recognised those boys and caught them on the way back from school, put their hands 
behind their backs and took them to the pedal pump and made them pump water," Mrs Moore 
recalls.

As she passed the market gardens she used to enjoy watching the skylarks. "They were lovely 
little birds which used to run around the ground from their nests, go straight up singing all the 
way, then come swooping down, land and run along the ground to their nests."

The Chinese market gardens ran from Surrey Street down to Macandrew Road. There were 
more gardens on the other side of the road. However, as the city grew the gardens 
disappeared and houses sprang up in their place.

Mrs Moore's father worked at the Hillside Railway Workshops and during the school 
holidays she and her younger sister were allowed to take his lunch to him.

"We used to go down Main South Road, around the back of Carisbrook and through a little 
gate into the workshops. My Uncle Frank used to work there as well and he'd ask if we were 
looking for our 'pa.' He'd go and find him for us.

"Then he'd say 'Come on Jim, give the girls threepence (two cents) for bringing your lunch 
down'. I don't think my father ever had threepence, or not often anyway. But we were happy 
just to have taken his lunch to him."

One person who made an early impression on Mrs Moore was a woman living in Main South 
Road. Her mother used to encourage her daughters to visit the woman, Mrs Crabb.

"We'd tootle off and see this poor old soul sitting there. She had a feet in a bowl of water this 
day and said she wanted someone to cut her toenails. Of course, I was only about six and my 
little sister was only four. I was frightened she was going to ask me to cut her toenails so I 
told her we had to be going but would be back another day."

Isla Moore was a carefree child. Between the ages of six and eight she would often be out on 
the road skipping with the other children in the street. Once while she was skipping a canary 
flew right over her head and on to a nectarine tree in her parents' garden, She rushed inside to 
tell her father.

"I never saw my father leap out of a chair so quickly. He went around the garden, turned the 
hose on and wet the bird so it couldn't fly, Then he picked up the bird and took it inside and 
dried it off

"He was down the backyard a little later when the man over the back fence told him he'd lost 
his canary. The man was delighted to hear my father had it and I got two lovely half crowns 
(a total of 50 cents) for finding the bird."

The family home was built on a double section and Isla's father had a glasshouse at the 
bottom. A grapevine grew inside the glasshouse, There was also a barrel of sheep manure 
there.

Her father used to go down to trim the grapes at night and encouraged his children to 
accompany him by saying: "Come on kids, the glow-worms are out tonight." The older 
daughters would go down quietly.

"He'd open the door very quietly and we'd sneak in and there were these glow-worms. I've 
never ever seen glow-worms so close to town before but they were definitely there," Mrs 
Moore reminisces.

Mrs Moore had four sisters and three brothers. They had a lot of fun as children with their 
hopscotch blocks and skipping ropes and their father would make them little wooden bats out 
of fruit cases for gifts.

Her mother was also very clever with her hands. She knitted beautiful dresses for the girls to 
wear to Sunday School. "The Sunday School teacher made us stand up and show off our 
dresses to everyone in church," her proud daughter recalls.

The children learned to knit their own slippers from the time they were six and their father 
would make leather soles which they would sew on. He also used to mend their shoes.

Mrs Moore is now 83 years old. She has three daughters and a son, She is still a keen knitter 
and has fine memories of being brought up in a house full of love.


This item from the Otago Age Concern Publication  Memories are Made of This
is used with permission
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