40 Trinity Street West Bromwich

I am so emotional as I write this.... but it's to be expected, a trip down memory lane will usually do that to me. I just received pictures of where my home I lived from a few days til almost four years old once stood, and the church yard a few hundred feet from out home where my brother and I played and watched squirrels.... I wonder if the descendants of those squirrels still live in the beautiful old trees.

I am so happy that I found out before my planned trip to England that my home was demolished, it would have been an emotional shock to find out for myself by going there in search of some familiar building by a green churchyard. However it is good in a way that it is gone, otherwise I believe that when/if I ever visit England it would be so incredibly difficult to not go and knock on the door and ask if I could come in, or at least walk up the stairs and look out toward the nearby church. My parents lived there all their married life, my Father died there... and his death was the catalyst for us to emigrate to Australia, which lead to the worst days of my life along with many of the best.

The path into the church yard is just how I remember it, I recall running excitedly with Peter as we went to play under the big trees. Looking at that picture is amazing, I feel a wonder at how my young mind held onto the image in such an accurate manner, it gives me more faith in my other fond memories, I can now believe them to be as accurate as this one. The church is just how I remember it, the churchyard so green with big old trees, when I saw the picture of the gravestones, I blurted out to Dick, "I think I remember those gravestones" then a childlike giggle came from me as I added "I don't think we were allowed to climb on them." and I could almost hear my Mother's voice say "Susan, you mustn't climb on there."

Some of the older houses are like mine was, at least in my memories, but since my recallection of the church memories is very accurate I believe that my memories of the house probably are too. We had three stairs down after coming out the front door, three stairs that my older brother decided to take me down in my pusher to help our mother one day when he must have been anxious to get going. I was apparently about sixteen months old, but still remember the fall down the stairs and hurting my mouth, my bottom teeth went right through, just under my bottom lip and I still have the jagged scar there as evidence that I am still the same person.

Another misadventure with my brother [which I don't recall] was when I was about ten months old. Peter made a snow tunnel, which I crawled into and it collapsed onto me just after our Mother had gone indoors for a few minutes. Peter told me about this accident when I was in my thirties, he said that he was digging frantically to get to me when our Mother came out, then they dug together and eventually found my limp little unconscious body, and revived me. A strange thing happened after Peter told me about the accident; my severe claustrophobia abated.

me aged two and one

My foster aunt's children with Peter and me.
In looking at that picture one would think that little Susan was the good child looking at the camera. However in reality, all the others had been posing for the picture. My Mother in sheer exasperation shouted "SUSAN" so I looked at her and she quickly snapped the picture, only to find later that I was the only one looking at her. Everyone else had looked at me when I got in trouble. Mum loved that picture

My Mother and me

As I looked at the pictures of the new number 40, a sadness came across me and I said "the hedge is gone", my husband gave me an almost "so what" look and I explained how after a snowfall Peter and I would make snowmen by the hedge and we would climb up onto the hedge and jump down onto them. Then as I am going through the pictures, there it was a hedge! It is a lot taller than the one I remember, as I don't recall climbing that high, but it did confirm my memory of the hedge. However I asked Sarah about it and she said it was behind the older houses, so she took a picture of it thinking that there would have once been a hedge by #40 too. Even though it is not my hedge, it is probably much the same as mine would have been and brings a smile to my face thinking of we two young adventurers and our games.

I have some very vivid memories of our life, back when things were all so simple, being jigged up and down on a leg clothed in dark trousers, and those strong hands that held me. The fun, games and mischief that Peter and I got up to, our favorite game was to hide behind our Father's easy chair, and one at a time sneak around to the side and pull the hair on his arm. He would roar in mock indignation and grab with one hand for the offending little monster, conveniently leaving the other arm in place for an attack from the other one. If I close my eyes I can still see how his skin would come up as I pulled on one hair... and then give a little scream as I ran behind the chair while Peter attacked from the other side.

I remember us helping our Mother as she cleaned out the goldfish bowl. Peter and I would each take a wriggly fish out of the bowl and put it in water in a tub while their bowl was made fresh for another week. When they were in the tub we enjoyed playing with them, then returning them to their bowl. The goldfish were our only pets, so no wonder little Susan received so much pleasure from watching the squirrels in the trees.

Another vivid memory was of my Gran [my Father's Mother] when she came to look after me one day while my Mother went into town to the radio studio where she sang live on air. My Gran was so excited as she told me "Come sit on the couch and you can hear Mommy sing on the radio". So I sat there in the arms of a woman who had a special place in her heart for her only Grand-daughter listening to my Mother's voice coming from the radio, but at that young age hearing my Mother sing was a daily event and hearing it coming from the radio seemed somewhat lacking, but it did at least provide me with a strong happy memory of my Gran. My Gran who was so distraught at having her son's children leave the country that she tried to abduct us so our Mother couldn't take us from her life.... My memories of the conflict this caused is more etched in my mind that loosing my Father, maybe this was the first time in my life I saw the people I loved so torn apart and came to realize that there are always two sides to a story, and often both can be right and wrong at the same time.

One day I will go "home" and my Mother and Granny [my Mother's Mother] always called England. That day is not on the horizon, but it will happen. I need to walk again across the road from #40 and head along the path into the church yard and watch for squirrels in the Planetree whose branches spread it's shade across me lovingly when I was that little girl still living in Brum. It will be a bittersweet day, as everyone who was in my life then is either dead or I don't know where they are. My Father Selwyn John Stephen Evans died aged thirty seven, but lived twice as long as doctors predicted he would after his heart was damaged by Rheumatic Fever when he was a child. My Mother June Marguerite Brown - Evans - Bunnett always had plans for what she would do when she retired, she lived for that day which never came. She seemed an amazingly fit lady, always very active, and I "knew" that she would be around forever and we would be old ladies together, but I was wrong, Mom only made it to fifty eight, her early death probably due to smoking. My brother Peter Selwyn Evans is probably somewhere in Australia, and if you know him tell him his "Sis" misses him and send me an email telling of his whereabouts. I believe that my Father's parents Jack Evans and Mary Medley - Evans died in the late sixties, and his sister May Evans - Baker in the early seventies. I have no clue as to whether his brother Arthur Bernard Evans is dead or alive, and where my cousins May's sons Ewart Baker & Paul Baker, or Arthur's sons Richard Evans & David Evans are, hopefully they are alive and well and have fond memories of their little cousins who left for foreign shores on January 5th 1959.

The Plane Tree's proper name is Planatus - and the American Planetree is commonly called a Sycamore Tree. The Sycamore is my favorite American tree and I never made the connection, but there is one where I lived in MO for a year, I would sit under that tree and wonder why I felt the way I did about it, and when I saw the tree above the "Susan, you mustn't climb on it" gravestone it gave me the answer. Oh I loved watching squirrels in that tree when I was little. Now I am going online and buying some Sycamore trees to plant in the garden of my home right here...

Forty Trinity Street, West Bromwich

A heartfelt thank you to Sarah Morley, for taking a trip from her beautiful Warickshire farm to go to West Bromwich just to get these photos of 40 Trinity Street and the Church yard I had told you about. And to remind me once again of the carefree life that little Susan Evans lived in West Brum.