The Toad Battle

The Toad Battle

From one to five years old I just remember being taken care by my mother and sisters, surrounded by poverty but unity. I was never cold or hungry in the extreme.

I was placed in a position of safety by those that loved me. -You see, I had the fortunate position of being the youngest of four sisters.

My eldest sister was 15 years older than me, the second eldest 12 years older and the third 3 years older. My mother was like a hen with her chicks, always protective and loving.

We were poor. My father was a miner in 1952, and behaved as miners did at that time. Miners went to the pub after worked, and spent more than they could afford and got drunk.

-It has to be said that what they spent amounted to very little, but that small amount would have improved life quality for many families.

Tradition is a bad thing in general. Behaving manly is often forgetting the needs of the people that you are supposed to care for. How could a man of that time say to his friends "I am going home because my wife needs me"! It would have been like saying "my wife will beat me up if, I don't get home on time". Instead they all went to the pub and got drunk. Beating their wives was common too. I suppose it was the only way they could face the prospect of going down the pit.Going to work in the pit was a very risky business. Firstly they dressed in very poor quality blue jeans trousers and shirt,with a short sleeve vest underneath and a rough coat. For their feet they wore boots of poor quality, some miners wore socks others did not have any.

Many a time, I saw my father wrapping himself in newspapers to protect himself from the cold win that would accompany him for the 20 mile bicycle ride.(I see today ladies wearing very strong leather boots with a thick sole and excellent leather to walk down red carpeted isles, these would have been a God sent to miners that suffered from cold feet) To protect his hands from the cold my father cut the skin of a goat and made two hoods for the bicycle hand rail and then polished them with lard until they were hard and acted like plastic would today, and thus help him from the chilly winter mornings.

More than once he fell asleep while riding the bicycle and crushed by the road side.

He had not had a full English breakfast before departing. A cup of chicory with a bit of milk and a crust of bread would have been all that was available. For his lunch my mother would have made a small one egg tortilla and a few fried chips accompanied by a small piece of bread and his "bota de vino".

With this meagre packed lunch he would set out into the night for an 11 hour shift.

These vicissitudes and many more were suffered by our ancestors, and today we speak about stress!!!

We the rest of the family would occupy ourselves with different tasks. For my part I was an observer of the proceedings. My mother rented rooms to other miners and would prepare small individual pots with their meals. These were left on the agar cooker put aside to keep warm for when ever the miners came back exhausted from their long shift.

You could point out to each pot and not go wrong predicting what was inside. A few white beans with chunks of potatoes cooked in the "fabada similarity "with a chunk of white bacon and a piece of black pudding. This meagre lunch or dinner was devoured by the men with a large piece of bread, when they return after a 10 to 11 hour shift. A larger pot with the same ingredients would feed the family too.

Additionally,health and safety provision had not been discovered yet, and untrained men executed dangerous tasks that threaten their lives daily.

My mother also had the task of washing and mending all their cloths. Washing was a special treat for me as I would accompany my mother to the river with her big bucket carried on her head.

I would hold her hand and when the weather was good she would talk to me about the birds, the trees and the vegetables growing in someone else allotment.

I had a fixation with printed words and although newspaper cutting were found in the bathroom by the toilet, hanging from a nail, for that special moment when toilet paper was a luxury we had not discovered yet. The papers in the street fascinated me. I would pick them up, for there were plenty,the streets were not spotless as they are now, and I would ask my mother to read me what they said.She was a real treat; she would invent something suitable for my ears and I would listen totally entranced by her simple words. I particularly remember the Job story; his acceptance of God's will without protest, his understanding of the futility of material things and his continuous praise of God's designs on our lives. I suppose this was to me the bedside story that I had never had read to me... Firstly, my mother was too tired by bed time, secondly she had not been informed of such a thing as reading to your children before going to sleep. No one had ever read to her. Washing by the side of the river was exciting for me too. My mother would take the white washing or the navy blue trousers and shirts and soak them in the river water before she would start rubbing at the seams full of soil and sweat with her bar of "Lagarto" soap.-It was an exhausting task. The rough trousers material and shirts with pockets and patches in most parts are not easy to wash or rinse.She scrubbed hard several times each piece, before rinsing it. The different colour rinses flowed down the river with the current representing sweat, tears, effort, humiliation and sadness.

Further down, the same river water, would carry some other soul's sorrow, sadness and similar miserable experiences. She would then squeeze each piece as much as possible to reduce the weight and use all her dexterity to place the bucket on her head. I would watch her, and observe her hands going red from the scrubbing and tossing of the human washing machine.I remember thinking I loved my mother.

From time to time I would wonder off, but her caution eyes would never let me out of sight for very long. Soon I would hear her calling me in desperation and demanding my return to her side. Mostly I obeyed promptly, for without her my reading of the environmental surrounding were not very interesting.

Once, as we were there by the river Luna, washing, we heard a sound approaching our positions as when an army moves forward. We turned to discover what the sound making was,to our surprise we visualised this chrome coloured huge toad pacing the way like a soldier."Boy was this exciting a frog standing on two legs was going to attack us, I though". I quickly held on to my mother's skirt and felt her legs stiffened as she stood up ready for defence. She looked around for something to distract this monster coming directly at us. Nothing was available. In a flash, she looked at the bar of soap and used it as a bullet to the target, catching it full on its back.

The toad reacted and I remember him looking at us in defiance before tossing his odds and changing direction to hide among shrubs and into a paddle.

That day of togetherness, with my mum, fighting in "The Toad Battle " was special to me.