Interview with Jimmy, born and grew up in Huntly

We always went up to the Battlehill to play there. But in 1953, with the gale, a lot of the trees got absolutely flattened. That was at the far end.
Where the quarry is now – that´s where we built a hut. There were big goarse bushes and down below was Bogie Wool Mills. They had big wool sacks. I don´t know how we got hold of them - we certainly didn´t buy them – so we got one of them, slit it and made a tent. Oh it was beautiful! At summertime we played there everyday. At that time for example we would go to the local cinema – the matinee programme – then we got the guns and we’d go up the Battlehill and it was back to the cowboys and Indians.

So you were reenacting the films?
Yes, reenacting what we saw. At that time it was Gene Autry, the singing cowboy and Johnny Weissmueller. We did one or two of his, because I don´t know if you noticed over the Bogie Bridge where the road goes up to the farm, we used to have a big rope swing there. We did a few yodelling and swinging back and forth there.
It was always cowboys, we never had Indians. We used to go and look for the Indians, but we never found any. But yes, we always reenacted the films. The guns just used to be a piece of wood. We never had a real gun, oh no! All we had were bits of stick. The horses were just our own legs, so there was no money spent.
We often built a small fire and we used to have boiled eggs. If we had potatoes in the field we would put them on a stick and pass them round. And the wee fire would help roast potatoes and we used to sit up there.
On a Saturday my father used to come home for lunch at one o´ clock and I had to be there at one o’clock. But fortunately at that time you had the Bogie Mills who worked, you had Spencers Mill worked and the Gordon cream company worked. All their sirenes were tested half past twelve on a Saturday. Brilliant! Because the minute we heard that we used to shoot off, down the hill, back up home and we got home at one o´clock. And then back down again.

There used to be a path that come up in a curve, it came straight along a joint and the council had seats there. It was wrought iron steel seats. There used to be a set of a dozen seats, if I remember it right and I think they lost one every year. The painter used to come up to paint them and you always heard them saying, „ Have you lads seen any seats?“ „No“, true enough, because we never saw them. There used to be several of a dozen and eventually they had two seats on the face, because people used to walk up there on a Sunday afternoon and sat down. The big trees weren´t blocking your view at that time. You were looking right over to Huntly, it was brilliant. After 53 it was devistated, totally devistated. It was a bare hill.
There was a lot a lot of berries! Rasps, blaeberries, but mostly rasps. That was another excuse to go up there. „Can we go and pick rasps?“. So your mother would give you a jar, but while you picked them, you ate them all and when you came home nothing was left.
I remember that my mother had told me that the council at that time had decided at that time, to manage the Battlehill better, they would plant trees and at that time we as a household used to pay rates. You paid your rates based on your rent. If you paid five pounds a week rents the rates would be a shilling and a pound. So you paid five shillings above that to cover dustbin emptying or whatever it was. So at that time the council accumulated some money and decided to plant the Battlehill. When the trees matured they would sell the trees and the money would come back into the council again. The Battlehill was planted, but unfortunately they changed it into region at that time and the money went to the region, so we never got the money back.
People of Huntly used to go up often with a handsaw and cut a big limb off, maybe ten or twelve feet long! You used to see them walking down back home with it! They used it for firewood.

Are there any sounds you associate with the woods?
You always, always heard the wood pigeon! You heard the cuckoo up there earlier on but you could never pinpoint it. It was really nice, because the grass was never cut, paths were never maintained.
My sister was playing with us all the time up there but unfortunately she died fourteen years ago. She was cremated and her wish was that her ashes are up there.
I try to look for words to describe what it was, but it was freedom, it was your freedom. The minute you stepped up there nobody said boo to you. That´s the good old days.