RON Baxter, whose Barrow funeral was held last week, grew up in a Hindpool where bomb sites were playgrounds.

Mr Baxter's Hindpool experiences as a youngster and then as a shipyard apprentice were shared in a series of articles for the Memories Page.

Readers of The Mail - and also on social media - were able to enjoy stories of school dinners, shipyard characters and Barrow leisure activities.

In tribute to Mr Baxter, who died at the age of 78, on Tuesday, June 20, were have pulled together some extracts from his articles for the Memories Page.

He was an apprentice fitter and worked in the Barrow shipyard before joining the Merchant Navy.

From the 1960s he was at Barrow gasworks and then returned to shipyard work with Vickers, living at Glenridding Drive.

One of his looks at life for children in Barrow during the 1940s noted: "We were in at the start of the Welfare State and in those early days the authorities seemed very keen to build us up after lean times we had endured throughout the war.

"I can remember being given a large spoonful of malt in a sticky, treacle-like form that stuck to the roof of your mouth.

"I think we all enjoyed the MOF (Ministry of Food) orange juice that had to be diluted — although a sneaky mouthful straight from the bottle was much better.

"I must admit I fought shy of the cod liver oil.

"These products were available from the welfare office on the corner of Cavendish Square.

"All you needed was a baby in the family and we had one of those, my new baby sister, Dorothy.

"On top of all these vitamins we each received one third of a pint of fresh milk daily and this milk continued during the school holidays.

"When we broke up at the end of term we were issued with a book of tokens.

"One school in each area of the town opened during the morning as a distribution centre and we went along, handed in a token, drank a bottle of milk, then got back on with the job of being on holiday.

"School dinners were also continued during the holidays but only for the kids who, through various circumstances, received what was known as “free dinners”

Among pictures he contributed was one featuring his father ready to board the bus for an outing just after the Second World War.

He noted: "The photograph was taken outside the British Legion Club in Holker Street and shows some of the members of the Barrow branch just about to set off to a rally in Blackpool.

“The event took place just after the war, possibly 1946 or 1947.

“I remember it was quite something; for my brother and I, the fact that our dad was going to Blackpool.

“Blackpool was a place we had been told about many times over the years.

“It was part of Northern folklore, the tower, the fairground, the waxworks, even Reginald Dixon at the organ playing I do Like to be Besides the Seaside, but we had never been.

Mr Baxter was brought up in the era when Barrow was struggling to get back on its feet after widespread damage caused by German bombs in 1941 and before the Howard Street complex of Barrow College of Further Education was built.

He noted: “My memories of Furness College go back to the days before construction of the building actually began.

"I was brought up in Hindpool, an area of Barrow that the Luftwaffe altered somewhat during the Second World War.

"A stick of German bombs laid waste to the lower end of the terrace of Anson Street, Keppel Street and Monk Street – also the section between Howard Street and Duke Street.

"We kids exploited these gaps in the terraces whenever we went to the public baths, or the Electric cinema, or the Gaiety, the Odeon, the Regal, the Ritz, the railway station or the park.

"We could cross from the Ambrose Hotel to almost the top of Monk Street in a straight line, before turning down Bath Street and on to whichever pleasure palace had the latest Errol Flynn or Johnny Weismuller film.

"The bombed sites, or Bommies as they were known, had been cleared off to some extent but they were still pretty rough and you could stumble over rubble and house bricks if you didn’t stick to the well-trodden, migratory path, especially in the dark.

"I started at the Technical School in Abbey Road in September 1949 and used the short cut daily, walking along with schoolmate Sammy Griffiths, discussing the goings on in the world.

The days when illicit gambling was carried out on waste ground and on street corners was also described.

He wrote: “We were warned to stay away from Cocken tunnel by our parents, the shore side had dangerous gullies and you could get cut off by the tide.

“We did however venture up to the entrance to amuse ourselves with the wonderful echo the tunnel produced, you felt very small standing in the entrance hollow with the slagbank towering above you.

“Whenever we heard the little engine chuffing towards the top pulling its white hot cargo of slag we would run for cover fearing it might just tip the searing load over us.

“There was an area alongside the railway track, by the rail bridge, where the Hindpool men played ‘pitch and toss’ on Sundays.

“The game involved tossing two coins into the air and betting as to how they would land. I don’t know how it worked but it was quite popular and quite illegal.

“The police must have known it went on, we kids certainly did.

“When the public houses closed at 2pm on Sundays we would see the men coming out of the many locals – the Queen’s Hotel, the Ambrose Hotel, the Cumberland Arms, the Hindpool Hotel, the New Inn, the Wheatsheaf Inn – and head off in small groups up Walney Road.

“You could smell the cigarette smoke and hear the cries of joy or disbelief as lady luck smiled or frowned in turn on the participants, all of whom were destined for the fires of Hell – Sunday being the Lord’s Day.

“They posted a look-out to watch over the lane that ran through the wooden area we knew as the Dingle.

“We would sneak up to his position and he would tell us to go away."