The London Blitz

On September 7, 1940, 348 German bombers escorted by 617 fighters bombed London for two hours straight.  Later that evening the Luftwaffe returned guided by the fires set by the first raid and blasted the city again, this time until 4:30 am.  And so began the London Blitz, short for "blitzkrieg", a German term for "lightning war".  The city was bombed for the next 57 nights and remained a centre for attack until May 11, 1941.

Children were evacuated to the countryside, some even overseas to North America.  The majority of Londoners, however, chose to remain in the city, including the Royal Family, who helped to boost the general morale immensely.  Londoners soon grew accustomed to a new routine.  When night fell each evening, they would draw their blinds.  Streetlights would remain off.  Traffic in the city became a hazard to both motorists and pedestrians due to poor visibility.  Some families would sequester themselves in Anderson shelters assembled in their backyards.  Some individuals would wear gas masks in anticipation of an attack.  Some families headed underground to the Tube stations to find protection.  Many Londoners (60%) simply remained in their homes, maybe with a frying pan over their head.  Some brave souls grew bored and climbed up on rooftops and balconies to witness the attack first hand.  According to war correspondent Ernie Pyle:

"You have all seen big fires, but I doubt if you have ever seen the whole horizon of a city lined with great fires -- scores of them, perhaps hundreds...These things all went together to make the most hateful, most beautiful single scene I have ever known." *

The next morning, Londoners had to make their way through the rubble as they headed for work or for school.  Some returned from the underground stations to find their house flattened.  Some houses survived the bombings but remained uninhabitable.  There is the story of one woman who found a German plane in her garden, complete with the pilot trying to make an exit; she turned him in to the local authorities. 

Although Hitler aimed to demoralize Londoners to the point that Britain would surrender in 1940, the Blitz actually united the British in a common cause.  The Nazis' plans for Operation Sea Lion, a land invasion of Britain, were shelved by mid-1941 in favour of an attack on the Soviet Union.  And Londoners got their city back.

*"The London Blitz, 1940", EyeWitness to History, www.eyewitnesstohistory.com (2001).

Note:  Read cartoonist Ben Wicks' book, Nell's War:  Remembering the Blitz, drawing on first hand accounts of the London Blitz.

Photograph of St. Paul's Cathedral, which remained intact during the Blitz, courtesy http://www.dreweatts.com/cms/pages/lot/36117/82.

One, Two, Three Cheers, Tommy!

When my son Thomas was little he used to love trains.  For his first birthday, I served a Thomas the Tank Engine birthday cake.  He played with the Thomas the Tank Engine set continuously.  He would spend hours setting up the track in different configurations, complete with a roundhouse for the cars.  He knew all of the car's names:  Thomas, Percy, James, Skarloey, Donald, Douglas, Sir Handel, Clarabel, etc.  He would read one particular Thomas the Tank Engine storybook everyday and recite lines from it, including:  "One, two, three cheers, Tommy!" a point in the story where Thomas saves the day by getting the Christmas tree.  That page of the book is ripped because he turned it one time too many.  My son also watched the Thomas the Tank Engine videos with his big brown eyes glued to the television set.  He couldn't get enough of them.  I remember my sister Laurie inviting us to Puddicombe Farms in Stoney Creek so Thomas could go for a ride on a giant Thomas the Tank Engine train.  Thomas loved the ride, but was so disappointed when he had to get off that he cried.  When Thomas was little, he lived, ate and breathed Thomas the Tank Engine:  in fact, he even thought he was named after the toy train.  Now the train sits in a blue Rubbermaid container in our furnace room, longing for another little boy to say the words "One, two, three cheers, Tommy!"  Those were the days!

Long Point Bay

As the day breaks on Long Point Bay,
The clear blue water is quite still.
Pretty poplars begin to sway;
Tall reeds rustle from a duck's bill.

The clear blue water is quite still.
Lily pads float lazily by.
Tall reeds rustle from a duck's bill.
Buttercups dot the shore with dye.

Lily pads float lazily by.
The silence holds awesome power.
Buttercups dot the shore with dye.
The duck takes flight at this wee hour.

The silence holds awesome power.
Water droplets gleam in the sun.
The duck takes flight at this wee hour
And undulating ripples run.

Water droplets gleam in the sun.
Pretty poplars begin to sway.
And undulating ripples run
As the day breaks on Long Point Bay.

Linda Jonasson
(August 8, 2008.)

Tennis Match Marathon

Ricardo "Pancho" Gonzales, who was ranked the world's number one professional tennis player for eight years in the 1950's and 1960's, played in one of the longest tennis matches in history.  Ricardo Gonzales was born and raised in California, the son of Mexican-immigrant working-class parents.  At 12 years old, he first started playing tennis when his mother bought him a 51-cent raquette.  Largely self-taught, he used to watch the professionals play on the court in Exposition Court in Los Angeles.  Because of his brushes with the law in his teen years and the fact that he was from "the wrong side of the tracks", Gonzales was largely ostracized by the Anglo-Saxon upper-class tennis establishment. 

Even so, he seemed to have a natural athletic ability and by 19 years old, Ricardo stood over 6 feet tall and yet he could move like a "big cat" on the tennis court according to fellow player Tony Trabert.  Gonzales won the US Open in 1948 and 1949 at the tender ages of 20 and 21.  He dominated the sport in the 1950's as a professional, winning the Wembley Pro Championship from 1950 to 1952 and the US Pro Championship from 1953 to 1959.  He continued to play in the 1960's and had respectable placings, including a win and some final or semi-final matches.

But the game that is recorded in the history books as the longest tennis match in professional history took place in 1969.  The 41 year old Gonzales was paired with the 25 year old Charlie Pasarell at Wimbledon.  The match opened with a gruelling first set where the two players matched each other wit for wit, Pasarell winning 24 games to 22.  With dusk approaching, Gonzales pleaded with the referee to postpone the match to the following day, but the referee refused and the game continued with Pasarell winning the second set 6 to 1, Gonzales pretty much throwing in the towel.  Finally, the referee agreed to postpone the match to the following day where Gonzales came back stronger than ever.  The "big cat" was back with a vengeance, rebounding to win the next three sets convincingly 16-14, 6-3, 11-9.  The tennis match lasted 12 hours and 5 minutes and resulted in the tie-breaker rule in tennis today. 

Unfortunately, although Gonzales progressed to the forth round of Wimbledon, he was beaten there in four sets by Arthur Ashe.  It was not until Wimbledon 2010 that the 1969 longest match record was broken by Isner and Mahut who played an 11-hour 183-game long match.  The "big cat" not only had the moves on the court, but the physical and mental stamina to back it up, likely due to his maturity.  In all Gonzales won 113 titles in his 25 year career.



Photo courtesy http://www.legendsrevealed.com

The Apple Orchard

How you ever strolled through an orchard?  There is a peace and a serenity in an orchard that cannot be found just anywhere.  Outside of Waterdown on the edge of the Niagara Escarpment sits a farm called Frootogo.  Rows and rows of apple trees line the landscape.  Ripe, red apples lay on the ground in clusters beneath the trees, cast aside by yesterday's pickers.  Hanging from the trees are apples half green and half red; the season's just begun.  They have the dull look of apples that have not yet been sprayed.  Rob pulls a small one from the tree and bites into it (remember "Strawberry Picking"?).  We slowly make our way past the trees, picking as we go.  We have the whole row to ourselves; it's as if we're the only two people on the planet.  In the middle of that orchard, we could block out the world.  We each put a final apple into the basket which is overflowing now and Rob carries it back to the barn.  Wasn't it yesterday that we marked summer's beginning by picking strawberries?  And now we pick apples as the summer comes to a close.  The older we get, the faster time passes.  We will hold on to those lingering days of summer like the apples cling to the trees.  For now, we say goodbye.



Photo courtesy http://farm2.static.flickr.com

My East End: A History of Cockney London

Gilda O'Neill was born and raised in Bethnal Green in London's East End, the granddaughter of a Thames tug skipper and a Pie & Mash Shop owner.  She has written a detailed account of what it was like to grow up as a Cockney, someone born within hearing distance of the Bows Bells.  Cockneys lived in one of the poorest sections of one of the richest cities in the world.  Drawing on the oral stories of the community's locals, Ms. O'Neill weaves a tale of a working class neighbourhood whose members were poor in the pocketbook, but rich in spirit.  My East End describes the industries that lined the docks of the River Thames and employed the locals.  The author also points out that the East End was where most of the immigrants congregated from the Huegenots in the 1700's to the Irish and the Jews in the 1800's to the Bengledeshis in the latter half of the 1900's.  She talks about the Oliver Twist world of criminals and sheisters.  She talks about how East Enders were so crowded together they lived "inside each other's pockets"; how children played outside open doors; how adults entertained themselves at dog races or pub sing-a-longs; how locals shopped at street markets for items like jellied eel or in Petticoat Lane for clothing.  East Enders were a close-knit group of hard-working citizens who did not give up easily.  It was these traits that got them through the London Blitz of 1940 and it was these traits that would see them through the closing of the docks in the 1970's.  East Enders thrived on adversity. 

So, take a trip down memory lane:  buy some dinner at the Pie & Mash Shop; or shop for clothes in Petticoat Lane; or listen to the Bows Bells ring.  It's worth the trip!



Photo courtesy http://thegettingofwisdom.files

Thomas Edison's Quote

"Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up."

Thomas Edison spoke these words in 1877.  What if the inventor had given up before he invented the light bulb?  What if Laura Secord had stopped walking at mile 18 with the British camp only a mile away and the Americans about to attack Upper Canada?  What if Abraham Lincoln had quit politics after a second failed bid for the Senate in 1858 with his successful presidential bid only two years later?  What if  Tom Longboat had stopped running at mile 23 of the Boston Marathon back in 1907 with the trophy within his grasp?  What if NASA had ditched the space program after the fire on Apollo 1 in 1967 with the moon landing only two and a half years later?  Where would we meet for coffee if Tim Horton had given up after opening a burger joint that went bankrupt in the early 1960's, eventhough his successful donut shop would open in Hamilton by 1964.  Who would climbers mentor if Sir Edmund Hillary had stopped before he reached the summit of Mount Everest in 1953?  What would have happened to diabetics if Sir Frederick Banting gave up before he discovered insulin in 1923?  And what would have become of North America if Christopher Columbus had have turned back before he spotted land back in 1492?

You, too, could be on the brink of success:  if you walk another mile; if you climb a few more feet; if you sail another furlong.  Victory is within your reach -- if you only try.

Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and the door shall be opened to you. (Matthew 7:7)



Photo of Thomas Edison circa 1878 courtesy http://en.wikipedia.org