Middlesbrough Memories by Michael Bharier 

(late 1940s to early 1960s)

-Hikes to "Devil’s Bridge" from the end of Tollesby Road

-Falling into the beck at Tollesby (in my best Shabbos clothes) trying to fish out frog spawn

-The "water-splash" near Marton

-Sneaking into Ayresome Park, with other kids at half-time, on Shabbos afternoons to watch the second half of the Boro matches - and seeing prominent shul officials there in their boxes!

-The Transporter Bridge, of course! We would sometimes climb the stairs and walk across the top, with its spectacular views of the docks, shipyards, grimy industry pumping out wastes into the air, and the more attractive view to the south of the Cleveland Hills

-The boating lake in Albert Park

-The rather stuffy Dorman Memorial Museum

-The Cenotaph, and wondering why they put a copy of it in London!

-Stockton market

-Delivering toys before Christmas for my father and his brother, Louis and Max Bharier, from Smarts toyshop, to homes, mostly poor ones, all over town

-Sneaking across the street from shul into the Albert Park for walks during the lengthy Yom Kippur services.

-The "O" bus and the "11" bus, both in the blue colours of Mddlesbrough and the green colours of Stockton

-Trying to figure out which side of the shul, the left or the right, was being stared at more by Rabbi Miller during his admonitory sermons

-The same for Reverend Kersh!

-Covering one's ears to try prevent having them flicked by Mr Sam Solomon for misbehaving in cheder

-Watching, with the entire cheder, the schechting of a chicken in front of the shul, much to the subsequent consternation of the parents

-Mr Morris Saville's leading Avinu Malkeinu. I still have trouble keeping my eyes dry at those same points when I lead it

-The Saville's shop, the nerve centre for many years of the Middlesbrough Jewish community, through which all news and information filtered

-Sunday afternoons with the family at Saltburn or Whitby or on the Yorkshire Moors

-Rambles on the Moors with Sam Hyman

-Learning to swim at the Thornaby Baths with Harold Stock

-Singing L’Dovid Boruch in shul at the end of Shabbos

-Mr Pinto

-His singing voice

-The annual battle of the tunes over the Piyyut "Omram Ken/ Solachti" (Written interestingly in mediaeval times by Rabbi Yomtob of York only 50 miles away) during the Kol Nidrei servioe between Rev Kersh and the old timers of the shul. Did they, perhaps, have Rabbi Yomtob's original melody?

-Going fishing in a small boat at the mouth of the Tees with my uncle Max Bharier

-Mrs Lamb

-Mr Lamb

-Mr Lotinga - and his Hebrew name, Klonimos ben Avraham

-One minister slipping out for a nip of the hard stuff each Shabbos during Haftarah (we all knew it!)

-The infamous Pesach Matzah Ramble on the Moors, during, which half the kids got separated from the older ones in the dark and wandered into a bog. Shoes were lost. Fortunately, after much parental agonizing and phone calls from a remote farmhouse, all got home safely.

-Daffodils in Farndale

-Morris Levenson

-The Wolfs, the Sterns and the Schoemanns, G-d bless them, benefactors to the Jewish community in general, and particularly to members down on their luck—and, to some of us, a reminder that there was another world out there somewhere.

-Going to Brunton’s Farm in Tollesby to have them hand milk the cows for Pesach milk.

Michael Bharier

Providence, Rhode Island, USA