But times were progressing. Although Stephen Young’s waggonette as well as his pony and trap were still in demand supplying daily service to Busby railway station and back, he had bought a big second-hand Ford motor car and converted it into a small bus carrying up to eight people. You felt very dignified going for a ride in Young’s fine motor, they say. Some folk planned special visits to their relatives just for the excuse of being driven there without horses. Next was a Ford bus with windows all round, and it rattled along on its narrow, sparred wheels.
While the Ford bus did good business - despite its very hard seats - there was soon scope at Davielea for a bigger vehicle to carry even more passengers. In the mid-1920s he acquired a 14-seater Reo bus, seven facing each other, and ran a regular service to Rutherglen, Cathcart and as far as the Gorbals. Although from long habit many people still walked sometimes daily to these places, Mr. Young’s bus was indeed something new!
But Davielea had a rival! Mr. Torrance, originally a travelling salesman who now did coach repairs and ran a carrier service in his home-made motor vehicle, had taken over the Misses Coulters’ ancient thatched cottage opposite Campbell Place. It’s said that the cottage’s owner had long since disappeared without leaving any address and so, like the two washerwomen before them, the Torrances paid no rent.
George Torrance, the newcomer’s son home from the War, had learnt motor-engineering during army service, and now that these new machines were coming on to the roads, father and son started a repairs and maintenance business in a shed on the area beside the old house. So good was George with motors, in fact, that when certain well-known city and Rutherglen businesses started using motor vehicles, it was he who was employed to instruct their garage mechanics and drivers. (George, at 90, revisited friends in Carmunnock in the Spring of 1988.)
Then his father made a small bus converted from an old Daimler motor-car to take seven or eight passengers down to the trains at Busby. Torrance’s bus was a wonderful machine put together in a somewhat ramshackle fashion, its green-painted sides - or was it yellow? - made of plywood. Some folk were highly critical of this incomer with his queer contraption. After all, they said, Mr. Young of Davielea had always run Carmunnock’s hiring and passenger business.
Others couldn’t wait to pay the 6d (sixpence) to ride in Torrance’s special bus. It’s true, of course, that a few got sick from being shaken about so much, were frightened when pieces fell off or, worse still, when - occasionally - the axle broke or a wheel came loose! Breakdowns from engine failure were frequent and you had to be prepared to get out and push when the hill was too steep.
Most people preferred Youngs’. They were proud of his grand Reo bus, although it has to be said that some were frightened by its size. Folk became prejudiced and argued. While it too broke down periodically, it was infinitely superior to Torrance’s. “At least it gets you there,” said the proud and loyal Sandy; “not like Torrance up there with his silly monkey-bus all in bits in his mucky wee shed. Aye, and Torrance cannae drive either,” he added, remembering stories of collisions with walls and grassy banks. But they all had to agree that Mr. Torrance was very clever at his car-building and the mechanics of these machines. He also ran a very smart taxi.
Mr. Young was kept busy with his service down the hill to Cathcart and Rutherglen and his hires with the pony and trap to and from Busby railway station, driven by his sister Jeannie or by one of his men. Among his bus drivers over the years were Mr. Tommy Hodge, Archie Currie, Gavin Lennox, Jim Gray, Wattie Miller, Jimmy McChlery, Sandy Jamieson, Bill Lambie and Duncan Ross.
Meanwhile Mr. Torrance’s noisy, shaky old monkey-bus rolled round Carmunnock’s streets on his runs to Busby, breaking down, losing bits and generally causing much talk and some amusement. But in the mid-1920s it was Mr. Torrance in the second of his converted car-cum-buses - or was it his third? - who got the contract to take the senior schoolchildren to Gallowflat and the Academy at Rutherglen, and they would speed off down the hill passing, first, High-, then Mid-Netherton, continuing down towards the lower farm.
Bel Crawford (formerly of Hillcrest) tells us that her sister Mary was one of the pupils taken daily to school on this run. One day they came round the bend on the steep road to find a herd of cows just coming out of Laighnetherton (Lower Netherton) farmyard on the left, and on the other side of the road a solid wall of rock banked up the slope below High Hagwell’s trees. Mr. Torrance driving at some speed as usual, with too little room to pass, cursed under his breath - although Mary missed the actual words. Instantly he shouted to his young passengers “Well, which is it to be, - the cows or the wall?” But there was no time to answer. They hit the wall!
Presumably someone else with a bus picked up the children that day and took them to Rutherglen. The wall of solid rock wouldn’t have done the bus much good, it’s true, but its owner, they say, would work late into the night in his wee shed (later called The Green Garage, where Waterside Court is now) putting things right again.
Horse-drawn conveyances were still in use for a long time, however. For instance, till ill-health forced him to give up about 1920, Uncle Ste’en Young of the Boghead and his carrier - especially for collecting and delivering the washing - and later, John and then Alec Wilson’s and Sam Little’s coal carts were to continue for another 30 years or more. After Uncle Ste’en’s death about 1924, Stephen of Davielea took the washerwomen and their bundles in his Ford bus down to the train at Busby; later Sam Little’s cart delivered it.
Before the advent of Carmunnock’s two converted car-cum-buses, the Ford bus and then the Reo - or at least before business built up - and while only an occasional motor-car drove slowly along Main Street, the village children still had complete freedom to play everywhere. All round the place they played their games. There was Kick-the-Can and another favourite was Bull-round-the-town, Bel says. It seems it was a kind of hide-and-seek with the whole village at your disposal to hide in, then once you were discovered you joined the seeker till all were found.
You may be sure they played plenty of pranks too. Bel remembers she and her chums loved to creep quietly into Johnnie Leggat’s the shoe-mender’s shop in the back room of the tenement (now replaced by 6A and 6B Kirk Road) between Miss Lamont’s grocers and Mrs McNiven’s sweetie shop. Apparently there were two reasons for going there: Bel had a passion for the heavy smell of new leather that filled the dingy, stuffy little back room; but as well as that, she was fascinated by the wee man at work.
In big leather apron, shoe hammer in hand, glasses nearly slipping off nose, he held a row of shoe-mender’s nails firmly between his lips. When ready for another nail, his lips edged the one next in line outwards at the corner of his mouth. Neatly and quickly he caught it, ready for hammering; then with much mouth movement the next nail in the row was nudged into ready position. When all were used up, a new handful was arranged between his lips in waiting order, ready to continue. Bel stood watching, shaking with nervousness she tells us, transfixed by this clever manipulation of nails, terrified that he would swallow one!
Shoes were a big expense to most people and great care was taken of them. Out of school-time when the weather was warm enough, children could run barefoot and shoes or boots were thriftily saved from wearing out too soon. But at least the early days of the century had passed when the poorer children, setting out each morning, had to carry their boots, forbidden by their parents from putting them on till they got to the school gate. Folk walking some distance to church wearing their Sunday best kept on their old working boots till the church gates were reached, and then from out of rustling paper packages, they unwrapped their shiny good shoes.
There were other characters in the village. For instance, there was poor old Sandy Falconer with his crippled leg whom the children mimicked unkindly. He lived in the Loan (Manse Road), a colourful sight in his red shirt and tattered straw hat. And the youngsters hung around old Miss White’s cottage next to the church where they could hear “the witchy old woman” inside, shouting in screeching voice at her cats. Half in fear and half in curiosity, they were convinced she must be killing them!
Then there was big Jimmock the weighman - Jimmock-the-Weys they called him till he retired. He lived in the tiny no-longer used toll-house at the corner of the High Green and Waterside Road. Jimmock, an ill-tempered brusque-mannered man with a dirty white beard, small black cloth cap on his head and boot-laces always undone, never married his Roman Catholic common-law wife Bridget, known to everyone as Biddie.
Fond of his liquor, frequently drunk, old Jimmock would be found lying unconscious on the road, his stout belly sticking up like a hump from his ugly body. One dark night an acquaintance fell over him as he lay there, and cursing angrily because he had hurt his leg in the fall, he told the old weighman next day. Jimmock tried to absolve himself for the hazard his comatose body had caused. Using the word they had nicknamed him, “Did y’ no’ see the humplock?” he asked. Worried about his drunken ways, a relative repeatedly tried to persuade him to stay sober. But old Jimmock was adamant. “Y’ can talk awa’, Jeannie, but a’ll drink till a’ dee” was always his reply.
In the village, the younger ones like Bel and her friends still played their games, chasing each other in and out of the lanes - Petrie’s Path, Gallowhill Lane and Coal Lane known by the late 1920s as Twaddles’ Lane where the coal carts waited, the back way from Main Street to Linnbrae and Bankhead Farm.
No one dared play near the High or Low Greens or washing-house gardens on washing days. Even on permitted days there were strict rules that every child in Carmunnock knew well - like generations of children before them. They must behave when on the drying greens, not run or be noisy, and must never play with a ball there. They must always respect that these were important carefully-kept places, specially for the village’s washing work.
But youngsters a few years older had other interests. By this time the teenagers were walking out and going to dances. A crowd of them attended these at Cathkin, East Kilbride or in the Shawlands direction and hired the local bus for the journey. According to Mrs Jessie Jamieson and Mrs Bessie Matthews, Torrance’s barouche was much more fun, even although you sometimes had to get out and push. When this happened you had to tuck your dance dress up round your waist to keep it from getting mud-stained or worse still, covered in dirty oil.
As like as not it would rain on the way there or on the journey home late at night - and then, pushing the bus uphill was a very messy business! You were really best to take your Wellington boots with you to the dance, just in case Torrance’s bus broke down. But it only added to the evening’s fun, the girls said. Besides, you got your money’s worth because you didn’t pay your sixpenny fare till you got out at the end of the journey; and what’s more there was the thrill that Mr. Torrance gallantly helped each young lady to jump down from the bus “on tae terra firma again!”