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Croft PrtrtWilliam Heaney, Part X.

Van Man

Brother Derek and wife came home for a holiday in late July 1970 with the Minivan they’d bought to transport their belongings to England and set up their new home, four years earlier. Whatever sort of deal was done, he took Wolseley 7104 HZ, I was given the Minivan and my father took over ‘my Cambridge’ after I’d been instructed to de-clutter it. The latter was younger, had about half the mileage of the Wolseley and therefore fetched a better price when it was sold later in the year. This illustration of a scruffy 16/60 shows the clamp-on door mirror that I’d had on 798 VZ and the Minivan was this rather unpleasant fawn colour. However, it was might be referred to as a ‘Wednesday car’, or at least its engine was, because it revved enthusiastically and was much quicker than other standard Minis. In fact it would go on to have a quite successful Autocross racing career after I sold it. Cosmetically it didn’t remain standard for long once I had it. A full-width dash was purchased and the instruments and radio from 798 VZ installed. The gear-change was converted to the remote type, as was standard on Coopers and Mk2 Minis, using a modified one from an 1100. Luckily, I hadn’t got round to fitting the Lucas lamps before jumping out in a hurry one day and forgetting to pull on the handbrake. Somehow it jumped in to neutral and ran off down a slight hill by itself. I came out from the errand to find the van about 50 yds away caressing a gate pillar, having also nudged a wall – DOH!!! Thankfully it hadn’t hit anybody or anything else on its lone journey. Repairs were effected by stripping off the damaged bonnet, bumper, front panel and wing and relacing them with a one-piece fibreglass front. I was really impressed that the newly opened garage of a former school pal and his partners had the fibreglass front in their store. You’ll hear more about ‘Autoservice’ and ‘The Chaps’ in the weeks to come. The undamaged wing was salvaged ‘for stock’ and the rest of the van sprayed white to match the new front. I’d discovered that one of ‘The Chaps’ was the cousin of John Crossle the racing car constructor and having come up with the idea of doing my HNC Engineering Studies Project on Crossle Racing Cars, I got an introduction to the great man. On half a dozen or eight Fridays over the winter of ’70-’71 I’d set off from work and head to Holywood in the Minivan, spend a couple of hours asking mostly banal questions I expect, making notes and taking photographs (where allowed). I’m forever grateful to John, Rosemary and all at Rory’s Wood at that time, because their patience and tolerance helped me get a commendation for the resulting tome at the end of the year. I still regret that I didn’t somehow make a copy of the piece and wasn’t happy to discover that the college would be retaining the original for the examination board and that I wouldn’t be getting it back. Whilst the Minivan was a real hoot to drive, it was neither ‘cool’ nor entirely practical for a twenty-something young man in the seventies. It may also explain why my fiancé at the time dumped me for a footballer with a flash Ford Corsair??

16-60 MinivanM

My parents had an uncanny knack of finding additional gainful employment for me, over and above the taxi valeting and other household chores. I’d already done a month as a porter/waiter in a Portrush hotel, the traditional potato gathering, about 16 months of holidays and Saturdays as a drapery shop assistant and a spell as a Christmas and relief postman. So, on returning from a week’s holiday in Portrush with aforementioned fiance, her pal and boyfriend, Fred informed me I was to smarten myself up and report to an independent supermarket in Derry on the following Monday morning for an interview with the owner, Wylie Kelly, for a job as storeman/van driver in his recently opened Strabane branch. The interview consisted of a chat as I drove him round Derry, delivering small amounts of supplies to corner shops, in a well used Transit that smelled as if it needed the vehicular equivalent of colonic irrigation. I soon discovered the source of this unpleasant aroma because I got the job and found out he had what seemed a quite lucrative sideline supplying cooked chickens to various emporia around the city. Mercifully I think I only had to do two of these cooked chicken runs in the two months I would work for him. However, I’d encounter this used cooking fat smell again some 10 years later.
Apprenshively reporting in the next morning I was more than happy to see I’d be using a nearly new ‘facelift’ Transit Mk1 and to be told the pay was 10/-(50p) and hour. Whilst finding out that I would be starting at 12.00 seemed quite civilised, being told I’d seldom finish by 8pm was a bit disappointing, the latter further compounded by being told that my last duty of each day was to take the shop rubbish to the local dump. These first few dump runs were labourious until I had the wit to take the ‘broad’ brush from the shop and with one long push, empty the van. The next innovation was to accelerate towards the landfill edge and handbrake the the thing round to save a few seconds reversing and it was an extra bit of entertainment, especially when you got it spot on. Finally I perfected a technique whereby I’d open the full-width rear door, repeat the handbrake manoeuvre and most of the stuff would fly out the back – sorted. The van driving bit comprised mainly of home deliveries, although Mr.Kelly’s innovative thinking quickly ramped this up as he had encouraged breadmen and milkmen to bring orders in. I’d then have to make up these orders and deliver them later in the day, starting no earlier than 5pm theoretically but that curfew was often broken – after all the customer is king!! One thing I did learn from this part of the job was the logistics of loading vehicles efficiently, something that would come in very handy in the years to come, with a variety of cargoes and vehicles.
I was phoned at home one morning and asked to come in to do an urgent job. It transpired that the whole delivery of baked beans, for both stores, had been left in the yard outside the Strabane shop. So we loaded two-thirds of it in to the Transit and I set off for Derry. Just past Bready Corner, where if you remember, I’d encountered the wild goose in 7071 JI there was a mobile Army Checkpoint. The geordie or scouse squaddie, with whom I was about to become very intimate, asked what was in the van. I replied “Half a ton of baked beans” and for some inexplicable reason burst out laughing. The next thing I knew I was spread-eagled against the side of the van being frisked. Despite protestations of innocence I was made to empty out the whole load with several rifles trained on me. Finally satisfied that I wasn’t carrying a bomb or weapons a couple of the other squaddies were ordered to help me re-load and I was sent on my way. Naturally I’d encounter this platoon several more times on my travels and share a joke on the dangers of too many baked beans.

Transit

On one of the mornings I’d been asked to report early to the Derry store, instead of another dreaded cooked chicken run I was told I was needed to go to collect a supply of frozen chickens in the the larger insulated LWB Transit. This well-used example with its 2.0L V4 engine was equally as lively as its smaller 1.7L sibling when empty and I had a quite enjoyable, if draughty, run down to the poultry factory beside the Causeway Safari Park. The draught was due to the gearstick gaiter not being screwed to the floor and I’d find out why on the return journey. Loaded with 300 frozen chickens weighing the better part of a ton I quickly discovered that the thing now neither accelerated nor stopped with quite so much verve, the latter activity requiring quite a bit of anticipation to be effective. Rounding the corner of Catherine Street in Limavady the momentum dropped and I grabbed for first gear only to have the gearstick come out in my hand. I howled on down the street in first gear and managed to find a space to pull over. After a few minutes jiggling I got the stick back in and completed the journey back to Derry. Reporting my problem to the Manager he just shrugged and said it’d been doing that a while and would be fixed at the next service. It was still loose the next time I did this run and about six years later I’d discover that it wasn’t solely a Transit problem, all well-used Fords had it.
About a month in to our Part-Time HNC Engineering course 5 or 6 of us who didn’t have jobs in engineering were called in to the College Head of Engineering’s office and told we’d been ‘awarded’ places on a Government sponsored training course. If we passed this course we’d get a job in the Molins Machine Co. as precision machinists and fitters. It was made fairly clear that we didn’t really have a choice but go. Whilst the thought of full-time permanent work was certainly attractive, I was less than amused to find that my take home pay was about to be cut in half. Some years later we heard it alledged that said Head of Engineering was actually getting a ‘finders fee’ from Molins for potentially good recruits.

Transit 27

Ten years on I was working on an engineering project for Ballymoney Foods Potato Processors – where my father-in-law was manager and had recruited me after my previous contract job ended. I was called in to the office one morning and told that the regular delivery van had broken down and I was to take the ‘local’ van, pick up the remaining load and complete the delivery. This rescue mission was undertaken in a Volkswagen LT35 and unfortunately added ‘relief delivery driver’ to an expanding job portfolio in the place. I’d end up trying to ‘engineer potatoes’ as the Process Manager for about three months, before moving on and it was during this period that I’d encounter that used cooking fat smell again.

VW LT

My ‘VanMan’ career had started many years earlier in the summer of my 12th Birthday when I got a job for a few weeks working with a cousin’s husband and his colleagues on their Inglis Bakeries breadvans. The job in Morris J2 vans entailed me doing the runs with the driver making notes of all the calls and route in the foothills of the Sperrins and then ‘navigating’ the relief drivers, from the Derry or Omagh Depots, round the next week when the regular driver was on holiday. I don’t recall getting paid an money but there’d be a cream bun or similar with elevenses at one of the customers’ houses and a Wagon Wheel in the afternoon. There have been many debates amongst fans of this biscuit about its size. Wagon Wheels have supposedly shrunk in size as time has progressed, but Burtons Ltd have denied this. It has been suggested that the supposed shrinkage is due to an adult’s childhood memory of eating a Wagon Wheel held in a much smaller hand – rubbish, they’re definitely smaller now. In the fore-runner of Kelly’s Supermmarket initiative, these breadmen would take orders for groceries and other supplies from remote farms, get them made up and deliver them on their next visit, usually a couple of days later. We’d also take in wet-cell batteries for re-charging in local hardware and elecrical shops. These powered small lamps but mostly radios (or wirelesses as they were more commonly known) in houses without mains electricity. I suppose this is where my skills in rally navigation first began to develop.

J2 Van

More from William same time next week.