Odd ways my father had of making money. Number 4: Santa gets rid of the year’s bad buys
We would catch the 55 or 35 Bus to Leeds some Sunday mornings to stock up from Mr Greenbaum’s Toys and Fancy Goods warehouse near the market. It was under underground, below a busy road. and we had to enter by stone flag steps and a low door. The room opened out into a poorly lit cave-like room about a third of the length of a football pitch. Mr Greenbaum had been there working in his suit and brown overalls, six days a week since 1935. I remember his bald head and National Health Service specs. He looked a little like Alf Garnett but was quietly spoken, pleasant and always gave me something as a gift when I was very young.
He had a plan to try and get us to move upmarket, but dad would always say he was a ‘stack em high, sell em cheap’ kind of man. We almost always bought the same things. Flags, Balloons, windmills, inflatable animals, jumping frogs on springs, and everyone’s favourite returning balls (a silver paper covered ball on an elastic string).But now and again dad would feel inspired. He once bought 6,000 tiny snowmen of the type you put on Christmas cakes, but nobody would buy them as they were from China and had Chinese faces (British expectation that snowmen should look English. Not very rational I know). Another time we bought thousands of handmade felt Gonks from an old lady in Frizinghall which had an unpleasant smell. They were poorly sewn, looked nothing like most people’s ideas what a Gonk was, and they stunk and that got worse over time
.My mum would object. Dad's stock for street selling was distributed around all three bedrooms in our house and stacked to the ceilings. I went to sleep each night looking at boxes with Made in Hong Kong stamped on the side. Mum got fitted wardrobes in their bedroom, but he soon filled them with bundles of flags and balloons…and the rank gonks.
By November dad would have accumulated a lot of bad buys, but he had developed a way of getting rid of this normally unshiftable stuff. It was our festive event. Dressing up as Santa Clause and putting a sturdy cardboard box in a hessian sack. I would sometimes go along as Mr Elf, Santa’s Little Helper. Even by my mid-teens, I was almost 6 feet tall. It was shaming.
Each night the dining room table became a production line. We took two small items we could not get rid of, added a balloon and then wrapped it up in a white paper sweet bag. So an excited child might get one of the snowmen, an unrecognizable smelly none-gonk and a balloon. But the deal only cost 10p so it was rare to get complaints. If the kid burst the balloon straight away in the ice and freezing wind then dad would give them another little package for free. We could not travel down into town on the bus in costume so we would get changed in an alley alongside the pub at the top of the hill. We broke for dinner in the pub and he thought it pointless to get changed. The beard would come off but otherwise, we were in full kit alongside the Saturday Dinner time throng. Women would shout “What are you giving me for Christmas Santa?”, or” ring your bell for me”. Stuff like that. Being 15 and trying to be invisible is what I remember best. ;-)
Tomorrow, selling flags to The Vanguard of the Proletariat This is not the pub. I cannot find a picture but its another favourite nearby
