Liverpool Stories
The stories on this site are not included in my book.
The tales are snapshots of my life in Liverpool, the home of the Beatles, and the echo chamber of the Mersey Sound that in the sixties resonated around the planet like an acoustic Tsunami. The stories cover a period of 50 odd years and so they touch on every aspect of my life from the rites of passage to the passing of youth. I hope you enjoy them.
Careful with that axe Eugene - The Liverpool axe man
By
John Williams
First let me apologise for the low resolution photo, but when I approached the site, an abandoned pub on the corner of Bankfield Street, and caught sight of the figure, which is holding an axe in one hand and has a dog sitting at his feet, my long established castration complex went into overdrive.
"Jesus tonight!" I thought, "A dog and an axe in close proximity to a place that served alcohol.". I can feel my crown jewells crystalising to ice as I write!
I was fascinated by the carving but anybody who might have been able to tell me what it was about was probably long dead or no longer resident in the area. So, departing from my usual scholarly interpretations of local history, which are invariably systematic and accurate observations, I am prepared to make an informed, possibly even inspired guess at the origin and meaning of the axe wielding figurine.
In 1864, or thereabouts, Jerimiah Kwornburger, a poor dirt farmer from Schleswig-Holstein, emigrated to Liverpool because the bottom had fallen out of the poor dirt market. He briefly acquired a post on the docks where his fellow workers, as was their practice, quickly bestowed on him a nickname. Now the Liverpool docker's nicknames were rightly world renowned for their wit as they almost always encapsulated the essence of the named individual.
Jeremiah's nickname was 'That German feller', which, while witty enough in itself, was rather inaccurate because, as Jeremiah's detractors knew full well, Schleswig-Holstein was in Denmark. The latter fact was of course disputed by Germany as the territory contained many German speakers. This notion of ownership prompts me to wonder whether or not we Scousers should annex Brighton, but I digress.
Worse was to follow for Jeremiah, who soon found himself ostracised because he refused to partake in the docker's customary practice of 'working the welt', a quaint tradition wherein two men agreed to double their individual work load, a state of affairs which allowed one of them to perform unpaid but nonetheless vital duties as a taster in either Stan Water's cafe or the Caradoc pub. You see, in Jeremiah's native tongue, German, welt meant world and so when he was asked to 'work the welt' he flatly refused as he thought he was being invited to join the merchant navy.
His obstinate attitude stemmed from his belief that his wife's life would be made even more miserable if he left her alone. You see, his wife was called Brunhilde and she foolishly chose to adopt a hyphenated name. Now, given that her maiden name was Undfriez you can see how she quickly became the butt of jokes down in the local wash-house where the women relentlessly skitted poor Brunhilde Kwornburger-Undfriez. She was further victimised by being allowed only limited access to the Callender press and so there were always terrible creases in her family's lederhausen, a circumstance which made her children, whom she lovingly referred to as her kinder eggs, look as if they were wearing corduroy hot pants.
Desperate for work, Jerimiah took a seasonal job as a beater on the nearby estate of Lord Derby. Unfortunately he was sacked very shortly afterwards because his limited understanding of English somehow gave him the idea that his job description entitled him to chin passing aristocrats.
However, his short sojourn in the 'dabs', the local name for Lord Derby's estates, had given him the germ of an idea for ensuring that his family survived the imminent winter, hunting. His main problem, obtaining a gun, was insurmountable as the ruling classes had decided that to allow Scousers access to firearms would somehow endanger their idyllic existence. You know what the well meaning aristocrats meant; all that dancing round maypoles, drinking ale and eating cakes laced with local honey and nuts, which were as hard as volcanic rock and known as Backlava. The nuts weren't in fact local but were imported from Manchester, by the coachload.
His other problem, finding a suitable dog was more easily resolved. He went to an animal rescue centre and picked a dog that was being bullied by the other rescue dogs, which were in the main Saint Bernard's. He had briefly played with the idea of adopting a German shepherd, called Schickelgruber the III, but even Jerimiah could see that it was barking mad, and so he chose an appealing little mongrel which, because it was a welcome addition to the Kwornburger family, he called Addy. Finally, the poverty stricken Jeremiah stole an axe from Ye Olde Rapid Hardware, which in those days was located in a shack on the corner of Roscommon Street.
It was time to launch Jerimiah's meister plan, operation 'Eagle's lair'. It was a simple but curiously elegant plan. He would take Addy to to the nearby forest of Vauxhall and await the arrival of game birds, not the likes of 'Horse faced Annie' and her posse from the Baltic Fleet hostelry you understand, but the avian variety. Then, armed with his axe he would chop down the trees whereupon the startled birds would be retreived by Addy, assuming the dog could tear himself away from his dreams of lebensraum.
"Aha!" you say, "The birds would fly off at the first stroke of the axe!"
Yes of course they would, if their feet were not well and truly stuck in the axe marks that Jerimiah had previously inflicted high up in the trees and from which sticky pitch escaped, forming pools of goo to trap the unwary birds! The cunning of the man!
Unfortunately for Jerimiah his dog Addy wasn't a retriever and ate all the birds! Thus it was that Jerimiah found himself unemployable in, of all places, Liverpool, known throughout the world as the El Dorado of jobseekers. He was forced to emigrate to Llandudno, a location he chose primarily because the Welsh language was so close to his own accents, as even after three months in Liverpool his voice still sounded like a piece of coal trapped under a door.
So, the next time you are on the dock road keep an eye open for that long abandoned pub, 'The German Feller', and spare a thought for Jerimiah and Brunhilde Kwornburger, because even though the family eventually became famous for making foodstuffs from some stuff out of mushrooms they had their share of heartache.