After the first war they had a `Cantata' at Soar Chapel, it was the `Birds Cantata' and I can remember May, Tynbryn took the part of the cuckoo. It was lovely and it was Tommy Williams (Kit's father) who taught them.
D. R. Jones had a childrens choir and John Trefor Jones had a Male Voice Choir and Richard Lloyd had a choir as well, but before my time it was J. J. Thomas who was the conductor of the Male Voice Choir and he won a lot of prizes. He was the schoolmaster and he died in 1917, His daughter Elsie lives in Yugoslavia now.
During the First World War, we had a very dry Summer and the water went very low. They were praying for rain in the prayer meetings they held in the little room at Bryn Street during the week. There was a billy goat roaming around Clogwyn Gwyn and when the women and children came to Ysgoldy for water he would attack them and he could be dangerous so they decided to shoot him. All the men in Soar who had guns went after him one evening and they shot him on the rocks. - it must have been in the early thirties.
There have been a lot of explosions in the Powder Works and men and women have been killed there, but during the First War there was a very big one. It blew big girders on to the traeth and that was some distance away and it shook the village. The old women thought the Germans had come and they got hold of the children and they were runnig towards Glanywern with their prams. There was hardly any traffic then.
Talking about traffic, we used to play with a big ball the other side of the Church and we would put two coats each end as goals. That was on the main road and somebody would shout if there was a car coming and perhaps the car was half a mile away. Children at one time would throw stones over the Church and I remember Bob Richards thought he could throw a stone from the top of the hill over the Church but an accident happened. John Gwilym was on the main road and a stone caught him and he lost his eye and that was the end of the stone throwing.
In the house I've got the key of the Ffestiniog Railway - it was the key that my grandfather used to open the carriage. Most of the workmen had a key as some of them would jump out of the train between stations. The key must be more than a hundred years old. If a stranger came on the train the regulars would put him to sit on the donkey - it was like a metal box in the middle.
When we started in school we had a slate to write on and the pencil was slate as well and if you pressed too hard on the pencil it would crack and I can remember the ventilation in the cloakroom was full of broken slate pencils that the children had hidden.
We went to the Gelli dinner time to look for what we called ground nuts. We had them under the weed that grows everywhere there. It has a white flower and it grows to about a yard high. Another thing we would do was to run half way to Stabal Mail as there were wild Cherry trees there and we would throw stones or a stick to try and get the cherries down. Once the stick did not come down and there was a charabanc from Barmouth coming quite near with visitors and as it was open we were afraid of the stick coming down on them, but as soon as it passed the stick came down and we all came out of our hiding place.
We could climb trees like monkeys and I'm sure that most trees in the Gelli and Coed Fucheswen has been climbed by one of us. Evie was the best and Jack Cambrian was very good too. We were always after dead wood for the fire and of course we thought by getting it from the tree it was better than to pick it up from the ground. We would put our arms around the tree and then put our foot on the dead wood. Another way was to buy 10 yards of rope and tie a stone on one end and throw it up the tree where the dead wood was and put a few turns on the rope and pull.