Over the past four years, Saddleworth Voices have recorded almost 70 interviews to preserve fond memories and anecdotes of all things local.
With the support of Saddleworth Parish Council, Delph Community Association, Delph library, Saddleworth Museum, and the North West Sound Archive in Clitheroe, the team of volunteers has created an oral record of our times, with the added advantage of capturing accent and dialect.
Here, Martin Plant looks at the life of Maurice Reid: part 3.
Maurice Reid was born in Liverpool in 1943. Before retirement he was Head of English at Hulme Grammar School for Boys, and he has lived in Delph with Janet, his wife, for over 35 years. Maurice has made three cycling trips across America.
In 2003, he set off from Seattle to ride to Minneapolis to meet Janet before cycling together the route of the Mississippi.
In Europa, Montana, he was buying groceries. The female cashier said: “I love your accent. Say something.” Maurice quoted a passage from Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra. Her response to the entire shop was: “This guy knows poetry. I want to marry him and have his babies!”
In Browning, Montana, Maurice camped round the back of a police station, which was also a women’s gaol. They began shouting (rude) comments at him. Maurice thought, ‘I’m a Scouser. I can cope with this!’ And he did!
The ride ended after 2,500 miles when an old friend from Uganda with whom they were staying in central Illinois became seriously ill. Instead of pushing on east, they stayed for three weeks to help on his pumpkin farm, working with, and getting to know, members of the Amish community.
In 2008, Maurice cycled 3,160 miles in 55 days from San Diego in California to Jacksonville, Florida. He crossed deserts in Arizona in temperatures around 115 degrees and a pass of 8,000 feet.
In New Mexico he suffered from repeated tyre punctures from thorns called goats’ heads. A cycle shop cured the problem by filling the inner tubes with green slime, which sealed the punctures. After the Rio Grande, and El Paso (lots of murders there)he cycled through Texas, sometimes near the border with Mexico where “things were pretty tense”.
In Mississippi they were still struggling with the effects of Hurricane Katrina. However, generally, everywhere across the states, he met huge hospitality. People he met at camp sites would even offer keys to their houses.
In 2013, Maurice cycled 4,400 miles from San Francisco to New York. He remembers: “The beauty of the High Sierras from Highway 50 in Nevada, the wind-chiselled buttes and canyons of Utah, snowstorms in Colorado and a 12,000 foot pass. And everywhere the kindness and hospitality. I am still in touch with fellow cyclists and kind folk who looked after me. When I reached home I wrote 36 letters of thanks.”
Finally, two memories of Kentucky! In a small town called Everton, no-one had heard of Dixie Dean! In another town, a sign on a garage cafe (with the last two words a rough translation!) “Y’all from the North come to see the South? Well now ya seen it, Go home!”
And Maurice could yet be a film star! On the last trip he cycled with a Californian who was making a film documentary which is about to appear on American television!
What a shifty person.