I think I know how dad found the value of a tip, as a financial incentive, and I surpose many drivers benefited to this one instance.
In1948 dad decided to take a three days break with my mother and I who would be under 1 year old to London. Dad never took holidays as such, always saying the only holiday he ever had was in the army during the war, as he had such an easy time compared to his working life under my grandfather’s regime.
He was in between cars, having sold his car and waiting to find a replacement and decided tom use a Morris 10 my grandfather had bought to sell. He says the car looked a bit ropey so decided the night before he left o paint it. At the time for the vehicles they were still using the traditional paints of the time where enamel was not available, so they painted three coats of what I would describe as undercoat, sign wrote and then varnished. A dad didn’t have time he had been recommended Brolac which produced an enamel paint. Deciding that the original paint would be an adequate undercoat he started to rub the car down with wet and drive. The paint seemed to be forming more and more dust and so he cleaned the car off and gave it a coat of paint and went to bed, thinking it would be a mess when he woke the next morning.
Next morning, the day he was to leave with the car to London he woke to find the car midnight blue and looking just like it had left the production line, so off we left. Round about Grantham he suffered a blow out and when he took out the spare he found the tyre had a huge bleb and was no use. Leaving my mother and me he got a lift with a wagon driver to the nearest garage and they said they only had an’India’ tyre. In those days new tyres were wrapped in a type of crepe paper and unwrapping the tyre he paid for it to be fitted to his rim. Getting a lift back to the car and his small family (mam and me) he fitted the wheel and off we went. His next problem was the carburettor which he did a repair to and arrived in the Strand in London.
Dad had been recommended the Strand Palace Hotel and when he stopped to ask were it was he saw he was opposite pointing the wrong way. ‘How to get across the road?’ he thought and decided to copy the taxis. Putting his hand out the window he went to do a ‘U’ turn. He said strangely everyone stopped and across the road he went and parked outside the front door of the hotel. (Imagine trying to park on the Strand today) an in the three of us went. Dad with his oily hands after his journey down.
Going to the hotel he was told that they were sorry but the hotel was fully booked. He had bee told to give a pound note tip and that usually would work. He looked at the receptionist with her manicured nails and thought how do I get a pound note to her (AT that time wages for a driver was two pound ten shilling a week) Taking the wood by the horns he put out his oily hand and handing a pound note over he said ‘Thank you for your trouble’ ‘If you come back in an hour and half I might be able to get you a room’ came the reply.
The receptionist was called Miss Lee and she was senior receptionist at the hotel (At that time the Strand palace was one of London’s largest hotels with 800 rooms)
From that time on Dad rang and asked for Miss Lee and she got him rooms when ever he wanted and when he went down he gave her a tip.
I have said that my grandmother was in Westminster Abbey at the Coronation. Rooms in London were impossible to get as the demand greatly outstripped availability. Miss Lee got a room for my Grandfather and Grandmother overlooking the Strand with a balcony. Dad went down a couple of weeks later and saw Miss Lee and thanked her with a good tip.
About a fortnight later after the original London trip, one Saturday the three of us were returning to Spennymoor from Bishop Auckland and as the road dipped down on a bend before the clime up Park Head bank a car overtook dad as we were travelling in the same Morris 10 and started spinning round on ice on the road and hit a car coming down Park Head which in turn hit the Morris 10 and damaged the drivers side front wing.
Dad took the car to Motor Supplies (That went on to be Elliotts Motors and was situated where Kwick Fit is today) to be repaired. Dad was well known there (Through his father which I will tell later) and the foreman in the body shop came out and said that although he could fit a new wing he would recommend beating out the old one and showed him a new one to prove his point. The old wing was solid metal, the new one very thin tin. But the foreman said what worried him most was to get a colour match for the midnight blue paint. ‘Don’t worry’ said dad ‘I have some left’ Dad said no one would believe the car had been brush painted.