Early Years

SIXTY YEARS OF SHOW RACER PASSION

By

Doug McClary

If my experience is anything to go by, the older we get the more we tend to look back on the past. I am about to enter my sixtieth year with pigeons and notably with the show racer. The passion I felt then as a schoolboy in seeing pigeons flying and then returning to their ‘home’ has never left me.  Pigeons have provided me with a lifelong obsession and interest, a hobby and sport all in one. They have provided a pressure valve from the stresses of life and a reason to get up every morning to attend to them.

I could not hope to cover my experiences in a single article so thought that I would indulge myself with a mainly west country story because that is where it all started and where I enjoyed most of the pigeon passions leading from schoolboy to man.  Even as I sit here in Victoria, Australia I can so easily re-live some of those times which all started out in West Cornwall in 1953.

Trevor Polkinghorne, then of Trevithal and who is still racing with the Penzance club, was the person responsible.  It was he who owned a small number of pigeons and showed me how they could be liberated and how they would come back to their home.  I just had to have pigeons and these were obtained by various means from local barns and other places where ferals roosted.  The prized ones were the gay pieds as they looked to lovely out on the wing.

Then, one day, against my will, my parents insisted on me accompanying them to the Redruth Agricultural show.  I was not very happy until I entered the pigeon marquee and there spread before me were the most wonderful and beautiful pigeons I had ever seen. And the most beautiful of them all were the show racers – some of which I felt were similar to some I had in my shed – which was a half share of my father’s poultry house. I didn’t see much more of the Redruth show that day for I am sure that I spent all my time gazing at those beautiful pigeons.

Enquiries were made and I was told about the Penzance Fanciers Association and found the secretary Mr Remphrey who lived at Newlyn.  I called on him with trepidation but was welcomed warmly and provided with every encouragement to attend shows and meetings.  He also told me about show racer fanciers in the area so my passion was being fuelled in high doses.

Enter Bert Nicholls who was the Penzance based RAC road patrolman on his motor cycle and sidecar.  I had visited his neat and immaculate loft and was so impressed with his beautiful birds.  On his patrols he came to visit me at Sheffield and to make note of my progress or otherwise.  At the Penzance shows I also met Morley Boase of Ludgvan and rode my bike over there to see his birds and his loft.  Living near me was Arthur Hosking who made me welcome and I got to know him well.  He gave me a pair of dark chequers which he described as ‘Thornton and Greenshields’ and after all these years I can still picture them and feel them in my hands. They were getting on in years but still beautiful birds.  Bert had sold me some decent Show Racers also and I started showing them both at Penzance but further afield using the rail network.  At Bodmin I picked up a card and at Truro I won the young cocks class with a Bert Nicholls pigeon with seventeen in the class.

My first ever show was at an evening table show at the Penzance clubroom in Rosevean Road – I am sure I have the name right.  I took three pigeons, one of my own, and one each for two friends.  My entry won the first prize and I walked on air that evening as I walked nearly three miles home carrying my precious burden.  One of the birds was owned by school friend Brian Burrell of St Ives and the next morning before school, I liberated the bird – which made it home to him.

What did I learn in particular about these times?  Every loft I visited was clean and obviously cleaned regularly and thoroughly.  It is a belief that has stayed with me ever since, the need to look after birds properly and that means keeping the loft and all utensils clean.  It also taught me that to have any win that mattered, it had to be won against the best and this is why I have always sought to show against the best fanciers and the best birds throughout my showing career.

At the Penzance annual open shows, I could only gaze in awe at the birds entered by A.R.Brown of St Day.  We all knew that if he came with entries, our chances of winning were greatly reduced.  His birds stood out like oil paintings, especially his powder blues and light mealies.  I was far too shy to talk to the great man but I made resolve to try to be his equal one day. 

A.R.(Reg) Brown of St Day, Cornwall - and early photo.

My schoolboy days came to an end at the age of sixteen when I left Penzance for good to pursue my police career in Devon, starting out at Newton Abbot.  My mother did her best to keep my little stud operating but eventually I was forced to dispose of it because owing to the cost of travel home, I could return only every few weeks.  Pigeon less at Newton Abbot I did not lose my interest in pigeons and the sight of racers overhead provided a thrill and I recall visiting the late Ken Gray at his dual-purpose lofts.  Police moves involved Tavistock, Dorset. Brixham and Plympton as I worked at my career.

Eventually I married Ann and after living in a grotty flat in Cullompton for a year or so, we were offered a police house with three bedrooms and a large flat garden.  I recall that I didn’t see the garden for about six weeks because it was covered in freezing snow but guess what?  Yes, the possibility of keeping pigeons came to the fore. I ordered ‘The Racing Pigeon’ and when it arrived I could hardly contain myself in my anxiety to acquaint myself with pigeons again.  In that edition there was an advertisement for Show Racers by Mr A.Rawson of Whitwell, Worksop as a ‘small select stud of Greenshiels Show Racers’.  The top pigeon was a mealy cock at five pounds, having won 2^nd at Larkhall, 3^rd Birmingham Mail, BYB at Motherwell, 3^rd at Denny and reserve at the People.  A Loxleys six bird basket was also offered at three pounds ten shillings and some youngsters at two pounds each.  I sent a letter off asking for the basket, the mealy and for a YB to go with it.  That amounted to a large sum in those days but my application was successful and the birds duly arrived at Cullompton station.  There was a problem.  I had no shed or loft.

An outhouse for coal was partially converted but a knight in shining armour came along in the form of Jack Smith of St Andrews Estate who offered to care for my birds until my shed arrived.  Jack was a great character and we became good friends.  In that edition of the Racing Pigeon of the 12^th January 1963 appeared a photo of ‘Rosa Belle’ the beautiful blue white flight owned by none other than A.R. Brown of St Day, winning best opposite sex at the Old Comrades, so I knew where my next move was to be!

Being a policeman I knew that moves about the county would be necessary so I purchased a garden shed seven feet by five feet as being the biggest I could manage to dismantle and re-erect wherever.  My carpentry skills were tested to the limit and found to be sorely inadequate as I sought to turn a shed into a loft.

I had written to Mr Brown and received back a welcoming letter and an offer of a pair of pigeons, a mealy cock and a blue white flight hen, both had raced, the hen to Exeter eighty miles and the cock to Taunton a hundred miles. I bought this pair and they provided my first show wins but stayed with me for a very long time.  They both returned to St Day when I tried to break them to my shed, the cock making the journey ‘home’ twice.

In that time, promotion came and involved a twelve month course in Hampshire involving leaving Ann at home with our new son and of course my loft of pigeons.  After that I moved across to Honiton, loft and all and this started my new showing career seriously. My father in law as a carpenter constructed an aviary which virtually doubled the size of my shed.

I started travelling to shows and had the pleasure of meeting up with Ralph Kingdom and Bert Duckham of Tiverton.  I was also meeting most of the other exhibitors of the time including John Robilliard, George Hood, Bill Pooley, George Abrahams, Francis Matthews and the North Devon fanciers Mervyn Patt, Ken Hearn, Bert Ridge, Bill Bennett and Keith Foley.  I later became friends with Francis Gamble of Penzance, a man I didn’t know well in my schoolday span.

My next move entailed a move to Plympton where we purchased our first house – a bungalow with a flat garden and a concrete block summer house. It was from this address that my showing took off and they were great days visiting Bill Pooley, George Hood, Les Dawson, Les Yeo, Jack Williams and others.  I bought a new purpose-built loft and by using the summer house finally had room to develop my team. What wonderful days these were, what great occasions were enjoyed, not only within Devon and Cornwall but further afield at the classics and wherever pigeon were shown. These were the days of absolute wonderment when my passion for the Show Racer almost took over my life – and Ann argues that it did! Later moves took us to St Austell, and Exeter before the big move in 2004 to Australia.  That seems a suitable place to end this article as an  autobiography was never intended.

Along the way in my pigeon career I have made all the mistakes we all make, disposing of birds which should have been kept, using creosote on the aviary- which ran down the wire and spoilt my show team’s chances and numerous other things.  But above all, I have kept faith with that most beautiful of pigeons, the Show Racer.  I have cherished and respected every bird ever owned, remembered every win and hopefully every loss. Recalling those early Penzance days and the top class fanciers I first met there, I have been dedicated to clean lofts, clean utensils and clean pigeons, thus always treating them with the respect they deserve.  What a great life pigeons have provided for me. What a great life they continue to give me.