Quench the Lamp

Children Of A Changing Time

T

HIS IS THE

story of country living that revolved around the hearth, the family, the farm animals, and the neighbours. The people we lived amongst provided us with companionship, whether out in the fields or around the fire, and the farmyard and household chores gave a pattern to our days. But as we left childhood behind and put tentative toes into the adult world, that pattern changed; rural living moved forward into a bright new world and we became the last children of the old ways.

So this is also the story of a changing time, a time when rural Ireland quenched the oil lamp, removed the po from under the bed and threw the black pots and iron kettles under the hedge. We who were the children of the forties came in the fifties into the challenging, exciting world of adolescence.

Rural electrification flooded our homes with light, clearing away old ghosts and beliefs and sending fairies scurrying underground. Modern plumbing replaced the bucket of spring water from the well and the timber rain-barrel at the gable end.

Corners hitherto shrouded in dust and tranquillity suddenly found themselves scrubbed clinically clean with the new and plentiful supply of hot water and disinfectant. The flush toilet replaced the chamber-pot, bringing an instant solution to a basic problem. The wide, warm comforting arms of the open fire were folded up and into its corner came tight-lipped ranges and shining enamel-faced cookers.

Out in the farm the clip-clop of horses’ hooves gave way to the roar of engines; cows, accustomed to the soft glow of the storm-lantern as we checked them at night, now blinked in the glare of the harsh electric light.

The older generation stood and hesitated on the brink of this bright new world, but we of a younger generation opened wide our arms and swam happily with the tide. We became the young parents of the sixties and seventies and brought children into a world totally different from the one of our own childhoods. Economic prosperity boomed and our teenagers grew up far from the shadows cast by the oil lamp and the plaintive call of the corncrake.

Look back with me to when we changed from the old ways to the new and left behind a world now almost forgotten.

Going For The Messages

I

ALWAYS STOPPED

for a few seconds outside Ned’s door to sniff the air appreciatively as we walked up the winding street past his little shop on our way to Mass. The whiff of tea, loose in a plywood chest; a wheel of cheese wrapped in a muslin cloth; candles piled on top of each other in a timber box: all mixed with the strong smell of snuff, which he kept in a tall tin can under the counter. He cut plugs of tobacco off a large block, filling the little shop with rich aromas which blended with the other fragrances that made up the unique mixture that was Ned’s shop.

Ned was a little man clad in a brown overall and because he seldom came out from behind his high timber counter he created a head and shoulders image in our minds. His hair had receded well back from his forehead but had decided then to go no further. His hairline was a blend of grey and brown, matching his brown overall which was streaked with white as a result of his constant weighing of flour. He viewed the world with kind, brown eyes from behind steel-rimmed spectacles.

Although his working hours often extended far into the night he was always, it seemed, in a pleasant frame of mind and when he was not serving customers he was busy weighing out supplies into stiff, brown paper bags. Goods were delivered in large jute sacks and heavy timber boxes and had to be measured out into weights suitable for purchase by his customers. Tea, sugar and flour were all poured into these strong brown bags with different sized scoops. They were then thumped gently on the counter to settle down the contents before being put back on the old iron scales for the final test of precise weight. The balancing weights ranged from small round brass ounces to heavy oblong iron pounds which had holding bars for convenience. Ned had a white enamel scales as well, but this was for the weighing of lighter items which called for greater precision, like cheese, tobacco and sweets. The long needle waved back and forth like the hand of a clock gone crazy until finally it settled and pointed out the exact weight.

On the floor inside the counter Ned stood surrounded by a circle of bags of varying heights. He usually began Monday morning with flour weighing and as the day progressed the shelf behind him filled up with paper bags of different sizes while the white cotton bag of flour declined in stature. The jute sack of sugar was next on the agenda and Ned weighed away, in between patiently serving and chatting to customers as they came and went, and after that he started on the tea. His appearance always told the tale of exactly what he had been weighing because evidence of it clung to his overall.

High on the shelves behind him, flash lamps, bicycle repair kits, Sacred Heart lamps, alarm clocks and all sorts of things stood. Below them were tins of biscuits that had to be weighed out when customers made their choices. Some containers had glass tops so that you could peer in without Ned having to remove the covers, and below the biscuits came the tin gallons and high glass jars of sweets whose colourful contents provided temptation beyond resistance. There were black-and-white bull’s-eyes which were hard enough to damage the most perfect teeth and brown cushions with their strange, minty taste; but the conversation lozenges made for the brightest jar of all, with their gay pinks, reds and yellows. They were exactly as their name implied, but the conversation was not one to be had with a casual acquaintance, as the messages had a decidedly intimate flavour. Kiss me quick or Love me or Hug me were not invitations to be extended to all and sundry. As if to counteract these amorous sweets came the acid drops that made you catch your breath with their sharp tang. Gallon sweets were the poor relations; the grander ones came in the glass jars. Top of the market came the sweets that had their own coats on, the wrapped variety. We seldom rose to those heady heights but the plain-wrapped toffees at six for a penny came within our reach. For long-lasting sucking the slab of hard toffee was the best value and came with the titles Captain Mac and Half-Time Jimmy"; the full slab was usually beyond our means, so Ned cracked off the required amount on the edge of the counter.

Everything that Ned had to handle was inside the counter, while outside was anything that did not require weighing or wrapping. A stack of enamel and tin buckets stood guard on each side of a pile of enamel pots and pans. Spades, shovels, two-prong and four-prong pikes and pickaxes all stood shoulder to shoulder, while milking stools could be tested for balance and comfort by waiting customers or anyone stopping in for a chat. Hanging off the ceiling was a miscellaneous assortment of goods, including kettles and teapots, balls of binder twine, strong nailed boots, and occasionally a pig’s head. You had to keep your eye on the pig’s head as sometimes if you stood underneath it you could get a cold drip of salty brine on top of your head. If you looked up, the pig’s eye would peer contemptuously down at you. On Friday the pig’s head gave way to strips of salted ling that hung off the ceiling like items of forgotten underwear.

Window-dressing was not Ned’s speciality: out there stood sun-faded advertising placards of teas being sampled by rosy-cheeked ladies and foggy mirrors etched with happy, pot-bellied, bearded gentlemen advocating the bliss of St Bruno tobacco. Ned’s cat used these mirrors to admire her tawney good looks and to improve on them. The window was the cat’s department and from here she watched life pass by with the disdainful air that only a well-bred cat can impart, her unblinking stare occasionally punctuated by the flick of an aristocratic feline whisker. A sliding timber shutter, which no longer slid but reluctantly shunted, gave access to this view of the outside world.

Ned’s burning passions in life were horses and greyhounds and his mother bitch, as he called his oldest greyhound, was usually to be seen stretched out on the shop floor between the buckets and shovels. She knew all Ned’s customers and if a stranger called, which was rare enough, she slowly drew herself off her haunches and sniffed him out, much to the customer’s surprise, because a sniffer dog was something one did not expect to find in this little corner of the world. But the greyhound, like Ned himself, was not aggressive, merely curious.

Ned used the evenings to do his accounts, which meant adding up the totals in a stack of little notebooks. Each of his customers had a notebook into which they wrote their messages, and these they handed in to Ned together with their shopping bags. Many farmers called to him for their messages on the way home from the creamery and scarcely needed to write down their orders since he knew better than they did what they needed. He filled each bag and wrote the prices into each notebook, and once a week or twice a month, whichever the arrangement was, he added up the list and was paid.

When he had his accounts finished he folded his arms on the counter-top and became the ideal chairman who skilfully directed heated arguments into calm waters and often supervised the sale of greyhound pups and promising yearlings. The shop, as well as being a place for trading, was also a select men’s club where male views were aired and membership was based on a man’s knowledge of horses and dogs. Not that anyone was refused entry, but as the main topics of conversation were racing odds and filly fitness, unless you were that way inclined you could not take part in the discussions that went on late into the night. Men sat around on milking stools, upturned buckets, tea-chests and indeed sometimes on an upturned po and, as the talk flowed, the smoke from their pipes and cigarettes curled upwards, blending with the pigs’ heads and balls of binder twine, giving them a smoky, well-seasoned look. Speedy greyhounds such as Spanish Battleship and Prince of Bermuda were discussed, their finer points closely analysed, and the chances of local horses Sheila’s Cottage and Cottage Rake winning the big races were argued back and forth at length.

The only night that Ned had early closing was when the track was on, but that did not upset his regulars as they were all at the greyhound track as well. He closed down completely for Listowel and Galway races, and sometimes for other meetings if a horse of special interest happened to be running. No one else could follow the geography of Ned’s shop, so the simple solution was to shut down altogether. Everybody understood that when Ned’s door was closed he had gone racing. Perishable goods he sold off to his old pals the night before and it was not unusual to see a man walking home from Ned’s with a pig’s head under his arm.

My mother brought the messages from town every Sunday after Mass but sometimes during the week one of us might be sent in to bring home extra requirements. We loved to be sent to town so there was great competition to be the one chosen to go. Walking along the road I enjoyed looking in through the iron gates on my way and watching the animals in the different fields, or climbing to the top of the ditch and looking down over the valley. Arriving in town I went straight to Ned’s shop, where I was always sure of a fistful of sweets; he made no profit out of me and I had it eaten before I left the shop. Children and men were Ned’s best customers because some of the less understanding women felt that in the interests of hygiene his cat should be evicted from her viewing perch in the window.

Across the road from Ned lived two old ladies, the Miss Bowlers, who had a big stone-floored shop that was scrubbed out daily. It was a contrast to Ned’s, where the timber floorboards, ingrained with knots and seams, sank and squeaked as you clattered across them. Whereas Ned’s little shop was packed to overflowing, the Miss Bowlers’ large shop had all the activity packed into one corner where they dished out squares of home-made toffee, sold brown lemonade and cut up blocks of ice-cream and sandwiched it between two wafers. A penny ice-cream only served to stimulate the taste-buds, a twopenny one was more satisfying and a fourpenny one bordered on extravagance, while a sixpenny one was sheer, gorgeous gluttony. They also sold puffy buns with dollops of cream and jam inside; when you sank your teeth into them the cream oozed around the corners of your mouth and along your fingers and, like Ned’s cat, you had to whip your tongue around vigorously lest you lose any luscious lick.

One of the sisters was like the cream-buns she sold and had folds of soft double chins, beneath which rows of white pearls continued the cascading descent into her enormous cleavage. Her hair was snow-white, and even though it was caught up at the back it still curled down over her forehead and ears, from which long pearl earrings swung, while her large, soft bosom encased in a white, satin blouse rested on the counter-top. She always reminded me of a downy feather pillow, soft, white and comfortable. The other sister paled by comparison. She was tall, thin and spare and was like the tall bottles of lemonade whose tops she whipped off with the iron bottle opener.

What Ned lacked in fastidiousness the Miss Bowlers made up for: their shop and they themselves were spotless. The hands of the small, cuddly Miss Bowler were white and soft, with pale pink fingernails which curved to slight points, and she always smelt like a rose garden, waves of light, flowery perfume wafting from beneath flowing folds. The tall sister seemed clinically clean and wore a white, lace collar and cuffs over her long black dress; her auburn hair streaked with grey stayed in a tight knot at the base of her poll where it was secured firmly with a few barbaric-looking hairpins.

As well as serving