Throwback Thursday: Lough memories, and RTÉ visit to our school

Reader Pat Kelly was entertained by our recent discussion of cinema-going in the Cork of bygone days, and sent us a few fascinating facts from his encyclopaedic memory.

“You mentioned Fred Bridgeman on the Savoy organ, and that brings back great recollections,” said Pat.

“But did you know he was also the organist at St Luke’s Church? When he retired, his replacement was Norman Metcalfe.”

Norman, for those who might like to know, was born in Limerick, the child of professional musicians. He won a number of Feis Ceoil classes as a child, and at the early age of 15 was already the deputy organist at Limerick Cathedral.

In 1945, Norman was appointed organist to the Irish Cinemas Ltd Circuit, travelling the country and playing in Dublin, Limerick and Cork.

“There was no mention of who wrote the words on the screen,” adds Pat. “It was Gladys Leach.”

Another Throwback Thursday reader, Tim Cagney, backs this up.

“The slides carrying the lyrics of each song were the work of commercial artist Gladys Leach. Her son - Rom Hyde - was a classmate of mine (1966).”

Well, isn’t it great when other readers come in with the missing pieces of the jigsaw that is Old Cork? Thanks!

“The cinema outside Collins barrack was the Cameo,” continues Pat Kelly. “From memory, it was started by a young man, who began by showing films in a hall outside Sarsfields Court.

“Someone said that being up in the Gods at the Savoy was like being in the top tier in Croke Park, but they didn’t mention the stairs, which seemed endless – in from the side street, then left turn and left turn until at last we reached the top.

“The Ritz on Washington Street showed the first 3D films in Cork,” adds Pat, “where we were given coloured glasses to view the special effects.

“It gave rise to the new experience of ‘ducking’, where everybody instinctively crouched as the unexpected suddenly flashed up!

“I still have so many memories of that great picture-going age.”

Paula Rose sent us some great childhood memories for last week’s article, sharing her parents’ experiments with the new notion of hire purchase. She has now very generously shared some more of her recollections from the late 1950s.

“It’s easy to look back at childhood and see a vanilla image of it - the sun, a permanently blue sky, the Lough, the church on the hill, the corner shop we owned, no scarcity except a universal one...

“Deliveries of food to us were through the back door of the shop,” recalls Paula. “We drank Tanora once a year at Christmas. An orange wrapped at the turn of a wool sock, a red telephone and a School Friend annual if we were lucky completed the Christmas gifting.

“I my younger sister poured half the bottle of Tanora over her Christmas Day dinner, such was her enjoyment, of it. It was too precious to just drink!

“Then the sun-filled days in summer dresses, running to the bus stop to see my mother coming from town. The constant boiling of the kettle, the tea-making (coffee was for the well-off with more sophisticated tastes). The open fire lit in the morning, and in the evening my mother taking the embers, still very much alight, on a shovel to the sitting room with experienced skill.

“How welcoming were the doors on the latch, the open forums where there was no discordant note, only the exchanging of opinion?” asks Paula rhetorically.

“The Angelus bell summoned us to communal prayer. The religious, if not feared, were honoured and obeyed. Such was our fervour, we saw even popes in the clouds over the Lough - Pope Pius XII, surely Pope John XXIII?

“That place was inspirational, aspirational - feeling at the edge of the world watching the evening sun go down over it. My dear little home in the west, as my mother called it.

“The orange globe, unfiltered, reflecting on the water, doubled in size, spreading its warmth towards home, to the parish and all who lived there.

“The wildfowl felt it. They sang their song freely. They were free, fed, profligate - a move by animal welfare to transport a few to Inniscarra failed when the fowl were back on the lake before the animal welfare van that carried them!

“More proof, if that were needed, that there was no comparison, no place like it.

“The plays that were produced, the early talent that shone. We had The Old Woman Of The Road and I Know A Millionaire in our hearts, old poems and songs that were the remaining vestiges of a previous generation that took form in us, pre-1960s children of de Valera and Lemass’s Ireland.

“The church and the tavern at the top of the hill vied for attention - mother in the church, father nightly in the tavern (‘giving another car to Angela’ was one of my mother’s frequent comments.)”

Paula adds: “My grandmother died when my mother, Brid, was just seven. As a single father of six children, the youngest, Bill, a baby, my grandfather adhered to a strict regime.

“He and the hierarchy of family, religious and other elders formed the landscape of my mother’s younger life.

“Nevertheless, the unique person emerged. She was a reluctant student. Her aspirant father, educationally aware, sent her to violin lessons. She managed to thwart his ambitions one day by giving her violin to a fellow student she felt was more deserving of the honour.

“She was the class clown, an inveterate talker. Her brother, Denis, often asked ‘Do you ever stop talking?’ and she would respond by talking some more.

“Somebody scolded her once and said, ‘You think you own the Lough’. She answered, ‘I don’t think it, I know it’.

As a mother herself, Brid was very keen on good manners. She directed us while eating to work from the inside out, to redirect the soup spoon outwards, chew silently, mouth closed, not to hold the knife like a pen. Stand up when shaking a woman’s hand on being introduced.

“She travelled extensively, many times on her own. In Philadelphia, she told us she once dined in a luxurious setting, the dining table laden with silver, having its own individual silver cruet set for each diner.

“That was the same year she came back from America with suitcases full of Gap jeans and several pairs of highly-flammable 100% polyester curtains, bearing the inescapable shine of a million mirrors.

“Equally, any visitors she entertained were dined in absolute grand isolation, in front of an open coal fire, the dining-room table laden with the best pork sausages, buttered eggs, brown home-made bread and pots of steaming tea.”

Paula continues: “Brid visited a halting site one Christmas Day with a box full of groceries. She arrived home minus her suede ankle boots and her beaver coat which she had left there. Consequently, she imbued in her children a sense of social awareness and a kindness for those less fortunate.

“My mother was the mouthpiece at home, the host. When visitors arrived and she was briefly absent, my father would oblige us to ‘go, get your mother’. Her voice could be heard before rounding the corner and everyone, visitors and residents alike, relaxed.

“Our school was a country one, just a bus run from the house by the Lough, or a 20 minute walk under frost. It lay beyond an old bridge with fields scattered around it and marks made on the road by Paddy the milkman’s old Shire horse.

“I still the milk delivery every morning and the steam coming up as it was poured into the big earthenware jugs. In a growing family, milk was an essential staple.

“The school had just two classrooms, incorporating all ages of girls from four to 12. Bhí an Gaelige an thacthacht sa scoil along with the religious ethos overseen by the local parish priest.

“The bishop’s visit every year was greeted with a mixture of excitement and trepidation, as we moved along to confirmation day and finally primary cert and the last day ar scoil.

“As we were reminded by Miss McCarthy, big girls there, but small girls moving on.”

Paula adds: “The biggest day of our young lives, however, was when we were chosen to take part in The School Around The Corner radio programme and RTÉ prepared to move hook, line, and sinker into our seat of learning. We couldn’t believe it - bhí an t-áth linn!

“Preparations were ongoing and extensive - spiders were driven out of corners never previously discovered. We watched as the old maintenance man hung precariously from the rafters as he gingerly climbed and swung between the two classrooms. Ladders were taken out of the shed and paint pots were scattered everywhere.

“The big day finally arrived, fires were lit and the Mansion polish was put away. The smell of coffee, part of Miss McCarthy’s breakfast, along with a raw egg that she swallowed whole, added to the sense of being in the only place, a place where we all fitted together, our place, our home from home.

“We saw the big truck come along the narrow road with its cables and microphones and out of it emerged very sophisticated accents, important people having travelled south all the way from the Pale. Paddy Crosby finally arrived - this was real life, the voice, the man himself.

“At last, the experience! We were still the big girls at Togher - the chosen ones, the ones to represent our school and our city. But, how would we do, were we up to an obair?

“I have to say that Paddy Crosby acquitted himself very well and we enjoyed the possibility of some of us, at least, being recorded for posterity.

“We felt we had got our wish that day. I sang Brahms’ lullaby, which was recorded to the accompaniment of a piano accordion.

“I the Sunday soon afterwards. We gathered around the big radio at home, with multiple layers of family awaiting the big event of the broadcast. We were all delighted!

“Our little national school was on the national airwaves. Congratulations abounded and some silver was put into grateful palms.

“Many decades later, I enquired of the RTÉ archives as to the whereabouts of the recording. Alas, it had gone missing, impossible to find. Posterity will have to wait, but for how long?”

Ah, it was usually the case back then, Paula, that tapes were wiped and re-used, for the sake of economy, and it happened too with early TV footage, resulting in some dreadful losses (the Lambert Puppet version of Brogeen Follows The Magic Tune is one of which Eugene Lambert regretted the loss to the end of his life).

So, unless somebody out there managed to record that unique episode of The School Around The Corner from that Sunday long ago, and can let us know, you may be forced to accept the hard facts of life.

Come on, does anybody have that tape?

Did RTÉ ever record at your school? Do you the milk being delivered, poured out of churns into your waiting jug? Tell us! Email [email protected]. Or leave a comment on our Facebook page: www.facebook.com/echolivecork.