Throwback Thursday: Pea-pod pickers, sales at Roches and working at the mills

Who re being given a bowl of freshly-picked pea-pods and being ordered to shell them all so that they could be cooked and served up for dinner?

If you do, you will instinctively recall the feel of those cool green shells in your fingers as you popped them open and scooped out the row of peas inside. And how many did you manage to pop into your own mouth instead of the waiting bowl?

Glancing at a pack of what claimed to be freshly-harvested peas in a supermarket the other day, we fell into conversation with the lady next to us. Thank heaven this is still something it is easy to do when you live in Cork – strike up a chat with a complete stranger and become friends in no time at all. It’s a quality of life here that we should treasure, because it isn’t found everywhere else, not at all.

Anyway, this lady and I exclaimed over the fact that the said peas had been flown in from Kenya, and I said I could in my younger days buying them fresh as they arrived in the English Market, having been picked that very morning in the fields outside the city.

“And I can tell you that I picked those same peas,” revealed my new friend, Breda. “I grew up in Douglas village when it really was a village, and my friends and I would go out to Raffeen when the crops were ready and pick those peas for sending into the city.

“We had to be there really early in the morning – sometimes a bus would pick us up, sometimes the farmer would drive in and collect a bunch of us in his truck. It was hard work, and you didn’t get paid all that much, but we loved doing it. It was extra money you could earn for going to the pictures!”

Not that she saw that much of the pictures, Breda recalls.

“We would get paid on the Saturday morning and would head straight into town to use our hard-earned wages at the Savoy. I was so exhausted after the work that I fell fast asleep and only woke up when the film was over!”

The worst thing, she adds, was that she adored Steve McQueen and they went specially to see The Great Escape. Of which she saw nothing! “I had to go back and see it another time, and was well awake that time. He was great, Steve McQueen. You knew any film he was in, it would be great.”

Breda recalls the older days in Douglas.

“Everybody knew everybody else, and you never had to look for help if you needed it – it was always there, taken for granted that others would lend a hand. There wasn’t a fuss made about it, you just got on with it and played your part in the life of the community.”

Like most of her friends, as soon as she left school, Breda went to work in the woollen mills that played such a huge part in the life of the village. “We all went there. It was what you did.”

Yes, the huge exports of woollen products, that went all over the world, were created right here in Douglas by Breda and her friends. It was something of which they were justly proud.

Who would have thought that you would get such lovely glimpses of older days and older times when supermarket shopping? Long may the tradition of friendly chat continue here!

Now – last week Tom Jones asked if anyone could the title of a midweek slot on radio for a chilling ghost story which always ended with the sinister wish, “Pleasant dreams…” We have had several immediate responses, all of which are fascinating. Here is one sent to our Letters page by Anthony Bevan:

“Jo was asking about a radio show on RTÉ where at the end of the show someone would say ‘Goodnight now, and pleasant dreams’

“That was none other than the greatest seanchaí storyteller of all time, Eamonn Kelly. And the idea of that remark was, he was telling a ghostly story for about 20 minutes, and boy was he good at it!

“You were afraid to close your eyes in bed afterwards, as you were sure something from his story was about to come into your bedroom, brrrr…! Horror of horror, and yet we’d wait every week to hear a new ghostly story. Looking back now, he was fantastic!”

That’s a lovely evocative memory, Anthony, and thank you for sharing it with the rest of us.

Another Throwback Thursday reader, Tim Cagney racked his brains to think of the particular show, but failed to identify it.

“I’m afraid I can’t that night-time radio programme which featured scary stories, but I do recall one which dealt with mysterious happenings (scary, as well) which had Richard Wagner’s Ride Of The Valkyries as its signature tune. This, however, used to be on during daylight hours.

“Another broadcast which featured ghostly yarns used to be presented by one Michael P. O’Connor. This was mainly aimed at children, and was aired (I think) on Wednesday afternoons, in tandem with a lady named Marion King, who focussed on art and drawing, along with stories about characters called Sammy Spud and Sean Bunny.”

Gosh, Tim, who needed the posh English Listen With Mother, and its famous soothing introduction: “Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin…”? We had our own favourites here at home.

Does anyone The Glenabbey Show? It was a lunchtime favourite, enjoyed by kids rushing home from school for the ‘dinner break’ before heading back, full of nourishing potatoes or soup, maybe even suet pudding, to drowse the afternoon away at their desks.

And here is an interesting suggestion from Thomas Ring, a fervent irer of Throwback Thursday: “Fantastic stories every week. Love reading them,” he says.

“Regarding the mystery programme, nobody ever mentions AFN - American Forces Network - and here I think is the answer, a programme called The Whistler, a very spooky mystery show. My parents would listen to it regularly.

“Another exciting programme at that time was Dragnet, a police drama set in Los Angeles. I lived in a top floor flat in Dunbar Street, opposite Needham Place, at the time those shows were airing.”

Well there you are, thank-you, Thomas. Anybody else the American Forces Network back then? We could do with more memories here!

If you recall, last week we mentioned the reunion that Finbarr Buckley is organising on May 23 for all past staff of Roches Stores, and asked for your own memories of that great establishment.

Katie O’Brien re it as the central point of her childhood, visited constantly by her mother and her grandmother.

“I was always taken along too, and so was very familiar from an early age with its high counters (they seemed high to me, anyway!) and the fascinating range of things you could buy there.”

Katie recalls vividly the January and July sales, when excitement rose to fever pitch among bargain hunters. Unlike these days, when every outlet has a different offer or sale every week, those were the two big events back then. They were practical, getting rid of surplus winter goods at one, of summer stock at the other, and thrifty housewives waited for the big week to stock up on household needs.

“My mother would buy sheeting at the White Sale (was that the January one?),” says Katie. “She would get lengths of cotton, and also of a type called ‘twill’ which needed a few washes before it softened into the most wonderfully comfortable bedsheet.

“She ran up the actual sheets herself of course, on our old Singer treadle machine. Why pay more for factory-produced sheets when you can easily make them yourself?

“I still have one or two of those venerable twill sheets, now very thin and worn, but I won’t part with them. I wonder can you still buy twill sheeting?”

Katie and her friends made thorough nuisances of themselves, she recalls, buying half and even quarter yards of marked-down dress fabric to make clothes for their dolls.

“I’m sure the staff were fed up with us, preferring adult customers who bought several yards at a time, but they never actually refused us.”

In teenage years, she re spending a lot of time at the knitting wool counter, “where you could get lovely thick yarn in a huge range of colours, ideal for making those bulky sweaters that were fashionable at the time”.

Who recalls the exciting opening of Cork’s first supermarket towards the back of the store?

“It was such a new idea,” recalls Katie. “My mother would go down and buy everything she needed, instead of walking from one shop to another as she used to do, and then they would keep it in boxes until one of my brothers would drive down to the access point on Merchant’s Quay and pick it up for her.”

Life had suddenly become so much easier for the hard-pressed Cork housewife!

Brian Cronin has revealed a strong family link to the early days of Roches Stores.

“My grandfather, Thomas Vincent Quillinan, came from a family of seven children in Limerick. He went into the drapery business at a young age, and after a few years learning the trade in Limerick, he moved first to Todds in Dublin, and then to Cork.

“I gather that the move to Cork was influenced by the fact that he was by this time a skilled oarsman and since rowing was a very popular sport at the turn of the century, he was very sought after by other firms.”

Brian continues: “He then took up a position with Grants in Patrick Street and got experience in all departments of the store. He was the ‘stroke’ in Lee Rowing Club, which won the coveted Leandor Cup in 1902 against strong European competition, and was subsequently offered a position by the Queens Old Castle on the Grand Parade.

“During his time with the Queens Old Castle he travelled a lot as a buyer, and went to London regularly on buying trips. It was while travelling on the Innisfallen and onward by train to London, that he met a man called William Roche. They became close friends.

“William Roche at that time had a furniture shop off Patrick Street which he operated with a Mr James Keating. He and my grandfather decided to acquire a shop in Patrick Street in 1917.

“They both had a little money put aside in their savings s and between them decided to open this shop which was originally called The White House, and which stocked clothes, and all household goods in addition to furniture.

“My grandfather invested £500 and William Roche £450. Roches Stores, where Tom Quillinan was chief buyer for many years, became an immediate success.”

Brian, that is another great piece fitted into the jigsaw of Cork history! Tell us more, do, of your grandfather and his many years both with Roches and in Cork events.

The rest of you, come out with your memories of Roches Stores and of your own childhoods.

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