Shopkeeper shanes mall cleanup has become a habit
SHANE Rodgers is known as ‘The keeper of the Mall’ in Castlebar. Religiously the 72-year-old undertakes a litter pick of the green and in pre-recession times would gather as many as two or three bags of rubbish in a day, writes Tom Gillespie. Some years ago Castlebar Chamber of Commerce honoured Shane for his environmental work in keeping the Mall tidy.
A former employee of Castlebar Bacon Company, Shane runs the family grocery and DVD rental business on Spencer Street. Shane gave me a history of the business.
He said: “The business started in 1895. It was owned by Beckett originally and he leased it to my grandmother for 10 bob a week and the ground rent on top of that to Lord Lucan was £11 a year. We subsequently bought out the ground rent some years ago through Michael Joe Egan, who was Lucan’s agent.
“The business started out as a bakery. It was during the war and they are doing fairly well. They were the first in town to get the electric. The bread was sold in Tourmakeady and places like that and Seamie Swift’s father was in charge of the transport, one or two vans, and subsequently he was appointed as commander over the transport section of the Old IRA. The bread was commandeered a couple of times in Tourmakeady by the fellows on the run but they got a chit to say it had been commandeered. They should have claimed it back but they didn’t as they had to go to Dublin to get it and it was too much trouble. They didn’t bother.
“My mother married my father, John Rodgers, in 1940 and I was born in 1942. My mother, Alice Gavin, took over the shop in the 1950s. We were living in 15 Spencer Street and we moved here around 1950 and my mother got stuck in and started running the business.
'Subsequently the roof had to be repaired on the place and that was the landlord’s responsibility but when asked to do it he said he hadn’t the money so my mother bought the place for £1,100 and it cost her £1,200 to do it up. It was a general shop.”
Shane finished secondary school in 1959 and was employed by Castlebar Bacon Company for 13 or 14 years. “I was in charge of the payments to the farmers for livestock. When I started in 1959 there were 560 on the clock and there were 40 besides, like van men. They were killing 1,200 cattle a week and it was all manual and about 1,000 pigs. They also had a poultry section and they used to have turkeys at Christmas. They had a chicken hatchery and they used to hatch the chickens in the spring and early summer. Later they started killing and selling their own chickens.
“I left the factory in 1971. My parents died and I had to make up my mind then about what I was going to do. I subsequently went back for about six months when they were very busy. After that I had to concentrate on the shop.
“The shop was going fairly well as there were none of these big supermarkets. We did have Paddy Hoban’s and Bests, who later took over Dunnes. Spencer Street was a busy place then. Now we have five of the multinational supermarkets in the town and it is not a big town. We would be one of the oldest family run shops in the town. Paul Scriney would be another family run shop. We are a dying breed. It is very difficult.
“In the ‘80s I got into the video business. That took a few years to build but when it came right, it came right. Now it is all Netflix and downloading. Things have changed dramatically. The cost of the video set up was fairly big. A single tape used to cost £40. We still do the DVDs and also the internet, Western Union and we do copying, and my son Paul changes the VHS onto DVD.
“The shop is busy, but not busy enough. We open at 7.30 a.m. until 11 p.m. On Saturday and Sunday we cut back a few hours. We will have to change in the next year or so. We will be looking at come projects in the coming year.”
Shane’s son and daughter, Paul and Alice, work in the shop and they have three or four girls employed.
Keeping the Mall clean, he said has now become a habit. “This time of the year you only need to do it once a week. Before the recession hit I was picking up two or three bags of rubbish in the day. Now it has all changed, maybe one or two a week.”