Down Memory Lane: Early ‘40s an uncomplicated time

By John Hughes, native of Cappavicar, Castlebar, now resident in Cobh, Co. Cork, who grew up in Mayo in the 1940s

PART TWO

I think back from the vantage point of today on my life as a young boy in Cappavicar, Co. Mayo, in the early 1940s - how simple and uncomplicated life was back then. But the thing is, we didn’t know any different, that was our life then. No running water, no electricity for many years, no car, naturally, just a bike that my mother owned.

I was the second eldest of five children, four boys and a girl. My dad, Jack, who had grown up in Mayo, was working in England, so my mother had to keep the show on the road.

Remember, this was wartime. Michael Devaney from Breaffy had a shop there and he used to export eggs. Once a week this travelling shop would come around, with a dray, I suppose you’d call it really, four wheeled with a horse. He’d have everything on that; flour, sugar, everything you could possibly need. He’d take my mother’s eggs - my mother had a fleet of hens - and the eggs would be exchanged for whatever you wanted from the mobile shop. It was a type of barter, I suppose. Money didn’t mean much at that time.

For light, we depended on the paraffin oil lamp. There was an oil lamp on the wall and we would fill it every evening. It would provide light for whatever was going on in the house until bedtime. To keep it topped up, we would have to go to Mrs. Fair, who had a shop in Keelogues - we lived in the parish of Keelogues, actually. There, you’d get your can of paraffin oil, bring it back and have it on standby for whenever it was needed. I was sometimes given the job of getting this can of oil after school.

She was a lady, Mrs. Fair, and her daughter, Frances, and son, Robbie, were all lovely people. I remember the big container of paraffin oil in the shop, and Mrs. Fair would fill the container as required.

One day when I paid for my oil, I had a few bob left over. There were all kinds of sweets in the shop: penny bars, gobstoppers and what not. So there was a big decision to be made. I saw three little bars wrapped up and they looked good value. I said I’d have two packets of them, which I bought and put in my pocket. I decided on my way home to sample one. When I opened it up, I discovered I had bought two packets of hairclips!

I have had a great love all my life of reading and writing. How did that come about? It’s simple. Lots of families like ours, who had spent some time in England, were forced to leave and come back to live with relations here in Ireland when the war broke out. In some cases, like ours, the father of the family went back again to work in England once the family were settled in at home.

A good friend of mine, John Walsh, came back from Coventry. His Mam and Dad used to send him loads of lovely comics: the Dandy, the Beano, Fran Hopper, Kit Carson, Buck Jones. As soon as he was finished with them, he would give them to me. And how I would look forward to reading them, all the stories that we would go through together - Black Bob, Desperate Dan, Keyhole Kate. All those stories! Black Bob was the dog. I had such a love of those stories, I will always remember them.

I remember the families who lived near me in Cappavicar: the Kellehers, the Bowens and, most of all, Delia Welsh. God rest her and God love her. She used to go to Turlough every Friday. We would be waiting in her house with her mother for her to come back on her bike. The comics would be handed to me and she’d bring the newspapers from Turlough too.

Imagine me, a young fella at that time reading the Empire News and the Stories of the Western People! My love of reading has stayed with me to this day.