The labels on the bottles of stout
As a young lad Joe's brother worked in his uncle's bar in Inch, Co.Wexford. He was only about seven years old, and had to drop out of school to work because the family needed the extra money.
The stout was delivered in big barrels and had to be transferred to bottles. Before they did this the stout was to be tested for freshness. Joe's brother had the job of tasting the beer before it went into the bottles.
He also had to wash out the bottles so they could be used again for the next time. At seven years of age this was a mighty task. There used to be a law that whenever a man got hit by a car on his way home from the bar, the pub would be held liable. However evidence was needed. It was usual for a bottle to be found in the pocket of these unfortunates which they had bought to drink when they got home.
The pub's label on the bottle was the give-away. So to get around this, one of Joe's jobs was to remove the labels off the bottles before they were sold for take-away.
Perhaps the punch-line to this story is that things have changed since the fifties. People got up to antics that they would never get away with today, and as for seven year olds working in bars, well, it simply wouldn't happen now, but it did then and it was accepted.
The story of the dead baby.
Joe and his brother slept in the room next to their parents. Late one evening they heard the mother telling her husband that she had heard of a girl who had given birth to a baby outside of wedlock and it had died. She had buried it but nobody knew where.
The next day Joe had been sent off on his own to collect the kindling for the fire in the woods at the back of the house. It was an old landlords estate, the large house had been abandoned and the grounds had been left an unattended wasteland.
As he was bending down to pick up some twigs, he saw the shadow of a face peeking up out of the earth beneath him. The face of a baby. It was covered in green moss and was definitely not living, the glassy staring eyes and pale almost white complexion being the give-away. He stood there in a state of horror for a moment and then ran home as fast as his legs could carry him to tell his mother what he had found. She went back to investigate with a possy of locals. It turned out to be the face of a marble statue that had once belonged to the big house. It was too late for young Joe though, he had already been traumatised by his find. This showed in his demeanor as he animatedly related the saga. As I laughed with the shock of hearing the punch-line I realised by the look on his face that these stories were not invented, they had really happened, to him. What amazed me though was it triggered my own memory of finding a dead baby on the steps of a church in Limerick as I walked past one day with my Grandmother. I can't have been older than about six, about the same age as Joe had found the statue.
I love the synchronicity in this and was possibly why Joe and I got along so well. The sixties weren't so different to the fifties back then. Maybe a little more advanced technologically, and men had landed on the moon by '63, but he was talking of an era that I can relate to well.
The stories in themselves seem fairly straightforward, but Joe breathed an animosity into them, which could only be instilled by a natural born shanchai. Joe is one for certain.
As a young lad Joe's brother worked in his uncle's bar in Inch, Co.Wexford. He was only about seven years old, and had to drop out of school to work because the family needed the extra money.
The stout was delivered in big barrels and had to be transferred to bottles. Before they did this the stout was to be tested for freshness. Joe's brother had the job of tasting the beer before it went into the bottles.
He also had to wash out the bottles so they could be used again for the next time. At seven years of age this was a mighty task. There used to be a law that whenever a man got hit by a car on his way home from the bar, the pub would be held liable. However evidence was needed. It was usual for a bottle to be found in the pocket of these unfortunates which they had bought to drink when they got home.
The pub's label on the bottle was the give-away. So to get around this, one of Joe's jobs was to remove the labels off the bottles before they were sold for take-away.
Perhaps the punch-line to this story is that things have changed since the fifties. People got up to antics that they would never get away with today, and as for seven year olds working in bars, well, it simply wouldn't happen now, but it did then and it was accepted.
The story of the dead baby.
Joe and his brother slept in the room next to their parents. Late one evening they heard the mother telling her husband that she had heard of a girl who had given birth to a baby outside of wedlock and it had died. She had buried it but nobody knew where.
The next day Joe had been sent off on his own to collect the kindling for the fire in the woods at the back of the house. It was an old landlords estate, the large house had been abandoned and the grounds had been left an unattended wasteland.
As he was bending down to pick up some twigs, he saw the shadow of a face peeking up out of the earth beneath him. The face of a baby. It was covered in green moss and was definitely not living, the glassy staring eyes and pale almost white complexion being the give-away. He stood there in a state of horror for a moment and then ran home as fast as his legs could carry him to tell his mother what he had found. She went back to investigate with a possy of locals. It turned out to be the face of a marble statue that had once belonged to the big house. It was too late for young Joe though, he had already been traumatised by his find. This showed in his demeanor as he animatedly related the saga. As I laughed with the shock of hearing the punch-line I realised by the look on his face that these stories were not invented, they had really happened, to him. What amazed me though was it triggered my own memory of finding a dead baby on the steps of a church in Limerick as I walked past one day with my Grandmother. I can't have been older than about six, about the same age as Joe had found the statue.
I love the synchronicity in this and was possibly why Joe and I got along so well. The sixties weren't so different to the fifties back then. Maybe a little more advanced technologically, and men had landed on the moon by '63, but he was talking of an era that I can relate to well.
The stories in themselves seem fairly straightforward, but Joe breathed an animosity into them, which could only be instilled by a natural born shanchai. Joe is one for certain.
It's a good thing you're writing these stories down. Life was so different in the old days, and much harder than it is now.
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