Happy Easter to all readers at home and abroad
ATHEA IN THE NEW YORK PARADE
Councillor John Sheahan, Ballyguiltenane, pictured with the Athea representatives Mike Ahern, Michelle Ahern, Megan Ahern and Jared Cline in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in New York
Athea Tidy Towns -Team Limerick Clean-up
We will be taking part in the Team Limerick Clean up on Good Friday March 30th. Registration at Con Colbert Hall at 9am. Anyone with litter pickers are asked to please bring them along as litter pickers are limited this year. Rubbish bags will be collected from Athea GAA car park on Friday evening. We are hoping that all roads approaching the village will be litter picked on this day so if you would like to make a difference to your area and spring clean our roads, please come along on Saturday morning.
Daffodil Day
We regret that due to circumstances beyond our control it was not possible to collect on Daffodil Day. The collection will now take place on Friday, April 6th. Please support this great cause.
Marie Keating Foundation
We will have a specialist cancer nurse from the Marie Keating foundation outside the pharmacy on Thursday March 29th from 11am to 3pm. She will be giving free advice and consultations to anyone with any cancer related worries or queries. It is a great service to be able to avail of for free.
End of an Era?
By Domhnall de Barra
So sorry to hear that Rose in Brouder’s Shop is closing down this week. It is another nail in the coffin of the small shop in our community and a sign of the changing times in rural Ireland. There aren’t many places left where you can go in and buy your groceries over the counter and I’m afraid we are heading for the time when the “counter” will be but a memory. Talking of memories, the news brought to mind a time when I was young and the place was littered with shops, even out the country. There were a few in my area and they evoke different memories. Johanna (Pats) Woulfe had a shop just over the Cratloe road. It could be seen out our back window and I was often sent there as a child. I remember the smell of paraffin, or lamp oil as we called it, as you walked in the door. The barrel was kept it in a little shed by the house and it had a little tap on it. We would take our can, an oblong shape with a flat top and an opening with a screw on cork, and she would fill the can with a gallon of oil with the assistance of a funnel. For some reason there was always a bit of spillage; hence the smell of oil. For a youngster it was not easy to carry home as the can was heavy and a couple of ditches had to be negotiated as we always took the short cut through the fields. Oil was a vital commodity for the lamps which were the only source of light before electricity. Another item she kept was common soap. This came in a long block and Johanna would cut off as much as you wanted. It was terribly hard but was very good for the washing of clothes when used with a washboard. Another item in great demand was tobacco. In those days most of the men smoked pipes and bought their tobacco in quarter or half quarter pounds. Like the soap it also came in a block and the desired amount would be cut off. This then had to be prepared before it could be put into the pipe for smoking. A sharp penknife was essential to pare the tobacco in narrow strips into the palm of the hand. When there was a sufficient amount for a fill the penknife was put away and the slices were crushed between two palms until they were almost turned to dust. The filling of the pipe was also a trade in itself. Too loose and the flame would run through it and too tight and it would be impossible to draw the air through it. The old lads were experts at it and didn’t mind how long it took for the perfect fill. “Bendigo” was the most popular and sometimes the only tobacco available until the arrival of brands like “Clarke’s Perfect Plug”. Everything in the shop came in sacks, chests or boxes and had to be weighed and wrapped for the customer. The wrapping was usually brown paper tied with string that hung from a reel suspended from the ceiling. Things like sweets would be wrapped in what we called a “tóisín” (spelling probably wrong). It was a sheet of paper twisted into a cone shape with a twist at the bottom to seal it. Sweets could be bought by the penny worth. You could get three Bell’s toffee or six “Milseán Uí Gráda” or one “Peggy’s Leg” (a candy bar). It sounds cheap but in those days pennies were hard to come by. My grandmother would send me for ten Woodbines, a box of matches and a bar for myself and I would get a halfpenny change out of a shilling; happy days!
Johanna’s wasn’t the only shop around. There was one at the cross in Knocknasna owned by Jess Horan and there were two more, one each side of Cratloe creamery. Tommy and Peggy Leahy had one on the Athea side and Birdie Collins had one on the Abbeyfeale side. Collins’ shop closed when I was still young but Willy Healy, who worked at the creamery and was also a blacksmith, opened a shop just back the Abbeyfeale road at the crossroads. It was handy for people to do a bit of shopping when they went to the creamery but money seldom changed hands. A book was kept and accounts were settled at the end of the month when the creamery cheque came in. I can’t see Lidl, Aldi, Super Valu or Tesco operating a scheme like that!.
Things were beginning to change from the ’sixties on and, with more transport available, people began to do more shopping in towns. The closing of rural creameries was the last straw and one by one the small rural shops disappeared as they could not compete and found it difficult to make a living without the morning trade from the milk suppliers. I suppose it is easy for me to look back nostalgically at those days but time marches on and nothing stands still. Are we better off for all the progress or has the demise of the small shop taken away a valuable social as well as commercial outlet? The small shop was the centre of the community.
It is my fervent hope that Brouder’s shop won’t stay closed for long and that somebody will take it over. If not, our village will be all the poorer. Like the saying goes: “you’ll never miss the water ‘til the well runs dry”.
Best wishes to Rose in whatever path life takes her from here.