JOAN WRITES HER OWN STORY
IN THE LEAD UP TO CULTURE NIGHT ON SEPTEMBER 16 THIS YEAR, THE CORKMAN IS SHARING THE WORK OF LOCAL AMATEUR WRITERS. THIS WEEK IT’S JOAN O’CALLAGHAN, WHO HAS WRITTEN A MEMOIR OF GROWING UP N CORK
IWAS born in 1958 and grew up in James St Mitchelstown. My brother Tom came into this world in 1960. Mammy was forty when she had me and forty two when she had Tom. My father suffered a brain haemorrhage when I was six and my brother was four.He was brain damaged as a result and was uninhibited and aggressive. My mother couldn’t look after him at home so he had to be hospitalised in St Stephens hospital in Glanmire.
He spent eleven years shuffling up and down block 4 before suffering a stroke which killed him. Thus my mother had to take on the role of single parent and reared us on her own with courage and without an ounce of self pity.
Mammy was an excellent dressmaker and spent sixteen hour days working at her sewing machine. She made beautiful dresses and coats and did many alterations. Times were hard in the sixties and money was scarce when we were growing up.
I remember my mother rented a television and all the James St kids and some from Georges St filled our kitchen every evening watching this new fangled machine. Our council house had a skylight in the bedroom upstairs and when there was a dance in the Mayflower ballroom in Georges St the music wafted towards us and we could hear Maurice Mulcahy and other popular showbands.
James St was the most agricultural street in the town having two fields in the middle of it. One field was known as Stantons field , the one opposite was Saich’s field and had cows grazing on it.
We kids spent all of the summer days playing in the street. We played ‘pickie’ and other St games like ‘ Wallflowers’ and we played with marbles. If the fire brigade siren went off all the children would run to where the fire was and watch smoke and flames shooting in to the sky. One year we decided to have a witches’ parade at Halloween.
All the children dressed up as witches and we paraded up and down the street singing the song ‘ We are the witches of Mitchelstown’. During one of the Christmases that followed, all the boys got nurses outfits from Santa and Christmas day was spent with all the cowboys chasing the nurses around the street!
My brother Tom was very adventurous and regularly disappeared down town. A search party was usually organised in the evenings and Tom would eventually be found , brought home and soundly beaten.
We played hurling and football in Stanton’s field in the summer time. Those were the days when the tar would melt on the road and it would stick to our socks and sandals. In the 1960’s a group of Mitchelstown adults came together to form a committee with the aim of building a swimming pool. It was to be an outdoor pool and was open during July and Augusst. Later a toddlers pool was added.
My brother Tom learned to dive in the toddlers pool! Local children had endless fun in the summer time. Swimming lessons and life saving lessons were iniated all thanks to local effort.
We had the privilege of living next door to Paddy O’ Mahony. Paddy was self educated and could speak French and a smattering of German. I learned a lot from him about English Literature. I loved to listen to him talk about Irish history, He seemed to know a lot about everything.
The library in Mitchelstown was in George’s St. It was upstairs in the council offices. Children couldn,t join until they were seven years old . I was delighted to reach the age when I could join as books were scarce at home.I remained a member until I became an adult.
Years passed. We went from primary to secondary school, me to the Presentation Convent and Tom to the Christian Brothers. In those days many boys and girls left school at fourteen and went to work in the creamery or the bacon factory.
There was practically full employment in the town because of the presence of the two factories. In fifth year I started going with a friend to the dances in the Mayflower on a Sunday night. We were the only girls in our class allowed to go dancing and on Monday morning all the other girls would be all agog to know what had transpired the night before.
Soon the Leaving Cert was looming before us – a minority of us would go to college, the vast majority of girls would do a commercial course at the local technical school and subsequently got employment in the banks and offices. Some did nursing but nobody in our class became a nun.
Next year 2015 it will be forty years since we did our Leaving Cert. A renunion is being planned and we’ll all have a chance to catch up and reminisce about our youth.
The James St kids are now in our mid to late fifties. A lot has happened in the intervening years but I’ll always remember with fondness and gratitude my childhood and youth in James St Mitchelstown.