Sixty years of light

This year of Our Lord 2018 marks the anniversary of the coming of electricity to our parish.

This development heralded significant changes in rural life both in this and surrounding parishes.

To use an apt metaphor, it shed a light on so many things.

In the beginning of 1958 the coming of electricity was announced.

Men came in cars and vans to canvass for households to “sign up” to have the electricity connected.

Initially the uptake was small. Fear of the unknown was a factor.

The cost was a consideration and the term “ground rent” sent a chill through the older people.

But the canvassers were resourceful!

A few weeks later the priests of the parish began to encourage people to sign up. From the pulpit and on the ground their words were listened to and a follow up canvass was more successful.

Our household signed and I remember the day that a man came with a slender red and white pole to mark the spot where the big pole would be erected to carry the power lines. Very soon gangs of workmen were covering the parish digging deep holes into which the massive poles erected.

These poles had been towed into position by a local man with his sturdy horse and “traces”

At the same time men started to call to offer to ‘do the wiring.’

A price was agreed....fifteen shillings per light and one pound and five shillings for a plug.

It was all new terminology for everyone and money being scarce the very minimum of fittings were installed.

And then came the ‘switch on’.

On a day in May I recall most vividly looking towards the house and seeing the new gable lamp fully alight, what a wonder!

What a change to see the kitchen aglow from a tiny switch on the wall.

Throughout the following weeks and months van salesmen called to every house to sell electric radios, washing machines, smoothing irons and electric kettles, again to people with meagre resources and ongoing fears.

There were whispered stories of scorching, shocks etc. but the salesmen were patient and over a period of a year or two nearly everyone had a new wonderful labour saving and convenient appliance.

Rural electrification empowered the countryside and its people.

It laid foundations on which every innovation in the following decades could be availed of.

It changed the methods of centuries and enhanced the lives of that generation to an unbelievable level

All of us are ongoing beneficiaries.

James McCarrick. Cloonboniffe.