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TRANSCRIPT OF JACK BENTON’S TWO INTERVIEWS ON BALBRIGGAN.NET
Tony Healy: Welcome to our first interviews on Balbriggan.net and today we’re going to be talking to Jack Benton, em Jack Benton is a well known photographer in the town em Jack will today be talking about his time when he was working in the cinema. There was two cinemas at the time, there was `The Strand Cinema’ in the Square and there was also `The Savoy’ on Dublin Street. So Jack will be talking about his times there, and then he’ll go on to talk about the times when he used to drive the cattle up the main street from Chapel Street all the way up the town to Market Green. So sit back and relax for the next ten minutes or so and listen to Jack Benton.
Jack Benton: This is Jack Benton on Balbriggan.net. And here is some stories of my time as a young fellow in Balbriggan 70 years ago.
Tony Healy: Ok so its Jack Benton here and Tony Healy and Jack is just after giving me a book about the cinemas of, is it North County Dublin?
Jack Benton: Dublin and North County Dublin.
Tony Healy: Dublin and North County Dublin. And do you know, did you say you knew the people who wrote it or?
Jack Benton: Yeah those two persons.
Tony Healy: Eh George Kearns and Patrick Maguire.
Jack Benton: Yeah its the history of all the cinemas in North County Dublin and Dublin.
Tony Healy: Ok so you remember, so what were the two cinemas in Balbriggan?
Jack Benton: The first was The Strand.
Tony Healy: The Strand.
Jack Benton: And the second one was The Savoy.
Tony Healy: The Savoy ok.
Jack Benton: And The Strand was opened in 1935.
Tony Healy: 1935, right.
Jack Benton: It was opened by Fr. O’Doherty who was one of the priests here in Balbriggan.
Tony Healy: Right.
Jack Benton: And they opened it to make money to build the school up in Chapel Street, St. Peter and Paul’s School.
Tony Healy: Right.
Jack Benton: And the first film shown in it was `Tell me Tonight’, Jan Kiepura was the singer. I think he was a Swedish Tenor or something like that.
Tony Healy: We’d have to do a research on that yeah.
Jack Benton: And eh he used to sing in the films, [Jack breaks into song] ``Become never again, if you will hush this song I sing you, tell me tonight’’, if I could sing, ha, ha.
Tony Healy: You see now I’m a photographer, ha, ha.
Jack Benton: Ha, ha, yeah. But eh Fr. O’Doherty when we used, I’d be only very young, about 7 or 8, and when the Matinee would be on a Sunday, now he’d get up and he’d say ``Now Children before we start, we have very important announcement to make, we have a Cartoon for you today and its Michael the Mouse’. He never . . .
Tony Healy: He was too nice to say Mickey Mouse.
Jack Benton: He was too nice to say Mickey Mouse.
Tony Healy: Oh my God.
Jack Benton: But before that there was silent, I seen a silent film in it. That was the first talking picture shown in it.
Tony Healy: Right but there was silent.
Jack Benton: Yeah. But there was silent pictures shown before that, eh and the first film I seen there in a silent film, I was about six year old, was `All Quiet on the Western Front’.
Tony Healy: Wow.
Jack Benton: And it was shown, a fellow called Victor Vernon used to show the pictures, and he had a van in High Street.
Tony Healy: Ok.
Jack Benton: That drove the electricity or . . .
Tony Healy: Generator.
Jack Benton: A generator and that, you know.
Tony Healy: Oh my God.
Jack Benton: And it went on fire one night.
Tony Healy: Ha, ha, people wanted their money back probably.
Jack Benton: And Sally Moran or Sally Brennan now, she’s ninety now.
Tony Healy: Recently actually.
Jack Benton: Yeah, she was an usherette in it, along with Mag Gosson. They were the first to usherettes in it.
Tony Healy: Great.
Jack Benton: And eh Tom Corcoran and eh Nally, eh Tom Corcoran and Tommy Carton were the first two operators, used to show the pictures.
Tony Healy: Wow.
Jack Benton: And eh about ten years later I ended up showing the pictures in it.
Tony Healy: You were working yourself?
Jack Benton: Oh yeah I worked there.
Tony Healy: Oh.
Jack Benton: I worked there for three years showing the pictures.
Tony Healy: Oh brilliant.
Jack Benton: With Tommy Carton.
Tony Healy: Great, actually that’s a very interesting thing that you said there about Sally Moran. Her daughter is June Ashby, and June is a big viewer of Balbriggan.net so she’ll be delighted to hear about her mother Sally.
Jack Benton: Yeah, we used to show the pictures. Then eh when the other one, cinema, I served me time down in Dixon’s as a Mechanic in 1942, I went in there, and in 1943 or 1944 they built a cinema up in Dublin Street.
Tony Healy: Where the Combined Clubs is now.
Jack Benton: Where the Combined Clubs is, and eh I got a job in that because you couldn’t get electricity because the war was still on.
Tony Healy: 1942 of course.
Jack Benton: Yeah so the garage I worked in supplied an engine and generator.
Tony Healy: And you could bring it up.
Jack Benton: So I got the job eh going up at night and starting the engine generator. And then I ended up showing the pictures.
Tony Healy: Ah brilliant.
Jack Benton: And the first picture there was eh, eh Phantom of the Opera.
Tony Healy: Right. And that was 1942 was it?
Jack Benton: No it would be 1944.
Tony Healy: 1944 sorry.
Jack Benton: And the first picture was Phantom of the Opera with Claude Reins in it.
Tony Healy: And were you in charge at that stage? Were you doing the projecting at that stage?
Jack Benton: No eh Linus Tolan was the Head Projectionist.
Tony Healy: Linus?
Jack Benton: Linus yeah.
Tony Healy: Tolan?
Jack Benton: Yeah he lived in Dublin street, and he went to America afterwards. And eh I got the job then showing the pictures.
Tony Healy: Great, so during this time were both cinemas open at the same time?
Jack Benton: Only for a while.
Tony Healy: There wouldn’t have been enough clearly.
Jack Benton: The other one closed after about a year or two.
Tony Healy: What was that The Strand?
Jack Benton: Yeah, yeah. The Strand closed after a year or two.
Tony Healy: Was it quite a small cinema was it?
Jack Benton: Ah no it would hold I suppose 400 or more.
Tony Healy: Really!
Jack Benton: Yeah.
Tony Healy: So that’s where up until recently the Town Hall was?
Jack Benton: Yeah, you know you went in through the Town Commissioners, it was in at the back.
Tony Healy: All right and 400 it could hold.
Jack Benton: Oh it would hold 400.
Tony Healy: And just one cinema, not like nowadays where there’s . . .
Jack Benton: Oh no just one. There would be a matinee of a Sunday at 3 o’clock.
Tony Healy: Hmm.
Jack Benton: And sometimes a matinee of a Saturday. But most of it was night time from eh half eight every night.
Tony Healy: Every night?
Jack Benton: Every night, you know.
Tony Healy: Right.
Jack Benton: And eh it was eh, what was it, truppence to get into the matinee.
Tony Healy: I was just going to ask you that.
Jack Benton: Yeah truppence.
Tony Healy: And was it dearer in the evening?
Jack Benton: Eh in the evening time it was eight pence, a shilling and one and fourpence.
Tony Healy: You’re memory is fantastic, you know like going back to the 40s, and I think I cant remember . . .
Jack Benton: When you were working there and doing it you remember. I mean I was working that time, you figure it out, I was working in a garage from nine o’ clock until six.
Tony Healy: Yeah.
Jack Benton: I was coming home and get something to eat. Go down there at half seven to start up the engine for the generator. And show the pictures maybe until eleven or half eleven at night, you known.
Tony Healy: Tidy up.
Jack Benton: Tidy up and get the films ready for the next night and that, and doing that seven days a week. And is was up early the next morning.
Tony Healy: And yous give out to me for doing too much.
Jack Benton: Exactly, and eh yeah but I mean I paid for it after, I ended up with an ulcer, you know.
Tony Healy: Yeah.
Jack Benton: And I never stopped working Tony, I went round with newspapers for Mrs White.
Tony Healy: Great, and where was Mrs White, was that on The Square was it?
Jack Benton: On The Square.
Tony Healy: Was that Bernie Whites Shop?
Jack Benton: Bernie Whites Shop yeah, down with his mother with papers. I used to work with an old farmer and I 10 year old for eh, drove cattle from Chapel Street.
Tony Healy: Yes.
Jack Benton: He’d a farm up there about 8 cows, up through the middle of the town.
Tony Healy: Ok.
Jack Benton: And up, right up to Hampton.
Tony Healy: And you were bringing the cattle up were you?
Jack Benton: Up there in the evening time, I’d collect them at seven in the morning, drive them down through the town, up to the dairy. He’d milk them, and they’d give me me breakfast. Eh bread and jam and tea.
Tony Healy: Right.
Jack Benton: And eh then I’d put the milk into the cans, little three quart cans as they called them. Do you know the billycan, the little billycan. Did you ever make the tea in them, you know.
Tony Healy: I think I know them yeah.
Jack Benton: There’s a lid on it and you take the lid off, you could use the lid and boil the can. Where have you been Tony?
Tony Healy: Ha, ha, ha.
Jack Benton: You know, you never seen a billycan?
Tony Healy: I never seen a billycan no. And when you say the dairy is that the dairy that would have been on Hampton Street opposite Laragh there? Wasn’t there a dairy across the road.
Jack Benton: Ah there was two dairy’s up there?
Tony Healy: But that’s not the one you went to, no?
Jack Benton: No the one I’m talking about is eh, you know Chapel Street, you go up Chapel Street.
Tony Healy: Yes.
Jack Benton: Right.
Tony Healy: Yes.
Jack Benton: Eh do you know where my brother lives? No.
Tony Healy: I don’t but the school is on the right.
Jack Benton: Ah no this side of the school.
Tony Healy: Oh this side of the school.
Jack Benton: You’re only up about three quarters of the way.
Tony Healy: All right ok.
Jack Benton: You wouldn’t be up 50 yards. Where they’re after building the new flats.
Tony Healy: I know it.
Jack Benton: Well just above that.
Tony Healy: Right.
Jack Benton: He had a little farm dairy there.
Tony Healy: Oh.
Jack Benton: And I’d drive them, I’d pick them up in the mornings, drive them down through the town. He’d milk them and then when I’d get me breakfast, they’d put the mild into the cans then, a little billycan was about, hold about a pint or a pint and a half.
Tony Healy: Right.
Jack Benton: And it had a lid on it. And you’d have them hanging out of one another going down the street.
Tony Healy: God.
Jack Benton: You know and you’d have to leave them down gently so you wouldn’t spill them.
Tony Healy: And how would you be supporting them?
Jack Benton: They’d be just one hanging out of the other. You’d have one big one.
Tony Healy: All right.
Jack Benton: That would hold about a quart of milk.
Tony Healy: Ok.
Jack Benton: And it had this hook on it, and you see you hung the others down the side.
Tony Healy: And you hung the others onto that. But you’d have to walk fairly gently or it would be spilling would it?
Jack Benton: Why do you think I walk so well now.
Tony Healy: Absolutely oh my God that’s great I must start getting one of those billycans myself.
Jack Benton: And you’ve never seen fellows making tea at the side of the road, the workers, the council workers.
Tony Healy: Yeah, yeah.
Jack Benton: With a little can.
Tony Healy: I know it, that’s a billycan is it?
Jack Benton: That’s a billycan.
Tony Healy: Well I never knew that.
Jack Benton: Yeah a billycan.
Tony Healy: Wow.
Jack Benton: And then when he was finished, I delivered the mild to Drogheda Street, I’d about maybe 10 to do.
Tony Healy: Yeah.
Jack Benton: I’d start in Chapel Street, go on down, down Mill Street, come up here, and eh up Dublin Street to the Market, opposite the Credit Union. One of them houses there, that was about the distance I went.
Tony Healy: Right.
Jack Benton: And come back, and he’d have the cows ready then to go out.
Tony Healy: And this was all going down the main street was it?
Jack Benton: This was up in Chapel Street.
Tony Healy: Yeah but when you came down?
Jack Benton: And then you’d go up to eh, when the cattle were finished, I’d bring them up Chapel Street, another field up there.
Tony Healy: Hmm.
Jack Benton: Just as you go up Chapel Street, by the school now.
Tony Healy: Yeah, yeah.
Jack Benton: About 100 yards a field in there. And I’d put them in there, right.
Tony Healy: Right.
Jack Benton: And then I’d leave there and come back down and into the place again, and then clean out the shed maybe. And then go home and I’d get ready and go to school. And get the lard bet out of you then.
Jack Benton: That’s it for today, we’ll have more for you within the next few days, keep tuned in.
** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** **
Tony Healy: Welcome to our second instalment of Jack Benton Remembers in today’s episode Jack recalls his schooldays. He also talks about time, and the lack of watches in Balbriggan. He goes on to talk about his friend Billy Dowling, and also Christie Coyle, he also mentions Paddy Fitzmonds and he reminisses on his days as a messenger with Dillon’s Grocery Shop. Em Jack then goes on to talk about times they used to go up to Gormanston with Nellie Reid and then he finishes of today’s episode by talking about how they used to walk to Skerries. And he’ll tell you the reason they walked there. Enjoy.
Jack Benton: And then I’d leave there and come back down and into the place again, and then clean out the shed maybe. And then go home and I’d get ready and go to school. And get the lard bet out of you then because you were late for school. That’s a fact. He used to have the door locked. There was three or four of us.
Tony Healy: And this was St. Peter and Paul’s is it?
Jack Benton: Yeah.
Tony Healy: This where you were going to school?
Jack Benton: No the old school.
Tony Healy: Oh it was on the other side of the road further, I know it, I know it.
Jack Benton: That school. Well you see at the time most fellows were doing messenger boys in shops.
Tony Healy: Yeah.
Jack Benton: You know, every shop had a messenger boy. And you weren’t doing it just for money for sweets or that. You were doing that because it was needed. I mean you’d be getting three shillings a week. But the maybe my father was paying rent of one and sixpence a week.
Tony Healy: So that went great towards that.
Jack Benton: Yeah. And you see you had to be in school at half nine. And it would be ten or quarter past. You come up running to the door, and shut. And here would be three or four of us standing in the hall waiting, you know.
Tony Healy: And what would happen to yous?
Jack Benton: He’d just, get inside, and eh, ENGLISH, IRISH, ARITHMETIC, he’s say all down there. And of course you’d have an auld jotter and that rolled up in your pocket.
Tony Healy: Yeah.
Jack Benton: And auld jotter. And you’d have the English at the back of it, the Arithmetic in the middle of it and Irish in the front.
Tony Healy: And you were really supposed to have three jotters yeah, you ended up tearing pages out?
Jack Benton: We couldn’t afford it.
Tony Healy: Of course.
Jack Benton: I mean its unbelievable Tony.
Tony Healy: You see people nowadays, the don’t, they just can’t comprehend.
Jack Benton: They don’t realise.
Tony Healy: I know I agree.
Jack Benton: And I seen, like you’d be saying the people in the street, eh see somebody get the time going bye.
Tony Healy: Yeah, they had no watch. And had you not a mobile phone or anything, I’m only joking you.
Jack Benton: The time went by the factory hooter.
Tony Healy: Right.
Jack Benton: Or the bell ringing, you know, that’s the only way you knew the time.
Tony Healy: That’s unbelievable isn’t it.
Jack Benton: Like you couldn’t buy a good alarm clock because the alarm clocks they had then, me father had a clock on the wall.
Tony Healy: Yeah.
Jack Benton: And it was the only one and everyone would come knocking on the door. Me father wasn’t, the right time you know. And I remember one evening he was sitting there at the tea and he was working, he used to repair, he was a shoe repairer, and eh he was actually a show maker, he served his time as a shoemaker. He could make shoes.
Tony Healy: Right, make shoes.
Jack Benton: Yeah he served his time in Belfast in a place called Ferguson’s of Belfast, you know.
Tony Healy: Right.
Jack Benton: And he could make shoes or repair shoes. But he was after having a busy day, people knocking at the door and that. And he was sitting down having his tea and this young fellow came, lived across the road, his father was a shoemaker too, knock knock, Mr. Benton me father wants to know would you have the right time.
Tony Healy: Well my God.
Jack Benton: You tell your father says he to go home and buy a clock, ha, ha.
Tony Healy: But the gas thing is if you think of it, by the time he tells him the time, by the time he goes home and tells his father, its not that time anymore.
Jack Benton: Not alone that, me father doing shoes you see for repairs, now I’d come home after school, three o’clock, I’d have something to eat.
Tony Healy: Yeah.
Jack Benton: In the house. I’d go over to the farm place. Go up and collect the cows up in Chapel Street where they were. Bring them down, get, milk them again, put the cans, and that evening go around with the mild again in the cans. Come back down, clean out the shed, and then again bring them back up through the middle of the town, can you picture driving cattle through the middle, and up there to Hampton.
Tony Healy: Oh my God.
Jack Benton: And my pal lived beside me, Billy Dowling. And he used to work in Campbell’s which was down where you are going to live now.
Tony Healy: Down em Murphy’s place.
Jack Benton: Yeah Murphy’s house the last house that was Campbell’s. And the rest of that was the Partner Dairy, and Billy worked with them. And we’d go up together to Hampton in the morning, of a summers morning about seven o’clock.
Tony Healy: Yeah.
Jack Benton: Because Billy went up straight up we’ll say to Pinewood, that way.
Tony Healy: Ok.
Jack Benton: And went up that way, but he’d come down with about twelve, and I’d have about eight.
Tony Healy: Right.
Jack Benton: And we’d meet at the bottom of the, top of the road now of our street.
Tony Healy: All right yeah, Hampton Street, yeah, yeah.
Jack Benton: Of course you must remember there was no houses there.
Tony Healy: Right, Hampton Gates would have been still there and all.
Jack Benton: Oh yeah and we’d come and we’d meet there and the cows would come down the street altogether, but when we’d get to Quality Row, they would go down that way.
Tony Healy: Yeah.
Jack Benton: And we’d come on, mine would go on, they wouldn’t like . . .
Tony Healy: They’d know.
Jack Benton: Oh yeah.
Tony Healy: They’d know we’re down here.
Jack Benton: Yeah, yeah.
Tony Healy: Oh my God that’s something that’s fantastic.
Jack Benton: You know and then there was Christy Coyle up here, right opposite you.
Tony Healy: Christy Coyle?
Jack Benton: Across the road here. Go out your door and walk straight across the road.
Tony Healy: Yeah that’s Hampton Court isn’t it?
Jack Benton: In there.
Tony Healy: That was the Dairy wasn’t it?
Jack Benton: That was the Dairy.
Tony Healy: Yeah because we have, I think we’ve some aerial photographs, and you can see it was a Dairy I think from the fifties.
Jack Benton: Yeah I’ve a photograph of the house like you know before it was knocked down.
Tony Healy: Have you, God I don’t think we’ve ever seen that.
Jack Benton: That was Christy Coyle’s or Coyle’s. That was, one of the Lawless and Gibbons was murdered in there.
Tony Healy: Was murdered, and that’s where he lived?
Jack Benton: Yeah.
Tony Healy: Oh my God, I think I do remember you saying that now, I think I did.
Jack Benton: And that’s where he was, they also had a butcher shop there. I used to go down for the meat, now the butcher shop was only there for about two or three years.
Tony Healy: Right. And what are we talking here, is it the fifties you’re talking about would it be?
Jack Benton: Ah go way back, fifties be damned, you’d be going back as far as 1940.
Tony Healy: Wow.
Jack Benton: You know, so you would. Christy Coyle’s Dairy there, and he’d have about 15 or 20 cows.
Tony Healy: God.
Jack Benton: And they’d be out there in the middle of the road because they had to go in, in certain positions into the shed.
Tony Healy: Right.
Jack Benton: So they’d be bringing them in two at a time. You couldn’t walk on the road with . . .
Tony Healy: Of course. And then when you think about it as well there was no milking, it was done by hand was it?
Jack Benton: All done by hand.
Tony Healy: My God. So just when you say the cattle were going down the street and that, would there have been any cars around at the time?
Jack Benton: There would have been damn all cars.
Tony Healy: So it wasn’t like you’d see it now?
Jack Benton: I’ve a very old photography down the main street with cows coming up it.
Tony Healy: God, maybe at some stage we’ll . . . .
Jack Benton: Did you never see that one?
Tony Healy: I don’t think so. I could have, but it doesn’t ring a bell now in all honesty.
Jack Benton: Yeah it was taken at the centre looking up towards the square. And these cattle going up through it.
Tony Healy: Oh my God.
Jack Benton: But there’d be no cars then. You know I used to rid an auld bike down the hill there in Balbriggan. You never looked up nor down.
Tony Healy: You didn’t have to.
Jack Benton: You didn’t have to, when I lived in Chapel Street, eh we used to run down and right, the Milestone, you know.
Tony Healy: I know the Milestone yes.
Jack Benton: Between Reynolds’ and the Milestone there was a shop.
Tony Healy: Ok.
Jack Benton: That’s still there.
Tony Healy: The Bookies there is it?
Jack Benton: Built it into the Milestone.
Tony Healy: Ok.
Jack Benton: But it was next to Reynolds’.
Tony Healy: Right.
Jack Benton: Well we’d be sent for a message, Paddy Fitzmonds over in the shop.
Tony Healy: Hmm.
Jack Benton: And we’d run straight across the road, into the shop, and the funny thing about it was there was a glass counter at the end of the shop where he used to keep cakes you know.
Tony Healy: Right.
Jack Benton: And he’d say some day yous are going to go through that glass case. Because you couldn’t stop.
Tony Healy: Right.
Jack Benton: But you never looked up or down.
Tony Healy: And you were coming onto a main road you know from Chapel Street, didn’t even have to look left, didn’t have to stop?
Jack Benton: Not at all for Lord sake, sure like it’s a different era, its unbelievable.
Tony Healy: This is amazing, we just can comprehend that, you know.
Jack Benton: Sure I’d often tell Marian and my kids and I was getting three shillings a week going around with the milk seven days a week.
Tony Healy: Right.
Jack Benton: And in the summer time you would have, when on holidays, I’d have to thin turnips, and make hay, and . . .
Tony Healy: Jeepers!
Jack Benton: And he used to cut, he’d about an acre and a half or two acres of oats. And he used to cut it with a sithe. And I would have to bundle it and tie it. And he’d bring it down and you’d stack it in a shed, and then on a wet day, I’d have to hand thrash it.
Tony Healy: Right.
Jack Benton: Hand thrash it.
Tony Healy: He had a 56lb butter box, and it’d be like here, right, and the big flat stones.
Jack Benton: Ok and you’d get the bunch of hay and bate the head off it.
Tony Healy: And just bate, and get rid of all the wheat off the top of it is it?
Jack Benton: And then you had it in maybe buckets, and you went out and stood at the corner, outside.
Tony Healy: Right.
Jack Benton: And poured, a windy day and poured from one to the other so the chaff would blow out.
Tony Healy: A brilliant, like a sieve or something. Oh my God.
Jack Benton: Stop the lights you know unreal.
Tony Healy: Well . . .
Jack Benton: Then I was a messenger boy in a shop down the there when I was about 15.
Tony Healy: And what shop was that?
Jack Benton: Eh Dillon’s Grocery Shop.
Tony Healy: And was that say where the Solicitors is now?
Jack Benton: Where the Wine place is down there, shop opposite Paddy Powers.
Tony Healy: Oh right down that far, down Bridge Street.
Jack Benton: Oh yeah.
Tony Healy: Oh right.
Jack Benton: That was the top grocery shop in the town at the time.
Tony Healy: Dillon’s.
Jack Benton: Kitty Dillon’s.
Tony Healy: Right.
Jack Benton: You know it was the top shop. They used, everything was well ahead, sort of like the glass case with Gataux cakes and all that.
Tony Healy: Wow.
Jack Benton: Which you couldn’t get you know.
Tony Healy: And that would have been the only shop in the town with that would it?
Jack Benton: Well it would be the top shop in the town.
Tony Healy: The top shop right. Because there would have been, wasn’t there that shop just a bit further, Keelings?
Jack Benton: Keelings, that was a pub.
Tony Healy: That was a pub?
Jack Benton: Yeah.
Tony Healy: But did they not sell stuff as well no?
Jack Benton: They did vegetables.
Tony Healy: Vegetables right.
Jack Benton: Vegetables and that sort of thing, you know.
Tony Healy: Dillon’s was the . . .
Jack Benton: Dillon’s was the shop everyone shopped in Kitty Dillon’s you know.
Tony Healy: And what is that now, what’s there now?
Jack Benton: It’s a wine shop. When the steamboats would come in.
Tony Healy: Yeah.
Jack Benton: You know to the harbour, they all came up to Dillon’s for their groceries.
Tony Healy: Straight up Quay Street and sure more or less in front of them nearly.
Jack Benton: Well it had a good name you see, and it was spotless clean, you know and like that. and eh when they’d come up the boats came in, the steamboats, come up and buy the groceries, and I’d have to bring them down, it was great because eh you’d always get two shillings or something or half a crown for bringing it down to the boat, you known so I used to look forward to going down.
Tony Healy: Great, great and all downhill to the boat an that, brilliant.
Jack Benton: I used to up, then I’d go around and have to collect the orders and that. Up as far as the soldiers cottages on the Skerries Road.
Tony Healy: Right.
Jack Benton: You know.
Tony Healy: God you’ve had a great life. Great variety of jobs.
Jack Benton: Then we used to go down to pick fruit in Gormanston. And Hughie Reilly and eh one woman is still alive used to come with us, she’s down towards, Nelly Reid.
Tony Healy: Ok.
Jack Benton: And I’ve a photograph, I only got a photograph of it last week, we used to walk down to the, you know the Cock in Gormanston?
Tony Healy: I know it well yeah.
Jack Benton: Well just right there. Mrs Casey that owned the pub the Hen.
Tony Healy: The other side of the road.
Jack Benton: The other side of the road.
Tony Healy: Right.
Jack Benton: She had land and we used to go down and pick raspberries there. Five shillings a week.
Tony Healy: Ok.
Jack Benton: Walk down in the morning and walk home.
Tony Healy: Ah that’s a fair walk?
Jack Benton: I know.
Tony Healy: That’s a fair walk.
Jack Benton: But we used to walk, Christy Geraghty will tell you. Christy Geraghty and that, we used to walks to the pictures to Skerries. And walk home.
Tony Healy: Ah for God sake like Skerries is what about four miles?
Jack Benton: Not alone that.
Tony Healy: Yeah.
Jack Benton: But we’d be going with a couple of lassies that lived up at the top of Curkeen Hill.
Tony Healy: Ha, ha, ha, you’d have to walk them home first.
Jack Benton: Walk them home and then walk home. And you see them now they wont walk across the road.
Tony Healy: I know well I think for different reasons now its probably more security. That’s, like I’ve never walked to Skerries, I’ve often cycled to Skerries and back and it’s a fair auld cycle, but to walk!
Jack Benton: And an odd time we would have a bike.
Tony Healy: Right, one bike.
Jack Benton: And a cross bike. So well we’d walk up to the County Bridge you see.
Tony Healy: Yeah.
Jack Benton: You’d put one fella on the crossbar.
Tony Healy: Yeah.
Jack Benton: And you’d ride as far as the Yellow Gates or the Lady’s Stairs.
Tony Healy: Right.
Jack Benton: And you’d send the fellow on the crossbar back with the bike to pick up the other fella while you walked on.
Tony Healy: I don’t believe it, like in relays or something?
Jack Benton: Yeah, ha, ha, you had to think of some way of getting around.
Tony Healy: God almighty, ah that’s brilliant, that’s fantastic.
Jack Benton: You had to think of ways and means of getting there. I mean you wouldn’t get a lift, you wouldn’t see a car.
Tony Healy: You wouldn’t see a car no.
Jack Benton: Not at all no.
Jack Benton: That’s it for today. We’ll have more for you in the next few days. Keep tuned in.
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