Do you Remember the Big ’47 Snow? #100DaysOfOldDays

Posted on June 17, 2022 by Gloria

Day 99 #100DaysOfOldDays

“Do you remember the Big ‘47 Snow?”
That was a question my dad asked people of his vintage and older—strangers too! When they said, “Yes, I remember it well”, Mam would roll her eyes and prepare to listen to the ‘Big ‘47 Snow’ conversation for the millionth time. People he met who didn’t remember the Big Snow…well, he told them all about it!

If Dad had been still alive during the 2020 pandemic and the lockdown that came with it, I think he would have said, “This is like the Big ‘47 Snow.” Death, isolation, fear, uncertainty.
Over 7,000 Irish people died from COVID-19. In comparison to that, hundreds died as a result of one of the biggest snowstorms ever to hit Ireland. But the country suffered in many other ways from the impact of the 1947 snow.

Snow fell sporadically during January and February, and Arctic winds blew for several weeks before the eve of the 24th February, when the biggest snow began to fall. It continued all through the night and the next day. A blizzard driven by the bitter Easterly gales, whipped the entire country. I hear stories that it snowed for close to fifty consecutive hours at that time.

Railway lines were blocked by 6 ft drifts. Main roads were impassable, buses couldn’t run. Turf bogs were buried under six feet of snow. Emergency fuel consignments came in from Britain.

Co Wicklow was hit hard. Many people were unable to leave their homes for a month. Some houses were completely covered in snow and there were people who lived on only potatoes for weeks.

The country experienced blackouts and 1000’s of phones were cut off. Farmers had to take their animals to lakes and rivers to drink, having to break the ice there on a daily basis.
Lavey Lake in Co Cavan, was one of the many lakes that froze over. A man even drove his car across it.

The Bailieborough news reported that the Tuesday night bus from Dublin got stuck in the snow near Mullagh and many passengers set off walking to Bailieborough. After their six mile trek, they called to Shaffrey’s Hotel (now the Bailie) and Mrs Shaffrey fed the cold weary travellers and gave them a bed for the night.

There are many stories to be told about the Big ‘47 Snow—some tragic, like this one.
A water-filled quarry in Kimmage had frozen over and to the local children it was a winter wonderland playground. The Gardaí had tried their best to keep the children off the ice but they always found a way in. On Sunday March 2nd while about twenty children were playing hockey, the ice broke. About half a dozen of the children plunged into a black hole of icy water.
Passersby rushed to rescue the children. Some were saved but tragically three of them died in the freezing quarry. One of the boys who died had been thrown a rope but he had held on to the hand of a young girl in the water beside him, and he lost his grip on the rope. The girl survived!

It was indeed a bleak period for many.

My uncle Philip recalls being told the story of the roads being level with the ditches and 2 ft icicles hanging from roof gutters. Deliveries of bread were dropped at my grandparents’ house for the two shops further up the hill.

My mother-in-law Betty, remembers a two-year-old neighbour child falling deep into a powdery snowdrift and having to be pulled from it. Their well, which was also used by the neighbours, was completely buried. Their water for many weeks was melted snow.

Snow that fell in parts of Ireland during January remained until the middle of March because of below freezing temperatures. Between the days of January 24th and March 17th, it snowed for thirty of them. On St Patrick’s Day there was still snow behind the ditches.

For weeks the country was a sheet of frozen snow and black ice.
Everyone who lived through The Big ‘47 Snow has stories to tell about it. Dad always enjoyed sharing his, and loved hearing other people’s memories too.

1947 is a memorable year weatherwise for the Irish, but for the Cavan people it’s memorable for a different reason. Sure wasn’t that the year Cavan beat Kerry in the All-Ireland final!

The Messages #100DaysOfOldDays

Posted on June 14, 2022 by Gloria

Day 98 #100DaysOfOldDays

Kate O’Reilly, from my hometown, recently posted a collection of photos on her Facebook page, that she took in a museum in Limerick; Old Irish Ways. I wish I had some of these photos in the earlier days of our 100 day project. A couple of the photos brought back so many memories of times gone by.

This photo in particular! In the 70’s, some shops still looked similar to this. Soden’s in Bailieborough was one. The old weighing scales and meat slicer on the counter. The old cash register. Newspapers and comics laid out. Cigarettes in 10’s and 20’s, visible to the customers.

“I’m going up the town for a few messages,” Mam would say when was going to the shops.
On a week day she bought something for the dinner, and bread and milk. Nothing that wasn’t needed! Although, sometimes she’d buy five penny bars but end up eating a couple of them on the way home, so we’d get half a penny bar each.

We loved the Friday shopping that was brought home in a big cardboard box—or two. They contained much the same as every other week, but it was still exciting to empty them. Maybe there’ll be a sandwich cake this week, or digestives instead of the usual Morning Coffee biscuits.

When we went shopping with Mam, we had absolutely no say as to what went into the trolley. We wouldn’t dream of trying to sneak anything into it. Christ, you didn’t take those kind of risks when you were a 70’s child! We also took little notice of what Mam put into the trolley. But when the big box landed on the kitchen table, we dived right in.

We were a sliced pan family. Some people were Batch Loaf…religiously!
There would be at least four sliced pans in the box—brown for Dad and white for us. And a bag of wholemeal flour for making the brown cake.

There would have been a pot of Mace strawberry jam, Mace marmalade and Mace diluted orange. (Mam always kept a check on the pennies and bought store brands whenever possible.)

She bought cream crackers, which she had to hide from us. There was always Morning Coffee biscuits, sometimes Marietta. It was later in the 70’s that the bourbon and custard creams became regular items in the shopping box.

A box of loose Lyons tea. It was well into the 80’s before Mam bothered with tea bags. Tins of beans and alphabet spaghetti. Tins of creamed rice and peas. Jelly and Instant Whip for Sunday. She had to hide the jelly with the cream crackers, because in reality it was a big fat square jelly sweet…a giant wine gum! And it smelled so delicious…of course she had to hide it!

Birds Dream Topping was an alternative to fresh cream. It was such a treat to get it, which wasn’t very often.

“Give it a whirl.”

Birds powdered custard. Oxo cubes. A box of Bisto—the one you had to mix into a paste with cold water. Never instant gravy.

There might have been a sachet of Apeel powdered orange drink and Rise and Shine from Kelloggs.

A four stone bag of potatoes. Carrots, parsnips and onions for the stew. And cabbage and a turnip. Always!
We would get some sweets on a Friday. Penny bars, lollipops or jellies.

Porridge, cornflakes and Weetabix were our cereals. And I’ve just remembered…Ready Brek. I hated it!

Apart from the tall plastic container of Saxa salt and the smaller one containing white pepper, Chef Brown Sauce and Coleman’s mustard were the only condiments on our table. If there was a bottle of tomato ketchup in the box we got excited! In the summer we had Chef Salad Cream.

So what fridge items were in the box? Bottles of milk—even though the milkman delivered to the door every morning. Sausages and corned beef. Calvita cheese and Easi Singles. Eggs. A big square tub of margarine; the soft spreadable creamy type that lasted a week. It went on the spuds, the bread and for making buns. And a lump of boiling bacon.

On the top part of our fridge there was a small freezer box so there was very little frozen food in the shopping. There was always frozen peas and fish fingers. Sometimes frozen burgers. We got excited if there was a block of ice cream and a packet of wafers.

Most of these things still exist and some are in my own shopping bag every week. But some are very hard to get or no longer exist.

3 Hands washing up liquid. I’d completely forgotten about it until I spied it on the top shelf in Kate’s photo.

Floor polish in a tin. You had to get down on your hands and knees to polish the floor with this stuff.

Mam used Daz washing powder (and sometimes the Mace brand) to wash the clothes. Daz gave your whites a bluey white.

Remember the little muslin bags that contained a cube of blue stuff? It was stirred around in the washing to make the whites whiter. It was called Bluing. I think it’s still available in liquid form but maybe not in the wee muslin bags.

Vim was a scouring powder for cleaning the sinks and the toilet bowl. It came in a fat cylinder box with holes on the lid so you could shake out just as much as you needed. Waste not, want not.

Mam used Sunlight and Lifebuoy carbolic soap for household cleaning. We had Palmolive and Shield soap for bathing. Although, I have memories of being scrubbed at the kitchen sink with the carbolic soap on a summer’s evening, when ordinary soap wasn’t enough to remove the mud, grass or tar marks on our hands and knees.

There was definitely no liquid hand soap or shower gel in our bathroom. We had bubble bath sometimes. Mam had nice soap for herself; Lux, Camay or Imperial Leather. (She still buys Imperial Leather.)

Camay created a soft creamy lather that gave a woman a complexion as smooth as porcelain. Most of the adverts showed women washing their faces with Camay soap and being amazed at their beautiful soft skin afterwards.
But this particular advert has a more humorous slant to it! I think it’s very funny!

Iodine was used for cuts and grazes. TCP was also put on cuts and used as an antiseptic for most skin ailments.

Any mention of a stomach ache and we were fed Milk of Magnesia or Syrup of Figs. I didn’t mind Syrup of Figs, but dreaded Magnesia.

Here’s an old-fashioned metal list of the messages.

My New Old Coat #100DaysOfOldDays

Posted on May 2, 2022 by Gloria

Day 77 #100DaysOfOldDays

A short and sweet post today. (No typo excuses🧐)

This is my mam’s 55-year-old vintage coat. Her Aunt Teresa brought it home to her from England in the late 1960’s. I didn’t know until a few days ago that she still had it. She probably kept it because it’s red; her favourite colour.

Well, it’s mine now and it fits me just fine. Thanks Mammy; I love it! I’m looking forward to wearing it next winter!

A couple of buttons got lost along the way so I just need to find new ones.

“I probably took them off to put them on something else,” Mam said.

I excused Lucy from drawing today. She’s busy making jewellery for charity.

The Jumble Sale #100DaysOfOldDays

Posted on April 15, 2022 by Gloria

Day 61 #100DaysOfOldDays

The jumble sales in the early 80’s, as I remember them, were the equivalent of a trip to Mr Price or Penny’s today. There was something about a jumble sale that you just don’t get at a car boot sale or from browsing in a charity shop—or Mr Price and Penny’s.

A jumble sale took place only once or twice a year, so it was exciting, especially for children. It was a chance to have new things that didn’t cost half of your father’s wages. It was mostly second-hand goods on sale, but some things were brand new costing a fraction of their shop price. The proceeds would go to the church or a local charity.

The earliest ones I remember were held in the hall behind the Church of Ireland. I particularly remember the Christmas ones. They would be advertised for a couple of weeks beforehand; on posters in shop windows and in the local newspaper, The Celt.

We’d be gathering our pennies in anticipation for the big spend. Doing jobs around the house to earn extra.

We’d arrive at the hall to join the queue that would have started to form. You had to be early if you wanted to get anything worthwhile. People hopped from foot to foot to keep warm, even though they would’ve been well wrapped up in their winter coats and hats & scarves. The mammies would chatter among themselves, about Christmas and the foreseeable bargains at the jumble sale. Their puffs of breath forming little clouds in the frosty air. We, the children, would play around in the dark, scaring each other with ghost stories about the nearby graveyard in the ruins of the old church; Lord Lisgar and the headless horseman, banshees and werewolves.

As soon as the doors would open everyone would rush in and scurry to their favourite stall. The mammies would usually aim for the wardrobe section; the children for the toys and bric-a-brac. There was something appealing about the scent of old books and the musty whiff of clothes and shoes that smelt like they’d been retrieved from the attic.

Part of our Christmas shopping was done at these jumble sales. An ornament for Mammy, a book or a game for Daddy, which was really for us.

Sometimes we’d have money left to buy a bun at the cake stand or a slice of homemade bread covered with gooseberry or plum jam. Sometimes we’d just walk slowly past the cakes, looking at them, our mouths watering with the smell of icing sugar. The Christmas bakes hummed with nutmeg and cinnamon. Some of the kinder ladies behind the stand would sell a bun for a penny, if that’s all you had left.

Things sold quite quickly at the jumble sales, with very little left behind.

The things I remember buying at a jumble sale: old annuals—Judy, Mandy, Bunty, Twinkle. Any I didn’t already have. Enid Blyton books, Black Beauty, The Little Match Girl, a white sparkly belt, a hat, handbags, half-empty bottles of nail polish and perfume, dolls, nice pens, crayons, colouring books with just a few pages coloured in, playing cards.

I remember buying things like fancy little boxes or pots, just to put stuff in. Mam would say, “Oh that’s lovely”… when really she meant, “Where are you going with that oul thing?”

The popularity of charity shops did away with jumble sales. I hear about cake sales now and again, but they’re not a patch on the old-style jumble sales. Or is it because we look at things differently through our childhood eyes?

Lucy’s drawing today!