Mr. Porter Says Hello

Mr. Porter’s ghost was as distinguished and as erect as Mr. Porter had been in life. A man of business and a gentleman all his life, he had been universally admired by his neighbours in Hamilton Park ever since he and his wife had first arrived there as a young married couple in 1922.

The Porter family were one of the original residents in the small scheme of houses built by the newly independent Irish state. Over a period of more than forty years Mr. and Mrs. Porter – for I never knew them by any other name – raised their family and built a successful furniture manufacturing business in town.

In the winter of 1964 Mr. Porter succumbed to pneumonia and was duly buried following a simple service in Mount Jerome Cemetery. Yet I had just seen him raise his hat and offer his best wishes to my mother.

It was the summer of 1965 and I was on holiday from school. School had only closed the previous Friday and the weather was unusually hot and sunny. Summer days and long summer nights called to us children then as there were games to be played and adventures to be had. However there were also jobs to be done both inside and outside of the house before we could enjoy what the summer might bring. My brothers Shay and Tom fell in for the outside work while my big sister Emily helped my mother clean the house from top to bottom.

Shay had spent two days painting the metal railings at the front of the house. On the day of Mr. Porter’s return to Hamilton Park he was painting the rickety fence in the back garden.

Tom had been given the job of cleaning out the ‘shed’ at the back of the house. This was in fact a one storey block built lean-to which was where coal, turf and paraffin oil were stored for winter. It housed the manually operated clothes wringer or mangle which my mother described as a ‘God-send’ when it first arrived. It was also in this part of the house that dogs slept, where clothes were hung in the worst of weathers and where the only sink in the house was to be found fed by a single cold water tap. This was where my mother hand washed clothes and peeled potatoes and my father shaved each morning before heading for work.

Tom spent the day in a cloud of coal dust and turf mould as he brushed and scrubbed both floor and walls, occasionally damping down the dust with buckets of water.

My job was to cut the grass in the garden to the front of the house. This garden was in two halves either side of a narrow cracked concrete path leading from the recently painted front gate. My tools for the job consisted of a push rotary mower of indeterminate age and an equally ancient large, wooden handled pair of garden shears. Neither was particularly sharp nor well oiled.

I laboured with one and then the other for over three hours until the grass was cut to within an inch of its life. The clippings and weeds I gathered into a rusty metal bin, carrying them through the house and dumping them in the furthest corner of the back garden. He they would rot down to be dug into the tiny vegetable plot early the following spring.

I finished the job stripped to the waist, dripping in sweat and glowing red at the shoulders. I put back on my striped blue and white T-shirt and fetching from the house an old sheet which my mother and Emily had both agreed was beyond rescue I spread it on the newly cut grass and lay on it.

At what moment I fell asleep or for how long I slept I have no idea, but I awoke with a start to a firm but gentle voice saying, “Good lad, you made a fine job of the garden and no doubt.”

I squinted upwards and back over my head, past the railings to where stood Mr. Porter. In spite of the heat of the day he wore his heaviest winter overcoat, leather gloves and his signature broad rimmed fedora.

“Oh, and tell your mother I was asking after her. Now don’t forget son,” he added raising his hat as if my mother was actually there and heading down the little cul-de-sac to his own house.

“No Mr. Porter...I mean yes Mr. Porter. I’ll tell her alright,” I answered, rising to my feet and turning to look after him. By the time I was on my feet and my eyes were fully adjusted to the brightness he had turned the key in the door of Number 5 and gone in.

What was I to tell my mother now?

On the Warpath

‘Grandpa’ Curran had lived in our little community for over ten years. The first time I encountered him was at the age of four and a half. I was playing a game of Cowboys and Indians and had taken up a good sniping position in his little front garden behind a sappy bright green leylandii shrub. Suddenly the rattle of a metal gate caused me to look up. There was ‘Grandpa’ Curran towering above me, eyes quizzically examining the earth smeared face of a boy no more than three feet tall.

I don’t know exactly what thoughts of panic went through my head at that moment but I am sure they ranged from fear of his great height - to his possible anger - right through to an overwhelming feeling that he would definitely give away my position to the Indians.

Much to my surprise however, he folded his long body in a manner which must have taken great gymnastic ability until he was looking me straight in the eye. Eyeing my roughly cut wooden rifle pointing through a gap in his shrubbery he summed up the situation instantly.

“Howdy partner,” he whispered just like in the films. “Injuns on the warpath again?”

Memories 2

One of my most precious memories is of a photograph. I was not present at the event it portrayed and it intrigued me greatly as a young child. It showed two young people,  a beautiful woman and a dashing young man dancing, holding each other close atop a small wooden table in a country setting.

When I was about ten years old the picture fell and the glass protecting it broke. A sudden gust of wind was to blame. I was sitting in the living room struggling with homework when the crashing and splintering of the glass made me start and rise to my feet. Turning to see what had happened I saw my mother on her feet too. Bending slowly, picking the photograph from among the shards of glass, holding it tenderly, Ma blew away the dust it had gathered from the linoleum floor. Moving towards her I saw her raise the photograph to her cheek, hold it there for a moment, then lower it smiling, nodding twice.

As I had never known the provenance of this photograph I decided now was the time to put the question which had often occurred to me as I realised there would never be a better time to ask.

“Who is that Ma,” I asked, “the beautiful woman in the photograph...and that man?”

“Why Martin, that’s me,” she said, and I could swear the colour in her cheeks was a rosier pink.

“And your father, Martin, that’s your Da.” Her tone suggested surprise that I needed to ask such a question.

“God, Ma. You were beautiful. And Da...he’s like an actor in the pictures,” I gushed.

“But why are you on a table Ma? You’re dancing on the table.”

Holding  the photograph to her with both hands my mother turned to me and smiling brightly explained that the photograph was taken in Carna, in Connemara. She and my father were on their honeymoon.

“It was the loveliest place, Martin” my mother assured me, “and the happiest week of my life.”

“There was an American man there and he had the latest camera. He took pictures of everything,” my mother went on.

The American man it seems, just like me, thought they were a stunning couple and cajoled them into posing for the photograph. The pose on the table he told them had featured in some Hollywood film or other. The photograph had duly arrived as promised by post about a month later. The postmark said Paterson, New Jersey.

The moment lost and the story finished my mother turned to me and said, “Martin. Get me the sweeping brush like good little man.”

Memories 1

It seems crazy now with all the inherent dangers of modern life, cars and endless traffic and fear of strangers, and so on; but one of my earliest memories is of being sent to the local shop for 10 Wills’ Wild Woodbine cigarettes by my mother.

I was not yet four.

I took the piece of paper on which was written the note for the shopkeeper and for some unfathomable reason walked the not inconsiderable distance to our Convent school, entered at the Brown Street door and handed the note to the first nun I met, who I later learned was called Sr. Rose.

Some 19th Century Detail on the Fever Hospital in Cork Street

The Hardwick Fever Hospital - or House of Recovery, in Cork Street, the most extensive institution of the kind in Ireland, was founded chiefly by the exertions of a committee of mercantile gentlemen, principally of the Society of Friends, who urged the adoption of hospitals for the reception of persons afflicted with fever alone. The subject having attracted the notice of government in 1802, on the recommendation of the Earl of Hardwicke, then Lord Lieutenant, a sum of 1,000l. was voted towards erecting a building, and 500l. towards the annual support of an establishment for the reception of fever patients residing in that part of the city which comprises the liberties on the south side of the. Liffey. The contributions made in a very short time, amounted to 10,000l., and have since received further augmentation. The original design extended to 40 beds only, but the founders were enabled to enlarge their plan, and accordingly determined on the erection of an hospital capable of containing, in case of emergency, 120 beds. The first stone was laid April 24th, 1802, and the house was opened May 14th, 1804, for the reception of 18 patients.

It is most advantageously situated, being near the district for whose relief it was established, and possessing good air and abundance of water; and stands on the south side of Cork-street, in a space of nearly three acres. The hospital, when first erected, consisted of two parallel buildings, 89 feet by 30, three stories high, running north and south, and connected by a colonnade of 116 feet. The eastern building is used for fever, the western for convalescent patients. The wards in these buildings are small and not very lofty, being only 16 feet by 11ft. 3in., and 101 feet high; and are arranged on each side of the galleries, which run the length of the building. They are ventilated by the chimney, which is opposite the door; by the window, and by a tube from the ceiling communicating with louvres in the roof. The galleries communicate by gratings placed vertically over each other. The apartments of the officers were originally in the western wing, but they have since been removed to the centre, which was built in 1808, for the purpose of affording additional accommodation; and thus, the number of beds was increased to 144.

This circumstance together with the increase of the parliamentary grant, which in 1805 was made 1,000l. per, annum, induced the governors to extend the district to the relief of which the hospital was to be applicable; they therefore determined to take in patients from all parts of the city, south of the Liffey; and in 1809, declared themselves ready to admit them from all parts of the city within the Circular Road. But in the lapse of a few years, they found, notwithstanding the establishment of the Hardwicke Fever Hospital, that their accommodation was still inadequate to the number of applicants; accordingly, in 1814, a fourth building, much larger than any of the former, was erected, by which the hospital was rendered capable of containing altogether 200 beds, which is its present establishment. (In 1818, when famine crowded the hospitals every where throughout Ireland, the number of beds in this hospital was increased to 260 - see Reports of Managing Committee for 1816.)

In the construction of the fourth building, the system of large wards has been adopted: it stands to the south of the east wing, and is ventilated by windows in the eastern and western sides. The hospital is supplied with ample offices, coal-vaults, &c.; and a laundry, a very perfect establishment, has lately been erected at a great expense, where the principal part of the labour is performed by means of a steam-engine.

The affairs of the institutions are conducted by a committee of 21 persons (15 of whom were elected 23^rd October, 1801, for life, and six others are selected annually from the subscribers), who meet every Tuesday. At the first opening of the hospital, the medical department consisted of three physicians and one surgeon; but the number has been since increased to six permanent attendants (besides whom, two other are occasionally employed), one surgeon and an apothecary.

Three physicians attend the hospital daily, and the others are employed in visiting, at their homes, the applicants for admission. The internal attendance is taken in turn by the physicians, each set attending one month in succession: their salaries are small at first, but are gradually augmented, until, at the expiration of three years, they are allowed 100l. annually. The surgeon receives 50l. per annum, and one guinea for every difficult case which he attends. These salaries and allowances, together with those of the minor officers and servants, amount to upwards of 1,600l. per annum; and the average annual expense, for the last six years, has been about 6,500l. This expenditure is chiefly defrayed by a parliamentary grant; the subscriptions and funded property amount to about 1,000l/ a year. Since the opening of the hospital to May 14th, 1823, 49,029 patients have been admitted; the mortality has been 1 in 15. No recommendation is necessary in order to procure admission, but on notice being left at the hospital, the applicant is inspected by a physician on extern duty.

New Story

We have a new Tenters story for you from Emily Lalloo. A great little story!

The Great Escape by Emily Lalloo

“Come on now quickly, children, let’s get our faces washed”, Rita said. Rita was our cousin; she was taking care of us while Mam was in hospital. We all lined up while Rita scrubbed our faces till they glowed a healthy pink. Satisfied we were up to scratch Rita surveyed us with a certain pride.

Suddenly her eyes narrowed, she glared at us fiercely, “There’s one of you missing.” Suddenly Shay said, “It’s Gerard, he hates getting his face washed.” Thomas ran back into the kitchen, pulled open the coal house door and there before our eyes sat Gerard on a heap of coal, wide eyed and covered in coal dust.

Rita scooped him up in her arms and carried him kicking and squealing to the kitchen sink. “Please don’t put water on my face”, he begged tearfully. I’ll tell you what, if you let me wash your face, I’ll bring you to see the pigs”, said Rita. Like magic Gerard stopped crying. “Okay”, he shouted excitedly.

We all trooped out of the house chattering excitedly about the delight which lay in store for us. We made our way down Susan’s Terrace into Cow Parlour, where the familiar smell of ‘O’Keeffe’s, the Knackers’, the glue factory, invaded our nostrils.

        We turned left into South Brown Street. Here at last was our destination. We quickened our step and reached the large wooden gates, which to our great disappointment were locked. Crest-fallen, we stood staring at the gates, then we heard a rumble behind us, and up drew a truck. It was full of pigs, pink and noisy, packed shoulder to shoulder and snout to tail.

        A man got out and opened the gates. Another man opened the back of the truck and poked the pig with a stick. The pigs began to squeal in terror refusing to budge. The man heaved and pushed the pigs until eventually they began to move down the ramp into the slaughter house. Fascinated we watched as the pigs began to run about, screaming and kicking, the men poking them wildly with their sticks sending the pigs down tunnels to their doom.

        One clever little chap seized his opportunity and made his getaway between one of the men’s legs and out the side of the truck. Gerard was beside himself with excitement. The pig ran down the street and round into Weaver Square.

        “Come on Mary”, shouted a man giving chase, “plenty of rashers on that fellow.” The crowd of onlookers immediately began to run in the direction of the pig. Rita quickly grabbed Gerard by the collar, “Home now, kids”, Rita said, “that’s enough excitement for one day.”

Fever

“They took the poor child away in the red blanket. God bless the mite….and his mother, she wailed like a banshee”, chattered Mrs McCrea. She was standing at the corner of the little avenue in her flowing white nightdress, long snow white hair blowing in the biting December wind. “Took the little thing away…wrapped him in the red blanket they did...”, and her voice trailed off.

Both hands gripping the garden railing for support, her swollen knuckles were as white as her hair. Head nodding, she mumbled “Little mite...and his mother…his poor mother…”

Mrs McCrea was a neighbour. She lived in the terraced house directly opposite the house I lived in. I had known her all my life, a full ten years. She had always been an old woman and I knew she had been unwell recently. I knew that because I had overheard my mother telling my father one evening when he came home from work.

“Tommy”, she said in a half whisper, “Old Mrs McCrea was really bad today. I think she really is sick this time.”

“What happened?” my father asked, lowering his voice as he became aware of me standing at the fire watching both of them intently. I didn’t hear the rest of the conversation but I knew that something was really wrong with Mrs McCrea.

And now this.

I wasn’t really sure what I should do for the best – run back to the house for mother - or try to get Mrs McCrea back into her own house.

Placing my hand over the back of her hand and feeling its icy coldness I didn’t hesitate. Placing my other hand on the old woman’s shoulder I led her back towards her own house. The hall door was wide open and in the gloom of the living room I could see the glow of a small fire in the hearth. I helped Mrs McCrea into the old wooden rocking chair and assuring her I would be back. I ran out the hall door and across the short distance to my own house. Hammering hard on the door knocker I shouted for my mother.

Undoing the latch and looking pale and worried my mother appeared at the door. Quickly taking in my condition and realising I wasn’t trailing a broken leg or pouring with blood she demanded to know what in God’s name I thought I was at.

“Ma, it’s Mrs McCrea. There’s something wrong. I think she’s gone mad Ma!”

Without a word my mother tore down our path and across to Mrs McCrea’s with me close behind her. When I entered the house my mother had her arms wrapped around Mrs McCrea’s shoulders and the old woman sobbed loudly. My mother looked up and seeing me standing there told me to stop standing and staring around me and to put the kettle on and make a pot of tea.

“The poor child…the poor child”, Mrs McCrea sobbed. “They took him away in the red blanket you know.”

Peering from the gloom of the kitchen I saw my mother passing her hand over and over again down the length of the old woman’s white hair trying to calm her. I brought the teapot to the fire and placed it on the hearth. Returning again from the kitchen I brought a cup and a half full bottle of milk and gave them to my mother. She took them and in a tone sharper than usual ordered me back to our house.

Grudgingly I did as I was told. Pulling our front door behind me and sitting myself at the kitchen table I replayed in my head all that had happened that morning.

After what seemed like an age I heard a knock at the front door and when I opened it my mother swept past me and went straight into the kitchen. Entering the kitchen I saw her sitting at the table.

“You did a good job this morning Martin,” she said without looking up.

“What’s wrong with Mrs McCrea Ma? I asked, “Is she gone mad?”

“No Martin, she’s not gone mad. No. She’s just confused.”

“She was going on about a baby Ma, and a red blanket. She kept saying that Ma.”

My mother took a deep breath and began, “A long time ago, before…before you were born Martin, a lot of children got very sick in Dublin. They had the diphtheria…a horrible sickness. When the child was very sick the ambulance would call and the child would be taken from the house wrapped in a red blanket and brought to the Fever Hospital in Cork Street.” As quickly as she had begun my mother stopped and looked down at the table.

I wasn’t sure if my mother was going to tell me any more so I pushed her again.

“And the mother, Mrs McCrea said the mother was bawling Ma. Did she go in the ambulance too?”

After a long silence my mother turned her head and looked me straight in the eye. Her own eyes had filled up and I nudged a little closer to her on the kitchen bench.

“No Martin… she didn’t. No visitors were allowed in the Fever Hospital. Mothers were given a number by the ambulance men.” My mother closed her eyes and swallowing hard she continued, “They…the mothers… could buy the paper each morning and check their child’s number and see how they were doing. It was a terrible time, a really terrible time.”

My face reddening I could feel the anger rising in me and standing up at the bench I blurted out, “That’s not fair Ma. Taking kids away from their Ma’s like that. That’s just not fair!”

“I know… I know”, my mother sighed sadly. “They were awful times…awful Martin.”

“And the kid Mrs McCrea was talking about? Did she know him? Did he come back safe Ma?

My mother took my hand in hers and squeezed it gently. “Oh yes she knew him well. And no Martin, no. He didn’t come home. A lot of the children never came home.”

My mother, standing up and wrapping me tightly to her, patted my back gently and spoke softly into my head of curls – “And poor Mrs McCrea, Martin, poor Mrs McCrea. He was the only child she ever had.”

Hot Desking*

In our home education was king. Sitting on that particular throne - when winter gales howled and low cloud settled on the rooftops chucking down rain like a fireman’s hose - was the Flatley.

The Flatley clothes dryer arrived amid great excitement in our house in 1960. Deliveries, other than bills in small brown cellophane-windowed envelopes and the garishly wrapped Christmas present delivery from my Aunty Peggy in Chicago were very rare indeed. So the arrival of O’Farrell’s Household and Electrical Goods’ beige coloured van at our door was definitely an occasion. Excitement was further heightened when the driver’s mate proceeded to wheel in a large corrugated cardboard box almost five feet tall. Our excitement had to be put on hold however as Ma was quick to make clear that on no condition was the box to be opened until our father got home.

In those days it was our custom – my two older brothers, my sister Emma and I – to wait at the 22A bus stop on the South Circular Road and greet our Da on his return from work. We did so with even greater enthusiasm that evening. He had scarcely placed his right foot on the footpath before the badgering began.

“Da! Da! We got a big box!” I blurted out

“What’s that, son?” my Da asked as his left foot found the footpath and the bus pulled off.

Putting her two hands about my waist and lifting my five year old frame without difficulty, Emma planked me on the footpath behind Shane and Tony.

“Don’t mind him Da! It’s a delivery. A delivery from O’Farrell’s,” she sang out in her Big Sisterly way.

Deferred gratification is not something that comes easily to four young children that’s for sure. Finally, when my Da had had his dinner and we children had had our tea, Da took his small tobacco knife from his pocket and slowly opened the longest blade and just as slowly snipped one by one the small pieces of tape that held the box closed. He had one quick look inside and realised this was going to be a bigger job. Big jobs we knew always involved Da in removing his jacket.

While Shane, my eldest brother, held the jacket carefully by the loop inside the collar, being sure to keep it clear of the linoleum floor, Da set to work.

Having decided that the job was taking too long Da changed tack. Gripping the body of the old tobacco knife tightly and waving us all back for our own safety; he began to attack the four vertical faces of the box.

“For God’s sake Tommy, don’t scratch it! It’s not even out of the box yet, cried Ma.

At last our curiosity was satisfied. At exactly that same moment our enthusiasm for the task in hand was as deflated as a four-wheeled bicycle with no tyres.

It was not a television set.

Mind you, how we had ever thought a box that size would have been necessary to house a TV in 1960 I will never know.

The following afternoon the Flatley, plugged in and ready to go, took pride of place in the living room just inside the door that that led to the kitchen.

The Flatley dryer was as simple as it was ingenious. It consisted of a metal box, large and white and with four coiled electrical elements at the bottom and nine thin wooden dowels across its top. The clothes to be dried, having been passed through the hand wringer in the backyard were hung from these and a smooth white metal lid was placed on top.

Scarcely had the first batch of clothes been hung in the dryer and the lid secured than Da had a brainwave.

“There y’are now,” he beamed, picking up a small leather-seated wooden chair which had been standing by the living room wall and placing it triumphantly in front of the now warm dryer.

“You’ll be the first ones in Hamilton Park to have your own desk to do your school exercise. And it’s heated!” he announced while at the same moment and with a sweeping movement of both arms pointing  at the Flatley.

*The term hot desking is thought to be derived from the naval practice, called hot racking where sailors on different shifts share bunks.

The Big School

Mister Moynihan was too old to be a teacher. There was no doubt about that. Even at seven years and eight months of age I was sure of that. 

It was the first Wednesday of July and I, like all the boys in First Class in the convent in Weaver Square, had been marched in rows of twos the less than ten minute walk to Scoil Treasa in Donore Avenue.

The fear of the unknown is a very powerful fear indeed and its shadow hung over us like a thunder cloud as we made our silent way to the 'Big School'. All the nervous excitement of the previous days had evaporated and had been replaced with stomach tightening apprehension. This feeling was further  ratcheted up when we were met at the high iron gates of the school by one of the senior boys, neat as a pin in his crisp school uniform and with his brylcreemed hair plastered to his head. Smirking gleefully, and looking us up and down with cold black eyes, he led us to a line of about twenty boys already assembled at the lower door of the large grey two-storied school building.

Standing, thumbs in waistwoat pockets, was a man of about one hundred years of age. Coldly he peered at us through small round rimless glasses which perched perilously close to the end of his large bulbous nose.

"Moynihan", breathed my best friend Paddy Farrell through lips that scarcely moved. "That's Mister Moynihan", he explained. "My brother had him last year." 

We stood in line a further ten minutes though it felt much longer. We were joined by a dozen other boys. They arrived, not as we had in a long herded line from the convent, but in small clutches with mothers, grannies and what I assumed were in some cases Big Sisters. 

As the line in front of Mister Moynihan grew and we shifted from foot to foot to relieve both the tension and the stiffness in our legs, the old man lifted his head and in an accent I had never heard before barked, "Ciúnas!"

The line fell silent.

Mister Moynihan dipped two tobacco stained fingers into his right hand waistcoat pocket and slowly withdrew a large silver pocket watch. With a sharp flick of his wrist he sprung it open. He held it lovingly in his hand for a moment, peering at it over his glasses before replacing it in his pocket which he tapped twice in a very satisfied way. Turning on the spot where he stood and glancing over his left shoulder he again barked, "Siúlaigí!" In deathly silence his flock followed him through the heavy green double doors and into the "Big School". 

Writers Course

I did a course last summer as part of my CPD titled Writing for Teachers. Unfortunately I missed the first two days and only joined in on Day 3 of the five day course. The course was presented by Cathy Beck. It was a really wonderful course and during those three days I wrote a number of pieces and edited and re-edited them many times. I ended up with two pieces with which I was very happy. However this did not really spur me on to continue writing. I did make the odd note of ideas for possible writing but not in an organised way. No idea was progressed. I feel that this was probably due to my failure to maintain a writer's log/notebook as strongly recommended by Cathy. I have enrolled for the course again in August and hope that by repeating the experience I can renew my acquaintance with the writing process and begin again. In the meantime I will post the work from last year on this blog.