Bord na Móna - Source Issue 12 - (Page 27)
A group of employees' children - and employees - enjoying the Ballydermot children's party
in the 1950s.
HERITAGE
PROFILE
LULLYMORE
VETERAN
HERITAGE
CORNER
L
AN EXTRACT FROM AN SLEÁN, FEBRUARY 1, 1946, BY
'WORDSWORTH'
O
ne day last week at Killinthomas
Camp, an orderly reported to the
C/S, Mr Hoban, that a cat had been
locked in the rubber boots store, so,
taking the key and accompanied by his assistant,
Mr Steinmayer, whose love for our "dumb"
friends is so well-known, the Super made for the
store and threw open the door, saying in a
coaxing tone, "puss, puss" or "pish wish", or
words to that effect. The mewing, sounding
rather hoarse now, persisted but no cat
appeared. "She's in the so-and-so well!" says
the Super. Sure enough, the light of a torch
hurriedly brought by an orderly disclosed, when
the loose boards had been removed, the form of
a black cat perched on a piece of timber at the
bottom of the opening about 25 feet deep.
Pussy, evidently recognising that help was
at hand, redoubled her cries which the Super
vainly tried to stem by alternate requests to
"be a good pussy", and to "shut up, you
brute!" The ranks of the rescuers having now
been swelled by the arrival of Mr P. J.
Gallagher, Assistant C/S, many and varied
were the suggestions put forward to extricate
puss. A ladder was procured and half of it
introduced into the store. Owing to it being
too long or the door too narrow (in the
absence of a member of the engineering staff,
we couldn't tell which), the ladder refused to
do its stuff. In fact, it took considerable
energy and the use of some magic words I
had never heard before to get the half of the
ladder already in, out again.
A really sensible suggestion from Mr
Steinmayer - that a hole be made in the roof
just over the opening and the ladder lowered
straight down - was somewhat rudely
dismissed by the Super's remark that the roof
cost money, but we got the cat free!
Eventually the only window which had been
nailed up was opened to the accompaniment
of more new words. These, however, paled
into insignificance when Mr Gallagher
attempted to catch the ladder on his chest as
it came, with more speed than discretion,
through the open window. This time, the
ladder was either too long or the roof too low
(see reference to engineering staff above)
and it took considerable manoeuvring to get
it into the well, but this was at last
accomplished, again to the enrichment of my
vocabulary! The ladder of course was short
by a good six feet and had to be lowered to
puss with a stout piece of wire - and if
anyone asks you can a cat climb a ladder to
get out of a well - it can, and it did!
INFORMATION
To find out more about Bord na
Móna's rich heritage, log on to
www.heartland.ie
S
oose briquettes were the order of the
day for Oliver Kearney (aged 76) when
he worked in Lullymore Briquette factory.
"We forked briquettes onto a conveyor belt
which tipped them into lorries," said Oliver, who
started work with Bord na Móna in 1953 - in
1955, he left to work elsewhere, including
England, before returning to Lullymore from
1963 until the factory closed in 1992. "The V8
petrol lorries used to take five or six tonnes of
briquettes, while the bigger lorries from hauliers
and fuel merchants like McHenry's of Dublin
took 10 tonnes."
Oliver also worked as a pressman in the small
briquette factory which was on the same site as
the main factory in Lullymore. "It produced
about six to eight tonnes in an eight-hour shift
- they were small briquettes made for use in
small furnaces."
Later, in 1963, he worked in peat harvesting
driving a miller on Lullymore bog, before
returning to work on briquette bales in the
factory in 1968.
That connection with Lullymore has been
with Oliver all his life - as a child, he lived just a
half-mile from the factory and passed by it on
the way to school. He recalls seeing the turf
boats which used to come down the Grand
Canal and tie up at the dock.
Married to Maureen with three adult
children, Oliver also recalls his father's
involvement in World War I. "He signed up and
fought in France. He was 62 when I was born
and didn't talk about the War much - that
generation didn't."
And, in as much as that war was about
saving communities in Europe, working in
Lullymore kept that local community together.
"Anybody who had a job at that time was
lucky," said Oliver, adding that the average
salary in the early days was £4-£5. "And people
lived on it and reared families out of it."
www.bordnamona.ie Source | 27
http://www.heartland.ie
http://www.bordnamona.ie
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Bord na Móna - Source Issue 12
Bord Na MóNa - Source Issue 12
Contents
News
Brown Gold
A Bright Future Beckons
Clean Energy Hub
A Good Year
Game On!
Sales Force
Project Update
Heritage Corner
Nationwide
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