Memories

[Rob MacKillop]

South Road by Dundee City Archives, on Flickr

I used to live next to the giant gas cylinder. I recall once being told to flee, as it was about to blow - but it never did. It was funny to watch it get smaller at Sunday lunchtime, as everyone cooked their three-course meals. Do people still have Sunday lunches?

I was a paper delivery boy for a couple of years, and my round included those "multi storeys" - the tall flats/apartments on the left. And, yes, the lifts didn't always work. Still, I did earn £7 per week, and gave my mum £5 of that. With the rest, I saved up for my first guitar, costing £14. It was during our stay here that my father became an alcoholic, eventually abandoning us. So my mum needed that £5 very badly. It was worth getting up at 5am to head out on my round, through rain, sleet, snow, and ocassional sunshine. I also saved enough to buy my first pair of red-label Levi's, first Ben Sherman Target Shirt, and first pair of Sta-Press trousers.

Have just discovered a Flickr site devoted to old photos of Dundee, where I was born in 1959. Feeling quite emotional about it all.

 

[Brian Moore]

Poignant reminiscenses, Rob. Thanks.

 

[Rob MacKillop]

You know, we could have a theme here: reminiscences stimulated by old photos. They could be family photos, or ones like this, from a library collection.

This one has occupied me for a few hours now. I could write a book, but it would be so boring to read...but the memories are very strong at the moment, and entirely triggered by one photo.

 

[Brian Moore]

I like the idea.

 

[Julian de'Courcy]

Interesting Rob. I also remember , seeking out Levi's, sitting in the bath or swimming in the harbour in them so they would shrink to be a tight fit. They also turned our legs blue as the dye blood out into our skin. No such gas towers in Cornwall, or at least anywhere I went, so when in London always curious to know what they were. A good insight to your younger years and very interesting.

 

[Brian Moore]

This is a scan of a glass "lantern slide" I bought a few years ago. The image was made in the late 1800s and shows Main Street in Rutherglen, my home town. The view is looking west.

The tall building with the clock and flagpole is the town hall, which was completed in 1862.

I spent a lot of time on Main Street as a lad before we emigrated to America. (No, I'm not in this picture!)

Just to the left of where the photographer was standing when he (or she?) took this shot was the entrance to Mitchell Street, which is where we lived in a tenement flat. I say "entrance to" because Main Street and Mitchell Street did not connect by road. Egress to and from Mitchell Street on the Main Street side was via a "close" (pronounced with a hard s, as in "dose") known locally as "The Pen." In Scotland a close is a kind of alley way.

When I look at a picture of the Town Hall (I have a number of images of it) a couple of memories spring to mind. One was my own memory and the other is one my mother shared.

Mine: In November of 1963 the Scottish comedy team Francie and Josie made an appearance at the Town Hall. I was walking on Main Street at the time, very close to the Town Hall's entrance, when Francie and Josie's car pulled up and the pair alighted from it and bolted inside the building with much ballyhoo and carry on. I had merely stumbled on the scene, but it seemed that most of the assembled crowd were there specifically to see Francie and Josie, who made quite a spectacle. One wore a bright red suit and the other a bright yellow suit. This was at a time when Britain hadn't quite emerged yet from the gray, sooty, damp post-war years. We emigrated to America just a couple of days after the Francie and Josie event.

My mum told me this story: The police had arrested a notorious criminal and for some reason they were bringing him into the Rutherglen Town Hall (perhaps they had a jail inside at the time or maybe it was an arraignment). A crowd gathered to witness the accused being brought in. My mum was a teenager at the time and she and her friend worked their way to the front of the crowd. So good was their vantage point that their picture was snapped by a photographer from the local newspaper, the Rutherglen Reformer, and the next day my mum and her friend were featured prominantly on the front page. Only one problem: They were smoking. My mum tells me that my grandparents were rather upset.

 

[Rob MacKillop]

Great stuff, Brian. Love the guy with the hoop. "Street urchins" really did play with these things. Would your grandparents have known this scene?

 

[Milan Vjestica]

That is a very emotive back story to the image Rob. The theme may well prove to be a gem as it forces all of us to look at our past.

 

[Rob MacKillop]

I would say invites, rather than forces

 

[Brian Moore]

Great stuff, Brian. Love the guy with the hoop. "Street urchins" really did play with these things. Would your grandparents have known this scene?

Thanks, Rob. I estimate that this photo was taken in the late 1800s. My grandfather was born in 1900. My grandmother in 1908. By the way, both of those grandparents lived long lives, in particular my grandfather, who lived to 109.

 

[Tom Dunne]

I wasn't long out of short trousers; maybe 10,11, 12 or more importantly going on 13 but way too young to be hanging around town every Friday night waiting for the Showbands to arrive in their mini buses. They always stopped in the Lower Square of our town, the Capital town of our County. Portlaoise, our town, could be found in the center of Southern Ireland, in the middle of the bog and the most inland town in Ireland. We rarely saw the sea.


The Lower Square of our town

Me and my friends collected 'Showbands', meaning we collected and swapped pictures of showbands who were all the rage in Ireland in the sixties.; drums, sax, trumpet, saxophone, bass, lead and rhythm guitar and the most important of all, the lead singer. Shiny esquire suits with a razor sharp crease in the legs was standard dress. No original songs here, just covers of the latest hits from England and America that we were probably already fed up with.

That's Joe Dolan in the front



This was the early sixties and The Drifters Showband were coming to Portlaoise; not just the Drifters but Joe effing Dolan and the Drifters and we were waiting for them, pen in hand for the autographs, outside Egans Restaurant in the Lower Square because we knew the bands always had their meal there before going on to play in Danceland, our local dance hall.


Danceland as I remember it.

But this evening things were beginning to look a bit bad. Fuck them said Seanie Fitzpatrick, they have given us the slip and the bastards must have gone straight to the hall. Not to be outwitted, we headed for the hall. We waited another few hours, outside the closed doors of the hall only to be told by the Conga Brophy, who lived next door, that the dance had been cancelled and ye might as well go home now to your Mammies and Daddies, where ye all should be at this hour of the night.

Years later I crossed the floor of Danceland, terrified, to ask a girl for the very first time to dance with me.

Joe died in 2007 and a motorway now sits on the site of Danceland. Danceland, and many other dance halls in Ireland, was owned by Albert Reynolds who went on to become Prime Minister of the Republic of Ireland.


Some of you may remember Make Me An Island by Joe Dolan and it, amongst lots of his other recordings, went on to be a huge international hit in 1969 and was kept off the No 1 spot in the UK by "Get Back' by the best band there ever was.

Memories indeed.

 

[Pete Askew]

What a great thread. I have really enjoyed all of these reminiscences and the visual links. What power the images have!

 

[Brian Moore]

Wonderful memories @Tom Dunne! Thanks.

 

[Rob MacKillop]

Great stuff, Tom! And well told. I can well imagine the whole thing. By the way, how does one pronounce Portlaoise?

Not to drive you crazy or anything, but...enjoy!

 

[Rob MacKillop]

Who is next?

 

[Pete Askew]

Complete with ducks!

 

[Pete Askew]

Argh, happyduck!

 

[Tom Dunne]

Now that's what I call video.

 

[Tom Dunne]

Rob; for Portlaoise say Portleash.
previously known as Maryborough in the Queens County

 

[Rob MacKillop]

That's what I thought. Thanks.