Throwback Thursday: Era of two TV channels and Wanderly Wagon

It is fascinating the things we most vividly from our youngest days.

Throwback Thursday reader Paula Rose writes of a Cork childhood in the 1950s and ’60s, and the coming of that new and seductive habit, hire purchase.

“The piano, new from Pigott’s music shop, was the most impressive piece of furniture in the house,” recalled Paula.

“It stood in the dining room away from the open fire, next to the hot press, sitting against the wall between the two rooms. The wall was old, but sufficiently steady to block sounds coming from the other room.

“The piano had a cream-textured cloth draped over the top. It carried a jug of flowers, also cups of tea or glasses with drinks, dependent on the whim of the piano player. Drink, smoke, it catered for all. It’s like it knew where it was bound and settled straight in.”

Paula adds: “I the anticipation of its arrival, asking my mother if there were candle-holders at the front or maybe other ornamentation?

“The previous keyboard model was a three-legged tiny white toy one on which I practised but which failed to reach any desired crescendo. This came straight up, however, varnished black. It was a choice dictated by the sales assistant as having the sweetest sound, no room for affectation, just black with black and white notes, no more.

“However, this vibrating box held the hopes and expectations of my mother for all of us, ultimately, seven children.

“The piano now dominated the spot previously held by the grandfather clock which had long ago stopped. The leather chaise longue, devoid of its innards, had been despatched. Its replacement was brand new, straight from Sean Jennings & Co, complete with its hire purchase agreement.”

Paula says her parents had very different attitudes to money.

“My mother and father were children of the revolution. My father was born around the time Cork burned. They were happy rebels.

“However, their financial outlook was like the meeting of the waters – they met, and then went their separate ways.

“My father’s outlook was ‘cut your cloth according to your measure,’ while my mother’s was ‘live now, pay later’.

“This discrepancy, however, posed no problem for her. As it behoved the man of the house to sign financial agreements and loans, it was up to her enterprising skill to acquire the goods without ‘bothering the boss’.

“She was adept at getting around any obstacle that she perceived in my father’s attitude. She was well able, rooted with the ancestors, in the knowledge, not alone of where she came from, but of her sole purpose and its natural conclusion. A man was only an interference.

“She simply took the hire purchase agreement and spent a decent amount of time walking around town before presenting the shop with a signature.”

Paula continues: “The invoices and bills were naturally all addressed to my father and duly came to him. ‘Jesus,’ he cried, ‘I’ll end up in jail from your mother!’

“She, however, managed to satisfy the creditors just enough to ensure that he remained at large.”

Paula recalls the routine of weekends in those days in her house, in which the piano played a vital part.

“Saturday afternoons my father spent sitting behind a newspaper or a book. Come teatime, though, there were a number of jobs. They reflected the lacuna, the space between then and later, the tedium, the busyness, the randomness of domestic life.

“After the Saturday night fry, it was time to build up the fire before taking the metal bath down from the flat roof to bathe the youngsters.

“Music then generally intervened. That’s when internal life took its own course, honouring the space or the lack of it.

“My youngest sister, Jean, sat at the piano to play, with my father in his collarless shirt and braces, frying pan still in his hand, harmonising.

“Whatever the colour of the sky outside or the prevailing variations in temperature indoors, the piano too was serving its purpose. Its influence was hardly balanced by its size – it had acquired magical status.

“It soothed, accompanied, was the stalwart receptacle of the house and its family. It remained black, modest, just being itself, more than the sum of its parts. It was, and is, just enough.”

Great memories, Paula. Do we take it you still treasure that piano?

Another Throwback Thursday reader, Stephen Twohig, of Kanturk, now living in Maine in the USA, also has memories of childhood, and in particular the coming of De Telly to Ireland.

“I look at the selection of stations now available, on both sides of the pond, and am amazed that there is so much to watch,” begins Stephen.

“I’m not a devout man of the tube myself, I find it strange to be able to flick through 70 to a hundred stations and not be able to find anything to watch. From the religious bible-thumping money-begging to the daily soaps. From talk shows to sports channels. Weather, cooking, home shopping, Japanese, Canadian, Spanish, cartoons, old movies, and the various music channels.

“The variety is as endless as the cereal aisle in a hypermarket. How can any young child want to go out and kick a ball around?

“It is funny the reaction I get when I tell people that when I was young we only had two stations. And only one for a very long time. That, and the fact that the shows didn’t start until after the six o’clock news and The Angelus. It’s no wonder we spent so much time outside, biking and ball-playing.”

Stephen continues: “Yes, the options were easy back then: RTÉ1 or RTÉ2. The first colour televisions were a treat and it was a while before we got one. I staring at them in a shop window in Cork city and being in awe. Even if the faces looked as if they had third-degree sunburn or a bad case of motion sickness.

“But who can forget the simplicities of the earlier shows and cartoons? We had the American cartoons: Mickey, Tom and Jerry, Mr. Magoo, Popeye. There was a funny animated cartoon called Noddy with a twirling roundabout.

“Then there were the home-grown children’s shows like Wanderly Wagon, a magical travelling caravan with funny characters - a talking puppet, dog and bird - that wouldn’t have been out of place at Cahirmee or Newcastlewest.

“As well as all the American shows of Lassie and Green Acres, we also had the British and Australian counterparts. Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, that live-saving dolphin, Flipper (whose cousin must have emigrated to Dingle later!) There was Daktari, Born Free, and for young girls with the pang for romance and horses, there was Black Beauty. Seems like there was an animal to save you from all catastrophes.

“A great home-grown show was the terrific and much loved Amuigh Fein Speir, a wildlife documentary on coastal and water birds, filmed by Eamon de Buitlear and drawn by Gerit van Gelderen, who would narrate in his Dutch accent and beautifully and marvellously draw the birds as he explained their habitats and migrations.

“From terns to wagtails, shoveller to teal, we knew them all,” says Stephen.

“In the later evening, or prime time as they call it now, you had all the current American shows. Where earlier there had been Mannix, Banacek or The Magician, we now had Hawaii Five O, The Streets of San Francisco, and The Rockford Files. Or later, Miami Vice.

“Jack Lord swivelling and smiling atop a Hawaiian skyscraper in Hawaii Five O, and solving a crime just by ·walking around his own desk, while Danno and his assistant just looked on.

“‘Book him, Danno’ meant we were off to bed soon as the crime was solved, and though the Polynesian boyos with the leis around their necks rowed as hard as any Dingle regatta crew, they never made the shore.

“My own father fancied himself as a young Jim Rockford, and every young buck with a comb and some hair gel was Don Johnson as they swaggered into The Highland in Kanturk, the Ferrari (actually a 1972 Ford Escort) cooling down after a hard chase down from Rockchapel.

“We had the comedies of The Odd Couple, The Beverly Hillbillies, M*A*S*H, and later the swindling, back-stabbing, and questionable morals of Dallas, Dynasty and anything else from Hollywood that RTÉ would allow.

“It’s amazing how versed we were on this foreign land through the impeccable values of the small screen. More people worried about who shot JR than they did about The Pope or President Reagan.”

Stephen adds: “We, of course, were brought back to reality with the smell of a jobber’s boots nearby, and the quick showing of Mart And Market.

“How about Mike Murphy and his quiz show? His signature little dance and the usual celeb appearance, plus the well-known adopted Irish phrase of ‘Stop the lights’ when you had the answer.

“What can be said about the Saturday night Late, Late Show? The man had indeed the gift of the gab and would put any and all of the late-night show hosts over here in the US to shame. Good man, Gaybo. Right up there with the best of them. ‘Would you roll it there, Colette’.

“The English shows of Benny Hill, Are You Being Served? and Fawlty Towers, were priceless and ageless. Still are. But it can’t be denied that our homegrown soaps kept a generation eager each day for the next turn of events.

“Somebody was always wondering what Tom or Benjy from The Riordans were going to do next. Would they plant winter or summer barley? Tough call.

“Later, there was Gabriel Byrne in Bracken, and later still Miley and Biddy in Glenroe. Simple shows, but they captured and held a huge audience.

“I’m not going to even start on about the English and ageless Coronation Street. It’s going on as long as construction on the N20 and it still holds the country hostage every night.

“Like all the soaps, you could miss it for a year and in a minute watching you could be back up to speed, such is the skill of the scriptwriters. But each to their own. Me, I will stay with Miley or Tom Riordan trying to find out who stole their cement mixer.

“On a Saturday afternoon it was all sports. Horse racing or golf, or on Sunday a football match with the irreplaceable Michael O’Hehir.

“If you were old enough, you stayed up ’til late and would even stare bleary-eyed at the rustic scenes of the countryside to the sound of the National Anthem. I doubt you see it now. These days they probably show scenes of Intel’s new factory in Leixlip, or the new ring road around Kildare or Portlaoise. It’s enough to send me off to bed!

“Lately I visited friends, and outside the barn cats slinked by bushes. A tractor parked in the shade, crows cawed and a pigeon cooed peacefully in a nearby tree. Inside, the TV was on and to this country backdrop of silence and calm, I could hear Formula One cars scream and roar through turns. At such a very different speed.”

Great recollections of those early days of TV here in Ireland, Stephen. We are sure many readers will nod and smile at the once-familiar names of those bygone shows.

Do any of you watch re-runs? Let us know what your own favourite was. Email [email protected] or leave a message on our Facebook page: www.facebook.com/echolivecork.