Throwback Thursday: Phone box memories, teaching Rory and a coffin prank

I was ing through the town of Macroom the other day and saw an energetic group of workmen drilling, bashing, and cutting at a small square on the pavement. Others were dragging away twisted pieces of metal.

What was going on? They were removing the phone box. No more need for that, away it goes to the scrap merchant, let’s have another free bit of pavement for the chewing gum!

Presumably, the same thing is happening all over the country, and in some of these locations the booth is now used to house a vital defibrillator or serve as a free bookstand. I have even seen phone boxes on offshore islands used for growing tomatoes, and very successfully too.

But weren’t phone boxes a vital part of our lives back in the ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s ?

We talked last week about the illegal skill of ‘tapping’ public phones to make calls for free, and many were the delighted responses, showing that we don’t forget what a huge role they played in our growing up, dealing with emergencies, establishing relationships, and keeping in touch with friends and families far away.

Whether you can two old pennies being required, or a newer and more expensive decimal coin, you surely can recall the many times you dialled carefully and pressed Button A to make that all-important with another human voice.

And yes, we have been reminded by several readers (who have now reformed and live blameless lives) that you could stuff the Button B aperture with paper (usually torn from the resident phone book – those?) so that if an unsuccessful caller pressed for the return of his pennies, he didn’t get them. If they were unaware of the dodge, they left in high dudgeon, while the local lads crept back later to pull out the paper and retrieve any money packed behind it!

Some years ago, Mattie Lennon recorded some wonderful stories of the old phone box days in Listowelconnection.com, when she feared (with good reason) that these landmarks were drawing to a close.

She quoted a great story of the man who phoned his friend to ask for the loan of a tenner. “Can’t hear you, sorry, it’s a bad line.” The plaintiff repeated the request, with the same negative response. Whereupon the operator interrupted to say, “I can hear him perfectly.” Without missing a beat, the friend who was being leaned on riposted: “Well, you give him the loan of the tenner so.”

Ah, the power of the operator! Before we all got private individual phones in our homes, shared or party lines were a fact of life, and must have contributed considerably to both the stories and the disasters of social life.

Half of Agatha Christie’s detective stories wouldn’t be possible without someone listening in secretly to a vital conversation. And here in Ireland, especially in villages where there wasn’t much else going on of interest, party lines were a constant source of interest to gossips and housebound folk.

“I when my father took over a business in a small village outside Skibbereen,” recalls John Nagle. “We shared a party line with about five other houses, and you had one ring from the operator if a call was for this person, two for that person, and so on.

“Well, of course, everyone knew ours was five, and everybody used to listen in to hear what my father was saying to his head office.

“If he was thinking of buying goods somewhere, or taking on more people, or letting staff go, they all knew about it as soon as his bosses did! It drove my father mad!”

Mick McCarthy - well-known stalwart of the Kerry Mountain Rescue Team and legendary dog handler - shared his own early experiences of party lines.

“I read, with interest, your article on Throwback on November. 7. I laughed when I read about the ‘phone tapping’ - I tried this many times but failed miserably - I guess I just didn’t have the ‘knack’.

“I started work in the city in 1965 behind a counter. Being a country boy, I was scared out of my wits being in the city.

“One of my jobs was answering the phone and, on many occasions, I cut in on random conversations between total outsiders. I in particular one call I overheard where a brother was speaking with his sister who lived in Wexford. A couple of the girls, working on the counter with me, were also trying to listen in and, whilst we couldn’t make out what the sister was saying, we could clearly hear the brother give advice to her and it went like this: ‘Holy God, Bridie, you’ll have to keep your hand on your ha’penny in future.’

“Now, I never did find out what was meant by the phrase, ‘keep your hand on your ha’penny!’”

A coffin prank 

Mick continues: “I too one of our loaders/drivers (who shall remain nameless) pulling what was then a hilarious stunt on the girls.

“We used to have an hour and a half for our lunchbreak and the girls used link arms and go ‘window shopping’ in Patrick Street.

“We worked next door to a coffin maker and coffins were regularly left standing upright and leaning against the outside wall for collection by the purchaser.

“This particular day, our man placed one of the coffins flat on the footpath with the cover left leaning against the wall. This colleague of mine was balding and had a glass eye - he lay into the coffin, removed his glass eye and crossed his hands. We were able to see all this from a second-storey window in our workplace.

“We saw the girls turn into our street, arms linked, and chatting away. They were used to seeing coffins against the wall, only this time one was blocking the footpath, and they had to step out on to the street to it by.

“As they ed, yapping away, our man sat up, arms crossed, said ‘hello girls,’ and immediately lay back down.

“Well, I tell you, at first the girls screamed, but almost immediately realised what had happened, so they grabbed the coffin lid, closed it down on our man, and walked into work.

“Needless to say, after about five minutes, they returned and released him.

“I suppose if some of the tricks that were pulled back then happened nowadays, the tricksters would land in jail!”

Mick re that when he first went for the job, the interviewer finished with the following statement: “ ‘Young fella’, he said, ‘, we are not the bosses in this company. The real boss is the man or woman who walks in through that door. No customer, no money, no money no job!’

“I think, all counter staff nowadays should learn that phrase!”

Well where was this counter job, we enquired of Mick.

“I actually started work in September, 1966, in Munster Glass on Maylor Street. Munster Glass was co-owned by W.J.Hickey Ltd., and Dublin Glass & Paint Company.

“A few years later, a man called John Elmes from Crosshaven decided to retire from his company, Waters Glass, which was our intense rival at that time. Our company bosses decided to take them over; however, before the news broke, all eight of Munster Glass staff were gathered together and informed by our Managing Director (Pat Hickey) that we were to pretend to Waters Glass staff (and the general public) that this was an ‘amalgamation’, not a take-over.

“Waters was a much larger company, he explained, and we did not want to insult/upset the staff of Waters Glass (Caroline Street) by saying it was a ‘take-over’.”

Teaching Rory 

Almost casually, Mick adds as an afterthought that at this time he was giving one-to-one music lessons in his mother’s house, and Rory Gallagher actually came down for a few lessons.

“He wanted to learn to read music. I used to teach sight-reading for guitar players (back in the days when I thought I knew it all!).

“Unfortunately, I was unable to teach Rory as he was too good - I’d play the few music notes I’d have written for him and he’d instantly have it in his head. He didn’t have the patience to look at, and play, what I had written.

“At that stage he was a brilliant guitar player yet he didn’t appear to have any confidence in his obviously innate ability.”

Oh gosh, we’re going to have to hear more about that, Mick!

Another Throwback Thursday reader, Brian Cronin wrote to say how much he also enjoyed last week’s story about fiddling the public telephone boxes.

“We never did anything like that of course...” adds Brian, “but it reminded me of an occasion when my sister Rosemary and I were doing our stint in London - she nursing, and me hotel-ing - when we clambered into a public telephone box outside Selfridges store in Oxford Street on a cold and wet Christmas Eve to call our mum in Cork. She was living then in a rented apartment on the third floor of a building at the end of MacCurtain Street (next door to that little Protestant Church at the foot of Summer Hill).

“The Garda station occupied the house next door, and from time to time when we were calling Mum from ‘overseas’, I would ring the guards there, and they would gladly bring her down to take the call in the barracks.

“Having pressed button ‘A’, we were told by the guard who answered - after he had hopped in next door to check - that she wasn’t home on this particular occasion. He then, incredibly, invited me to leave a message on their answering machine!

“So Rose and I, a little tearfully I think, sang Silent Night into the phone before leaving the Christmas greeting. Could you imagine doing that today with the police - even in Ireland?

“It was Rosemary’s first Christmas away from home and only my second one. Oh, and there was no point in pressing button B, as the money had gone!”

Yes, you do wonder if there is anywhere you would get a thoughtful service like that these days? Against all the rules, probably. But so nice when it happens.

Party lines and gossip

Brian also shared a memory of party lines which ensured that news was spread everywhere as soon as the phone was lifted.

“The two years we spent in Oughterard as managers of the Connemara Gateway Hotel were amongst the happiest times in our hotel careers,” he says.

“Our grand old house on the hotel grounds had been originally the Church of Ireland rectory. In those days of the early 1970s, the telephone lines were scarce for the older houses in that part of the country and in our case we shared a line with three other houses.

“The local post office, with postmistress Mrs O’Sullivan, would ring one, two to three times to identify which house should answer the call. So even the most private conversations could be overheard by other curious neighbours.

“On one particular occasion, I was away in the UK on business and I called the post office to request being put through to Anne. Mrs O’Sullivan asked me to wait until the line was free but in the meantime she gave me all the local ’news’, the most dramatic being that our local doctor’s wife had just given birth to their first child after 20 years of marriage!

“I guess half of Connemara was able to in the celebrations!”

What are your memories? Email [email protected] or leave a comment on our Facebook page: www.facebook.com/echolivecork.