Shops and Shopping Memories
I remember Woolworths shop coming to Tralee in the early fifties. There was great excitement at the arrival of this new shopping experience for the people of Tralee. It had a special significance for me because I was starting school, and I was not happy to be held in captivity within the confines of a classroom with a locked door. Sr Immaculata told me that my mother was gone to Woolworths to buy me a present, whereupon I told her that she was a liar because Woolworths shop was not yet open. I lashed out and kicked her. That incident gave me the title for my published memoir ‘The boy who kicked the nun”.
Yes, Woolworths opened a whole new shopping experience for the people of the Tralee catchment area with its array of sweets, chocolates and a wide range of goods. I remember buying my first fishing rod there.
Woolworths was a bright star in the middle of the more traditional shops and institutions around it.
We had Revington’s store selling high class drapery and household goods. It was our Harrods of Tralee. People flocked in there and loved it. There was also The Munster Warehouse, a fine drapery store.
There were traditional butchers Mc Donnel’s and Florrie Connors. I remember Mr Mulcahy in Wilsons Shop slicing rashers to perfection on the slicing machine. Mr Harmon sold loose sweets in paper tósíns, his wine gums were to die for. Yes, and we had Healy’s dairy selling ice cream and dairy products. Oh memories, memories of Havercrofts bakery, of Benners that sold every conceivable household gadget imaginable, of Ned Cabell’s bike shop in Ashe Street .I recall Senoritas, Hipp’s Tailors, and Mangan’s chemist shop.There was Kelliher’s, McCowen’s and Latchford’s stores and yards with their hardware, fuel and building supplies.I ondly remember Yes, there is a rich memory bank from our early shopping days, but all is changed now with less local ownership and a huge diversity in suppliers and supplies.
We also had the Munster and Leinster bank with Bank of Ireland close by. They were revered national institutions where all shopkeepers queued up on Monday mornings to lodge the weekend takings. Little did they think that such noble institutions would crash and cause such inestimable damage and stress to the lives of ordinary people. They would also bring long serving businesspeople to their knees Irish shopping life was changed for ever by the collapse of the banks.
Apart from all the above we had a few grocers’ shops, and they had their regular clients. Our grocer of choice was O Connors and Mikey, the owner, was a relation of the family, on my mother’s side. He was a Fianna Fail Politician and that did not sit too easily with my father who was opposed to him politically, but practicality had to prevail because the choice of grocer’s shops was limited, and we shopped with Mikey.
Now I liked this institution because when we brought the shopping list into O’Connors on Wednesdays we were always allowed dip into the open biscuit or loose sweet box and have one treat. After the treat the list was handed over to Mikey. He examined it and put it on the Friday pile. He had circular wooden pieces with what looked like a knitting needle protruding upwards and he just pushed the shopping list on to the Friday pile. Then these messages were selected and delivered in the van by Big Pat Sullivan. We paid him the exact amount due in cash or else in the shop next day. Otherwise, there was no delivery the following week. This was our online shopping with strict credit control. We also got our bonus points at Christmas time when each regular shopper received a Christmas Cake and a bottle of Sandeman port.
In addition to the delivery vans most shops had heavy messenger bikes with a cumbersome wicker basket in front for deliveries of shopping. These were heavy machines to handle and were operated solely by human pedal power. They usually had the name of the shop on a plate attached to the crossbar. They could have done with some of the battery-operated machines that today’s Deliveroo people use for fast delivery of take aways. And now as I write these delivery methods are being superseded by delivery drones. Will the next phase be robots galloping around delivering?
I remember in rural Ireland we had the man with the van travelling from village to village selling groceries and this worked well in small communities but was not widely available.
I look at shopping today and I see so many people doing click and collect since Covid times. People regard it as a great convenience which it really is.
We also have home deliveries which have become very popular with shoppers with instant card payments and online selecting and ordering. It is a fantastic system for busy people where both partners are working or for older people whose children or themselves do the shopping online and have the groceries delivered to their own kitchen table.
I smile wryly to myself when I think that we had online shopping, home deliveries and on the spot payments 75 years ago and more.
I came to Arklow in 1967 and spent my first couple of years in digs which was very settling, comfortable and secure with no shopping required, but times moved on. Our landladies retired, and we rented a house. Now we had four bachelors who needed sustenance and had to eat. This required the provision of groceries. We went to Jack Byrnes on the Coolgreaney Road which was our nearest grocer’s shop. Now Jack operated a book service for regular customers whereby you got your groceries, they wrote them into your book, and you paid for them on pay day. This suited us perfectly until it came to pay day and dividing up the bill. The list was well scrutinised to ensure no one was doing any extra personal shopping outside the prescribed agreed list of necessary foods to be purchased for breakfast, dinner and supper. It was a great system that worked perfectly well for us before we spread our wings and settled down to more acceptable ways of living and shopping.
PS When one visitor to my site read the shopping piece she added the following'
Reading your story about the shops in Tralee, I noticed you missed out on Costello's shop opposite the Picturedrome cinema. It was run by a brother and sister, Miss Costello stood behind the counter selling sweets and fruit and her brother stood behind the counter selling a very limited amount of groceries.
I loved the cinema and would call in to the shop to buy a few sweets before going across to see the film of the day. Miss Costello was always shining the red apples and they were like mirrors. She always asked what film I was going to see and what it was about.
When you think of it, we had 3 cinemas in Tralee. The Ashe was the poshest and the Theatre Royal the least appealing while the afore mentioned Picturedrome was most popular. When I was pregnant, my waters broke while I was atttending a film in the Theatre Royal and my husband, who wasn't a great cinema goer, said it was one of the best films he'd seen in a long time but had to leave and take me home!
Memories are made of such incidents.
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