Growing up outside the village of Dundrum in South County Dublin reminds me of the song: "Dublin in the Rare Old Times". For some Dubliners it would have been earlier and for others later but for the children of Gerald and Marguerite Kent I think we all would concur that it was the glorious 1950s. Looking back I see nothing but happy times, great adventures , cairde maith (good friends) and great characters. As related previously we had moved to our new home at 12 Wyckham Park outside Dundrum Village in the summer of 1952 where I quickly completed my convalescing from my mild bout with rheumatic fever. Soon after my recovery I was in school at the Dominican nuns in Muckross Park in Ranelagh with my sisters Anne and Geraldine. That school year would see me make my First Communion. John was a toddler and Eddie was just about to make his escape from the pram so school was in their not too distant future in 1952. New neighbours moved in next door: the Enrights. Gerry was the father and Haddie was the mother. They had three children: Michael, Deirdre and Anne. Also living with them was an au pair lass from Cooraclare, County Clare named Teresa McCormack who had a great laugh. Mrs Enright was also from Clare and a very nice lady who with her husband Gerry became good friends of my parents. Michael Enright was older than our other friends in the Wyckham Park "gang" but we came to admire him for his pipe bomb making skills. He and his pal Michael Errity would pass on their expertise to us in later years. We set off these small bombs for the innocent thrill of it . Nascent demolition men we certainly were not. I remember going into the hardware store as a 9 or 10 year old for weedkiller(Sodium Chlorate) "for my father's garden"which we would mix with saltpetre, sulphur and sugar , to the best of my recollection looking back over a half century or more ago, before putting this explosive mixture into a length of copper or lead pipe "found" near the houses being built in the vicinity. We would then close the pipe at both ends and make a small hole with a hammer and nail in the middle for the fuse which was a trail of the aforesaid explosive mixture. We would then light a match and run for cover diving into the nearest hole. We were foolhardy chaps looking back and could have suffered serious injury but our guardian angels were looking after us well. As I recall the ringleaders may have been the oldest of our friends. It was a time when all ages from 4 to 12 or older were part of the gang with the younger ones taking their cue from the older boys.
These were carefree days and there are many more stories to relate so there will have to be more of these jottings. Our friends in the housing development at Wyckham Park were the Kennys, Keatings, the Higgins family, the Stephens lads from Kilkenny, the Dwyers, the Frees, Maurice Cord, Dennis Cahalane, Kevin Byrne, Andre Brennan, Joe Crammond,the Monks family and the Henseys to name just some. The River Slang, a tributary of the River Dargle bordered the side of Wyckham Park facing towards the Dublin Mountains where we could see the baleful image of the Hellfire Club ruins and the Pine Forest in the distance. It was on the banks of the Slang where the battles with our mortal enemies the "Ballinteer Brats" took place with the two sides drawn up in battle formation on opposite banks of the river with stones and sticks at the ready. We all became expert at throwing stones. Indeed at least on one occasion I got beaned with a well aimed stone that left a bump and drew blood. Once in a while the enemy would succeed in crossing the Slang and sometimes we had to flee to our houses to escape the ferocious barrage of stones thrown by the "Ballinteer Brats" or "BBs" as we shortened the name to so as to save our breath. One time we did engage them in hand to hand combat and I remember one of the enemy sitting on my head. I eventually shook him off or one of my compadres pulled him off me. This may have been the time when either Malachy Higgins or Willie Stephens overpowered one of the "BB" warriors and rubbed his face in cow dung. Due to the callowness of youth we experienced a feeling of schadenfreude upon seeing the poor guy's plight. We fought on waste land not yet built upon where cows would stray from nearby fields and leave their calling cards. We won that particular battle but at other times we had to retreat with discretion being the better part of valor as the old adage goes. In retrospect a casual observer might have seen this as class warfare at the time but we would have not seen it that way. The "BBs" lived in public housing whereas our parents were homeowners in a new development although none of us were wealthy and our families struggled to clothe, feed and give us a good education in the Ireland long before the so called Celtic Tiger of recent years. We were completely satisfied with our lot in life and simple things satisfied us all. To us it was just one set of lads versus another set of lads and we did not see anything of a socio-economic nature in the ongoing "wars".
Dublin Mountains in winter. Snow was more prevalent in the 1950s.
The River Slang was part of our territory. In its waters we would catch pinkeens in jam jars. Once the pinkeens made the jam jar their days were numbered although this was not the intent. Once they were out of the stream their regular diet was gone and the bread we gave them was no use. Pinkeens were small fish about the size of sardines with a pink underbelly. We had a swimming hole upstream where we had dammed up the waters with tree limbs and other debris. We enjoyed swimming there until one day some mean soul dumped a dead horse in the stream. The River Slang was also the boundary of our back garden where my father had a great vegetable garden. A path ran from our back door the length of the garden. Once upon a time when "Granny" Kehoe was up visiting from Wexford she ambled down the garden with a walking stick in each hand to see the stream. She encountered what she described as a mentally disturbed women on the opposite bank pointing at the stream and screaming " the ducks! the ducks! the ducks!". There may have been a few ducks there but "Granny" did not wait to see and being of a somewhat nervous disposition retreated to the house as fast as her arthritic condition would allow . Obviously the appearance of the crone on the opposite bank of the Slang had somewhat unnerved her.
All our friends went to various schools in Dublin city or other parts of the south County Dublin. The Keatings attended Catholic University School (CUS) off Saint Stephen's Green in the city where my father and his brothers had attended school for a while. The Kennys and the Higgins lads went to the Christian Brothers at Synge Street in Dublin . Both of these schools had numerous famous alumni. Ron Delaney the 1956 Olympic 1500 meters champion was at CUS. My brother John was attending CUS before we left Dublin for Tipperary some years later while our youngest sibling Eddie was with the nuns at Muckross Park. I went on to the Jesuits at Gonzaga College in Ranelagh after I left the nuns at Muckross Park nearby. Dennis Cahalane also went there. The Frees, Henseys, and Stephens lads went to the De La Salle Brothers in nearby Churchtown. Maurice Cord went to the Protestant school known as The High School in the city. Kevin Byrne was a "water rat" as those who went to Westland Row Christian Brothers School were nicknamed. Kevin was a good friend of mine and he was the ringleader of a gang within a gang which he formed. This was the Davy Crockett gang and Kevin designated himself "Davy Crockett" while I as his sidekick was "George Russell". The rest of the gang were nameless. One of our gang Brian Kenny came up with a name for a heavy piece of coiled wire about three feet long which we would throw haphazardly on the waste land which adjoined the building site and wherever it landed we would dig for what we hoped would be buried treasure. More often than not we would find a rusty nail or nothing. Once we unearthed a cow's horn though. Brian suggested the name Senora to give our "treasure" finder a name with an old west flavor. So it became the Senora or "Sanyora" as we pronounced it in our best Texas drawls. We were all aficionados of the Old West in those days. Cowboy suits, Davy Crockett coonskin hats, toy six shooters with holsters, and even Hopalong Cassidy pocket watches were desired items as presents at Christmas time and birthdays. We also were voracious readers of cowboy comics and "annuals". Reading the comics we noted the cowpokes saying "whoa" as they stopped their horses. Instead of pronouncing this word like "woe" we Irish cowboys pronounced the word as "hoo-a" when emulating our heroes like Roy Rogers, Buck Jones, Billy the Kid or Lash LaRue.
Kevin Byrne had a cousin called Brenda Fricker. If the name sounds familiar it is because she played the mother in My Left Foot. Daniel Day-Lewis played Christy Brown, her son. Brenda won an Academy Award as best supporting actress for her role. Back then she was a blond tomboy who could jump off walls and climb with the best of us. She would visit the Byrnes from time to time and that is why I remember her.
"Johnston, Mooney and O'Brien make the best bread,
bread you can rely on,
Yes! It's Johnson , Mooney and O'Brien,
for the best baked family pan" (or words to that effect)
"The use of the Swastika name for this company was as an
ancient symbol of good luck in India; its name originates from the sanskrit
svastika."
" Kennedy's bread
Would kill a man dead
Especially a man
With a baldy head..."
Would kill a man dead
Especially a man
With a baldy head..."
