NOT ALONE is the past a different country, but one that’s totally unrecognisable in present day Ireland. The way in which we live and work has changed so dramatically over the past 60 years or so that the old days just seem incredibly archaic. How did we ever manage? I was struck by all these fundamental social changes when I was researching and writing a recently published book about the 75-year history of Calor Gas in Ireland.
When McMullans, the Belfast oil company behind the Maxol brand, brought Calor Gas to Ireland in 1936, it started its publicity with features in various newspapers, including The Irish Times, extolling the virtues of this new fuel, a byproduct of the oil industry.
The first big rollout was at the 1937 Spring Show at the RDS; the Spring Show itself, to the regret of many people, became a casualty of progress. In those far off days, for anyone fortunate to be well off, the ultimate in holiday luxury was having a caravan somewhere like Brittas Bay or along the Wexford coast.
Portable gas cookers were promoted as the ultimate holiday accessory.
Few people went abroad for holidays and for those lucky enough to have a job, a day at the seaside, somewhere like Bray, was the most they could hope for.
When Calor Gas restarted after the second World War, the working conditions for the company’s employees were primitive. One man I met was Jack Noonan, from Rooskey, Co Roscommon, who started as a sales rep on the road with the company in November, 1946. He recalled that the depots around the country were no more than galvanised tin sheds, with no lighting, no heat and no telephones. The van he used had no heating, a big drawback in the terrible winter of 1947. Neither was it possible in those days to get even a cup of coffee anywhere on the road, he recalled.
On the odd occasion he needed to phone head office in Dublin, he had to go to the nearest post office to make the call, which had to be put through manually. Direct dialling for any but local calls was unheard of. When head office wanted to communicate with its reps around the country, it put triplicate memos in the post. Just compare that with all the mobile online and digital paraphernalia of today.
The atmosphere at work, too, was very paternalistic. In the 1950s, after McMullans had given up the Calor Gas franchise and started Kosangas, with a Danish company, in competition with Calor (eventually, Calor took over Kosangas), this old- fashioned relationship between bosses and workers continued. Coming up to Christmas, all the women working for Kosangas had a half a day off so they could do their shopping. All employees had to attend a yearly dinner dance at the Gresham Hotel in Dublin, while another mandatory treat was the annual visit to the orchard near Limavady, Co Derry, owned by one of the McMullan family.
In those days, it was almost unknown for women to drive cars and for many, getting married meant leaving work. It wasn’t until 1973, when the civil service marriage bar ended, that this time-stained ritual ended.
Everyone used to go home for lunch, which the stay-at-home woman of the house cooked. From 1955 for 20 years, one of the most popular radio programmes was the Kennedys of Castleross, the first Irish soap; many factories altered their lunch times so that their workers could get home to tune in over lunch. But even then, times were changing fast. When RTÉ ended the show, it got just one letter of complaint.
When Jack Lynch was taoiseach, around 40 years ago, he always made a point of going home to lunch nearly every day, to Garville Avenue in Rathgar. For years, there used to be a Housewife of the Year competition to promote bottled gas; even though it only ended in the mid-1990s, it seems incredibly out of date now.
Even by 1963, when a Kerryman, Larry Hickey, started with the company, many housewives in that county were still using ranges, or else a crane over an open fire, a custom that had persisted for centuries. Many homes in rural Ireland still had to get electricity, so candles or oil lamps remained essential.
Life was even more deficient in modern appliances on the offshore islands. When the 30 inhabitants of Inisbiggle, just off Achill in Co Mayo, got bottled gas in 1970, the cookers and other appliances had to be brought from Achill by currach, then transported around the smaller island by donkey cart. In one hilarious episode, a donkey laden with cookers refused to move, until it was given a thwack with a stick. It then shot off, at high speed, disappearing over the hill until it upturned itself, the cart and its load into a bog.
At about the same time, Rathlin Island off the north coast, also got bottled gas. One of the men working on the installation had spent three months there before head office realised that he hadn’t returned. But during his time there, he became so knowledgeable about the island and its history that he wrote a book on the subject. These days, when it’s usually so easy to get in touch with someone, it’s hard to
imagine any head office not realising that someone had disappeared off the radar for three months!
In those days, the same key would open the locks of any particular model, such as the Ford Zephyr, a popular car among wealthier motorists in the 1960s and into the 1970s.
One night, the sales manager with the bottled gas company, and his wife were enjoying themselves at the Castle golf club in Rathfarnham, south Dublin. In the early hours, they got into what they thought was their Ford Zephyr. They had only gone a short distance before they were stopped at a Garda checkpoint in Dundrum. Unknown to them, the then Garda Commissioner, Paddy McLaughlin, had also been in the golf club that night and had parked his identical Ford Zephyr, his own personal car, outside the club. It was this car that the couple from the bottled gas company had unwittingly driven off in. But it was all sorted out and no one ended up in Mountjoy!
Those were simple times, devoid of all the gadgetry we have today, and in recollection, they have a certain quaint, easygoing charm. But the chasm between the realities of then and the realities of today is so big that it can only be bridged by a little humorous recall of events.