My Silver River Feale
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Junior Griffin's Memories
This is Junior's father John Griffin. Many people will remember him as a great amateur engineer and the go to person to mend clocks, umbrellas etc.
Kay Caball who grew up as a neighbour of the Griffin family has a vivid memory of him on a fateful day when Bert Griffin got into one of his many childhood scrapes.
" We lived right across the road from the Griffins in the Bridge Rd before we moved to Gurtinard in 1948 but I knew Bert better as he was the one older than me - Junior must have been a 'big boy' then. Bert used often joke with me about the time I gave him a ride on my tricycle - a big black one as far as I can remember. Young fellas didn't wear shoes then and he went off for a cycle round our back yard in his bare feet but got his (big) toe stuck in the chain. Talk about an emergency - there was no A & E or no Ambulance then. I can just remember crowds of people in the back yard all giving conflicting advice on how to extricate the toe without success. Eventually Johnny Griffin (their father ) had to be called away from his job (was it McKennas?) and he had a hacksaw and had to saw the chain off to get Bert released. Somehow or other then I was blamed - apparently I gave him a push at the wrong moment."
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Tim Kennelly Dinner, October 25 2002
Junior let me photograph some of his memorabilia of this great night. In the above photo are Bert GriffinR.I.P., Mary and the late Eamon O'Connor, Vincent and Kathleen Carmody
Junior has kept his menu which was autographed by many of the football greats who attended.
At the front are Mike Nagle of Ballybunion, John Brosnan, Junior and Fr. Kieran O'Shea
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Neodata Memories
Kathleen Nolan worked in Neodata in the 1970s and 80s. She very kindly agreed to tell us what she could of the history of the place:
"The Neodata office in
Listowel operated as a processing centre for the Philip Morris cigarette
company in the United States. Coupons were collected from cigarette packets and
sent with order forms for different products.
The office in Listowel handled the coupons and processed the orders. The
data was sent back to the U.S. and the goods supplied to the customers.
I am not sure when the office
opened but I worked there as a typist in 1973 along with a lot of other women.
One room was assigned to
typists and the other was the mail room.
I worked in Neodata again in
the 1980s as a mail opener and I micro filmed the order forms. Typists were
also employed at that time. The big change was that the typewriters had been
replaced by computers.
Lorry loads of mail were
collected at Shannon in the mornings and brought to Listowel for processing.
Neodata also had offices in
Newcastlewest, Kilmallock, Abbeyfeale .
The office in Listowel may
have become an eyesore in recent years but we should not forget the huge amount
of employment it generated for the town and its environs during those years and
as a consequence generated a lot of money for the many women, married and
single who worked there. There were some men employed there but not many. This
earned it the nickname “The Henhouse”.
Wags earned there were largely spent in town and it was a great loss to
a lot of people, workers and shops. It was a very busy place and friendships
were formed there that endure to this day."
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Some Humans
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Mystery Solved.....Violá! A beautiful new Seat
The sculptor is Darren Enright.
I photographed the beautiful piece of street furniture, which celebrates Listowel as Ireland's Best Small Town in the Tidy Towns' Competition, from all sides so that you could get a good idea of its size and location.
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