Now, there’s another thing! In them days you knew every man in the country by his whistle. You’d never hear a man whistling today! 

Have they lost their whistles or what?

But anyway Jim Pat came down to the corner and he says,

‘I have a job for you’.

Now Felix Rafferty had bought a brand new pony’s cart and he had locked it in the wee yard off Meeting Street. I was about ten years younger than Jim Pat but I was a big strong lad of sixteen or seventeen. Jim Pat says,

‘Follow me!’

We went up Meeting Street and got over the gate into the yard. Anyway, with my help, he got a wheel off the cart and lifted it over the gate. We got it up the back loanan and through the church graveyard. There was a hole in the hedge and there were nettles and stuff and that’s where we put the wheel.

Now, Jim Pat lived directly across the street from Felix. Felix was an early riser: he’d be up at six o’clock every morning to bring in the cows. So next morning when he came out Jim Pat was sitting on the summer seat across the street.

‘Do you know,’ says Felix, ‘there’s some smart alec after took the wheel off my new cart. Would you keep your eyes open?’

‘I will indeed!’ he answered.

But it got so bad that the police were called in and because of that Jim Pat couldn’t return the wheel. Eventually Felix had to buy a new one. The old one lay there for three years until one day Davy Kearns was in there for something and found it.

That’s the sort of ‘joke’ there was in them days!