Joe had served as a soldier in the Royal Irish Rifles in the Great War (First World War). He had been wounded at the Dardanelles. He was struck during the battle for Gallipoli and at the height of that ferocious, hopeless attack. He was towed on a raft across the waters to the beach. This raft had a stout, wooden partition behind which the crouching soldiers could hide, crouching behind this, taking the safe side, shooting up at the Turks who were pouring fire down upon them from the high, rocky cliffs. The bullet that struck Joe penetrated and lodged in his helmet and partially entered his skull. Seriously injured, he was invalided out of the army. He recovered, only to suffer the effects of the chronic unemployment, encountered by so many of his kind. He hated Churchill whom he blamed for this debacle.

Still as a wounded ex-serviceman, Joe was entitled to a government gratuity to assist in his rehabilitation in those immediate post-war years. The money would be paid only if the appellant could prove that the money would be spent in some wise and worthwhile venture. The amount of this gratuity was £60 - a lot of money to a working man in those days. The temptation to my Uncle Joe thus was very great, whose ingenuity was equal to the occasion.

He applied, on the understanding to the officials in charge of the fund that he would enter into business as a carter. The money, he alleged, would serve as a ‘down-payment’ on a horse and cart. Joe then borrowed the rig from a local farmer and paraded it, up and down, in front of the local office on Trevor Hill. This was by way of material proof of his enterprise. The ruse was successful.

Joe was a drinking man in those days, and would quickly ‘liquidate’ his assets. He was then reduced to toiling at the docks to earn his crust. This activity meant discharging ships of all kinds; brick and tile boats, timber boats and general cargo boats; but most of all, coal boats.

This activity was known locally as ‘coal-heaving’. As coal was relatively lightweight, the dockers, using enormous shovels, began digging down as soon as the hatch covers were removed. To begin with, the work, though hard, was lightened for the enjoyment of fresh air and the possibility of a breeze. These simple joys soon disappeared as they dug further downwards into the coal in the gloom of the hold. It became hard, brutal work for the shovels had to be driven into a mass of coals of various sizes. This was the more difficult as there was no solid ground to work on, and sheer, brute force had to be employed. Larger chunks - some the size of a bread-bin - had to be thrown by hand into the tubs. Once filled, the tubs were hoisted up by means of the ship’s steam-winch and derricks. The laden tubs would climb up through that small, rectangular, diminishing sky.

Injuries were commonplace, whether from being crushed by a tub, or being struck by a chunk of coal falling from a loaded tub. Uncle Joe suffered this fate, which later affected his sight and for which he received compensation. His sight faded gradually but progressively and he ended his days almost blind.

When the tubs cleared the hold, they were then tipped onto reciprocating screens which filtered them down to the waiting lorries or railway wagons. These were shunted back and forth by a steam locomotive. The coal-grading screens oscillated continuously with a persistent, loud, throbbing noise. Since coal is soft and fragments easily, they also generated great, thick, black clouds of coal dust. Falling in abundance, this dust covered everything like a fine, black snow. Too light to penetrate the surface tension of the calm waters of the basin, this also became covered with a black, dirty crust.

At first the men’s working area was limited to the opening of the hold itself. Soon, beneath deck level, they had a larger area in which to work. They laboured in this confined space amid the dust generated by their activity. Such hard, brutal, dirty work generated a mighty thirst. The dockers acquired a reputation - not without substance - as big drinkers.

A great moment of relief occurred when some one digger would strike bottom. This was signified by the shovel’s grating on the metal hold. Oh what a happy, joyous sound that was, the event being jubilantly announced to one’s mates. Now that the end was in sight, the shovelling was much easier. Toiling in that gloomy, metal cell, - with just a small rectangle of sky above them - they had worked their way laboriously right to the bottom of the ship. Who could blame them for looking forward then to a drink! Excessive sweating in that dusty, airless chamber had covered their skin with a coal film and filled their lungs with choking dust. They had come to resemble a different race of men altogether.

Little wonder as they climbed wearily out of the hold into the clean, clear light of day, that one thought dominated their minds almost to distraction - they thought of nothing else but a long, cool drink. Soon in small groups, their nailed boots rattling loudly on the cobbled quay, they made their way to nearby pubs, stepping briskly with a rolling gait and a new vigour, their talk taciturn but triumphant. Each with his own proud tool, they manfully shouldered their broad, shining shovels, a cheerful group of black whitemen with trousers still hitched up by cords below the knee, in a style they called"Yorks". This sartorial arrangement allowed the trousers to be baggy about the knees and hence made bending movements easier. First call would be to the office to collect their hard-earned pay. Only after this would come the tempting and long-awaited drink. Hollywood’s pub, conveniently sited on a corner near the basin, was their Mecca. It was a common sight to see a long line of large, bright shovels on the pavement outside this pub, leaning indolently against the wall. Inside the tired men lounged, slaking their thirst and talking animatedly of little incidents - humorous or otherwise - that had occurred during their labours. Despite their weariness, they would usually laugh, their eyes unusually bright, their lips remarkably red, in comparison with their dark, begrimed features.

Of course most of these responsible men would content themselves with one, or maybe two pints, before going on their weary way home. A few would linger longer, their resolve weakening with every pint. Then, still yorked and shovelled, they might just head for another pub for more beer, or to back a horse or two. These reprobates could sometimes be seen much later, still doggedly clutching their shovels, unsteadily but resolutely making their guilty way home. Occasionally they’d be seen lurching off the pavement into the road with much belligerent muttering and an occasional defiant profanity, directed blindly at the disapproving street, such would then be the depths of their inebriation. This hostile, wobbly, drunken progression was known colloquially as,"Roaring drunk, taking the two sides of the street". It was not uncommon in those far-off days of my boyhood.

In those days, pubs were rough places, often with a line of little wooden barrels outside, on which men would sit, and smoke and drink in the summer. Inside they were smoky and gloomy, with few concessions to ornamentation. The only embellishment was the many yellowing advertisements for beer, whisky and cigarettes. Bartenders, clad in white aprons, were invariably men. The floor was often strewn with sawdust. Bars were just plain, drinking dens and the preserve of men. Their slightly disreputable reputation meant that they were not fit for women. Women did for various reasons sometimes enter, often as part of a family celebration party. Most bars catered for such occasions by providing ‘snugs’. These were small, seated enclosures with shoulder-high wooden partitions, providing a modicum of privacy for each had its own door and enough space for six people.

Men rarely drank at home except perhaps during a family gathering or party. On such occasions women would usually drink port, this being regarded as correct and appropriate for their sex, beer-drinking being considered uncouth and coarse in women. The few secret drinkers were invariably women. Social attitudes of the time precluded women with a taste for alcohol from frequenting pubs, or even the ‘snugs’ attached to them. They would furtively bring a jug to the side door of the pub and purchase a quart of porter to be taken away for home consumption. One old lady who lived near us could often be seen making her way home soberly and contentedly from McVeigh’s Pub, securely clutching a jug completely hidden beneath her shawl.

There were rumoured to be about a hundred pubs then in the town. The swankiest of these were the hotel bars, considered fit for women and often frequented by commercial travellers. The small back-street pubs made a precarious living from the local, regular customers who liked to sit with their newspapers, studying form. These were places where men could also play darts or cards while drinking. My father was never a drinking man, yet he had many stories of such places. The verbal pictures he painted so eloquently with an eager, deft brush were revealing and sometimes comical. He often told us how the owners of these dingy pubs, especially on Monaghan Street, revealed a hidden thespian talent and a cunning enterprise in the way he had of attracting and retaining wayward passing ‘drinkers’. One such publican could often be seen standing at the door of his pub, rocking on his heels and chuckling loudly with good-humoured banter directed towards the jovial company inside his happy bar. An enticed drinker would quickly be furnished with a pint inside. When his eyes became accustomed to the gloomy interior, he would glance around to make the acquaintance of the merry company, only to find himself the sole occupant! Meanwhile the busy publican was back at his post in the doorway! If memory serves me well, this cunning and jovial publican had a very appropriate nickname. He was called Sunshine Mallon.

6. A Trip to the Point

Sometimes, in the usual round of mundane events, our routine is broken by a rogue thought that has been accidentally triggered by a faint echo from the past. It could be a melody, or perhaps even a smell - a relic from another time, of years long past. At once we are transported back again into that curious dreaming mind of our childhood, to see the world once again from that innocent perspective.

These once vivid experiences now mellowed with time, we view with tenderness, as if like ancient artefacts, they might just crumble to dust through being handled too roughly, even in the gentle process of fond introspection. Appealing as these memories are, they can be frustrating because inevitably they are incomplete. Often they are little better than animated cameos, highlighted but yet isolated from their contemporary scene. Annoying gaps intrude to break the continuity, so that the reason for the event - or even its outcome - is often lost.

We remember with ease apparently trivial things, which must have impressed our minds at the time to become so deeply incised in our memories. Yet these same things now appear paltry and we wonder at their persistence. At the same time, as we trawl through our memories in search of things we would now view as important, we are often unsuccessful: these supposedly significant things seem to be lost in oblivion.

It is often the vividness of a first-time experience, however inconsequential, that makes an indelible imprint on the mind. Adults become blasé through familiarity with beautiful or important things. The mature mind often forgets the mind-expanding wonder of a new discovery, whether it be a simple thing like that first sweet, sharp, stimulating smell of methylated spirits, or the curious, dry, slippery, fluid feel experienced when one first plunged one’s hands into a bag of flax-seed. The polished seed behaved like a fluid, slipping between one’s fingers, when one first closed one’s fist within. Remembered tactile sensations like this can be extremely evocative and are an important part of our experience.

In my own experience, smells can have a profound effect in the recovery of memory. The smell of a cedar wood pencil under my nose, or a quick sniff of an inkbottle or the curious odour of plasticene, is usually enough to bring me back to my school days. Old photographs too can be evocative, often tantalising, sometimes downright annoying, however dim or faded. Some days ago while reorganising a bed room I came upon a folder with lots of old photographs. A few, small black and white photos, now faded and a little discoloured, clearly the product of a Box Brownie, soon gripped my attention. Of one, one look was enough to captivate my attention and transport my mind back through the long, weary years to the summer of 1935, when I was three years old. I recall with great fondness, a train journey and my first impressions of the sea.

Sometimes while on a visit to my granny’s in Queen Street, I would call into the house next door. The Frames lived there. They had a boy about my age, Freddie, with whom I often played. Our play was usually agreeable. I remember on one occasion, the family took me with them on a day out to Warrenpoint. As this was my first visit to the ‘Point, it remains sharply etched in my mind. Curiously I cannot recall Mr Frame. In those days the ladies always made a bigger impression, so I remember them more easily.

We walked to Dublin Bridge Station. Though just a few minutes away, it seemed at that time a long walk. Then came the mysterious process of buying tickets from a uniformed official behind a pigeonhole. When this man punched our tickets, he did so by inserting them into a large cast-iron pillar that stood beside him. This made a ground-shaking thump as it operated, punching our tickets heroically with appropriate railway force. We all proceeded onto the platform, to wait excitedly with many others, for the train to arrive.

Our impatience finally ended when a bell started ringing and we were moved back from the platform’s edge by a uniformed railway official. Then the ponderous road gates began to swing open. They were driven by a man high up in a signal-box, who laboriously turned a large, spoked wheel. When the engine, wreathed in plumes of smoke and steam, slowly approached, our excitement was almost heart-stopping. As it passed the signal-box, the driver leaned out to slickly exchange the large keys with the signalman. These were as big as rolling-pins and each had several rings (this practice was necessary in single-track working.)

A brief, excited melee followed as we boarded the train to the loud thumping of thick, heavy doors. Then came the guard’s whistle. A vigorous, metallic jerk preceded a slow exciting forward movement and we were on our way at last. How exciting it was, bombarded with novel sensations, steaming ponderously out of the station amid acrid smoke and steam and the metallic sounds from engine, chains, carriages and railway line. There was the smooth, rolling rumble of motion and the repetitive heavy clanks of the wheels beating on the junctions of the shiny rail. The great dark mass of the Steam Packet shed slipped slowly past to reveal the broad, shiny harbour basin, with its ships and gulls.

Then a sudden, unnerving, thunderous noise erupted. The train was crossing the metal bridge that spanned the muddy river near the gasworks. As we rumbled over this bridge, the massive, heavily-riveted steel frame seemed to rear up with an alarming roar. A violent monstrosity, it appeared dark and threatening, close to the carriage window. It temporarily blotted out the sky as if trying to engulf the train. I remember peeping through the window in quiet panic at this sudden, frightening apparition, but being privately consoled by the calm composure of the adults in our compartment.

In later jaunts to The ‘Point I would lose much of my fear of this sudden, noisy menace. Some anxiety remained though, until my vulnerable, childish mind learned the blind, callous bravado of the growing boy. After this brief but fearsome drama, the journey became pleasant and sedate. We passed the long, brick slaughter-house, still with the high arched entrance and exit of Newry’s original railway station. We settled into our plump, stiff, springy seats to enjoy the soothing sight of the green Marshes sliding by. It was immediately a pastoral scene, with fat cattle grazing contentedly in the low fields, flicking their muddy tails oblivious of the noisy train and the plume of smoke drifting across the grass. However in some fields, young inexperienced bullocks would scatter, running wild, from the train, alarmed by the sudden, loud, metallic clamour. We watched this with more than satisfaction. Boys like action, and we knew we were the cause of it!

By now the train had gained full speed and was rumbling along, joggled gently by the occasional rhythmic clickity-click of the wheels on the rails’ junctions. We rested comfortably on our firm, plump seats, the fabric exuding a sulphurous smoky smell. We sat shoulder to shoulder, our knees almost touching those of the passengers opposite. Overhead, gently rocking in the net rack was our baggage and surplus clothes. My eyes would lazily roam the shaking interior to briefly rest upon the sepia photographs on the wooden wall beneath the rack. I recall an unengaging view of Portrush - a dark brown silhouette against a shabby, white sky. Another depicted the great swelling bulge of the Mournes, dwarfing Newcastle clustered below: again the impression was darkly drab against a dirty white, lifeless landscape, forbidding views of a beautiful place.

In the carriage, the adults talked into each other’s faces, ignoring the passing scene outside. The scene grabs and holds the attention of Freddie and myself. Crossing from one side of the carriage to the other, we try to see everything at once. To our left is the narrow ribbon of the Warrenpoint Road: streaming past swiftly it seemed alive, zigzagging smoothly sometimes, then swinging swiftly towards the train. Just as quickly it veered away as if animated by some independent, wilful quirk. In the Thirties the only road traffic would be an occasional car. We watched with pleasure as our train overtook these, pounding past with triumphant, iron-shod ease.

On the other side appeared the great, grey, shiny expanse of glar that was the wide, muddy, estuary of the river at low tide. Our river enjoyed a trinity of names. At this point it was the Newry River, but in town it was the County River, as it divides the Counties of Down and Armagh. Further upstream, as it meanders slowly through lush meadows, having left the watershed of the brooding Mournes, it is known as the Clanrye River.

In this broad, muddy estuary wetland that we observe from the train now, the river seems diminished, lost in innumerable, branching fissures. Here and there are deep, interesting clefts of trickling, oozy mud. From it, surprisingly, emerge with a flapping rush, immaculately plumaged birds that wing and glide smoothly over the wide, glistening mud, meeting their reflections below. Beyond this glistening, grey expanse, we see in the near distance a steep slope (Fathom) densely covered in bottle-green conifers, climbing up to comb the sky of this spiky panorama. Soon the Newry River, reduced now to a modest trickle, meets its mighty mother, the sea - a mingling of waters, fresh and saline, in this wide, wet morass of shining mud and feeding birds. Then we pass the medieval castle at Narrow Water, stern and silent, its mossy, castellated walls still pathetically guarding the narrow waterway. Stony teeth still thrust defiantly upwards. Eclipsed and humbled by time, it now broods in handsome decay, obsolete in this wasted backwater.

Below it on the steep, shingle shore, the inclined oval of a ferryboat lies, waiting its time. Across the now constricted river rises a small stone building in the gloom of the tall trees. Above towers the grandeur of the Carlingford Mountains, with the highest peak Slieve Foye, tall and serrated against the sky. Here the sea is manifest as the estuary widens into Carlingford Lough. On the landward side the green expanse of Warrenpoint Golf Course now takes and stretches the eye: immaculate turf, a smooth green carpet, rises in gentle swells, its verdant perfection blemished here and there with the scars of ugly, yellow sand traps, vivid like a bright rash of fevered intensity.

Then our pulses begin to quicken as the train slows towards Warrenpoint Station. The brakes squeal urgently, the train slows, then jerks to a halt with a sustained hiss of steam. Eagerly we descend to the busy platform amid the loud, disorganised thumping of heavy doors. Little groups stand around, looking, searching, waiting impatiently to complete their number before proceeding. We find ourselves suddenly in the midst of a murmuring throng, jostling excitedly towards the exit. Our eyes dart about busily, engrossed by the novelty, but return swiftly to our adults. We are anxious not to become lost in this strange, exciting place. Someone rushes urgently back, to retrieve a possession left on the train!

Then down the Newry Road we went, to that surprising square. How vast it seemed then to the curious eyes of a three-year-old boy! In the middle of the square were a few tall trees, toilets and some amusements - a rectangular space bordered with neat shops, brightly painted in various colours. Above each shop front was its painted name, boldly emblazoned in block lettering in (hopefully) eye-catching colours, or etched high on gable ends were legends proclaiming the delights of the resort. Ice creams, fish and chips, afternoon teas - all were on offer here. The whole town awaited our pleasure. The scene in the Square was capped around its periphery with multi-coloured striped awnings, deployed to protect the window displays from the rays of the pestilent sun. Optimism can lead to such romanticism.

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