The happiest days of my life (and the best foundation stone of any child’s life) were spent in the Meadow, where I was born in 1967 :
this despite the fact that I only resided in the Meadow for eight years before moving a short distance away to Carnegat to a bigger house.
My earliest memories were of my cousin John Mc Millan, who often stayed with us at 54 Derrybeg Drive, and of him pushing us around Derrybeg Drive and down behind the garages on a set of old pram wheels with a plank of wood across the bars to sit on. These were absolutely brilliant times for us and luckily enough we never had any accidents.
I always remember all the fathers returning in the evening from the back of an old lorry after being out picking potatoes all day for a certain Mr Patterson. Each of the men would have a bag of potatoes home with them for their families. I can recall the likes of my father Dessie along with Hugh and Malachy Mathers all leaping off the back of the lorry while we played out in the street.
I also remember the turf lorry coming round and the people all out buying the turf to burn on their fires. And on Fridays you would see a van coming round the man shouting out in a loud voice ‘herrings, herrings, herrings’.
I also remember another lorry coming round and a man shouting out ‘rags, rags, rags.’ And you would give him out a bag of old clothes and in return he would give you some balloons.
We always looked forward to Tommy Price coming round in his ice cream van and many a day we would all run up and ask him if he had any brokers. He would give us all the broken wafers in a clear plastic bag.
You never would see many cars in our street but I remember a Mr. Connolly across the street had a Morris Minor outside his door. Sad to say, we used to always have great fun pulling the orange indicator sticks out of the side of the car and letting them flap down again.
………2 of 3 Meadow of 1970s ? …………….