My father outside our bookshop circa 1967
As I have no doubt said before, since I never tire of repeating myself, in my childhood home we operated according to the Little Red Hen principle, to wit: Those who do not work, neither shall they eat.’
And work we did.
By age 4, proficient in reading and basic maths, I had already been put to work sorting and shelving books in my parents’ secondhand book shop. My mother, tasked with looking after the shop while my father worked, had a tendency to abscond to the pub across the street and on these occasions, I would take her place behind the counter. Sitting on the high stool atop a pile of books, monarch of all I surveyed, I would competently and confidently take care of business. Nobody robbed me or reported my parents to Child Protective Services. I suppose it couldn’t have been that unusual since the kids who lived in the newsagents next door were also miniature shop assistants.
Child labour was alive, well and living in 1960s Dublin.
My wee brother outside our bookshop circa 1967
When the shop closed down and my younger brother was born we were rehoused by the local authority in a suburban highrise. Both of my parents worked so it fell to me, by now 6 years old, to take my brother to creche by bus before school and to collect him again in the afternoon. We were latchkey kids, fending for ourselves until our parents rolled home, often via some public house or other.
In the early 1970s when my father started a Legal Agency business with his brother, I would work there after school, filing, making tea and most importantly, to satisfy my uncle’s extreme thriftiness, picking up each and every paperclip from the floor with the aid of a magnet tied to a string.
Did I receive financial remuneration for my toil? Did I heck! Nor do I recall expecting it.
Money was always tight. So tight that my profligate parents would borrow cash from the gas meter hoping to have it replaced by collection day. In those days you paid for electricity and gas by feeding coins into a meter which would be collected periodically by the meter man. Needless to say, our meter was ofttimes empty when the meter man came to call. In evidence, I submit Exhibit A below
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I chose not to have children as I can’t stand the little blighters and rarely engage with anyone under the age of 21. If I did, however, I would raise them in exactly the same way my parents raised me, minus the alcohol. And why wouldn’t I? Sure look what a fine, upstanding member of society I turned out to be!
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Obviously, the photos are my own.