View of Carlingford from the sea
Memories
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Kevin Woods
29 January 2017
Making Sausages in 1953
Sawdust was scattered on the terrazzo floor and a roll of white string hung from the ceiling its end dangling on to the marble slab where the meat was laid out and beside it was a wide roll of brown paper. My Uncle Willie tore a piece off it, lifted 6 lamb chops from the counter and whistling through his teeth as he worked - wrapped them. Taking the string- he tied the parcel and with a deft flick of the wrist and fingers he broke the cord with a skill that obviously took years to perfect. The parcel was named and addressed and placed in a large wicker basket for delivery to Cooley or for dispatch to the post office, who in return would deliver it by post.
This was 1953 in Woods’ butcher shop in Newry St. Carlingford. I was 9.
If you could get to the back door of the butcher shop without being noticed that was the place you really wanted to be. There was a sausage machine there. Large bowls of minced sausage meat were ready to be stuffed into what looked like a hollow canon with a hollow narrow barrel at the end of it. Beside the minced sausage meat was a glass jar full of sheep’s gut immersed in water that had been cleaned of whatever it contained the previous day: only now can I imagine!
The first job in the process of sausage making was to take a long piece of gut and work it all down the hollow narrow barrel of the machine. That done: you picked up handfuls of the sausage meat and stuffed as much of it as you could into the hollow canon. You sealed the back of the canon with a steel clamp attached to a handle, which when turned forced the meat through the canon down through the narrow barrel. With your hand holding one end of the sheep’s gut you were ready to go.
Your heart would be in your mouth for you knew that if you were caught you could get a ‘thick ear’ but the temptation of been able to make the biggest sausage in the world was to great and always overruled caution.
By gently turning the handle the meat would ooze into the sheep gut spluttering and spitting trapped air as it did. It would quickly pass the 12 inches long mark but inexperienced hands left it with gaps where pockets of air were trapped, together with wide and narrow circumferences of meat that soon stretched longer than five feet in length. It looked nothing like a sausage but took on a life of its own twisting and turning like a deformed snake out of control. My young mind always knew when to make a run for it and there was no more opportune time than at that moment. In seconds I was gone. I never knew who cleaned up after me. I was never caught and I never did master the art.
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Kevin Woods
29 January 2017
Milk didn’t always come in bottles and cartons
In 1957 I attended school in the Christian Brothers Dundalk. It was tough. The leather strap was used at will and I was a regular recipient. Brother Obrien was best at letting you have it.
Primary school in Carlingford and Master McGraths cane had prepared us well for entry to secondary school. Our palms were well hardened.
At school end I went to my father’s office in Francis Street to “study” and await a lift home at 6pm.
The pattern was always the same. We called on the way home, in our Volkswagen beetle.to Castletown House in Castletown Cooley.
I would open the gates to the driveway; my father drove in and moved to the passenger seat. I got in to the driver’s seat and driving lessons began at 12 up and down the avenue. The house belonged to my bed ridden grand Aunt Ann wife to the deceased Tommy Woods.
My Uncle Thomas Woods, brother of my father ran the farm for her and minded a cow owned by the father. Thomas had an understanding that my father would receive the cow’s milk and he would be the owner of any calves it produced.
The milk was ready each evening for collection in a 2 gallon steel can, the cream thick on the top of it. When we finally got home the milk was poured into large jugs, no pasteurising here and placed in our newly acquired first fridge.
I spent 3 years with the brothers in Dundalk and learned little other than how to drive a Volkswagon beetle.
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Karen Hodgson
29 January 2017
I was wondering if anybody in carlingford can help my find out more about my great grandma and her family. Her name was Mary Keenan and she was born on Castle Hill on 12th Nov. 1872. Her parents were called Ross and Anne (nee Rogan). Ross was in the merchant navy , I believe and died at sea. Anne went on to marry an English man called Andrew Foy and moved to England with her reluctant daughter Mary when Mary was 17 in 1889.Iwould lick to know more about Ross,s and Anne,s families.Please email me at More > (0 comments)
James McGivern
29 January 2017
in memory of james who came home for a holiday back to his birthplace and died on his holiday 5/8/1965 in omeath it was meant to be he was buried in the graveyard where his wife and little daughters were and his father and mother in the next grave to him god bless More > (0 comments)